A court in Uzbekistan's southwestern city of Bukhara has sentenced another 39 Karakalpak activists accused of taking part in unsanctioned anti-government protests in the Central Asian nation's Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan last year.
Uzbekistan's Supreme Court said on March 17 that 28 defendants were sentenced to prison terms of between five years and 11 years on various charges, including organizing and taking part in mass unrest, distributing materials inciting social discord, inflicting serious bodily damage, and the illegal use of firearms.
Another 11 defendants were handed parole-like sentences and immediately released from custody. It remains unclear how the defendants pleaded.
In late January, the same court sentenced the first group of Karakalpak activists, 22 individuals in the high-profile case, sending lawyer and journalist Dauletmurat Tajimuratov to prison for 16 years on charges of plotting to seize power by disrupting constitutional order, organizing mass unrest, embezzlement, and money laundering.
Seventeen defendants were sentenced to prison terms of between three years and 8 1/2 years at the time. Four defendants, including another journalist, Lolagul Qallykhanova, were then handed parole-like sentences and immediately released from custody.
SEE ALSO: In Uzbekistan's Karakalpakstan, Trial Over Deadly Unrest Makes A 'Hero' Of Its Intended VillainOne of the activists, Polat Shamshetov, who was convicted in January and sentenced to six years in prison, died in custody last month.
Self-exiled Karakalpak activists have expressed suspicions that the 45-year-old Shamshetov might have been tortured to death in custody and demanded a thorough investigation of his death, while Uzbek authorities have said he died of a "thromboembolism of the pulmonary artery and acute heart failure."
Uzbek authorities say 21 people died in Karakalpakstan during the protests, which were sparked by the announcement in early July last year of a planned change to the constitution that would have undermined the region's right to self-determination.
The violence in Nukus, the main city in Karakalpakstan, forced President Shavkat Mirziyoev to make a rare about-face and scrap the proposal.
Mirziyoev accused "foreign forces" of being behind the unrest, without further explanation, before backing away from the proposed changes.
Karakalpaks are a Central Asian Turkic-speaking people. Their region used to be an autonomous area within Kazakhstan before becoming autonomous within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1930 and then part of Uzbekistan in 1936.
Karakalpakstan is home to fewer than two million people, out of a nation of 35 million, but it covers more than one-third of Uzbekistan's territory.
The European Union has called for an independent investigation into the violence.