A well-known Karakalpak activist has been detained by police at his home in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty, the activist's partner told RFE/RL on February 15, adding that Uzbekistan had issued the warrant for his arrest.
Aqylbek Muratbai (aka Muratov) is a well-known figure in Kazakhstan's Karakalpak diaspora and regularly provides interviews to foreign media about the situation in his native Karakalpakstan -- an autonomous region in Uzbekistan's northwest that was the scene of unprecedented protests and a lethal state crackdown in 2022.
Muratbai, an Uzbek passport holder, has also advocated for the rights of fellow diaspora members who were detained by Kazakh police at Uzbekistan's request in the aftermath of the violence.
His partner, Indira Beisembaeva, told RFE/RL that Muratbai was detained by plainclothes Kazakh police at around 10 p.m. local time.
"[Muratbai] just phoned me. He said that he was taken to the Department of Internal Affairs in Almaty. He said that he was detained at Uzbekistan's request in connection to the Karakalpakstan issue," Beisembaeva said in a telephone call.
Beisembaeva said that Muratbai had been invited for questioning by Kazakh police last week but had been unable to go.
At least 21 people were killed and more than 200 injured in July 2022 during a crackdown on protesters and riots fueled by Tashkent's plan to curtail the autonomous region's constitutional right to secede from Uzbekistan.
The violence forced President Shavkat Mirziyoev to make a rare about-face and scrap the proposal.
Mirziyoev accused "foreign forces" of being behind the unrest but gave no further explanation before backing away from the proposed changes.
In January of last year, an Uzbek court sentenced 22 Karakalpak activists to prison terms on charges including undermining the constitutional order for taking part in the mass protests in Karakalpakstan in July 2022.
The following March, another 39 Karakalpak activists accused of taking part in the protests in the region's capital, Nukus, were convicted, with 28 of them sentenced to prison terms of between five and 11 years. Eleven defendants were handed parole-like sentences.
The state crackdown significantly weakened the flow of information out of Karakalpakstan, but RFE/RL journalists were recently able to speak to multiple students from the region who provided details of an intensifying government campaign targeting Karakalpak youth, as authorities seek to avert further unrest.