Uzbekistan: Official Denial on Domestic Abuse

“For a long time I didn’t become pregnant, and that was the main reason for the beatings,” said Qaramat Odilova, now 27. “My husband told me his parents and male friends were laughing at him for marrying a barren woman.”

Odilova was married off – against her will – to a relative, who turned out to be a violent drunk.

“When I did get pregnant and had a child… he continued to beat and humiliate me. I put up with it because my parents were against divorce and said that if I left my husband, it would bring shame on them.”

Like many women in her position, Odilova does not know what she can do.

“It’s hard to go to the police since they usually take the husband’s side,” she said. “When I did make a statement to them, they said it wasn’t good to be accusing my husband.”

Tashkent lawyer Laylo Hamidova says abuse in the home and victims’ fear of doing anything about it stem from traditional values that accord women a secondary role.

For those brave enough to go to court, the risks are high. “That kind of behaviour is seen as immoral, and she will be publicly vilified by the people in her neighbourhood,” said Hamidova.

Social pressure to conform is great in the “mahalla” or traditional neighbourhood, and the intrusive questioning of friends, neighbours and even the victim’s own children following an official complaint can be enough to make her retract her statement.

Rayhon Abdurazakova, a 26-year-old from the western city of Bukhara, remained silent for four years and only considered seeking legal assistance when one of her husband’s attacks landed her in a hospital casualty department.

“He humiliated me, and beat me and the children,” she said. “My parents forbade me from speaking about it, saying that the neighbours would laugh at them, and that they’d renounce me if I told anyone or went to the police.”

While Abdurazakova was recovering in hospital, another patient told her about a local organisation called Oydin Nuri which offers legal assistance and psychological counselling to victims of domestic violence.

However, she has not yet decided whether to take this step.

Natalya Polyanova, a lawyer in the capital Tashkent, says women rarely go to court with their complaints.

“They put up with the beatings for ethnic and cultural reasons. It’s considered shameful to publicise violence, and they fear being condemned not only by their parents-in-law, but also by their own parents,” she said.

Uzbekistan ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1996. National legislation includes penalties for assault, but there is no specific legal framework covering domestic violence.

The lack of separate recognition for the issue in domestic laws is an obstacle, experts say.

“The policy that women should not wash their dirty linen in public derives from the state, which does not recognise that the problem exists,” said Hamidova.

In addition to the lack of a legal framework, many Uzbek politicians deny that domestic abuse is even a problem.

“In our society, given our respect for the female gender and for the role of women as mothers, sisters and daughter, the problem of domestic violence falls away, since men always behave in a respectful manner towards members of the fair sex,” said Diloram Tashmuhammedova, the deputy speaker of parliament and one of Uzbekistan’s leading female politicians.

“If there are any cases of domestic aggression, they are isolated and not on a wide scale. We are not experiencing a surge in domestic terror as other countries are…. and if it happens, the existing legal framework allows women to defend their rights. So it is not appropriate to talk about the existence of this problem in Uzbekistan.”

Farida Akbarova, another top female political figure who is deputy prime minister and heads the government Committee for Women’s Affairs, also said that domestic violence was not a problem in Uzbekistan.

In such an environment, it is unsurprising that women are hesitant about filing a complaint.

“Uzbek women essentially lack protection against the whims of their husbands,” said Hayitboy Yoqubov, head of the Najot human rights group in the northern Khorezm province. “Most [women] aren’t aware that systematic beatings and humiliations are a violation of their legal rights. It isn’t just that they don’t want to go to the police, they basically don’t know that they can defend their rights in this manner – including the right to life, given that there are quite a lot of cases that end in death.”

Yoqubov said police in Khorezm had recorded three cases of suicide by women since the beginning of the year. The police were linking the deaths to abuse, psychological as well as physical, within the family.

One recent case was that of 22-year-old Nargiza Ollabergenova who hanged herself in January. According to Yoqubov, who looked into this case, Ollabergenova suffered assaults by her husband.

Although the lack of publicly available information makes it impossible to gather statistics, Ollabergenova’s death does not appear to have been an isolated incident.

Doctors at one hospital in Tashkent say two women died there recently, one of a ruptured liver after a brutal beating by her husband who did not like a meal she had prepared, the other of grave injuries inflicted by her spouse.

Uzbekistan has few non-government groups dedicated to helping the victims of domestic abuse.

After the violence of May 2005 when government troops shot down hundreds of protesters in the city of Andijan, Uzbekistan’s relationship with western states deteriorated sharply, and large numbers of NGOs including women’s rights groups and crisis centres were forced to close, either for lack of funding or because of government pressure.

A few human rights defenders and groups continue to provide services on an informal basis.

“All the centres that offer support to such women are under constant pressure,” said a crisis centre worker from the Jizak region of central Uzbekistan. “State institutions are mistrustful of this kind of activity. They think we are promoting the emancipation of women and setting them at odds with their husbands. We explain to them that very many women die at the hands of tyrannical husbands, But they reply that those are the ways of Uzbekistan families and that we shouldn’t be importing elements of an alien, western culture.”

The crisis worker said that what was really needed was for the state itself, not NGOs, to set up a network of centres to help the victims of violence in the home.

(The names of some interviewees have been omitted to protect their identity.)

Bakhtiyor Rasulov is the pseudonym of a journalist in Tashkent.

This article was produced under IWPR’s Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media programme, funded by the European Commission. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.