WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT Since it opened in 1999, Jaslyk stood as a symbol of Uzbekistan’s terrible human rights record, a ‘house of torture’ for thousands of religious prisoners, government critics, and others. Some inmates never made it out alive
A man had fingernails ripped from his hands and suffered horrific last moments as he was plunged into scalding hot water before he died in ‘The House of Torture.’
Also dubbed the ‘Place of No Return’ Jaslyk prison, north-west Uzbekistan where human rights activists and ex-inmates have argued it is a hotbed of human rights violations, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Muzafar Avazov, a so-called religious prisoner was found with 60 to 70 per cent of his body burned by “doctors who reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing Avazov in boiling water”.
HRW documented Avazov and Husnidin Alimov’s deaths in 2002, as suspicious deaths showing clear signs of torture. Based on witness accounts, HRW said Avazov also had a bloody wound on the back of his head and heavy bruising on his forehead and neck. His fingers had no nails.
Valeriy Parijer, a businessman with dual Russian-Israeli citizenship was in Uzbekistan since 2002, was transferred to Jaslyk in 2012. Parijer’s original prison sentence was expiring so instead of being released he was moved and handed an additional five-year term in Jaslyk for “breaking prison rules”.
Parijer’s wife, Irina, says Parijer experienced “horrendous suffering.” She said: “They put needles under his fingernails,” Parijer told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, and was placed inside an iron box for hours in the summer heat.” She feared for her husband’s life, and doesn’t believe Parijer would survive another five years in Jaslyk. Protests in her husband’s name were held outside the Uzbek Embassy in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan.
Other former inmates recalled vile methods of torture, including electric shocks, sexual assault, the pulling out of prisoners’ fingernails, and long stints of solitary confinement without food or drink.
Yusuf Juma, an Uzbek poet and dissident who spent three years at the remote prison facility was imprisoned in 2007 after he challenged President Karimov’s right to run for a new term in office.
He said: “I don’t know which is worse — Jaslyk or Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Jaslyk is nothing less than a death camp. It feels like there is no limit to the cruelty the prison officers there are capable of.
“Every month, they would keep me in solitary confinement for 15 days. Another 15 days of each month I would spend in another facility in the town of Nukus, some 500 kilometers away.
“They would transfer me there in a small iron box — too small to sit, too small to stand up. And it was a bumpy road and my head would bang against iron. There wasn’t enough air to breathe.”
The Israeli government, wrote to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry requesting that Parijer be transferred to another prison immediately and also calling for his release.
Jaslyk was set up in 1999 on the site of a former Soviet-era chemical-weapons testing area in the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan. The area is known for its harsh climate with extremely cold winters and scorching summers. The prison facility was opened after the deadly Tashkent bombings, which authorities blamed on religious extremists.
Tens of thousands of people were arrested in the aftermath of the 1999 bombings and many so-called “religious prisoners” would end up in the newly established Jaslyk. The prison currently houses 5,000 to 7,000 inmates, according to HRW.
Swerdlow said: “Since that time torture has really been one of the major focuses of the human rights community concerning Uzbekistan. Jaslyk has continued for the last decade to be the source of numerous reports – credible and consistent reports — of torture of so-called religious prisoners.
Uzbek authorities insist the situation has since improved, and deny that torture is widespread in the country’s prisons. Several law-enforcement officers have reportedly been punished after being accused of mistreating inmates. The country, however, does not allow United Nations’ rapporteurs on torture to visit Uzbek prisons, including the notorious Jaslyk facility.
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