Human Rights for a Writer in Prison

I’m changing my blogging schedule around this week, so that I can participate in today’s human rights blogging campaign here. I thought I’d follow up my previous blog about International PEN.

The English PEN website is featuring Djamshid Karimov, a journalist in Uzbekistan, who has been forcibly kept in a psychiatric hospital for over eighteen months. His writing about injustice and corruption in his country has been published internationally. Perhaps because he is a nephew of the country’s leader, President Karimov, he was offered work for state controlled newspapers in 2006. He was detained after he refused to toe the line.

His detention order has never been explained but the original six month order was extended until September 2007. Although that date has passed, he has still not been released and his fiancée and mother (widow and sister-in-law to the president) have been abused, harassed and banned from making statements or contacting the media.

As is their practice, English PEN has made Djamshid Karimov an Honorary Member, and requests its members to write to the Uzbek Ambassador in London calling for his immediate release. His details are:

HE Mr Tukhtapulat Tursunovich Riskiev
41 Holland Park
London W11 3RP

Visit their website to find events and opportunities to support English PEN.