ARBITRARY POLICE BRUTALITY AGAINST FARMERS IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH A SUSTAINABLE COTTON SECTOR

Azizjon Tojiboev and Gairatjon Khairullaev, successful and hardworking farmers from Rishton district of Fergana region, became victims of senseless and illegal arbitrary violence at the hands of local police officers.

“I’ll kill you”

On July 7, 2025, four police officers, including one in civilian clothing, came to the home of farmer Gairatjon Khairullaev and ordered him to go immediately to a meeting with the district police chief, Shavkat Mavlonov.

The police officers did not provide a written summons and refused to explain the reason for the meeting. When the farmer, exhausted after a day’s work, asked them to wait, they forced their way into his house. One officer pulled out his pistol, pointed it at Khairullaev, and shouted, “I’ll kill you!”

“That day, around 8 p.m., I had just returned from the field with my family after defoliating cotton. Four men broke into our house. One of them had a pistol in his hand. I asked, ‘What’s going on?’ The officer came up to me and, without explanation, pointed the gun at me. My mother, who saw everything, screamed and then fainted from fear. The police tried to drag me to the station by force. Seeing my mother unconscious, I immediately called an ambulance. They came three times that evening but refused to take her to the hospital, saying: ‘She just has high blood pressure. We’ll give her an injection and she’ll be fine.’ But after three or four hours, she still hadn’t regained consciousness. In the middle of the night, I took her to the hospital myself, where she finally came to,” the farmer told journalist Sharifa Madrakhimova.

The next morning, on July 8, Khairullaev filed a complaint with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor’s office, demanding that the officers be held accountable. The prosecutor’s office, however, responded that “a decision has been made to refuse the opening of a criminal case, since the actions of the police officers did not constitute a crime.”

The farmer said he still does not understand why police officers broke into his house, threatened him with a weapon, and terrorized his mother and children. The only explanation given was that they were acting on the orders of Shavkat Mavlonov, chief of the district police.

Five days in jail for nothing

Another farmer from Rishton district, Azizjon Tojiboev, told journalist Sharifa Madrakhimova that he was detained by police officers on August 15 while driving to work in his fields

Three officers stopped his car and claimed that because he had not submitted his cotton defoliation equipment for technical inspection, police chief Mavlonov had ordered him to be brought in for questioning.

“I told the police that I had a lot of work to do, that my equipment didn’t need repairs, and that I could fix it myself if necessary. One officer called Mavlonov and repeated my words. Mavlonov then ordered the officers to, ‘Handcuff him and bring him here quickly.’ They handcuffed me and took me to the police station. There, they wanted me to sign some papers, but I refused. One officer said, ‘You’d better sign. You’ll only be fined 400,000 soums (approximately $32)—I’ll even pay it myself. Just understand us, our boss said to ‘lock you up for 15 days.’ He pressured me into signing the papers.”

The same day, Tojiboev was taken to Rishton District Criminal Court. When he told the judge he would not speak without a lawyer, the judge responded by threatening to increase his punishment if he insisted.

On August 20, the Rishton District Criminal Court sentenced Tojiboev to five days of administrative arrest and fined him 2,060,000 soums (approximately $166). Tojiboev was found guilty under three articles of the Administrative Code: disobeying a lawful order of an internal affairs officer (Article 194), petty hooliganism (Article 183), and “sexual harassment” (Article 41-1). According to the charges, he caused a public outrage during his arrest, used abusive language, and disturbed the peace.

It is notable that the “sexual harassment” charge was added at the last moment. The alleged victim, who was not present at the scene, testified in court that Tojiboev had once sent her “a couple of text messages,” which she had deleted. She also admitted that she had not filed the complaint herself but merely signed a document prepared by a police officer. The woman even asked the court for leniency, saying she “did not expect the case to take on such a serious nature.”

Tojiboev, who maintains his innocence, appealed to the regional court. Four days later, his appeal was partially upheld and he was released.

The Fergana Regional Criminal Appeals Court ruled that the charges of petty hooliganism and disobeying a lawful police order were baseless, as no evidence had been provided. Moreover, the court found that the police demand to submit the farmer’s defoliation equipment for inspection “cannot be considered a lawful order”, since the equipment was his private property.

In his effort to obtain justice, Tojiboev reported that he had called the Ministry of Internal Affairs hotline to request an investigation into the officers’ actions, but his complaints went unanswered.

These two cases highlight the crisis within Uzbekistan’s legal system, where law enforcement agencies are themselves the main violators of the law. The prosecutor’s office routinely refuses to investigate abuse of power against citizens, thereby creating a culture of total impunity.

Despite some reforms, Uzbek farmers continue to suffer under a vicious system of constant interference in their affairs. In numerous interviews with the Uzbek Forum, farmers state that the first thing they need is freedom from state interference. In recent years, Uzbek Forum has documented dozens of cases of arbitrary detention and police violence against farmers. In most cases, there were no transparent investigations, and no-one was held accountable. Despite the Uzbek government’s best efforts to present its cotton industry in a warm glow of reform, it cannot pretend to have a “sustainable” cotton sector while it tolerates state-sanctioned acts of violence against its farmers.

Source: Uzbekforum.org