Uzbekistan: Gay Men Face Abuse, Prison
Ensure Rights to Personal Security, Privacy, Nondiscrimination
Men in Uzbekistan who engage in consensual same-sex sexual conduct face arbitrary detention, prosecution, and imprisonment as well as homophobia, threats, and extortion, Human Rights Watch said today. Uzbekistan should guarantee rights to personal security, privacy, and nondiscrimination by decriminalising consensual sexual conduct between men.
Uzbekistan, a current member of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council, has undertaken key human rights reforms since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev came to power in 2016, but the criminalisation of same-sex sexual conduct remains a significant stain on Tashkent’s record. Article 120 of the current criminal code punishes consensual sexual conduct between men with up to three years in prison.
«Article 120, and abuses linked to it, has placed gay and bisexual men in Uzbekistan in a deeply vulnerable and marginalised position, leaving them with almost no protection from harassment by police and others», said Hugh Williamson, director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. «Uzbekistan should definitively turn a page from its abusive past and remove this rights-violating and outdated provision from its new Criminal Code».
Human Rights Watch interviewed nine gay men and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists and reviewed other material, such as videos depicting and encouraging humiliation, insults, beatings, or sexual abuse of gay men that were posted online and in homophobic social media groups, such as TashGangs. The men interviewed, who asked to remain anonymous, said that they faced arbitrary arrests, threats, extortion, psychological pressure, and physical attacks by both police and non-state actors for being gay.
Article 120 is a carry-over from Uzbekistan’s Soviet past and is problematic because it violates fundamental rights protected under international law, such as to privacy and bodily autonomy, and is blatantly discriminatory. Only two states in the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, still criminalise consensual same-sex conduct. Turkmenistan has said that it will reconsider its law. While it seems that prosecutions based on article 120 are rare, police in Uzbekistan continue to use it to arbitrarily detain and threaten people, who may ultimately be prosecuted on other charges, such as prostitution.
Uzbekistan is considering a new Criminal Code, yet the draft published on February 22, 2021, retains the offence, in a new article, 154, with the wording unchanged.
Gay men who face human rights abuses have few legal remedies. One activist said that LGBT crime survivors do not seek protection from police «fearing they will be outed, [or] subjected to bullying and insults by the authorities [themselves]».
In a February 2020 report, the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity (ECOM), an alliance of nongovernmental organisations working on LGBT issues, citing local activists, documented that police in Uzbekistan harassed gay men, detaining and interrogating several of them between August 15 and September 15, 2019. After an Istanbul-based LGBT activist from Uzbekistan, Shohruh Salimov, issued a video appeal in August 2019 urging President Mirziyoyev to protect the lives of LGBT people in Uzbekistan, police visited his relatives’ home and told them they were looking for him to arrest him, media reported.
Media outlets in Uzbekistan also reported on the shocking case of Shokir Shavkatov, a 25-year-old man who was found stabbed to death in his apartment in September 2019, just days after he came out as gay on his Instagram page. Police opened an investigation, and later a man was convicted for Shavkatov’s «intentional murder».
Five men also told Human Rights Watch that they had paid bribes of up to the equivalent of US$1,000 to keep them from disclosing the men’s sexual orientation to family members or the public. Two of them said they had to pay a bribe to the police.
«Because of the violence and discrimination that LGBT people are subjected to, we had to stop most of [our] projects, news feeds or groups online», one activist said, describing the climate of fear’s chilling effect on activism. «We’ve gone completely underground».
Uzbek law has no provision for hate crimes, nor can crimes be prosecuted as aggravated offences if they are motivated by hatred based on discrimination. Uzbekistan has yet to adopt a comprehensive anti-discrimination law that includes sexual orientation and gender identity as a protected ground. As of September 2019, the last time it addressed the issue, the Uzbek government said there were no ongoing criminal investigations involving violence against LGBT people.
Multiple local and international human rights groups, as well as UN bodies, have called on Uzbekistan to decriminalise same sex conduct in recent years. The UN Human Rights Committee, which oversees state compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, three decades ago held that state laws prohibiting consensual same-sex conduct violate government obligations to respect the rights to privacy and nondiscrimination.
In July 2019, a group of LGBT activists sent a letter to President Mirziyoyev, urging him to repeal Article 120. They said that «this article opens a path to vigilantism and corruption». In December 2020, nine international human rights organisations issued a statement calling on the Uzbek government to «stop punishing homosexuality and respect the human rights of all». On March 5, after Uzbekistan’s draft Criminal Code was published retaining the offence, 44 human rights groups issued a joint statement urging Uzbekistan to decriminalise same sex conduct.
In its May 2020 conclusions, the UN Human Rights Committee called on the Uzbek government to repeal Article 120 and expressed concerns about «continuing reports of discrimination, harassment and violence, including extortion, arbitrary arrest, torture and sexual abuse, against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons by State officials and private individuals, including in places of deprivation of liberty, and about the mandatory disclosure of private medical information». The committee noted a «high level of impunity for these crimes” and expressed concern that LGBT people are «unable to report violence and discrimination against them for fear of prosecution».
Uzbek authorities have dismissed calls to decriminalise homosexuality. In March 2020, during the UN Human Rights Committee’s review of Uzbekistan, an Uzbek government representative said that the “lifestyle [of LGBT people] was not approved by Islam and was not in keeping with the Uzbek mindset.”
Uzbekistan should decriminalise same-sex sexual conduct by repealing article 120 of the criminal code and excluding any provisions criminalising same-sex conduct from its new criminal code. The government should also investigate attacks and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including threats made by law enforcement officers to use article 120 against people, and hold those responsible to account. The authorities should adopt effective nondiscrimination policies, combat violence, harassment, and hatred against LGBT people, and facilitate the registration and operation of nongovernmental groups working on LGBT issues.
Uzbekistan’s international partners should press Uzbekistan to decriminalise same-sex conduct in keeping with its obligations to uphold key human rights standards. The European Union (EU), in negotiations with Uzbekistan over the EU’s GSP+ trade incentive, should set up a dedicated human rights monitoring process, including LGBT rights, involving domestic and international civil society groups.
«Criminalisation of same-sex sexual conduct is fundamentally incompatible with international human rights norms and keeping it on the books contributes to an environment of fear and hostility for LGBT people in Uzbekistan», Williamson said. «If Uzbekistan wants to show the world it is serious about respecting human rights, parliament should decriminalise consensual same-sex conduct before it adopts a new Criminal Code».