A wave of persecution in the Uzbek SSR (1972)
To the Praesidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, to Soviet public opinion (3 pp.)
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This document reports that on 18 May 1972, the day of national mourning of the Crimean Tatar people, a “quarantine” was declared at many cemeteries in Uzbekistan and police squads were deployed at them [1]. In Bekabad Crimean Tatars who came to the cemetery were detained and subjected to humiliating interrogations. Several people (Refide Abkhairova, Kadir Akhtemov and others) were taken into custody for 15 days.
On the following day searches were carried out at the flats of Dzhappar Akimov, Ramazan Muratov, Khalil Ibraimov, S. Seitmetov and the brothers Shugu. Copies of letters from the national movement to organs of government were confiscated. A written undertaking not to leave the town was taken from D. Akimov.
On 12 July, 17 searches were carried out in Uzbekistan. Those whose homes were searched were:
- Tashkent: the engineers Reshat Dzhemilev, Izzet Khairov and Dzhelyal Chelebiyev, graduate student Sabri Umerov and pensioner Mustafa Khaliyev;
- Samarkand: the worker Shevki Mukhteremov;
- Fergana: Nurfet Muraklias, Fakie Mullayeva, Muksim Osmanov and Seiran Useinov;
- Angren: Amet Abduramanov and Lennar Tezikov;
- Yangi-Yul: Amza Ablayev;
- Margelan: Seidamet Memetov and Settar Abduveliyev;
- and in the “5th anniversary of the Uzbek SSR” State Farm: the accountant Amdi Mukhteremov and Ilyas Yurdam.
Several searches were carried out when the owners of the homes were not present, and children were forced to sign the search-records. There was no sanction from a procurator for the searches at the homes of Chelebiyev and Umerov.
The statement says that the aim of these actions was to put a stop to the collection of signatures on appeals to the Politburo and the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet (see Items 17 and 18 in current issue). “We demand that you order the administrative organs to cease their attempts to turn the national question into a criminal one.”
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NOTE
- “In Moscow such measures have been applied only once,” comments the Chronicle: “at the Novodevichy cemetery on the day Khrushchev was buried,” (in 1971).
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