Mutabar Tadjibayeva | Mutabar Tadjibaeva is a human rights activist from Uzbekistan who was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment after denouncing the government's crackdown on human rights defenders. Amnesty International believed authorities detained her to prevent her from speaking out about the 2005 Andizhan massacre in which government forces killed and wounded a largely unarmed crowd of protesters.
While incarcerated she endured solitary confinement, mistreatment and forced psychiatric treatment. Her release on parole in 2008 was largely dictated by her need for adequate cancer treatment. She is the chairwoman of the Fiery Hearts Club, a human rights organization based in Ferghana City. She is also a founder of the national movement Civil Society. Tadjibaeva has monitored human rights violations in the Ferghana Valley and has reported on issues such as the violations of women’s rights to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an international non-governmental organization that trains journalists in human rights reporting. She received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2008 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2005.
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