Family members of Uzbek political prisoner Mamadali Mahmudov say police officers came to their home this past Saturday morning and forcibly detained them at a local police station. The police told Mahmudov’s wife and son that the family is on a police “special list” that needed to be updated.

In August 1999, Uzbek authorities sentenced Mahmudov to 14 years in prison. Among other charges, the writer was convicted of insulting the president and seeking to destroy the constitutional order. Without international pressure, Uzbek activists doubt the writer will ever see freedom since he criticized the president’s policies. Mahmudov’s wife says he’s been tortured and put in solitary confinement.

There’ve been numerous prisoner amnesties in Uzbekistan since Mahmudov’s arrest. Thousands of inmates were released after presidential pardons. Human Rights observers call the pardons a ruse to placate Uzbekistan’s powerful ally, the United States.

Mahmudov is just one of many activists and journalists, who are routinely arrested under simple suspicion of being critical to the president or the government.

Umida Niyazova is a human rights activist and former translator for Human Rights Watch. In 2006, she was arrested and convicted on politically motivated charges. At her trial, she was forced to denounce the work of Human Rights Watch and publicly admit guilt.

I spoke with Umida while she was in Chicago to receive the Voices of Justice Award from Human Rights Watch-Chicago. Umida began by telling Jerome a little about her human rights career…