45 year-old Yelena Urlaeva worked as a technician at the state-run television station in Uzbekistan until 1999, when, outraged by human rights violations and infringements on freedom of speech in Uzbekistan’s media, she began working with human rights groups. She was forcibly hospitalized for the first time on April 6 of last year, where she was diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia. Only months later, after international human rights organizations staged protests over her hospitalization, was she released, immediately returning to her human rights work. She has repeatedly organized protests against the lack of government accountability and violations of citizens’ rights in Uzbekistan.
After a peaceful demonstration on August 27, both Urlaeva and another protester, Larisa Vdovina, were locked away in a psychiatric hospital, where they remain. Urlaeva’s mother described what happened in a phone conversation with the human rights organization Citizen's Action: “On the day before the demonstration, August 26, the apartment building where Yelena was staying was surrounded by Special Forces, so she put on Uzbek clothes and covered her face. They didn’t recognize her when she left the building, but took her not long after the demonstration started. Now they won’t let anyone except me in to see her, and they are forcing treatment on her.”
On September 26, the head of ward 17 of the Tashkent city psychiatric hospital confirmed that she has been ordered to let no one in to see Urlaeva except her mother.
Urlaeva described the August 27 demonstration as follows: “I witnessed how, during the protest in front of the Ministry of Justice about ten people, strangers, ran up to the protesters (Olga Krasnova, Konstantin Stepanov and Larisa Vdovina) and started grabbing their signs from them. They beat Olga with their fists and then packed them all in a car and drove away. When I joined the protest, they ran up to me as well, but I was able to hide some signs in my bag. Members of the Special Forces shoved me into a car and took me to the Yunusabad regional division of Interior Affairs, and later to the hospital.