PEN American Center and PEN USA West are delighted to announce that Uzbek journalist and human rights activist Ruslan Sharipov has
obtained political asylum in the United States and is now with
members of his family in California.
Sharipov fled Uzbekistan on his way to a work camp after receiving a
two-year community service sentence this past June. He had originally
been given a four-year prison sentence on appeal in September 2003.
Sharipov was arrested on May 26, 2003 in Tashkent with two other
colleagues on suspicion of having committed homosexual acts and
sex with minors. Sharipov denied the second charge.
A former president of the Union of Independent
Journalists of Uzbekistan (UIJU) and correspondent for the Russian
news agency Prima, Sharipov, who is open about his sexual orientation,
has been a critic of the Uzbek government for many years and
has written articles on alleged corruption in the police force.
He has worked with a number of international human rights
organizations. In 2002, he was physically attacked three times,
once by police and twice by unidentified individuals.
In a statement written on July 16, 2003 from prison,
Sharipov stated that the case had been fabricated by the
Mirzo Ulugbek district department of internal
affairs as punishment for his reporting for the Russian PRIMA news
agency critical of the department and for
his activities as chair of the unregistered human
rights organization Brazhdanskoe Sodeystvye (Civic Resistance).
He added that forensic tests on his alleged
victims and himself exonerated him of the charges.
Ruslan Sharipov is an honorary member of both PEN American Center and PEN USA West,
in addition to being the recipient of the PEN USA 2004 Freedom to Write award.
Each year PEN USA presents Freedom to Write Awards to men and women who have produced work in the face of extreme
adversity, been punished for exercising their freedom of
expression or fought against censorship and defended
the right to publish freely. The awards were presented October 20
at PEN USA's annual Literary Festival in Los Angeles.
Mr. Sharipov arrived in the United States two days later.