Uzbekistan's Forced Psychiatric Detentions Face Scrutiny After Blogger's Reported Release

A release leaves other critics confined

Uzbek blogger Shahida Salomova, 64, was reportedly released from psychiatric detention on October 19 after being confined following her criticism of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's family. Her case sits alongside a formal United Nations finding that another blogger, Valijon Kalonov, was arbitrarily detained and should be released, compensated and given an independent investigation into his confinement.

Salomova was detained at her Tashkent apartment on December 18, 2022. A court ordered compulsory psychiatric treatment in February 2023, and she was later transferred to a hospital under the Interior Ministry. Her reported release date gives no year, leaving the precise duration of her confinement unclear.

Uzbekistan's legislation makes voluntary consent the general rule for psychiatric care and protects access to legal assistance. The cases described by relatives and human rights organisations show critics instead facing confinement without a clear end date, medication they opposed and difficulties obtaining outside help.

The central issue is concrete: a person prosecuted over speech can be moved into a medical institution, where leaving depends on further medical and judicial decisions. For families, the struggle then involves both challenging the original accusations and securing access to the person inside.

How criticism of a presidential relative led to detention

Salomova administered the Telegram channel Pathanatomy of Uzbekistan and the YouTube channel Shahina Salomova. She accused the president's family of corruption and nepotism, meaning the use of power to benefit relatives. Her posts included allegations about Otabek Umarov, Mirziyoyev's son-in-law.

She alleged that Umarov had acquired about 20 plots near his home in Tashkent's Mirzo-Ulugbek district to build a large estate. An investigation published in 2024 described a residential project covering about 1.5 hectares, with an estimated value of $20 million. People familiar with the project alleged that residents had been pressured to leave and that about 20 private homes were demolished to combine the plots.

Those property allegations remained central to the public interest in Salomova's case. They concerned how a close relative of the president obtained valuable land and financed a substantial residential development in the capital.

Personnel from four security agencies reportedly participated in Salomova's detention. The stated accusations were online defamation and insult. Her family could confirm her detention only three days later, and the lawyer retained by her relatives was reportedly denied access.

Salomova was held for more than 48 hours, which advocates described as a breach of criminal procedure rules, before being sent for psychiatric examination without her relatives' consent. In February 2023, a court in Tashkent's Mirabad district declared her mentally incompetent and ordered compulsory treatment without a fixed end date, citing ideas described as dangerous to the state.

In January 2024, she was transferred to the Republican Psychiatric Hospital for Intensive Observation after refusing prescribed medication. International rights organisations and independent activists called her confinement punitive psychiatry, the use of psychiatric diagnoses and institutions to punish or silence people for their views.

What Uzbekistan's psychiatric care law promises

Uzbekistan's Law on Psychiatric Care, O'RQ-690, dated May 12, 2021, sets out a different starting point. Article 7 says care is generally provided after a person voluntarily seeks assistance and gives informed consent, with exceptions defined by law. Involuntary hospitalization requires legal grounds and court review.

Informed consent means receiving an understandable explanation of the condition, proposed treatment, likely duration and possible side effects before agreeing in writing. The law also provides for consent through legal representatives in specified circumstances.

Article 8 says people receiving psychiatric care retain constitutional rights. It gives them rights to humane treatment, information they can understand, assistance from a lawyer or representative, and care in the least restrictive conditions possible. Hospital stays should last only as long as treatment requires.

The law also permits a person to invite a psychiatrist, with that doctor's agreement, to take part in the relevant medical commission. Restrictions on rights require a legal basis, and officials who unlawfully restrict those rights can be held responsible.

Access to a lawyer therefore matters throughout the process, from the initial examination to challenges against continuing confinement. A court hearing, an opportunity to contest medical findings and contact with an independent representative are practical ways for a patient to seek release.

Salomova's reported lack of access to her family's lawyer, followed by treatment without a clear release date, places those protections at the centre of her case. No accountability measures against the officials, medical assessors or others responsible for her confinement have been reported.

Kalonov's case brought a formal UN finding

Valijon Kalonov, a blogger from Jizzakh, criticised government policies, Uzbekistan's relations with China and Beijing's treatment of Uyghurs. His political messages in 2021 included calls to vote Mirziyoyev out of office and, later, to boycott the presidential election.

The Uzbek Forum for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch date his arrest to August 2021; another account dates it to October. In December 2021, a court ordered compulsory psychiatric treatment after a state commissioned assessment diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder and problems with logical thinking, and described him as potentially dangerous to society.

Kalonov had publicly argued for political action through elections. In a March 2021 video, the blogger explained his appeal:

I am not calling on you to take up arms and fight, I am urging you to use your democratic right to vote in an election.

His relatives later said doctors tried to force him to take tranquilizers. They also described a November court decision extending his treatment by three months. The doctors' assessment reportedly referred both to his condition and his continued lack of regret about the actions that led to his detention.

On February 28, 2025, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found Kalonov's detention arbitrary. The Uzbek Forum for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch published the findings in their March 31 joint statement.

The working group found violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including provisions protecting expression and equality. It called for immediate release, an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, and a full independent investigation.

Umida Niyazova, director of the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights, described the reason her organisation challenged his detention:

Kalonov did not call for violence, threaten violence, or say or do anything that posed a threat to anyone.

The cases stretch across several years

The sequence of arrests, court orders and international findings shows how long a psychiatric detention dispute can continue. Kalonov's case had reached a UN decision more than three years after the compulsory treatment order.

• May 12, 2021: Uzbekistan adopts Law O'RQ-690 on psychiatric care, setting out consent requirements and patient rights.
• December 2021: A court orders Kalonov to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment.
• December 18, 2022: Salomova is detained at her apartment in Tashkent.
• February 2023: A court orders Salomova into compulsory treatment without a fixed end date.
• January 2024: Salomova is transferred to a psychiatric hospital under the Interior Ministry.
• February 2025: A court in Karakalpakstan orders Dauran Allambergenova's forced psychiatric hospitalization.
• February 28, 2025: The UN working group calls for Kalonov's release, compensation and an independent investigation.

A 2026 Human Rights Watch report said Kalonov remained in a special institution. His continued confinement puts the implementation of the UN finding, rather than simply its publication, at the centre of demands by rights organisations.

Karakalpakstan cases widen concern

In February 2025, a court in Kungrad district, in the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, ordered resident Dauran Allambergenova into psychiatric hospitalization. She faced criminal charges connected to social media posts about Karakalpak activism and criticism of Mirziyoyev and his daughter, Saida.

A psychiatric examination diagnosed Allambergenova with delusional disorder. The court decision reportedly cited no evidence that she posed a danger to others. Her case has been described as the first known forced psychiatric hospitalization in Karakalpakstan involving alleged separatism and criticism of Uzbekistan's president.

Another account, dated September 2026, describes the forced hospitalization of civil activist Farhad Tuymebaev, an ethnic Kazakh from Karakalpakstan's Amudarya district, after he filed an official complaint. Friends alleged that he was receiving powerful psychotropic drugs and being kept from visitors.

Tuymebaev had spoken publicly about torture and deaths at the Jaslyk prison colony during former president Islam Karimov's rule. His friends' allegations concern both his confinement and the difficulty of maintaining outside contact.

The US State Department's assessment of 2024 also described a campaign against political discourse in Karakalpakstan involving torture and psychological pressure. It said the government had not fully answered allegations about excessive force during the region's 2022 protests or published its investigation results.

Online criticism also brings prison sentences

The US State Department's 2024 human rights report recorded Salomova's continued compulsory care in October of that year. It connected her confinement to questioning the source of funds used by the president's son-in-law and said she had received no specific release date.

The department also cited Uzbekistan's Supreme Court as saying at least 10 people were fined or imprisoned for up to seven years for slandering the president on social media. The report described journalists avoiding coverage of Mirziyoyev and his family because they feared reprisals.

A 2021 law established criminal liability for publicly insulting or defaming the president online, with penalties including up to five years in prison. Individual cases show how such prosecutions reach beyond established political activists.

Dilshod Iskandarov, 19, received a sentence of two years and six months for an Instagram comment insulting the president and his family. He had posted the comment while working in Russia in 2022 and later deleted it. He was prosecuted after returning to Uzbekistan in 2023.

In the Ferghana region, Utkirbek Sobirov received a prison sentence of three years, while Ahrorbek Quchqorov received four years of house arrest over Telegram posts criticising the president. Their comments appeared in discussions about shortages of natural gas and electricity.

Blogger Abduqodir Muminov received a sentence of seven years and three months in August 2023 on fraud and extortion charges. His supporters described the prosecution as retaliation for his work, which included scrutiny of the business activities of presidential relatives.

Release, compensation and access remain central

Salomova's reported release was linked to an October 19 visit by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a C5+1 ministerial gathering in Samarkand, bringing together the United States and five Central Asian countries. The timing prompted comparisons with earlier prisoner releases around prominent diplomatic visits.

Human rights defender and opposition activist Azam Turgunov was released in October 2017, shortly before a visit by UN special rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed. Rights advocates have urged foreign governments to make the release of detained critics a regular part of their dealings with Uzbekistan.

Past psychiatric confinement also shapes those demands. The Uzbek Forum and Human Rights Watch said veteran activist Elena Urlaeva was forcibly hospitalized five times between 2001 and 2016. They described restraint, forced medication and lasting physical and emotional effects.

Michael Perlin, professor emeritus at New York Law School and a co-petitioner in Kalonov's UN complaint, explained why outside access matters:

[b]ecause forced psychiatric treatment is often administered in institutions far from any third-party oversight, patients, whether they have a mental disability or not, are extremely vulnerable to abuse.

The rights organisations also pointed to blogger Otabek Sattoriy. The UN working group found his detention arbitrary in February 2023 and called for release and reparations. He received early release in February 2024, but the organisations said in March 2025 that he had received no reparations.

For Kalonov, the UN's requested remedies extend beyond opening the hospital door. They include compensation and an investigation into how he lost his liberty. For Salomova and other critics, access to independent legal help, contact with relatives and enforceable review of confinement remain the practical protections written into Uzbekistan's own law.

Key Points

• Shahida Salomova was reportedly released on October 19 after psychiatric confinement following criticism of the president's family; the release year was not specified.
• Uzbekistan's 2021 psychiatric care law makes voluntary consent the general rule and protects legal assistance and court review.
• The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for Valijon Kalonov's immediate release, compensation and an independent investigation on February 28, 2025.
• A 2026 Human Rights Watch report said Kalonov remained confined in a special institution.
• Cases in Karakalpakstan and prison sentences for online criticism have widened concern about punishment for political speech.