On December 13, in Fergana region, the Uzbekistan district court on criminal proceedings considered the case of administrative offense against blogger Olimjon Khaydarov, the press service of the Supreme Court reported.
Olimjon Haydarov was accused of committing an administrative offense under Article 201 (organization of meetings, rallies, street marches or demonstrations, violation of the order of holding) and Part 2 of Article 202-2 (spreading false information) of the Administrative Responsibility Code.
According to the court decision, the blogger was found to have committed the offenses mentioned in the above articles, and he was fined in the amount of 70 BCAs – 21 million soums in the order of applying administrative punishment for several offenses.
In an interview with Kun.uz correspondent, Olimjon Khaydarov said that he is dissatisfied with the court verdict and informed that he will file an appeal to the higher court.
In the past weeks, when the temperature cooled down, industrial enterprises were cut off from natural gas in order to give priority to households and social facilities. Khaydarov released a video on December 6 that “10,000 people” are unemployed as a result of the gas supply cutoff to enterprises in the Uzbekistan district, and workers of the “Albus” plaster factory, among them, are going out on streets asking for gas connection.
On December 13, the Fergana region DIA announced the following explanation regarding the court verdict.
“During the investigation of the case, on December 11 of this year, citizens A.T., D.N., U.T. and O.S. filed an application, in which on December 4-6 of this year, a citizen introduced himself as blogger-journalist Olimjon Khaydarov came to the plant’s territory where they work, and said that the plant would soon be closed due to the disconnection from the gas network, and as a result, the workers would be unemployed and no wages would be paid. Also, he told them to gather at the plant, organize a protest and make a video appeal about it, only then the plant could be connected to the gas network again and he could help in this regard.
In addition, it was found out from the case materials that O. Khaydarov taught how to videotape the demonstration, that some participants could not speak well enough, so others should speak, encouraged the demonstrators to speak aggressively. The blogger participated in the planning of this demonstration through re-dubs.
On December 6 of this year, although he did not participate directly, he spoke with a specialist in filming the demonstration, organized his work and distributed the finished video materials through his channel.
