Report of the political opposition movement “Erkin O’zbekiston” (Free Uzbekistan) at the Third Session of the 1st OSCE ODIHR Supplementary Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. City of Vienna (Austria), 18 March 2025.

On 26 October 2024, the Uzbek service of Radio Liberty disseminated disinformation that an assassination attempt was allegedly made on Komil Allamjonov. The station further reported that the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was behind the assassination attempt on Allamjonov, and that the perpetrators of the assassination had been promised 1.5 million US dollars.

Commenting on the situation of the so-called assassination attempt to the Financial Times, Allamjonov said: ‘Four bullets hit the car. The assailant’s weapon, an old Kalashnikov assault rifle, jammed, which is the best explanation for why I survived’.

The absurdity of Komil Allamjonov’s words is obvious. Every adequate person realises that if the budget for a contract killing is $1.5 million, the killer’s weapon works properly and the chances that the victim will not be eliminated are next to zero. No matter how we feel about Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya has nothing to do with Allamjonov’s case, since there was no attempt on his life. This assassination attemp has never been planned. It was carried out solely on paper in order to initiate politically motivated criminal cases necessary for the Mirziyoyev regime.

However, the disinformation of the Uzbek authorities spread around the world. Without checking the facts, Internet platforms began to disseminate the news. The Western press published about 20 articles on this case, for example, under the following headlines: ‘Chechen Leader Threatens Komil Allamjonov, Uzbekistan’s Democratic Reformer’.

Let me emphasize here, that Komil Allamjonov is the founder of the Uzbek troll factory, which is engaged in whitewashing Mirziyoyev’s image and has been terrorising our movement since 2019. Their main goal is to completely oust any mention of the political opposition Erkin O’zbekiston Movement from the information field.

Thus, on 11 February this year, our website published an article titled ‘Mirziyoyev’s Espionage Scandal’. The article referred to the illegal criminal prosecution of Lieutenant Colonel Valijon Rakhmanov, an employee of the Uzbek Military Counter-intelligence Directorate. Uzbek authorities accuse him of spying for the US government and the UN. Lieutenant Colonel Rakhmanov is currently sentenced to 16 years in prison for ‘high treason’. Today I have learnt that the Uzbek authorities have initiated criminal proceedings against me under the article of disclosure of state secrets for publishing this material.

In this context:

— We call on the U.S. government to address the case of Lieutenant Colonel Valijon Rakhmanov, as the Uzbek authorities are using the name of their state for their own purposes.

— We call on the European Union to limit the spread of misinformation by the Uzbek authorities in the OSCE region.

— We also call on the EU to help promote Uzbek opposition content in the OSCE region, through technology companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Google, and YouTube.