Please note that the virtual portion of this event has been rescheduled from Jan. 26 to Feb. 2 at 2:00-3:00 pm ET.

In the 1990s, Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov arrested tens of thousands of practicing Muslims, imams, and citizens engaged in Islamic study groups, forcing them to sign pre-written confessions that led to decades in prison on terrorism and treason charges. Following Karimov’s death in 2016, his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, acknowledged for the first time the existence of a blacklist against former prisoners, their social contacts and extended family. Oqlanmagan – The Unexonerated, a documentary sponsored by the Oxus Society, is one of the first attempts to tell the story of more than 18,000 people formerly designated as “extremists” by the Karimov government.

This event will feature a screening of the film followed by a discussion with Noah Tucker, Oxus Society senior researcher and the film’s producer, and Emina Umarov, a researcher whose family lived through the Karimov repression and the prison system before receiving asylum in the United States.

This event is part of the Kennan Institute’s spotlight on the Caucasus & Central Asia.