Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday called for the release of imprisoned Uyghur activist Valijon Kalonov, who has been forcibly detained in a Uzbekistan psychiatric hospital since 2021.

Kalonov was initially detained on charges of using social media in a way that threatens public safety, and publicly insulting the president of Uzbekistan. During his trial, state-appointed psychiatrists diagnosed him with “chronic mental illness in the form of obsessive-compulsive disorder and impairment of logical thinking.” As a result of his diagnosis, he was forcibly detained in Samarkand Regional Neuropsychiatric Dispensary before being transferred to his current location at Djizak Regional Psychoneurological Dispensary.

A UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) found that Kalonov was arbitrarily detained for criticizing the government of Uzbekistan in February. The WGAD concluded that Uzbekistan violated its obligations to protect the freedoms protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and violated Kalonov’s freedoms guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through arbitrary detention.

According to the UN Human Rights Committee, detention as punishment for the legitimate exercise of the right to free speech is arbitrary, contravening Article 9 of the ICCPR.

Through the process of the trial and after his detention, the WGAD also found that Kalonov had inadequate legal representation that did not act in his interest. For example, his most recent lawyer did not appeal his forced psychiatric treatment, in spite of admitting that Kalonov does not suffer from a mental illness.

HRW claims that the government of Uzbekistan frequently uses forced psychiatric detention to silence individuals who are critical of the state, citing similar cases in which activists and individuals critical of the government are detained under the pretense of mandatory psychiatric treatment.

Kalonov was a blogger whose posts most frequently focused on issues related to China’s mass imprisonment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. He expressed criticism of Uzbekistan’s relationship with China through his blog.

China’s human rights violations against Uyghurs have been characterized by some states as constituting genocide.