On January 13, 2017, there was a trial, and the judge, with evident pity, sentenced me to 6 years in prison.…

👉 Beginning

On January 13, 2017, there was a trial, and the judge, with evident pity, sentenced me to 6 years in prison. Then, at the beginning of March, they took me to the prison in the city of Navoi. On July 22, 2016, I left home and disappeared. Without a trace. No one knew where I was. It was abduction in the true sense of the word. The kidnapping of a human being. And today everyone knows who the kidnappers were. Just imagine the state my parents were in. April 4, 2017. It was a Wednesday, if I am not mistaken. For the first time my family came to see me in prison. My mother came. Exactly 7 months and 12 days — the longest time in my life that my mother had not seen me and I had not seen my mother. Later my mother told me: “Thinking about you day and night, not a drop of water, not a bite of bread would go down my throat; I thought about you so much that I began to wonder whether I had ever given birth to a boy called Akrom, whether I had such a son at all... At night I would wake up with my heart pulling back. I could not breathe. I would worry: what if at this moment they are torturing Akrom in prison... What if they are beating Akrom, and that is what is being revealed to me...” I am speaking about my own mother. But in Uzbekistan there were thousands of such mothers. At one and the same time, day and night, thousands of mothers, whose children — educated, learned, devout children — lay in prison, would wake up from the pain in their hearts. All of them were in the shackles of helplessness and hopelessness, with no way left other than crying out, “O my God!” For the doors of justice were closed, the gates of mercy were shut tight, and there was no generous soul to listen to a person's sigh. From the very first moment Shavkat Miromonovich took over the leadership of the government, he set about breaking the chains of oppression one by one. The result of this appeared in the prisons from the beginning of the summer of 2017. Without going into detail, I can say that on August 27, 2020, our President signed a Decree on pardoning a group of convicts, and my name was among those pardoned. But being released did not mean that now it was a celebration. The wounds and pains of oppression lodged deep inside you lead you to suspect everything and not to trust people. The good words being said seem like lies and traps. That is, joining free life is also a hard process. It is, so to speak, like being born again. But the State did not abandon me. They supported me in every way. They helped me to feel well and to pull myself together. When I made mistakes, they forgave me again; they tried again to set me on the right path. Yes, the right path and the false path are clear, but seeing it, acknowledging it and confirming it with the heart is a complicated matter. A person must not doubt the path he walks or the work he does. With perfect faith he must be certain: yes, I am doing the right thing. For this, his path and his belief must accord, in all their foundations, with rules that have been confirmed and accepted since ancient times. My father always says: “We are indebted to Shavkat Miromonovich. We cannot forget the good he did, first of all, to our family. Moreover, it is impossible to fully describe and portray the service he is rendering to our people and our country. We must pray for him night and day.” Thank God, we have my father's mother — our grandmother, whose age is approaching ninety. She too, in every other sentence, prays: “May our king be safe and sound, may he stay well for our happiness; he brought my grandson out of prison; he must be a saint.” If I spoke relying only on the kindness and magnanimity our President showed to me personally, it might seem one-sided to some; but looking at the policy he is pursuing, I draw this conclusion: a man who sees far ahead; a man who assesses the situation correctly; a man of fairness and integrity; a man who would give his life for his people and his Homeland; a man who has won the love and trust of the people and is receiving their prayers.

👉 Continued