Last week, the brother of Aman Sagidullayev, the leader of the banned Alga Karakalpakstan party, was detained for seven days on a petty hooliganism charge. The incident underscores the continued sensitivities in Uzbekistan when it comes to Karakalpakstan and any whiff of agitation.

According to the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, citing unofficial reports, Zholdasbay Sagidullayev – Aman’s older brother – approached a district police department building in Karauzyak, a small town in Karakalpakstan, and repeatedly shouted, “Alga, Karakalpakstan!” 

“Alga” means “forward” in several Turkic languages, including Karakalpak, Kazakh, and Uzbek, where it is often used in political party names and chants. 

Karakalpakstan as an autonomous region associated with Uzbekistan. The Uzbek Constitution grants the region special rights, namely the ability to secede from Uzbekistan via referendum. This has been a point of contention for decades, as no referendum has never been held and numerous activists have been detained after advocating for such a vote. 

Aman Sagidullayev fled Karakalpakstan in 2012 for Kyrgyzstan and eventually even farther abroad. His movement’s demand for a referendum on independence in Karakalpakstan has long been viewed by Tashkent as separatism.

Sensitivity to this issue flared up in the summer of 2022, when the Uzbek government shared a draft of its intended constitutional revisions. The draft deleted the provisions guaranteeing Karakalpakstan the right to secede; it triggered large protests and a crackdown in the regional capital, Nukus. 

The Uzbek government quickly walked back the draft, ultimately preserving the clauses related to Karakalpakstan, but arrested activists who had drawn attention to the issue. Dauletmurat Tajimuratov, a Karakalpak lawyer and journalist, had urged fellow Karakalpaks to vote “no” in the then-only-theoretical constitutional referendum in 2022. He reportedly said in an audio recording that made the rounds on social media that he would “personally [go] to a peaceful and legal rally” to demand a referendum on secession from Uzbekistan if such amendments were approved. He was punished with a 16-year prison term. His supporters allege he has been tortured, and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his jailing to be arbitrary in November 2024. Earlier this year, U.N. experts urged Uzbekistan to release him.

Aman Sagidullayev and a Kazakhstan-based Karakalpak activist, Neitbay Urazbayev, were convicted and sentenced in absentia by an Uzbek court in May 2023 on a litany of charges, including insulting the president of Uzbekistan, conspiracy to overthrow the constitutional order, organizing riots, and other charges derived, in part, from the 2022 unrest in Nukus.

Urazbayev died at the age of 54 in 2024. 

Back to Zholdasbay Sagidullayev and his alleged shouting. The Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights reported that Zholdasbay was charged on April 14 with “petty hooliganism” (Article 183 of the Administrative Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan), which is defined as “deliberate disregard for public conduct, expressed through obscene language in public places, offensive harassment of citizens, and other similar actions that violate public order and the peace of citizens.”

He was given an administrative sentence of seven days.

Zholdasbay is not the only one of Aman’s brothers to face difficulties. Reports last year suggested that another of Aman’s brothers, Jumabai, had been detained; those reports were mistaken. However, Freedom for Eurasia also reported that Jumabai had been denied a passport by Uzbek authorities, preventing him from traveling abroad and has been subject to surveillance and other forms of state pressure.