The Centre for Screen Cultures, the Centre for Art and Politics, and the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence collaborated on a screening of the documentary Oqlanmagan: The Unexonerated, which took place on 10 April 2024. The screening was followed by a discussion with Noah Tucker, Oxus Society senior researcher and the film’s producer.
In the 1990s, Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov arrested tens of thousands of practising 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.