Land Taken, Justice Denied: An Uzbek Farmer’s Battle Against State Seizure of Land

Nasiba Turdieva, a farmer from the Yakkabog district of Kashkadarya region, has been fighting for the past five years to keep the land that was illegally taken from her by order of the Yakkabog district hokim (governor), who claims she signed a “voluntary” land lease termination. Turdieva has been growing grain and grapes on this land since it was allocated to her for 49 years in 2005. She says the land had previously been abandoned, and for 20 years—despite significant irrigation problems—she and her family cultivated grapes and apples and fulfilled state mandated production quotas every year.

Over the past 20 years, the Uzbek government has carried out several chaotic “optimizations of farmland plots,” resulting in farms either being reduced or transferred entirely to the state reserve for reallocation under the pretext of “improving the efficiency” of the country’s land resources.

The mass seizure and redistribution of farmland has been accompanied by systematic lawlessness, corruption, disregard for the rights and interests of farmers, and lack of access to compensation from the government for the unilateral termination of land lease agreements by the state.

Nasiba Turdieva wrote