On July 1 of this year, massive protests erupted in the major cities of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region within the sovereign state of the Republic of Uzbekistan. These protests, involving up to 30,000 participants, were sparked by proposed constitutional amendments that would eliminate Karakalpakstan’s right to secede from the Republic of Uzbekistan.

During the confrontations between demonstrators and law enforcement authorities, more than one hundred people lost their lives, and thousands were injured to varying degrees.

It is well known that after the nationwide vote on amendments to the Russian Constitution in the summer of 2020, the country’s Basic Law was supplemented with Article 67.1, which states that the Russian Federation is the legal successor of the Soviet Union, with all the consequences that follow from this.

Numerous Russian politicians, along with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, have brazenly and shamelessly expressed the need to unite the former Soviet republics into a new union.

The bloody massacre in Karakalpakstan is a joint special operation orchestrated by the intelligence services of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kremlin agents of influence in Uzbekistan. The intelligence services of these countries created controlled chaos in Uzbekistan to pressure the country’s leadership into accelerating its entry into a new Putin-led union.

On behalf of the political opposition movement “Erkin O’zbekiston,” we confidently state that the January events in Kazakhstan, the war in Ukraine, and the July events in Nukus are all part of the same chain. The Putin regime has begun implementing its insidious plan to recreate a new union state within the borders of the USSR as they existed in 1991.

Uzbekistan’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity are under threat.

We believe that it is both prudent and necessary to conduct an independent international investigation into the bloody massacre in Karakalpakstan, involving the relevant structures of the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom!

We demand that Uzbek authorities immediately publish an official list of the names and surnames of those who perished in the bloody events in Karakalpakstan!

We demand that the Uzbek authorities cease all actions related to amending and supplementing the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan until the opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston is granted the opportunity to officially participate in the public and political life of Uzbekistan!

We demand that the Uzbek authorities cancel the nationwide referendum on amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, scheduled for December 8, 2022!

The opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston stands, and will always stand, for the full sovereignty of the Republic of Uzbekistan and for the territorial integrity of the country within its internationally recognized borders.