Policeman at the door of Urlaeva's house. Photo by Elena Urlaeva.

Like a number of people who are on Elena Urlaeva's mailing list, I received her "SOS" cry for help on March 13 — only this time, it wasn't for someone else (she sends out alerts about other victims just about every day) — it was for herself.

The story was so personal and painful that I wasn't sure it was wise to publish it simply because it was confusing — and might not help. Of course, she herself made it public to likely hundreds of people, and that's why EurasiaNet picked it up — but the rendering of it there seemed rather stark and devoid of context (possibly cut by an editor).

I found myself when publishing accounts from Urlaeva, notably during the "suicide student" hoax, that other journalists at EurasiaNet looked somewhat askance at her — well, as hard-boiled reporters tend to do at the human rights activists — they're a source, they're emotional, they're biased, they're gullible — whatever. Not really much of a sense of reverence for their bravery and what they accomplish under terrible conditions. It wouldn't be cool to feel that way.

EurasiaNet is called "advocacy journalism" by some, and it's true that it's a niche, non-profit news service that does have a perspective and an agenda of sorts — the question is to sort of what it is. There's nothing wrong with that; but it never gets discussed or debated and should.

So what was left out of the story by Ashley Cleek (a graduate of Columbia University in International Relations who has written on Central Asia for RFE/RL and other publications)? Two things — that this was an actual situation of domestic violence — and why the Uzbek authorities are finding ever new ways to harass her — because of the many causes she has taken up.

According to Urlaeva's e-mail, her husband, Mansur Masurov, was in an uncharacteristic drunken rage. He came home from work so drunk and behaving so oddly, that, as she told uznews.net, she thought possibly some other drugs were slipped to him. He didn't just "threaten" her — she said explicitly in the email twice that he struck her and his 7-year-old nephew, who lives with the couple because his own mother is unable to care for him. And he broke dishes and electronic gadgets and threw them around the house — so menacing was he that she was forced to call the police for protection. That's the ultimate irony, and of course in Tashkent, they aren't so responsive to issues of domestic violence in general, and for an activist who spends a lot of time criticizing them about their own abuses, barely credible.

Mansur shouted that he was upset that the authorities were persecuting his family, and yelled at his wife to stop receiving all kinds of petitioners and people with human rights protests in their home.

Obviously, the stresses and strains of life with a human rights activist have taken their toll — it's important to remember that for years, in fact Masurov has been supportive of his wife and their foster child. He has been pressured at work, says Urlaeva, because of her activities, and she believes that the secret police have found yet another way to pressure her — using the "family method" of pressure for which the post-Soviet and particularly Central Asian regimes are infamous for. They go for whatever vulnerable target there is, especially non-political relatives, and harass them relentlessly, or set people against each other, to be able to silence activists.

The authorities have been threatening for months that they would take the boy away from the couple, as he was ostensibly not being raised properly in an activist's house. And officials have also repeatedly threatened Urlaeva with psychiatric incarceration, which she has suffered before, but after getting a clean bill of health from a Russian psychiatrist, she has fended off the attempts — at least until now. I fear that now either she or her husband or both of them will be forcibly detained in psychiatric clinics and the boy forcibly placed in state care.

This is all a miserable story — but let me get to the other point that was let out: what it is Urlaeva does that brings this on her. It wasn't just one case in Namagan, where she was roughed up for attempting to defend some broadcast journalists.

There's a tendency in reading the stories of the pravdaiskateli — the justice-seekers — who obsess about fighting for right in these depressing, throughly abusive situations, of seeing them as mere cranks, or at best, holy fools. That does them a disservice. I feel the need to spell this out, especially after going many rounds with Registan commenters who disparaged Urlaeva generically as a regime critic and specifically as an activist who took up the case of the woman who claimed her sister had committed suicide in detention, because it was the right thing to do. She was just as methodical in exposing the story as a hoax.

Urlaeva has accomplished really a heroic amount of stuff. At the time this incident broke out, she and several others were still attempting to march in protest in front of President Islam Karimov's residence to protest his many abuses. At least someone is still willing to do this!

And while you might think this a futile act, there's everything else Urlaeva has done — chiefly in the last year, monitor, report on, and protest the use of forced child labour in the cotton fields. She has single-handedly done more than any other person in the human rights movement to document and publicize this issue methodically and vocally, even going to pick cotton herself to get the story.

She has taken up a number of cases of victims of torture or persecuted religious believers and various other human rights activists and journalists harassed for their work. It's just not true, as Registan writers persistently claim, that human rights advocates like Urlaeva only take up the "bourgeois" human rights in the capital of free media or association — the overwhelming majority of her cases are garden-variety economic justice cases — striking cab drivers, disabled people, farmers.

The focus must remain on the brave human rights work that Urlaeva has taken, and not on second-guessing her difficult situation with her family, under stress, and not on various speculative theories about "what is worth doing" or "what works" with the Uzbek regime. The secret police — and the regular police — should protect women when they call and say their spouses are abusive to them and their children, and they shouldn't be trying to put in jail people who legitimately raise human rights cases even at the president's door.