Uzbek Jewish Leader Killed - February-March 2006

Death of Jewish Leader In Tashkent, Uzbekistan

NCSJ Statement

WASHINGTON, March 3 -- Avraham Yagudayev, the leader of the Bukharian Jewish community in Tashkent died on February 22 from injuries he received two days earlier. He was found severely injured on a road near the synagogue in Tashkent by his wife. According to the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Washington D.C., Yagudayev was the victim of a tragic car accident that was not related to his religion or nationality. An investigation is continuing and the driver of the car is being sought. Avraham Yagudayev was 33, the father of four, and the chairman of the synagogue in Tashkent. 

NCSJ will continue to gather information concerning this investigation as well as the situation in Dushanbe.

News

Mar. 05	EJP:	No anti-Semitism in Jew's death, Uzbekistan says
Mar. 01	Jerusalem Post:	Possible anti-Semitic motive In Tashkent rabbi's murder
Feb. 28	Haaretz:	Anti-Semitism suspected in murder of Uzbekistan Rabbi
	Ferghana.ru:	Murder of a Jew in Tashkent caused a public outcry
Feb. 27	FJC.ru:	Tashkent Jewish Leader Killed

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European Jewish Press - March 5, 2006

European Jewish Press

No anti-Semitism in Jew's death, Uzbekistan says 


The death of a prominent member of Tashkent’s Jewish community last week was strictly accidental and it was "dangerous" to suggest that it was motivated by anti-Semitism, religious authorities said.

“Any attempt to give this tragic accident a political slant is dangerous," Shoazim Minovarov, chairman of the Uzbek government’s religious affairs committee, told reporters.

His comments came after Avraham Hakohen Yagudayev, 33, died Saturday in hospital of injuries sustained after apparently being hit by a car whose driver fled the scene.

Yagudayev’s death raised alarm among Jews in Uzbekistan and prompted a number of media outlets, including an Israeli daily newspaper, to speculate that anti-Semitism had been a factor.

The chief rabbi for Central Asia, Abe David Gurevitch, supported Minovarov’s assertion and appealed to media not to fan religious tensions in Uzbekistan in reporting on the case.

"In this situation, we ask the media to play a positive role and help us, but not to escalate the situation," said Gurevitch, who is also a representative of the World Wide Lubavitch Movement in Uzbekistan.

Gurevitch said that for the past decade he had been one of around 20,000 Jews living in Uzbekistan and the closest thing to anti-Semitism he had experienced in the former Soviet republic was "people looking at my Jewish clothes with curiosity only."

Gurevitch confirmed that Yagudayev was not a rabbi as had been claimed in several media reports on his death.

Authorities said a criminal case was opened into Yagudayev’s death and an investigation was under way.


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Jerusalem Post - March 01, 2006

Jerusalem Post

Possible anti-Semitic motive In Tashkent rabbi's murder near synagogue

By Hilary Leila Krieger 

Uzbekistan authorities are probing the murder of one of Tashkent's rabbis, but it is unclear whether they are considering anti-Semitism as motive in his death.

Avraham Yagudayev Hacohen, 33, died on Saturday night after being found unconscious on the side of the road and brought to the hospital. He had left his house for evening prayers and was discovered suffering from head wounds near the Bukharan Synagogue in the Old City.

Some in the capital city's Jewish community have suggested that the act was driven by anti-Semitism, as nothing of value was stolen from him, though his coat and the synagogue keys were missing.

But according to a Jewish Agency field worker in Tashkent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "It seems that this will be [investigated as] a criminal act or a hit-and-run." He added that it wouldn't have been immediately apparent that Hacohen was Jewish, as he covered his kippa with a hat while outside, and that the poor neighborhood around the synagogue is not very safe.

An 18-year-old member of the Jewish community was also attacked in the same area two weeks ago and has been in the hospital ever since, according to the agency worker. It is also not clear what motivated that attack.

The agency official described the community as "concerned" but not afraid following the attacks, saying that the community has a history in Uzbekistan stretching back for centuries and that "I've never seen anti-Semitism on the government level."

He noted, though, that the attitudes of the "street" can be different and that the country borders on Afghanistan. "It's not so far. I can't say that there's no influence from the extreme elements there."

Some 83,000 Jews have left Uzbekistan for Israel since the fall of the Iron Curtain, with another 16,000 to 19,000 remaining, according to Jewish Agency figures.

Tashkent hosts an Ashkenazi synagogue operated by Chabad and a second Bukharan synagogue as well as the Old City house of prayer run by Hacohen. The Jewish population in that part of the capital has dwindled due to aliya and to relocation within the country, and many families - Hacohen's among them -relied on aid from international Jewish organizations. Congregating a minyan could be difficult, and Hacohen served as the ritual slaughter and bar mitzvah tutor.

The Jewish Agency worker knew Hacohen personally and recalled him conducting bar mitzvas - not only for 13-year-olds, but often for their parents as well.

"He really wanted to strengthen the small synagogue and to give it a new life, but it was very difficult because of the economic and political situation," he said.

Hacohen left behind a wife and four children, and a synagogue largely dependent on Hacohen's skills and services. The agency official said that he knew of no trained rabbi to take Hacohen's place, but added, "The Jewish people are strong. They will continue to go to synagogue and to go to Jewish organizations."


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Haaretz - February 28, 2006

Haaretz

Anti-Semitism suspected in murder of Uzbekistan Rabbi 


By Amiram Barkat

A rabbi in Tashkent, Uzbekistan was mysteriously murdered last Tuesday evening some time after leaving his synagogue. Rabbi Avraham Yegudiyev was found unconscious with a head injury by family members who searched for him after he failed to return home. 

He died in the hospital on Saturday night. His funeral was held Sunday in Tashkent.

Yegudiyev, 34, who is survived by his wife and four young children, was originally from Bukhara. The family was poor and had been supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). His brother Nikolai disappeared 12 years ago under mysterious circumstances.

Three-and-a-half years ago, after the death of Yegudiyev's father, who was the synagogue beadle, Yegudiyev became the head of the congregation, considered the oldest of the three active in Tashkent. 

The synagogue was located in a primarily Jewish-population neighborhood, however, in recent years, the number of worshippers had dwindled. Yegudiyev also served as a ritual slaughterer and Bar Mitzvah tutor.

"He was a pleasant man who contributed a great deal to the community," Israel's ambassador to Uzbekistan, Ami Mahal, told Haaretz on Monday. "His death is a great tragedy."

Relatives of Yegudiyev living in Israel told Haaretz they were certain the murder had been motivated by anti-Semitism. His cousin, Ziva Mor, said that she and other relatives had begged the family to come to Israel but they had refused.

Uzbekistan is considered a moderate Muslim country, however fundamentalist Muslims are known to be active. Until 15 years ago, some 200,000 Jews lived there, a number that has now declined to only a few thousand. 

The neighborhood where Yegudiyev's synagogue is located is said to be crime-ridden and a focus of extreme Islamic activism.

Mahal said that anti-Semitism was only one of the motives under investigation and that there had been no problem of anti-Semitism "for dozens of years" in Uzbekistan. He said the neighborhood had been the recent scene of an increasing number of murders. 


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Ferghana.ru - February 28, 2006

Ferghana.ru news agency


Murder of a Jew in Tashkent caused a public outcry

The Seventh Channel, an Israeli newspaper in Russian, was the first to report the murder of Avron (Avraam) Yagudayev, chairman of the Tashkent community of Bukhara Jews. Yagudayev, 33, was found in the street not far from the Tashkent synagogue with serious injuries on February 22.

Jewish News Agency (JNA) later reported Yagudayev's death at the Republican Center of Neurosurgery on February 25. "Yagudayev died of serious cranial injuries sustained in an attack on him several days ago. Motives of the crime are not known at this point but the authorities are not rushing the investigation," JNA correspondent wrote.

JNA correspondent reported that the Tashkent Jewish community was thunderstruck because Yagudayev's death came only two weeks after assault and battery of Grigori Akilov, the son of Tamara Akilova, the leader of the Bukhara Jews Culture Center Simho. The young man, 18, is still in hospital.

Jewish media outlets also report that some criminals whose identities were never established battered and injured Iosif Greenberg, 65. formerly of the Syrdarja Regional Hospital. Assailants were never found.

Some observers assume that Yagudayev fell victim of a hit-and-run accident.

Representatives of the Jewish community dismiss this hypothesis as misleading and maintain that Yagudayev clashed with the local authorities when they tried to commandeer the building of the Tashkent synagogue.

Upper echelons of the CIS Federation of Jewish Communities broke silence on February 27. Federation President Lev Levayev urged the Uzbek authorities to run a diligent investigation and establish whether or not it had been a deliberate anti-Semitic action.

"Yagudayev, the father of four, has chaired the Tashkent community of Bukhara Jews for the last 4 years. His efforts to make Tashkent one of the centers of Jewish life earned him local Jews' respect," Levayev said.

Shoazim Minovarov, Chairman of the Uzbek Committee for Religious Affairs, told REGNUM news agency at the same time that "there are no Yagudayevs among chairmen of Jewish communities or among rabbis. There is only one Yagudayev I know of, and he is shoemaker at the city marketplace."

According to Minovarov, there are three synagogues in Tashkent nowadays and two of them belong to Bukhara Jews. "These religious communities have Boris Shimonov and Arkady Isakharov for chairmen and do not include an Avraam Yagudayev," the official said.

"Members of the Jewish community are not worried or anything because Jews have been living on the territory of Uzbekistan since the time out of mind - without any conflicts or clashes with the population, much less with the authorities," Minovarov explained.

Minovarov: There is no anti-Semitism in Uzbekistan. Uzbek Jews live in harmony with other ethnic groups in the republic.

In the meantime, observers comments that Yagudayev was murdered when representatives of other religious minorities are regularly harassed in other regions of Uzbekistan and particularly in Dzhizak. Ferghana.Ru news agency reported one such episode the other day [see the material "A handicapped person released by the Dzhizak prosecutor's office is arrested again"].

MigNews reports indicate that Yagudayev was a lecturer at the Pharmaceutical College in Tashkent. He taught Jewish traditions at the school established by organization Joint and was a rabbi of the local synagogue (this latter post hereditary, assumed when his father passed away).

According to MigNews, Yagudayev was jumped when he was walking to the synagogue for the evening prayer. His family initiated a search when he failed to return home.

Israeli diplomats demand a thorough investigation of the anti-Semitic crime from city fathers. The police claim, however, that it was a banal hold-up gone bad (Yagudayev's leather coat was missing but not money or valuables).


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Federation of Jewish Communities - February 27, 2006

FJC.ru

Tashkent Jewish Leader Killed

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - The leader of the Tashkent Jewish community, 33-year old Avraham Hakohen Yagudayev, who was found severely injured in a road near the Synagogue in Tashkent on February 22nd, died last week in a local hospital. It is unclear how he sustained his injuries.

The President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS and President of the World Congress of Bukharian Jews, Lev Leviev, has called on the Uzbek authorities to launch a detailed investigation into the incident, to determine the cause of death and whether this was an anti-Semitic attack.

Lev Leviev issued the following statement:

We are deeply pained by the tragic loss of Avraham ben Matityahu Hakohen Yagudayev.

Avraham Yagudayev, a father of four, served as Chairman of the Bukharian Jewish Community in Tashkent for the last four years and was widely respected by all local Jews for his efforts in making Tashkent a better place for Jews to live in.

This is a great loss and sadness for everyone in the Jewish community in Uzbekistan and the worldwide Bukharian Jewish community.

We do not know yet if this incident was an act of fate or was premeditated murder. Neither do we know whether it was motivated by anti-Semitism.

We appeal to the Uzbek authorities to make a full investigation a top priority and bring the perpetrators to justice.

The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS expresses its deep condolences to the family of Avraham Yagudayev and has established a special fund to help his family.


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