Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Uzbekistan face deep-rooted homophobia, discrimination, and the threat of violence, activists and human rights defenders say.

And so it was for K., as she identifies herself for security reasons, a transgender woman who says she indeed faced death threats back home in Uzbekistan.

She was detained in Tashkent by Uzbek police and security forces four times between 2014 and 2017.

Each time, they demanded that K. out other members of the LGBT community, and when she refused she was brutally beaten.

"I was beaten badly. After five or six days [of such abuse] you just lie there," the 26-year-old K. tells RFE/RL's Belarus Service in an interview from Minsk.

Uzbekistan’s authoritarian ruler Islam Karimov died in 2016 after nearly 27 years in power. But his death and the installation of former Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoev as president failed to usher in any meaningful improvements in Uzbekistan’s "abysmal human rights record," as Human Rights Watch has described it.