Uzbekistan: Political Persecution Prompts Rise in Refugees

Human rights activist Nadezhda Atayeva is president of the Paris-based Association for Human Rights in Central Asia. Originally from Gulistan in Uzbekistan's Syr Darya Region, Atayeva felt compelled to leave Uzbekistan in 2000 because her father had a falling out with President Islam Karimov.

Atayeva's association assists refugees and asylum seekers from Central Asia -- especially Uzbekistan -- understand their international legal rights and gain protection. The number of refugees and asylum seekers from Uzbekistan has risen significantly over the past three years -- since the Andijan events of May 2005, when security forces opened fire on mostly unarmed demonstrators in the Ferghana Valley city. EurasiaNet asked Atayeva about conditions in Uzbekistan and the difficulties encountered by Central Asian refugees and asylum seekers abroad:

EurasiaNet: Why has Uzbekistan, since independence, become so synonymous with asylum seekers and refugees?

Atayeva: People leave their homes when emigration becomes the only way to save their lives or the lives of their relatives. In almost all cases [in Uzbekistan], the reason is governmental political persecution. For the last three years, the flow of refugees has increased. Almost all people who have [called for an] international investigation into the Andijan tragedy of 2005 and dared to criticize the current government have been compelled to leave the country. Mostly, they were human rights activists and journalists.

Lately we see a rise in the number of relatives of imprisoned dissidents and religious people among those who want to leave Uzbekistan. This tendency is due to ongoing government campaigns to persecute the relatives of the imprisoned; the trend has been stepped up since Andijan. Recently, our association received an application from a former employee of the Uzbek special [intelligence] services, who has had to flee the country just because he did not want to fulfill a plan to capture "terrorists" and religious extremists. According to him, the relatives of prisoners [charged with religious extremism] are potential victims of such plans of the security agencies.

EurasiaNet: What happens to these relatives who stay behind?

Atayeva: Relatives of prisoners of conscience and of those who have already left the country face terrible challenges in Uzbekistan. Adults cannot find jobs and children cannot receive a good education. They become outcasts. They are under constant surveillance by law enforcement bodies, and are often called to police stations and interrogated about their dissident relatives.

Also, the number of victims formerly from within the government is increasing among asylum seekers from Uzbekistan. . . . According to our forecasts, the flow of asylum seekers from Uzbekistan will increase in the next few years [due to the upswing in harassment since Andijan].

EurasiaNet: How do Uzbek citizens learn about refugee protection systems, either at home or once they are abroad?

Atayeva: Uzbeks mostly learn about international refugee protection systems from refugees who have already received such help. In other cases, they leave the country as labor migrants or under student visas. Then, outside, where information is freer, having learned about the refugee protection system of the United Nations, they try to remain outside of the country forever. Considering that Central Asian people are traditionally strongly tied to native places and family, to decide to emigrate is no simple task. People decide to leave their homes only in extreme cases.

EurasiaNet: What are the main problems facing asylum seekers when they first leave Uzbekistan?

Atayeva: [Under UN regulations] the state that receives refugees is obliged to provide them with safety and basic living conditions. However, in reality refugees sometimes have to wait years for the resettlement process in third countries to be finalized. All this time they have no right to work, and humanitarian help is given just symbolically and not regularly.

We hope that the governments of democratic states, such as the European Union, will create a target program of humanitarian help for refugees and asylum seekers in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries where mechanisms of social protection of refugees and asylum seekers are absent. And there is an urgent need to organize shelter-houses for asylum seekers and the refugees [locally]. In Kyrgyzstan, there are such centers, but there are not enough. There are three such centers in Russia, but are they are located far from where refugees and asylum seekers congregate.

The safety of refugees has become one of our biggest issues now days. The intelligence services of countries that signed the Minsk Convention and the Kishinev Convention, and members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, conduct effective teamwork to search and capture refugees and asylum seekers; they do not always use legal methods. As a result of such cooperation, Uzbek refugee Rustam Muminov was handed back to Uzbekistan by Russia in 2006. In 2005, Alisher Usmanov, and in 2007 Abdulaziz Bojmatov were kidnapped; Usmanov was illegally deprived of his Russian citizenship. Hatam Hadzhimatov's Russian citizenship was cancelled in 2005 on the basis of the false documents presented by the Uzbeks.

EurasiaNet: Tashkent has recently made promises to improve its human rights record. Is this happening? What are the effects?

Atayeva: Recently, to appear as if they are visibly observing human rights, and under pressure from some democratic societies, the Uzbek state began hypocritically discussing the principles and values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and their observance in Uzbekistan. Different events are being organized. However, the concrete cases of infringements of human rights in the country and work of the security services are never discussed. The same approach is observed in Uzbek government reports on human rights.

The absence of objective analysis and public control in the field of human rights observance in Uzbekistan leads to a situation that reminds me of an aquarium, where fish silently float and cannot be free.