US PRESSURE HELPS PROMPT UZBEK GOVERNMENT TO REGISTER HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP
Josh Machleder: 3/7/02

Culminating a five-year struggle to gain official recognition, a leading human rights organization in Uzbekistan received word March 5 that the Ministry of Justice had accepted its registration application. Local observers say the government's decision to register the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan (IHROU) is a response to US pressure to improve the country's human rights image in advance of a trip by President Islam Karimov to Washington.

The IHROU, which is chaired by Mikhail Ardzinov, has lobbied heavily on behalf of Uzbekistan's prisoners of conscience. Ardzinov estimates that there are nearly 7,500 people imprisoned for political or religious reasons and for terrorism, primarily consisting of members of non-state sanctioned mosques and Islamic groups, as well as members of the secular opposition and human rights activists.

"The registration of IHROU is significant," Ardzinov said. "IHROU is the first independent, public human rights organization registered in the republic."

Uzbekistan's human rights records has been roundly criticized by international human rights groups and governments, including the United States. However, Bush Administration criticism has become more muted since September 11. During the campaign against terrorism, Uzbekistan has emerged as a key strategic partner in Central Asia for the United States. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archives].

US officials are eager to defuse any potential controversy during Karimov's US trip, and have pressured the Uzbek government to burnish its rights image. Numerous visiting official US delegations have cautioned that ongoing US assistance is dependent on the Karimov government's ability to improve its rights record. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Karimov is scheduled to meet with US President George W. Bush on March 12 in Washington.

"There has been a lot of pressure on lately, particularly from the US" said Marie Struthers, a Human Rights Watch representative in Tashkent, "with intensified demands for registration of human rights groups in Uzbekistan."

"For a country that claims to have democratic goals, this should have happened a long time before." Struthers added. "This [registration process] is just a technical process of the law."

The Uzbek government's registration of the IHROU can help give the Bush Administration greater flexibility in its strategic and economic cooperation with Tashkent. Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have praised the IHROU's registration.

"This shows the US government has leverage and can achieve real successes when it chooses to use that leverage," Elizabeth Anderson, executive direction of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division, said in a written statement. "It should be the first in a series of steps by the Uzbek government to show the United States and the rest of the International community whether it is committed to making genuine progress in human rights."

For years, Ardzinov struggled to register his organization. The lack of legal status gave authorities a pretext to arrest, harass and intimidate the group's activists. "Since the very start of its illegal existence, IHROU responsibly has sought registration," Ardzinov said.

The registration process required Ardzinov to negotiate a bureaucratic maze. In May of 1997 the Ministry of Justice refused registration to the organization, when it applied to the Tashkent city government to hold a "kurultay" or founding congress, a procedure required for registration. The city government failed to respond to the application ahead of the congress' scheduled date, effectively denying registration to the organization. In addition, in December of that year, the Ministry of Justice refused the organization's registration stating that the address on the application form was incomplete.

In June 1999, Uzbek police forcibly arrested the 63-year-old Ardzinov at a bus stop on the way to observe the trial of the people accused of the bombings in Tashkent in February of the same year. The officers held him, interrogated and severely beat him for nearly 14 hours leaving him in critical condition, he said. The attack was believed by human rights groups to have been prompted by his outspoken criticism of the trials of those alleged responsible for the Tashkent bombings, which touched off a broad government crackdown on freedom of religious expression. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archives].

At the time of his detention, his attackers confiscated his equipment, archives, and passport. Intimidation aside, this effectively disrupted his ability to register IHROU, as it is impossible to register an organization in Uzbekistan without a passport.

On February 10, 2002, according to Ardzinov, the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs returned to him a new passport along with his equipment and archives. Shortly thereafter he submitted his organization's documents for registration.

"This, I believe, is thanks to the international organizations, it's the international influence on our country," he said. The new passport he was given was stamped on January 8, the day after he had met with a US Senate delegation led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat. During that meeting, Ardzinov told the delegation that his archives, equipment and passport had been withheld for two and a half years, despite appeals to the procurator general and lobbying by the US Embassy, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2001, released on the same date as the registration, notes that though the Uzbek Constitution allows for the right of freedom of association, the government of Uzbekistan restricts this right in practice. "The Government refuses to register opposition political parties and movements. The Constitution places broad limitations on the types of groups that may form and requires that all organizations be registered formally with the Government in accordance with procedures prescribed by law," the report states.

Rights activists in Tashkent hope other groups that have already submitted applications, or those that are planning to submit applications, will succeed in being officially registered. Ardzinov said that registration reduces the ability of the government to influence the activities of rights activists. "Legalization provides new opportunities for deepening the activities of human rights activity in the republic," Ardzinov said.

At present, the public sphere remains tightly controlled by the government. There are only four political parties in Uzbekistan, all of them pro-government in orientation. All opposition parties that were formed during the Soviet Union's perestroika era are currently banned. Their members work either in exile or underground.

Struthers suggested that an indicator of the Uzbek government's future intentions could be whether or not materials relating to the IHROU's registration and activities are published in the local press. "It's all well to be registered," she said, "but if you can't publicize your information to the media, then you can't be better off, if you don't have an information exchange with the government, that doesn't set you ahead.

Editor's Note: Josh Machleder is a Tashkent-based contributor to EurasiaNet.

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Posted March 7, 2002 © Eurasianet
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