Is the U.S. Muting of Criticism Helping or Hurting Human Rights in Uzbekistan?
Has America's recent muting of human rights criticism helped set the stage for a worsening crackdown on human rights in Uzbekistan? Or is a new policy of restraint on lecturing going to bring at least the release of a few political prisoners and other concessions?
Some human rights groups seem to have serious doubts. As the U.S. moves to restore relations with Tashkent, the urgent need for Uzbekistan to cooperate with the U.S.-created Northern Distribution Network (NDN) to ship military freight to troops in Afghanistan seems to be trumping any expression of concern about worsening crackdowns on civil society -- and the concessions haven't been in sight.
Yet the American softening of the rhetoric on rights can be seen in the larger context of President Barack Obama's overall human rights policy, in which he has sought to portray the United States as listening and learning, rather than lecturing from a position of superiority on democracy. In his speech at Cairo University a year ago, Obama said:
“I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”
Clearly, the foreign service corps was given instruction to change the way in which public diplomacy operated. In an interview in November 2009, for example, Amb. George Krol, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs, echoed the Cairo message:
The position of the United States, and particularly of the Obama administration -- as President [Barak] Obama has stated himself -- [is] that the United States doesn't wish to force its values or its own institutions on these countries, but wishes to engage in a constructive dialogue, in engagement with these countries and these societies in order to help foster an environment and the development of democratic institutions and democratic values that are, again, not forced on these societies, but are understood [and] are accepted by the societies and their governments as a means of their own development as stable [and] prosperous states and societies.
But the previous year, under the Bush Administration, in an October 2008 interview posted on the U.S. Embassy website in Tashkent, Amb. Krol had been more frank:
When I was there [in Uzbekistan] I had meetings with representatives of the government, of course with the Foreign Minister -- I had an extensive conversation -- at the National Security Council of Uzbekistan, but also I participated in a roundtable with representatives of various civil organizations and also met with individuals like Mrs. Tojiboyeva, who had been recently released from prison, in order to, basically, get a wide view and as deep a view as I could in that period. [...]
We are engaging, both sides, on all of these areas. In our security relationship, in our economic relationship, and in our dialogue on issues of religious freedom, human rights, and things of this nature. And I think this is very encouraging because, and it is a step by step approach since the days after the Andijan incidents, which I think was a very low point in the relations between the United States and Uzbekistan.
A year later, in a discussion with reporters covered by uznews.net , Amb. Krol said human rights remained an important part of the bilateral relationship and was aware of various political prisoners, but ducked a question on how much Uzbekistan was financially benefiting from the NDN. He denied that the U.S. sought the return of any military base for its troops. Amb. Richard Norland, who attended the meeting, noted that Sanjar Umarov, leader of the Sunshine Coalition, had been released early from prison -- hinting the U.S. had quietly intervened.
Asked about forced child labor in the Uzbek cotton industry, Amb. Krol explained that companies decided what to buy and sell in a market economy, which meant the U.S. government could not get involved, uznews.net reported. He failed to note that the U.S. Department of Labor had two months earlier released a list of goods made by child labor, and included Uzbekistan's cotton. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis said her office was working with companies to root out child labor from their supply chains.
The challenge remains for the U.S. to convincingly coordinate the work of the Bureau or Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, the Department of Labor and other relevant offices with the public diplomacy abroad on countries implicated by its own reports as serious human rights violators.
Writing in the magazine The New Yorker, George Packer observed that the people in President Obama's Cairo audience clapped once at the mention of democracy, but then didn't applaud as expected after the mention of imposed government. While they may have been glad that the U.S. wasn't imposing its own system through force, they were likely wondering how their own government was going to stop doing that if the U.S. did not speak out:
Obama is coming up against the limitations of engagement. What if people around the world want more than a humble adjustment in America’s tone and behavior? What if American overtures to nasty regimes fail, because those regimes have a different view of their own survival? Then the President will have to devise a fallback strategy—preferably one that answers the desires of the people who applauded in Cairo, and doesn’t leave another generation cynical about American promises.
The U.S. fallback strategy for a persistently recalcitrant Tashkent isn't clear. Seeking to clarify a policy that was likely generating some criticism, Amb. Krol elaborated on the U.S. message to Tashkent in an interview in December 2009:
"to encourage political liberalization and respect for human rights. President [Barack] Obama has made clear we don't seek to impose our political system on other nations, but that does not mean that we do not actively promote good governance and respect for fundamental human rights."
Human rights activists are wondering how that promotion is actually going to happen now. Umida Niazova, head of the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights, believes Washington is ignoring human rights:
“It is clear that the new [Obama] administration is ready to cooperate with Karimov’s regime despite the deteriorating human rights record…. There is no indication that the Americans are aligning their cooperation agenda with the domestic situation, the situation with human rights and civil freedoms. Obsessed with a successful operation in Afghanistan, the Americans are strengthening dictatorships in neighbouring countries."
On the fifth anniversary of the Andijan massacre this month, the U.S. did not reiterate its past call for an investigation, but only published a brief comment on the Embassy website expressing condolences to the families of the people killed in 2005 -- almost as if they were like Haitians who died in an earthquake, instead of people who had been gunned down by their own government's troops. Gone was the notion that an impartial human rights fact-finding report would be part of a just resolution, and in its place was a more anodyne call for reconciliation and accountability.
It remains to be seen how much the U.S. will step up its rhetoric if implied concessions are not forthcoming. Tashpulat Yoldashev, an Uzbek political analyst and dissident now based in the United States, believes they are. In an interview May 13 he said Uzbekistan has been offered a number of large construction projects to assist with the NDN and about 50 agreements and contracts are expected to be signed this summer. Yoldashev believes the U.S. is continuing to raise human rights cases quietly and was even planning to restate the demand for an independent international investigation into Andijan. He thought that if such political prisoners as poet Yusuf Juma, journalist Salijon Abdurahmanov and human rights activist Aghzam Turghunov were released, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might travel to Tashkent for the agreements this summer.
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