Uzbekistan celebrated the 19th anniversary of its independence on September 1 with a flourish of patriotic slogans, warnings to be vigilant about external enemies, streets closed to traffic, and orders to dissidents not to go outside. President Islam Karimov announced that the average income was now $500 a month, and the state-run press carried stories about increases in pay. The propaganda was offset by independent media such as uznews.net, which noted that while some people have higher pay, the state doesn't pay it on time.
In the last year, President Karimov has stepped up nationalist rhetoric and has demonstratively retired symbols from the Soviet era, seen as a dominance of Russian culture, by renaming streets and removing a World War II monument and replacing it with one promoting the Uzbek homeland.
State-controlled television channels in recent weeks have featured reports that convey ethnic harmony in Uzbekistan, and downplay the possibility of the kind of violence seen in neighboring southern Kyrgyzstan in mid-June, EurasiaNet reported. In a televised speech on the eve of the independence celebration, President Karimov called for vigilance to prevent confrontations from "any kind of forces" that are "around us and places close to us," referring to neighbors Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with which Tashkent has had a number of ongoing energy and security disputes.
In a message of congratulations for the holiday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised the Uzbek leader again for his efficient handling of the refugee crisis in June, accommodating 100,000 people fleeing from neighboring Kyrgyzstan -- but then promptly sending them back several weeks later. While indeed Karimov has been restrained in dealing with Uzbekistan’s volatile neighbor, flare-ups of the inherent tensions between Tashkent and its neighbors continue to instill concern among experts about how long conflict can be avoided in the crowded and impoverished Ferghana region with its many cross-border communities.
On August 31, Uzbek border guards detained two senior Kyrgyz border officers near the southern Kyrgyz village of Pulgon bordering Uzbekistan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. The Kyrgyz Border Service subsequently arrested three Uzbek customs officers and one Uzbek national security officer. The Uzbeks detained the Kyrgyz when they came to resolve problems that arose when Uzbekistan closed all its borders in connection with the Independence Day celebrations. Ultimately the two countries made a prisoner exchange on September 5. The pro-government press-uz.info portrayed the incident as involving "a plundering raid" by the Kyrgyz and "valiant efforts" of Uzbek officials, EurasiaNet reported.
Eurasian expert Paul Goble writes in his blog Windows on Eurasia that ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan feel betrayed by Tashkent, which has failed to offer them refuge or protect them. He cites Alisher Yuldashev of materik.ru who says Karimov views southern Kyrgyzstan as a "stronghold of the Uzbek religious and political opposition" and is not interested in importing these problems to Uzbekistan. The Uzbeks of southern Kyrgyzstan have fought for greater representation in Kyrgyz government and Karimov is likely to be very cautious about promoting their autonomy to avoid encouraging political struggle in his own country.
Uzbekistan proposed the deployment of the Police Advisory Group (PAG) from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to southern Kyrgyzstan, preferring the OSCE to the Russian-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). While approved unanimously, the 52-unarmed mission has yet to deploy as negotiations on the precise points of the memorandum of understanding has stalled. Markus Mueller, head of the PAG, visited Bishkek to meet with President Roza Otunbayeva but was unable to nail down an agreement to have the foreign police patrol together with Kyrgyz law-enforcers in the south. His trip came amid claims published in Die Tageszeitung by Viola von Cramon, a member of the German Bundestag who had also met with Roza Otunbayeva, that the government had refused deployment of the mission.
OSCE denied the claim, saying the Kyrgyz government continued to welcome the PAG but faced opposition from Osh Mayor Melsibek Myrzakmatov and other local officials on the deployment. Sources close to the OSCE police mission say deployment is unlikely to proceed before the Kyrgyz parliamentary elections on October 10, EurasiaNet reported. While the police are only mandated to provide training and mentoring, the Uzbek community felt their presence was a visible sign of the international community’s determination against further pogroms. Now Uzbeks feel with the delay that they have been abandoned. “We have no one to turn to. The answer is that we have to rely on Allah and ourselves,” one man told EurasiaNet.
Kyrgyzstan opened the long-debated $200 million Karambata-2 hydroelectric power plant, its first since the collapse of the Soviet Union, RFE/RL reported. Uzbekistan has opposed the plan as it says that rivers originating in Kyrgyzstan will be diverted, causing Uzbekistan to suffer shortages of the large amounts of water it needs for its irrigation-intensive cotton crop.
As the cotton harvest season opens, human rights groups fear that the climate of coercion still existing in Uzbekistan, where the government imposes state quotas on farmers and forces state workers to bring in the harvest, will inevitably lead to the exploitation of child labor. While formally Uzbekistan has signed international agreements to ban forced child labor, local officials are under tremendous pressure to produce results, and end up relying on the labor of school-children to meet the demands. Already some reports have been received of children working in the fields, and officials are resorting to obtaining false statements from parents that they have voluntarily consented to taking their children out of school for the harvest. A number of leading international companies have announced the boycott of Uzbek cotton and a coalition of human rights, labor, and retail groups have joined together to spotlight the ongoing problem of child labor in Uzbekistan (for regular updates see eurasianet.org/choihona and cottoncampaign.org).
With the downturn in the global economy, many labor migrants have been forced back to Uzbekistan. The persistent black market in foreign currencies has made it difficult for people looking to start businesses to succeed. There are hefty import duties on goods from Turkey, which is a popular source of consumer goods, and artificial shortages of currency make it hard or expensive to buy foreign currency to make purchases. The spread between the official and black market exchange rates is now as high as 35 percent, EurasiaNet reports. New tax regulations have also stung small businesses, News Briefing Central Asia reports. Instead of taking 4-7 percent of proceeds as was done previously, the government is now charging a fixed rate that has wound up putting some small merchants out of business.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick compiles the Uzbekistan weekly roundup for EurasiaNet. She is also editor of EurasiaNet's Choihona blog. To subscribe to Uzbekistan News Briefs, write [email protected]
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