Although still basking in the praise the international community has heaped on him for handling the refugee crisis during the June violence in Kyrgyzstan, at home President Islam Karimov is ruthlessly presiding over a wave of trials of journalists and human rights activists who have criticized his regime's suppression of any form of independent civic activity, whether political, social, or religious.
In recent weeks, a half dozen reporters and human rights monitors have faced trial on libel or slander charges that appear to be fabricated in retaliation for their work, following a year of prosecution of such prominent figures as photographer Umida Akhmedova and HIV/AIDS campaigner Maxim Popov.
Abdumalik Boboyev, an Uzbek journalist based in Tashkent for the U.S.-funded Voice of America, was arrested in September and charged with defamation and causing a "threat to public order and security" for his reporting. International observers have said the charges were trumped-up to further intimidate the already beleaguered independent press in Uzbekistan, EurasiaNet reported.
So far the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent has not committed on this or other recent cases. Human rights groups are concerned that the lack of an articulate U.S. defense on Boboyev's and other cases in Tashkent is the collateral effect of the U.S. need to keep close cooperation with the Karimov government in the interests of expanding the Northern Distribution Network to supply NATO's troops in Afghanistan. To be sure, the U.S. envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Ambassador Ian Kelly, spoke on behalf of Boboyev at the OSCE permanent council in Vienna, noting the defamation charges as well as a charge of "illegal entry into Uzbekistan" which apparently stems from a minor incident involving a missing stamp in Boboyev's passport. But the American statement at OSCE, while reprinted on other U.S. embassy websites in Europe such as in Belgium, has not been published in Tashkent.
The U.S. reached out to the Tashkent human rights community when senior officials visited Uzbekistan this past summer. Surat Ikramov, head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan, said after a visit July 20 from Michael McFaul, Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia for the National Security Council, that the U.S. was paying closer attention to the complaints of such groups. But on August 5, Ikramov found himself on trial again when authorities revived a convoluted old case to accuse him of libel. He was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine and publish a refutation of the article he distributed in 2008 about the death of a famous singer, Dilnura Kadyrjanova, in 2007, ferghana.ru reported. At the time, based on a complaint to his organization by the singer’s family, Ikramov questioned the official version of Kadyrjanova's death, which authorities had pronounced a suicide.
In an interview with ferghana.ru, Ikramov called the lawsuit "absurd," noting that it was filed more than two years years after the article was published, indicating that the authorities’ real intention was to pressure him to cease his human rights work. He said he had no intention of publishing any correction, because he did not believe he had caused any offense, and plans to appeal. Ikramov believes the judge was under pressure from Jamshid Matliubov, the police chief who was allegedly the father of Kadyrjanova's child
Vladimir Berezovsky, a Russian journalist and former editor of the now-closed website vesti.uz and correspondent for Parlamenskaya Gazeta, is now on trial for libel of "the Uzbek people" for reprinting wire service stories from Russia's state news agencies and for his own articles on Uzbekistan and regional affairs. A Russian diplomat who attempted to monitor the session was turned away by the judge.
The Uzbek parliament dutifully backed up the call of President Islam Karimov to hold an international investigation of the events in Kyrgyzstan made at the UN General Assembly last month, regnum.ru reported, citing the parliamentary press service. Last summer, Uzbek prosecutors carefully took down the accounts of refugees and gathered forensic evidence, even as they barred independent human rights investigators from contacting the refugees when they were in Uzbek camps. Meanwhile, the national investigation in Kyrgyzstan has curiously issued a preliminary report that ethnic Uzbeks were the main instigators of the unrest, although ethnic Uzbeks are the main victims. All 24 defendants in three major June-related trials (not including the SOS case) were ethnic Uzbeks, Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty reported.
In a typically harsh sentence that appears have resulted from a tendentious reading of acts of desperation, a court in southern Kyrgyzstan has sentenced two ethnic Uzbeks to three years in prison for writing “SOS” on the gate of a private home during the clashes, The court claimed that instead of pleading for help behind home-made barricades under attack, they were signalling to outside instigators, AKIpress reported. Ulukbek Abdusalamov, the vice president of the Uzbek Culture Center and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Diydor in Jalal-Abad, reportedly had a stroke on September 17 in the hospital where he had been taken from pre-trial detention, and has now been released to house arrest.
In Osh, the contentious "master plan" to resettle ethnic Uzbeks away from the territory of their ruined homes into new high-rises is once again being pushed by reconstruction officials, EurasiaNet reported. Human rights groups have been concerned that the forced evictions, when Uzbeks have already begun building their homes with the help of international aid groups, will further fuel tensions. The plan, which existed before the pogroms and is believed by some to indicate complicity in them, involves removing Uzbeks from their neighborhoods and mixing them with Kyrgyz residents in apartment complexes. The controversial mayor of Osh continues to promote the eviction plan despite international objections, stalling on construction permits for Uzbeks to build on the sites of their destroyed homes. Since the Asian Development Bank is providing a $30 million loan for Uzbeks to rebuild their homes, human rights groups are hoping the international community will maintain pressure on local leadership to stop evictions.
The Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights has issued more reports indicating that children are still being forced to work on the cotton harvest, despite Uzbekistan's pledges and new laws passed last year to end the practice. According to the BBC's Uzbek Service reports, human rights activist Elena Urlayeva reported that in Upper Chirchik District, children were being taken out of school to pick cotton, Urlayeva said that troops were deployed to oversee the harvest, and when she gained entry to the fields and started interviewing children, police seized her cell phone and deleted the pictures. The children told her that the police had warned them not to mention that they were picking cotton and to say they were in school. Each morning, they are bussed to school, but their book bags contain bread and water and they are then taken to the cotton fields. They complained that their arms were scratched from the bushes and they did not have proper shoes for field work or large enough bags to collect the cotton.
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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