Tajikistan Joins Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Authoritarian Category in State Dept. Report
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are all classified as “authoritarian states,” with Islam Karimov’s regime in Tashkent singled out for particular censure, in the latest edition of the US State Department's annual human rights report.
In examining the conduct of what the US government considers to be the world's most notorious human rights abusers, the report’s introduction highlighted Uzbekistan for the second year running. The State Department focused on several areas for criticism, including the country's torture of prisoners; the harassment of religious groups, journalists, nongovernmental organization activists and human rights activists; and the use of forced labor. “Again in 2010, the government of Uzbekistan mobilized thousands of adults and children as forced laborers during the annual cotton harvest,” the report noted.
The report did, however, praise Uzbekistan for its handling of the refugee crisis caused by interethnic violence in neighboring Kyrgyzstan in 2010. “Following ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan in June, Uzbekistan accepted more than 100,000 Kyrgyzstani refugees into its territory and worked closely with the international community to provide food, water, and shelter for those in need,” the report said.
While the most recent edition of the Freedom House watchdog group’s Freedom in the World rankings gave Tajikistan the same score as it did to both Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, neither of those latter two countries were deemed by the State Department to be “authoritarian.” In Tajikistan, the State Department report said, “President Emomali Rahmon and his supporters, drawn mainly from one region of the country, dominated political life. The constitution provides for a multiparty political system, but in practice the government obstructed political pluralism.” (The State Department report does not score countries, or otherwise give any way to compare them to one another).
Kazakhstan is defined as a “parliamentary system dominated by President Nursultan Nazarbayev's Nur Otan Party.” (The report, which focuses on events in 2010, did not address the most recent presidential election). The report steers clear of assessing Kyrgyzstan's new government, noting only that its “new constitution defines the country as a sovereign, democratic, secular, unitary, and social state governed by the rule of law.” Mongolia is the only formerly Communist state in the Caucasus and Central Asia that the report describes as a democracy.
While the State Department's assessment of Kyrgyzstan's new government was cautiously optimistic, the human rights situation in the country was marred by the ethnic violence that rocked the country in 2010. Kyrgyzstan also was the only country in the Caucasus and Central Asia where the State Department considered the armed forces not to be fully under civilian control.
None of the countries of the Caucasus are deemed either authoritarian or democratic. Armenia is defined as a “constitutional republic,” but noted that “[c]itizens' right to change their government through peaceful elections was restricted due to repeated, significant flaws in the conduct of elections.” The report also does not explicitly label Georgia's government, noting that the “constitution of Georgia provides for an executive branch that reports to the president, a unicameral Parliament, and an independent judiciary” and that “although a significant number of opposition parties existed, the country was dominated by a single party.”
Azerbaijan is defined as “a republic with ... a presidential form of government. Legislative authority is vested in the Milli Majlis (National Assembly). In practice the president dominated the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.”
The report discusses the human rights situations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but only in terms of how the de facto authorities in those breakaway republics treat the Georgian minority, which is generally poorly in both cases.
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