A closed-door European Union-Uzbekistan human rights dialogue took place June 23-24, activists said, but nothing is known about it, nor is it certain to what extent the EU representatives in Tashkent or Brussels consult with domestic and international human rights groups. Likely cases of political prisoners as well as the issue of the use of forced child labor in the cotton industry were raised, but results were not immediately felt.
While Polish officials, in their capacity as current EU president, were reportedly conducting this quiet diplomacy on rights, a German trade delegation was meeting with Uzbek Foreign Ministry officials on the same day, ultimately sending mixed signals from the EU. On June 23, a trade delegation with government officials and business representatives led by Jörg Bode, German Minister for Economics, Labor and Transport of Lower Saxony, met with the Uzbek Foreign Ministry in Tashkent. The Foreign Ministry press center recalled that "Germany is a main economic partner of Uzbekistan" and that trade "exceeded $480 million in 2010" and that currently joint ventures are worth "over 1 billion euros."
Meanwhile, in France, another EU member, another drama was unfolding related to Uzbek President Islam Karimov's daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, who had sued a journalist for libel for calling her "a dictator's daughter," rue89.com reported. On July 1, a French court ultimately acquitted Augustin Scalbert, a correspondent for the online publication rue89.com regarding the case which the president's daughter filed in May over his article in May 2010 criticizing her charitable activities, which were alleged to have included payment for an appearance by Italian actress Monica Belluci. She had sought €30,000 (US$43,000) in damages.
The trial took an odd turn as efforts by Karimova-Tillyaeva to provide good character references from the European Union's Europa House in Tashkent only backfired. The letter, signed by the EU's program consultant, cited grants given to a state-created charity for disabled children run by Karimova-Tillyaeva prompting larger questions from European parliamentarians about EU funding of the Karimov regime. After German MEPs inquired about the funding of Uzbekistan's government, the EU was forced to back down from transferring further grants to the Uzbek charity. The implications of supporting the Uzbek dictatorship became more visible; members of two German parties – the Green and Free Democrats – called on the EU to refuse a €3.7m grant allocated to the charity, uznews.net reported.
The Uzbek government soon retaliated -- the Uzbek Foreign Ministry cancelled a trip by the German Bundestag Committee for Human Rights, eurasiantransition.org reported. However, the Uzbek government kept on track the June 23 German trade delegation. But Western investors have grown more nervous about the Uzbek regime, even if they are not directly troubled about human rights issues. The same factors that make for despotic rule leading to imprisonment of dissidents and torture in prison -- absence of the rule of law -- applies in the business world just as well.
German companies are holding a number of large debts from joint ventures that have soured with the implosion of Zeromax, the state-owned Swiss-registered conglomerate that went into bankruptcy last year. And the British company Oxus Gold, ensnarled in a dispute with Uzbek authorities over valuation of shares in its joint venture Amantayau Goldfields (AGF), suspended share trading on June 29, Financial Times reported. The value of the stock had already been reduced by half when the first announcement was made by Oxus about a hostile audit, and then fell nearly by half again. The British mining firm announced back in March that it was ceasing operations in Uzbekistan and planned to challenge an Uzbek government audit it says was being conducted in bad faith. It joins other companies that have exited Uzbekistan with troubled relations and arbitrary rulings that leave them with far less than their initial investment.
The EU leadership as well as cotton traders in Western Europe have come in for heavy criticism lately from members of the European Parliament regarding child labor in the cotton industry, but it is not known yet whether this will lead to any removal of trade benefits or suspension of business contacts. The US released its annual Global Trafficking in Persons report (G-TIP), but ducked reducing Uzbekistan to Tier 3 from Tier 2, a downgrade that is supposed to occur automatically when countries fail to comply with basic standards and reporting on the exploitation of child workers.
The reasons are directly related to how much Washington says it needs Tashkent’s cooperation to fight the war in Afghanistan. But there, too, the indulgence of Uzbek government negligence has had some consequences. WikiLeaks revelations released in recent months include alleged cables from 2009 about a new railroad in Uzbekistan used extensively in NATO's delivery to Afghanistan on the Northern Distribution Network which was built with substandard steel. The mountainous track causes trains to suffer so much friction on braking that the wheels become red-hot, posing great safety hazards.
An earlier cable published by Wikileaks from 2004 involved a meeting between the US State Department and EU about how to address the challenges of the radical Islamic organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which seeks to restore theocratic government under a caliphate. Noting that summer's terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan, the EU said the Uzbeks had asked them to designate Hizb-ut-Tahrir as a terrorist group; the US had not done so.
The cable is a good example of how governments talk about groups in civil society behind their backs, hoping to encourage some civic actors even as they remain ambivalent about others. On Central Asia, reported the cable writer, both the US and EU "agreed on the difficulty and importance of helping to build civil society" and an EU official said the problem is dealing with "substandard governments and substandard civil society." The Central Asian governments were suspicious of Western calls to reach out to NGOs and other groups, while NGOs and the press tended to take irresponsible actions that aroused further government suspicion.
There has long been a divided response from the EU, with some EU countries like Germany banning Hizb-ut-Tahrir and others like the UK reluctantly permitting the organization, not believed to directly cause violence. That enables the Uzbek government, which bans any religious groups outside of state-sanctioned bodies, to justify its oppressive actions. In yet another case involving devout Muslims, seven men have been sentenced to prison terms from five to 10 years in Namangan in the Ferghana Valley on charges of membership in a religious group called Islamic Jihad, fergananews.com reported. Human rights activists said the defendants were tortured.
According to reports from Kashkadarya, residents of the Koson District are panicking because of an infectious, unknown life-threatening disease, the BBC’s Uzbek Service reported. Officials are not providing any information. In a telephone conversation with a BBC correspondent, a representative of the regional Ministry of Health would not confirm or deny the reports of an epidemic or that a woman who lived in a remote village in the Koson District bled to death during childbirth, and doctors reportedly found that she was suffering from a disease similar to the plague.
After the woman’s death, a quarantine was declared in her village, and everyone who had come into contact with her, including doctors, were examined. There are rumors that some doctors became infected themselves, although there is no confirmation of this report.
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, a weekly digest of international and regional press, write [email protected]
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