In contrast with the relative laxity regarding pious Muslims in the lead-up to independence days, Uzbek authorities continued to crack down on unauthorized Christian groups. Police raided a Protestant family's private home in Fergana in August, assaulted the husband and confiscated religious literature including the Bible and the New Testament, local Protestants told Forum 18 News Service.
Seven months after a fine for "illegally" bringing Christian magazines into Uzbekistan was overturned on appeal, passport officers stopped Tashkent Baptist Lidiya Guseva from leaving Uzbekistan, Forum 18 News Service reported. Guseva was taken off a night train and was forced to return to Tashkent by taxi. This was the second case known to Forum 18 since early September of this year of an individual punished by an administrative court for their religious activity being denied permission to leave the country.
While an amnesty was not declared, authorities quietly freed a political prisoner whose case has been repeatedly raised by Western governments and non-governmental groups. Maxim Popov, an Uzbek HIV/AIDS campaigner and educator, handed a harsh sentence of seven years of prison last year for distributing sex education booklets, was freed in June, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, noting that the news of his release was only made public August 30. Popov is still confined to his home, has been given a job as an unskilled laborer, but his wages are being garnished by the state.
Popov, a psychologist by training who ran various youth programs, was accused of "corrupting minors" for distributing booklets about HIV prevention, and was also charged with embezzlement of foreign donor funds -- a claim the foreign agencies themselves didn't make, which seems to have been trumped up by the authorities. Numerous NGOs signed a petition on behalf of Popov, but USAID (the U.S. government's Agency for International Development) and other international agencies that had once given grants and publications to distribute to Popov failed to publicly defend him.
An alleged cable recently released by WikiLeaks indicates how USAID backed away from his case and UNICEF said they were not following it; there was disagreement about the origins of the booklet he was said to have distributed but there was no evidence for the charges of financial mismanagement. The State Department privately raised his case with Uzbek officials, yet as his incarceration dragged on, the sentencing of Popov, widely known in the community, sent a chill over both NGOs and foreign donors, Like other releases achieved through foreign intervention, such as the pardoning of the Uzbek poet Yusuf Juma, their freedom seems rather a Pyrrhic victory, as the cost to their health and lives of imprisonment and even torture is so great, and they are not free to continue their professional work after release. When these activists shouldn’t have ever been jailed in the first place, their release appears not to be a gesture of conciliation but rather a reinforcement of the regime’s brutal arbitrariness.
While Popov's plight was eased, there has been a surge in attacks on other human rights monitors and independent journalists. Tatyana Dovlatova and Abdullo Tojiboy-ugli were attacked by women in separate incidents on August 10 that appear to have been instigated by the authorities, similar to attacks on them in the past. Human rights defender Elena Urlaeva was detained and beaten when she went to investigate a case of three TV journalists charged with extortion by authorities in Namagan.
Journalist Elena Bondar was detained August 22 at the Tashkent airport after returning home from two months of study at the Central Asian School of Contemporary Journalism of the OSCE Academy and the Deutsche Welle Academy, fergananews.com reported. Security agents confiscated her disks and flash drives which contained materials from the independent Uzbek press and her own articles.
Residents of the Uzbek province of Andijan who owe on their gas and electric bills are having their property confiscated by police to cover their debts, Radio Ozodlik reports. A special state-organized inventory commission has been going from house to house, turning off the gas of those in arrears on their bills, and making a list of all their property. The total debt for Andijan is said to have reached the equivalent of US $154 million. According to Jahongir Kosimov, an independent observer from Andijan who cited official sources, the provincial administration, acting on orders from Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev has ordered the collection of at least $800,000 from debtors
A gas company official confirmed to Radio Ozodlik that authorities were going house to house and making lists of property, then sending complaints to the court. These were evidently being handled rapidly, with court bailiffs immediately arriving to seize property – a measure that forced some delinquents to pay up on the spot, but caused others to give up their meager belongings such as rugs.
The problem is not just the impoverishment of people in Andijan and their inability to pay for heat and cooking, but the arbitrary methods used by the state-controlled energy company to calculate bills. People remove the gas meters from their home for the simple reason that they believe gas flows better when they do – the system often suffers from low pressure. This causes the gas company to simply take the total cost of usage – which can include businesses and farms – and divide it up by the total number of consumers, regardless of usage. Critics claim that some corrupt officials are siphoning off gas and electricity illegally at various enterprises, and then sticking ordinary consumers with the tab. One Andijan resident said that teachers and other municipal workers routinely have their wages docked the equivalent of $12-16 to cover energy bills.
A new social network similar to Facebook, moloqot.uz, was launched in Uzbekistan in the Uzbek and Russian languages, Radio Ozodlik reported.. Simple Networking Solutions, the developers of the site, say moloquot.uz was founded to support “universal human values, national traditions, equality and principles of tolerance and also has the goal of creating the conditions for improving the moral and physical health of youth and providing for users civility and spiritual purity.”
The state company Uzbektelecom is sponsoring the project – causing some critics to reason that the security police may be using the service to collect information on talkative citizens. The site has all the utility of more popular Western services like Facebook and the Russian social networking community Odnoklassniki – users can make a page, upload photos and videos, and make friends and chat.
Yet to register for moloqot.uz, users must provide an Uzbek cell phone number – which can only be obtained by presenting a valid passport. The providers say frankly that they wish to discourage anonymous accounts which have been tolerated on some services. While the secret police seem to be hovering nearby, Tulkin Umaraliev, a specialist on new media in Central Asia, said that authorities cannot be too intrusive because users will simply cancel their accounts and leave if they feel the state interference is too heavy.
There are 7.7 million Internet users in Uzbekistan, 4.4 million who access the web through mobile phones. There are already 23 million cell phone users, so there is great potential for this population to increase. Uzbekistan has one of the fastest growing Internet populations in the world. The number of users on moloqot.uz is not known, but the social network may be trying to compete with Odnoklassniki, where 300,000-400,000 Uzbek citizens are said to be logging on daily and Facebook has 85,000 Uzbek users, Radio Ozodlik reported.
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]
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.