Uzbek girl, 12, picking cotton in Kashkadarya region in Uzbekistan, 2011.
European parliamentarians have voted overwhelmingly to reject the reduction of textile tariffs for Uzbekistan until the International Labor Organization (ILO) is given access to the country to examine extensive reports of forced child labor.
Members of the European Parliament voted this morning 603-8 to send the textile protocol to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the European Union and Uzbekistan back to the European Commission.
In the text of the resolution, the European parliamentarians "[s]trongly condemn the use of forced child labour in Uzbekistan" and "[u]rge the Uzbek President Islam Karimov to allow an ILO monitoring mission into the country to address the issue of forced child labour practice."
The MEPs further specify support for the ILO's request for "a high-level tripartite observer mission that would have full freedom of movement and timely access to all locations and relevant parties, including in the cotton fields, in order to assess the implementation of the ILO Convention."
Finally, evidently mindful of how such missions to closed societies run by authoritarian regimes can be manipulated and sidetracked, the parliamentarians spell out further conditions:
Concludes that Parliament will only consider the consent if the ILO observers, have been granted access by the Uzbek authorities to undertake close and unhindered monitoring and have confirmed that concrete reforms have been implemented and yielded substantial results in such a way that the practice of forced labour and child labour is effectively in the process of being eradicated at national, viloyat and local level.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is scheduled to travel to Moscow on December 23 to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH) reported.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and President Dmitry Medvedev in Dushanbe in September 2011
Veteran Russian Central Asia correspondent Arkady Dubnov has a feature in Moscow News this week about the growing crisis for Russians in Turkmenistan with dual passports. As we noted, chrono-tm.org reported last week that notices have begun appearing in travel agencies that starting in 2013, tickets to Russia can only be purchased if a Turkmen passport and a Russian visa are shown.
Russians have been under pressure for some time to give up their Russian passport if they wish to receive the new Turkmen passport.
As Dubnov notes, the chief advantage for dual passport holders has been the ability to easily travel back and forth between Russia and Turkmenistan -- the average Turkmen would not find it anywhere near as easy to travel abroad.
Dubnov cites "informed sources" in Ashgabat that told him of a "new wave of panic" seizing Russians still left in Turkmenistan. The sources said, citing a registry in the Russian consulate, that there are about 120,000 people with dual Russian and Turkmen passports remaining in Turkmenistan. Prices on apartments have reportedly fallen by 30 percent, because people are trying to get out quickly and are selling their homes for a lower price. Parents who sent their children to kindergarten this fall found that they were required to indicate if they had Russian citizenship, and that fueled worries as well.
Rashid Meredeov, Turkmenistan's Foreign Minister, is rumored to have said to those in his close circle that "Russia has already ceased to be a factor in Turkmen foreign policy," Dubnov reports.
Human rights defender Elena Urlaeva checked hospitals, mosques, marketplaces, and a school, in search of a student claimed to have committed suicide, but found no trace.
Human rights activists looking for more information about the case of an Uzbek student said to have committed suicide after allegedly being detained and tortured in Andijan region have been forced to conclude that the case was likely fabricated.
Yet they remain perplexed about the motivation for such a social-media concoction, and wonder whether it was Uzbek intelligence, the opposition, or simply Internet pranksters who made up the compelling story of Gulsumoy Abdujalilova, an Uzbek woman studying abroad in Germany who became a Facebook friend of the Popular Movement of Uzbekistan, then supposedly met a tragic end.
Elena Urlaeva, the Tashkent-based leader of the Human Rights Alliance, traveled again to the town of Kurgantepa in Andijan region on Monday, in order to investigate further leads on the story after a fruitless trip to gain information from police on Saturday.
In an account circulated Tuesday on email, Urlaeva writes that she took up the investigation of the story of Gulsumoy Abdujalilova because she had been approached by people claiming to be her relatives who had asked her to help.
Using an address mentioned on an opposition website said to be Abdujalilova's home, Urlaeva traveled to Hamsa Street, but discovered that no family by that name existed at no. 49. She found a taxi driver who said he had lived on the street for 40 years, and together they walked around the nearby streets making inquiries, and also went to find the chairman of the mahalla (neighborhood). He told them that the police had also come looking for Gulsumoy, but said that he knew of no such family, and nor of any such deaths in the mahalla.
Here's a shocker: a former Turkmen cultural official is criticizing the lack of democracy in Turkmenistan in Ashgabat, i.e. not from exile or abroad, but speaking inside the country -- and publicly, and using his own name. That's extremely rare in Turkmenistan because of the great risks involved.
"If someone wants to set up a political party today, there is no legislation for doing so," he said. "There are people who want to create a party. But they are told [by the Mejlis] that 'there is no law on establishing political parties.' Everything is blocked."
As we reported last week, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's pocket parliamentarians have been trying to snow the public in state-controlled media interviews that they will have "democratic" elections ostensibly open to free nominations.
There's no mention at all at the lack of enabling legislation for parties -- which is definitely required in a country where the constitutional norms for freedom of association aren't upheld and there's no independent judiciary to enforce them.
While the prospect is held out for registering citizens' nominations groups in the absence of parties, such registration will be totally at the discretion of local officials and various technical hurdles will likely prevent the emergence of truly independent alternative candidates.
Prosecutor's Office, Kurgantep, Andijan region, Uzbekistan December 2011
The saga continues of the strange story of the Uzbek student who allegedly committed suicide after returning from study in Germany and reportedly suffering detention and torture by police in Andijan region. Human rights activists and reporters continue to speculate whether the case really happened as originally reported, whether it was maybe a concoction by an opposition group to discredit the Uzbek government, or whether a possible scheme by Uzbek intelligence to smear the opposition.
Elena Urlaeva, the Tashkent-based leader of the Human Rights Alliance, who originally reported the story, traveled again to the Kurgantepa district of Andijan region and has spent the last two days trying to track down the story of the alleged suicide, Gulsumoy Abdujalilova, and to lodge an inquiry to the police and prosecutor's office about the case. Here's an excerpt of the account of her trip sent via email today:
My driver told me that he had a brother who works in the Interior Ministry of Andijan region, so I asked him to find out the address of the relatives of Gulsumoy Abdujalilova. After some time I received a reply that there were no such people in Andijan region and that some woman had already been asking about this family.
Along the route to Kurgantepa district, I asked many people about Gulsumoy Abdujalilova and her family, but it's a large district stretching many kilometers along the border with Kyrgyzstan, and without an address, my search became more complicated.
On December 10, I went to the prosecutor's office of the Kurgantepa district in order to submit a statement about how Gulsumoy Abdujalilova was driven to suicide, but the prosecutor did not let me in; the guard said the prosecutor is not in his office on Saturday.
Turkmenistan's Ministry of Health in Ashgabat, July 2010
Turkmenistan's minister of health has been reprimanded by the president for "unsatisfactory performance," the opposition website gundogar.org reported, citing the presidential news service.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, himself a trained dentist and former health minister, issued a strict reprimand to Kurbanmamed Ilyasov, current minister of health and the medical industry, for "allowing shortcomings in compliance with labor discipline."
The dressing-down took place in real time, on one of the government video conferences that the Turkmen leader is increasingly using to control his subordinates across the country.
Lest you think the public rebuke might be related to Turkmenistan's actual poor health care system, as documented in reports such as the 2010 study by Doctors without Borders (which has since left the country in frustration with the bureaucracy) -- it wasn't about medicine.
Instead, Berdymukhamedov criticized his hapless health minister for failing to build yet another set of health facilities on time, and for falling behind the break-neck pace that the Turkmen dictator has set for constructing dazzling new state-of-the-art clinics.
The minister was warned that if he did not shape up immediately, he would be released from his duties.
Ilyasov was appointed as minister in April 2010, taking the place of Ata Serdarov, who was sent to serve as ambassador to Armenia. (He happens to be President Berdymukhamedov's cousin.) Previously, Ilyasov served as minister of tourism and sports.
This prompts us to ask: is there a doctor in the house?
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and his wife visit Turkmenbashi Ruhi Mosque and Turkmenbashi mausoleum, April 2010
The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has concluded its latest session, where it reviewed the Turkmen government's report on its compliance with the treaty on these rights.
Areas of concern included the negative consequences of the policy of “Turkmenisation” which resulted in discrimination against minorities, the strong negative traditional practices discriminating against women, high levels of unemployment, the absence of independent unions, the lack of information on the extent of human trafficking, child marriages, the forced relocation of human rights activists, and widespread hospital closures. The Committee recommended that the State party address discrimination against minorities and women, enhance access to employment, criminalize domestic violence, uphold the freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution, and cease the practice of censorship of electronic communication and blocking of internet.
What a contrast with the the UN's web site in Ashgabat, where the conclusions of this particular UN treaty body's review -- like others before it -- are simply not published on its site.
Instead, there are only positive and upbeat stories like this one about the granting of Turkmen nationality to 3,000 stateless people.
The former British defense secretary Geoff Hoon, now chief executive for the joint British-Italian helicopter manufacturer AgustaWestland , received an audience with President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov on December 1, the government daily Neitral'niy Turkmenistan reported, citing the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH).
TDH quoted Hoon as saying that Turkmenistan had earned a reputation in international business circles as "a solid and reliable partner." Apparently he hasn't spoken to Russia's MTS, kicked out of Turkmenistan last year.
Like many other pilgrims beating a path to Berdymukhamedov's palace door, Hoon "expressed sincere admiration for the contemporary look of the white marbled Turkmen capital which has now become one of the most beautiful cities of the world," said TDH.
Hoon pitched some unspecified projects, and the Turkmen leader listened "with interest" and said they deserved "attentive, detailed study." He said that Turkmenistan intends to expand and modernize its aviation.
The former British defense secretary moved to the leadership position at AgustaWestland last May.
Hoon, who was defense secretary from 1999 to 2005, was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party in disgrace in 2010 after being secretly filmed by the television show Dispatches offering his consultancy services for £3,000 a day, the military news site defencemanagement.com reports.
So while questions can be asked about the gullibility of human rights activists and the perfidy of exile political operatives as the semi-official uzmetronom.com is doing today, and as Inside the Cocoon has noted, what’s more likely is that the story is concocted by Uzbek intelligence to discredit everything but itself.
When I first saw Elena Urlaeva's story of the tragic suicide of Gulsumoy Abdujalilova, a young Uzbek student, on the Google group Human Rights in Central Asia, I was immediately struck by a tell-tale feature that has been a hallmark of stories involving exiled opposition movements and the secret police who try to infiltrate them since the Soviet era.
