A court in Uzbekistan’s capital of Tashkent has acquitted a leading human rights activist charged with defamation, ruling that the authorities’ criminal charges were unfounded in a decision that astounded rights groups.

Shuhrat Rustamov (left), a member of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, said that the court simply reached a just assessment of the facts and circumstances.

The ruling came as Obama administration officials prepare to negotiate an agreement with Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s authoritarian president, to permit thousands of military vehicles, and other equipment to transit from Afghanistan through Uzbek territory.

The U.S. diplomats will “walk a fine line between maintaining transit routes out of Afghanistan and expressing support for democratic principles,” Sanjar Umarov (right) writes in the Los Angeles Times:  

The thing about fine lines, though, is that they often don’t exist. Washington needs to insist on specific and measurable steps to improve human rights — such as the immediate release of rights activists, journalists and opposition figures, and allowing civil society groups to operate in Uzbekistan — and be prepared to impose tough consequences if those conditions aren’t met.

Uzbekistan, which Freedom House counts among the world’s most repressive regimes, is also gaining notoriety for its monitoring and censorship of the internet. The regime has a dedicated Center for Monitoring Mass Communications for violations of Uzbek laws and cultural norms.

The country did experience a cycle of tentative openings to the West followed by repression, said Miriam Lanskoy, the National Endowment for Democracy’s senior program officer for Central Asia and the Caucasus. But a strategic partnership agreement with the U.S. was short-lived and the regime stifled domestic civil society and pressured foreign NGOs to leave even before the Andijon massacre.

After condemning the Andijon massacre of largely peaceful protesters in 2005, Umarov was drugged, beaten, charged with financial crimes and sentenced to over 14 years in prison.

“Finally, efforts by human rights groups and diplomats made Uzbek authorities realize that I was more trouble to them dead than alive,” he writes. “I was freed in late 2009 and received asylum in the United States, where I now live. I was lucky, but thousands of other prisoners are tortured and abused by Uzbek police and prison guards. Millions more in my country lack even the most basic rights and live in constant fear of their government.”

Uzbekistan is used to transport more than 50% of supplies from Central Asia to NATO troops in Afghanistan, notes Umarov, a former political prisoner, physicist and businessman. But strategic interests should not be allowed to subsume considerations of human rights.

U.S. officials have at times publicly called the Uzbek government to account over its abuses. But Karimov is getting mixed messages. I know my government: Lifting human rights restrictions at a time when activists and independent journalists are in jail, media are censored, civil society organizations are kept from operating and forced child labor is used on a massive scale is not the way to convince Karimov you’re serious about human rights.

Experience in the former Soviet Union region, particularly in Central Asia, highlights the importance of setting out human rights benchmarks as a condition for international engagement and unrelentingly pursuing their implementation, writes Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch:

One of the most disappointing developments in this regard was the EU’s failure to hold firm in demanding human rights improvements in Uzbekistan as a condition for dropping sanctions imposed on the government following the May 2005 killings by government forces of hundreds of civilian protesters in the city of Andijon.

The U.S. should comply with higher standards than the EU, writes Umarov, the leader of the Sunshine Uzbekistan movement:

The events of the Arab Spring remind me that one day — soon, we hope — a change will come to my country. U.S. officials in Tashkent this week should make sure that when that day comes, my countrymen will see them as defending Uzbek human rights and not spending all their time seeking to appease the man who has oppressed them for so long.

RTWT

Umarov cites forced child labor as one of Uzbekistan’s most prevalent rights violations, and Prime Minister Mirziyaev this week reportedly decreed that children should not be engaged in the upcoming cotton harvest.

“Similar decrees prior to the cotton harvest have been issued prior to cotton harvests for the past several years,” reports suggest, but they “seem primarily designed to try to convince foreign critics that Uzbekistan’s government is trying to improve its record on child labor.”

Uzbekistan’s $1 billion cotton industry is a major employer, notes the Solidarity Center:

Up to one third of the country’s nearly 15-million-member workforce labors on cotton farms. Instead of using machines to harvest cotton, Uzbekistan’s government uses children. Every autumn, state officials shut down schools and send students, together with their teachers, to the cotton fields. Tens of thousands of children, some as young as seven, are forced to undertake weeks of arduous labor for little or no pay. In some areas, they are compelled to apply toxic pesticides without appropriate protective gear. They must meet daily cotton quotas, and those who fail or refuse to take part can face corporal punishment and expulsion from school. Consequences for parents who protest also can be severe: their social benefits may be revoked, they may be shamed at public meetings, or their utilities may be cut off… The Solidarity Center is part of a broad-based coalition of concerned organizations, led by the International Labor Rights Forum, which is pressuring the Uzbek government to put an end to these brutal practices. To highlight this issue in the global arena, the coalition convened a round-table, “Forced Labor and Child Labor in Central Asia: The Way Forward and the Role of the International Community.” Nearly 90 union, business, and government representatives attended the roundtable, which was held on June 11, 2009, during the International Labor Conference in Geneva. Participants discussed current conditions in the Central Asia region, the role of international businesses and trade unions, and international human rights perspectives, with a view to determining appropriate actions by the various stakeholders to end child labor in global cotton production.

Learn More

• The Child Labor Coalition serves as a national network for the exchange of information about child labor; provides a forum and a unified voice on protecting working minors and ending child labor exploitation; and develops informational and educational outreach to the public and private sectors to combat child labor abuses and promote progressive initiatives and legislation.
• Download the ILRF report “We Live Subject to their Orders”: A Three-Province Survey of Forced Child Labor in Uzbekistan’s 2008 Cotton Harvest

The Solidarity Center is one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance group. Sanjar Umarov is a former NED grantee.

On his recent visit to China, Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov (left) negotiated trade, investment and loans worth at least five billion US dollars and signed an strategic partnership treaty, according to News Briefing Central Asia.

While in Beijing, Karimov also attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, SCO, the security alliance which also comprises Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Kamoliddin Rabbimov, an Uzbek political analyst based in France, explains to NBCentral Asia the shared security concerns and economic interests that feed China’s growing relationship with Central Asia and Uzbekistan in particular.

NBCA: Karimov’s talks with Chinese president Hu Jintao pointed to greater coordination on international and regional affairs, trade and economic collaboration, and a shared approach to security. Does this mark a big step forward in Uzbek-Chinese relations?

KR: At the SCO summit, member states amended an agreement on mechanisms for responding collectively to “events that jeopardising regional peace, security and stability”. Some commentators see this as a reflection of SCO members’ shared fear or popular unrest, revolutions and uprisings.

Uzbekistan is still recovering from the consequences of the May 2005 violence in Andijan, so the SCO and China suit it as partners – these states have similar political systems and common fears about both domestic and external risks.

NBCA: The Chinese are prepared to sign large investment deals with Tashkent despite the isolation of the Uzbek economy is closed, the lack of currency convertibility, and the obstacles facing foreign investors. Why does it make such a leap of faith?

KR: In Uzbekistan, Beijing is less concerned about money than about maintaining its reputation as “the superpower that never bares its teeth”.

China is the top investor in the Uzbek economy, financing multiple projects in the areas of energy, transport, information technology and communications.

Chinese investors in Uzbekistan never engage in disputes or litigation or complain about conditions. That’s the Chinese way of thinking and behaving in economics as well as politics.

Beijing’s approach on foreign policy is especially attractive to Tashkent. Both states oppose international intervention in other states for reasons of human rights and democracy. Uzbekistan is also well aware that it lies at a geopolitical crossroads for global players like Russia, the United States, the European Union and China, and it makes skilful use of this fact when it needs to. It regards China as a way of counterbalancing both the West and Russia.

NBCR: Tashkent has always been cautious about granting increased influence to its foreign partners, but it seems to make an exception for China. Is that just an inevitable result of modern geopolitics, or is it simply that the Uzbek treasury is in need of funds?

KR: When we look at the strengthening relationship between China and the Central Asian states including Uzbekistan, we need to understand the deep concerns, even fears, harbored in Beijing. China is prepared to act as an all-weather partner to countries in the region, and is always open to new projects, even unprofitable ones.

The reason for this is that security takes precedence over business. Beijing’s strategy for maintaining its own territorial integrity is to establish control on both sides of its borders. Through economic and political engagement with Central Asia, it wants to exert a lasting influence on the region’s political elites and societies……..

But this strategy is really a way of ensuring the stable functioning of “authoritarian capitalism” in Central Asia. Were the region, including Uzbekistan, to undergo a genuine shift to democracy, China’s fears would become a reality.

RTWT

The SCO has been described as “the most dangerous organization that the American people have never heard of,” an authoritarian international for Eurasia’s illiberal regimes, and “one of those international bodies whose proclaimed ideals conceal an often sordid reality.” Other observers have noted that Beijing is using the SCO to ensure that it gets “the thickest piece of cake given to the modern Chinese by the heavens,” granting $10 billion in loans to Central Asian states last year.

The SCO’s approach to counter-terrorism is modeled on China’s Three Evils doctrine for combating terrorism, extremism and separatism, even if, as one study notes, this has “too often acted as cover for suppression of ….legitimate opposition groups and the cutting-off of trans-regional ties between them.” The Beijing/SCO focus on territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs, and social stability “contributes to supporting repressive regimes at the expense of national, regional, and global human rights,” according to a recent whitepaper from Human Rights in China.

The NBCentral Asia article was produced as part of News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Human Rights in China is a NED grantee.

Is Central Asia likely to feel the warmth of the Arab spring any time soon?

Probably not, given the lack of credible opposition, weak internet penetration, limited exposure to liberal democratic traditions and relative economic success, says Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs.

The lack of a democratic tradition and vibrant opposition are real constraints, says Gulambek S. Umarov, head of the Sunshine Uzbekistan Coalition. But, change in Uzbekistan is likely to driven by demographics rather than democratic forces, he told a hearing of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe:

The current leadership is old, and a behind-the-scenes struggle for power has begun. Evidence of this power struggle can be seen in the often irrational actions of the government. While 2011 was supposed to be the year of support of small and medium Business, at the same time, the government began to destroy all of the major markets – bazaars – in major cities including capital city of Tashkent. This policy was adopted in the name of city beautification and ultimately destroyed thousands of jobs and raised the cost of living for everyone. Why? One can only deduce that the destruction will enrich one faction of the governing elite at the expense of another.

The U.S. and other external actors can help promote change by providing democracy assistance to combat the causes of religious extremism in Uzbekistan, including the “wide spread sense of injustice caused by the absence of functioning civil institutions.”

Umarov addressed the commission on the 6th anniversary of the Andijon massacre. The Sunshine Uzbekistan Coalition is a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Uzbek opposition leader Sanjar Umarov is finally reunited with his family after being released from a labor camp. He received an amnesty and was released from prison on Nov. 7.

A successful businessman, the 53-year-old Umarov formed the Sunshine Uzbekistan movement to press for economic reform. He became a dissident and vocal critic of President Islam A. Karimov following the Andijon massacre in 2005.

In 2005, he was charged with embezzlement and tax evasion and a court sentenced him to 10 years in jail. A permanent resident of the U.S., Umarov was reportedly tortured and denied both medical treatment and regular access to legal representation. His deteriorating condition was causing grave  concern to his family and human rights activists.

The coalition’s prisoners of conscience committee has been supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
   
The European Union recently announced that it would lift the few remaining sanctions on Tashkent imposed following the Andijon events.

“Umarov’s release was a ’thank you’ to the West for the lifting of sanctions,” Nadezhda Atayeva, president of the Paris-based group Human Rights in Central Asia told EurasiaNet. Karimov is “playing a game with the West,” by releasing one or two political prisoners a year in an attempt to improve the country’s image, she said.

The Uzbek government’s decision to withdraw from the pro-Russian Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) is not only a signal of Tashkent’s commitment to the “Uzbek Path.” It also suggests “a new openness to the West” that may eventually generate openings for reform, says Uzbek reformer Gulam Umarov.

Umarov cited the case of his father Sanjar Umarov, the former head of the Sunshine Uzbekistan Opposition Alliance, amongst others, to insist that  it is “extremely important” that human rights be on the agenda of any dialog with one of the world’s most repressive regimes, he told a recent Washington meeting co-hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy and the Center for International Private Enterprise. His father’s condition remains a cause for grave concern after 13 months in solitary confinement.

“Those classified as political prisoners, such as practicing Muslims or government critics, face ill-treatment and torture” while in Uzbek prisons, says human rights activist Mutabar Tojibaeva, herself a political prisoner for several years. “They are subject to verbal abuse, as well as physical and psychological pressure. Prison workers treat them like animals.”

Uzbek dissidents are limited by the realities in Uzbekistan today. Despite these limitations, they seek a dialog that will be effective in assisting with processes that ”open, reform and democratize” the country, such as the programs to improve transparency and minimize corruption on which he had worked with CIPE.

The country had experienced a cycle of tentative openings to the West followed by repression, said Miriam Lanskoy, NED’s senior program officer for Central Asia and the Caucasus. But the strategic partnership agreement with the U.S. was short-lived and the regime had stifled domestic civil society and pressured foreign NGOs to leave even before the Andijon massacre.

Civil society activists had been jailed and exiled, NGOs subsumed into GONGOs, and the few remaining independent actors were limited to “pushing the envelope” of incremental political reform. Youth activism was one sign of hope, said Lanskoy, a welcome contrast to the graying of the human rights community elsewhere in Eurasia.

The regime has a dedicated Center for Monitoring Mass Communications for violations of Uzbek laws and cultural norms. Since 2002, over 10,000 political prisoners have been held on charges such as “encroachment on the constitutional order,” “anti-state activities,” and “infringing the honor and dignity of the president”. In one of his “more comic attempts to disguise his regime from the prying eyes of the west, Karimov once established his own human rights organization, but when its president went to Bishkek for a conference, had him abducted and charged with sedition.”

Engaging such authoritarian regimes is a delicate business. Human rights groups condemned as “a disgrace” the visit of the head of the Uzbek Security Service to Germany in October on the same day that an Uzbek court sentenced a prominent dissident to 10 years in prison on politically motivated charges.  Azam Turgunov, the head of an unregistered rights group called Mazlum was sentenced days after the European Union praised Uzbekistan for its “improving rights record.”

But German officials respond to such criticisms by insisting that long term engagement with Uzbek officials and the Uzbek military is a far more fruitful strategy for promoting reforms than publicly criticizing Tashkent, notes analyst Alexander Cooley. In dealing with Uzbekistan, as with other authoritarian Central Asian states, the West must maintain a “precarious balance” between strategic access and democratic values, he argues.

Maintaining such a balance is further complicated by Russia’s “pushback against the democracy promotion agenda of the West”, contesting the spread of transatlantic democratic institutions, and the Central Asian states’ alternative regional mechanism in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Cooley advocates “a more coordinated and reinvigorated transatlantic” approach on the part of the West “to promote both its interests and its democratic values throughout this changing and now critically important part of the world.”

Sanjar Umarov, former head of the Sunshine Uzbekistan Opposition Alliance

The deteriorating condition of Sanjar Umarov, the former head of the Sunshine Uzbekistan Opposition Alliance, is causing grave concern to his family and human rights activists. Umarov was arrested and jailed after the Andijon massacre. He has reportedly been drugged and tortured in prison, spent 13 months in solitary confinement, and 16 months without being allowed to communicate with legal counsel or family members.  Find a recent update here and background information here.  

The Uzbek regime this week sentenced a leading human rights activist to 10 years in jail on trumped-up charges in a case that observers say is politically motivated. As with the Umarov case, the authorities brought criminal rather than nakedly political charges against Azam Turgunov, who heads the opposition group Mazlum  (The Oppressed),. In his case, he was arrested in July on charges of extortion. RFE/RL carries further details:

After a court in western Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic handed down the sentence on October 23, Uzbek opposition activist Dilorom Ishoqova called the trial a “show.” “I wasn’t hoping that Azam Turgunov would be freed — he wasn’t imprisoned to be set free,” Ishoqova said. The authorities “were going to lock him up sooner or later, fabricating some pretext. The case is related to his human rights activities and political activities.”

A former Uzbek intelligence officer has revealed that President Islam Karimov personally ordered the Andijon massacre, conspired to cause the death of a UN development official and is involved in human trafficking.

Ikrom Yakubov, a former major in the Uzbek National Security Service (SNB), told RFE/RL that the regime was behind a plane crash that killed a UN development official in January 2004 itself; that it has itself maintained extremist groups and their leaders, including Tahir Yuldash, the purported leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Akram Yuldash, the ‘spiritual leader’ of Akramia, the group blamed for fomenting the protests in Andijon.

The regime is one of the world’s most oppressive, according to Freedom House rankings, and marked by the denial of citizen and civil society freedoms, as one recent account notes:

“.., there are severe restrictions on the freedom to associate and carry out civil society activities. NGOs must compulsorily register before being allowed to function. Permission to register is often subjectively denied, particularly to those organisations that are likely to offer independent views and legitimate criticism of official policies. For instance, pickets and demonstrations organised by the unregistered Human Rights Defenders Alliance of Uzbekistan in the last three years have been constantly disbanded by the police and national security service troops, followed by arrests and physical assaults on participants. After each weekly protest, these human rights defenders are detained for periods ranging from hours to several days. Their homes are under constant surveillance. Random searches and administrative penalties are routine occurrences. Aside from NGOs, faith-based groups and professional associations also undergo extensive scrutiny and harassment. Between 2003 to 2007, there were 300 confirmed closures of civil society organisations.”

As the NED report on the backlash against democracy assistance noted, under the guise of a crackdown on money laundering, the Uzbekistan government effectively stopped the transfer of foreign funds to Uzbek civil society groups. A resolution of the council of ministers requires NGOs to report activities to a “bank council” before releasing funds. The banking sector is so tightly controlled that it would be impossible to make these transfers.

In December 2003, the Uzbekistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) instructed the International Republican Institute to cease working with “illegal organizations,” meaning all unregistered political parties.  The country’s foreign minister personally accused the International Republican Institute (IRI) of promoting a coalition of “anti-government forces that wish to overthrow the constitutional order of Uzbekistan.”

Caption: Jailed dissident Sanjar Umarov was a founding member of the Sunshine Uzbekistan opposition coalition

Gulambek Umarov yesterday made a personal appeal to Uzbekistan president, Islam Karimov, for the release of his father, jailed dissident Sanjar Umarov. The founder of the Sunshine Uzbekistan opposition coalition is in poor health and his life endangered. Family members who visited him last week noted visible signs of torture.

Meanwhile, Uzbek authorities today banned Human Rights Watch’s representative, in defiance of the European Union’s request that the group’s Tashkent director be accredited. HRW notes that, halfway through the current EU sanctions cycle, initiated following the May 2005 Andijon massacre and subsequent crackdown on civil society, the regime has backtracked on human rights standards in a number of respects.

Sanjar Umarov “sought to establish a coalition of independent civil society groups that could engage in a dialogue with the [government] to bring about democratic and much-needed economic reforms through gradual and evolutionary means,” his son told a UN forum on political prisoners.

Although the Uzbek constitution is nominally democratic, including provisions on civil and human rights, it is a “kind of ‘official democracy’” that “serves to limit freedom and restrain the potential of Uzbekistan’s finest asset, its own people.”  His father is serving a prison term of over seven years after criticizing the authorities’ actions at Andijon. In a further instance of the criminalization of dissent, he was arrested in October 2005 on charges of embezzlement, money laundering, and tax evasion.

Uzbekistan, which Freedom House counts among the world’s most repressive regimes, is also gaining notoriety for its monitoring and censorship of the internet. The regime has a dedicated Center for Monitoring Mass Communications for violations of Uzbek laws and cultural norms. It has also mobilized a network of accomplices, as one analyst’s story illustrates:

 ”A colleague of ours went into a cyber café in Tashkent and tried to get on to a blocked website.  He could get on to the first page but when he went to click through it just wouldn’t load, so after about five minutes of trying went to leave. But the person who was running the internet café was being very coy and not wanting to let him go. Within five minutes a non-uniformed member of the security forces came and started interrogating him, ‘why were you looking at this, why were you trying to get to it?’ Fortunately, our colleague had a diplomatic passport, he got off. But it is clear there was collusion between the owner of the café and the local security forces.”

Since 2002, over 10,000 political prisoners have been held on charges such as “encroachment on the constitutional order,” “anti-state activities,” “infringement on the honor and dignity of the president,” and “membership in an Islamic terrorist organization,” loosely interpreted as any Muslim majority organization. As a report in tomorrow’s press recounts, in one of his “more comic attempts to disguise his regime from the prying eyes of the west, Karimov once established his own human rights organization, but when its president went to Bishkek for a conference, had him abducted and charged with sedition.”

The Kyrgyz Constitutional Court yesterday overruled restrictions on freedom of assembly in response to petition by the Kylym Shamy (Torch of the Century) human rights centre. The court overruled a decision by Bishkek City Council to impose new regulations on meetings, rallies, marches, demonstrations and pickets in Bishkek.

Kylym Shamy, a NED grantee, is one of the country’s leading human rights groups. Its recent activities include monitoring the treatment and condition of Uzbek migrants, particularly victims of the Andijon massacre. “The sheltering of families of Uzbek journalists, rights activists, and average citizens who have fled across the border to Kyrgyzstan continues,” Kylym Shamy’s Aziza Abdurasulova recently told RFE/RL. “There are scores of these people seeking places of safety.”

The group also monitors human rights abuses within Kyrgyzstan which, despite the initial promise of the “Tulip Revolution” has recently witnessed a marked deterioration in democratic governance and human rights standards. Kylym Shamy has reported at least 10 cases of torture, including three deaths in custody.