Society of Human Rights of Uzbekistan

Society of Human Rights of Uzbekistan

Once justice and legitimacy fade away
a state becomes a gang of bandits.
Augustine Aurelius.

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Opinion on the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan regarding the politics of Western political structures towards Uzbekistan

The Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) is living through the most difficult period in its history. Islam Karimov's felonious regime strives for a complete annihilation of the first civic human rights organisation, created at the dawn of independence. The mere existence of the HRSU caused genuine discomfort for the authorities. The stance of Uzbekistan's authorities towards the HRSU is very well illustrated by the fact that they rejected six times the Society's requests for official registration.

In different years, 25 HRSU members were unlawfully convicted and served, or still serve, prison terms in the jails of Karimov's regime. In July 2001 the head of the HRSU Kashkadarya regional branch, the former parliament deputy Shavrik Ruzumuradov, was beastly tortured and died in the dungeons of the Ministry of the Interior.

The persecutions of the HRSU reached unprecedented levels after the Andijan events of May 2005. 12 active HRSU members, 5 of them heads of regional branches, were brought to court on criminal charges. Presently, nine of them are being detained. In June 2006, for the first time a human rights defender was sent to the concentration camp near Zhaslyk (Republic of Karakalpakstan), where before only persons convicted on religious grounds were detained. This was Asam Formonov, the head of the HRSU Syrdarya regional branch.

Several former and present HRSU activists had to leave their country after the Andijan events, seeking political asylum in other countries. HRSU structures are close to destroyed in three regions: Syrdarya, Djizzakh and Kashkadarya.

After the aforementioned tragic events in Andijan, Uzbekistan's authorities used repression not only against the HRSU and persons accused of terrorism. American armed forces, based in Khanabad, were driven out of the country. Virtually all international non-governmental organisations, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, were banned, as well as international mass media, human rights organisations and foundations. Many local NGOs were closed down. Not only human rights defenders and members of opposition parties were brought to court, but also several independent journalists.

How did this happen? The reason is simple. After 2001, in spite of a short-sighted US support for one of the most repressive post-soviet regimes out of strategic considerations, Uzbekistan's authorities began to waver under the influence and the political pressure of the world's democratic institutions. The regime's anti-democratic and anti-popular character became more and more visible with the years, so that there were no more means to conceal this.

Islam Karimov was particularly frightened by the events in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. In early 2005 Kyrgyzstan's president was chased away by the people, in spite of his being incomparably less authoritarian than Islam Karimov. Uzbekistan's head of state decided to conduct a pre-emptive strike, to carry out a "colour counter-revolution". Red became the colour of this revolution, as on 13-14 May 2005 the streets of Andijan were covered with blood of thousands of innocent people.

It seems that the West did not grasp the real sense of this bloody "colour counter-revolution". Until the end the West insisted on getting answers to a series of major questions: Why do Uzbekistan's authorities stubbornly reject an independent investigation into the causes of the Andijan events? Why did international organisations and mass media, which worked in the country for so long and assisted it in its transition from a totalitarian communist regime to a free and democratic system, overnight become unwanted? and so on.

It is very bitter to admit that the US did, apart from maintaining their embassy, shamefully leave Uzbekistan. Now, one and a half years after the Andijan events, Uzbekistan's media continues publishing articles stuffed with anti-American hysteria. Americans factually signed themselves their own defeat: Uzbekistan's authorities openly accused the US embassy of funding terrorist groups that planned a coup-d'état by organising an armed assault in Andijan on military premises, a detention facility, and the regional administration.

The sanctions imposed on Uzbekistan by the European Union were more than soft – bluntly spoken they could be compared to a mosquito bite. Who cares if the EU declares an arms embargo on Uzbekistan? Russian Kalashnikovs are not worse than European arms – buy as many as you like!

The EU barred some Uzbek army colonel from entering Europe, deeming him responsible for shooting at a peaceful demonstration in Andijan. This colonel is nothing compared to the main perpetrators of the Andijan carnage: the President Islam Karimov, the Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev, and the Prosecutor-general Rashid Kadyrov. If the EU sanctions were more severe, then Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Norov could not walk freely in the very heart of Europe, in Brussels.

All this is very sad. It proves once again the effete and hypocritical character of some western politicians. We think that the first rank of effete and hypocritical policies is occupied by German politicians and the chancellor Mrs Angela Merkel in particular.

I will allow for a short digression. Today, in the West, it is fashionable to think and to speak in a politically correct way. Politically correct wording, terms, and expressions are used in order to equal men and women, firm and infirm, whites and non-whites, etc. In lots of cases –the use of these expressions is justified and does re-establish justice. In some American supermarkets, for instance, we can see persons with Down's syndrome working and packing goods – people, who so often are abrasively called "idiots". In order to designate these nice and harmless people, individuals striving for political correctness invented the term "differently-abled". In other words, if you consider yourself a gifted person, then we consider individuals with Down's syndrome gifted as well, yet "differently" gifted compared to you.

Living with Down's syndrome is nothing evil; they were born this way. Being a dictator, an executioner, a slayer of freedom and democracy is without doubt an evil and there is no excuse for it. It seems that Mrs Merkel and her government, and some other US and EU politicians consider Mr Karimov to be a "differently-abled" human being and are about to put him in one row with such great persons as Martin Luther King, Marek Nowicki, Andrei Sakharov, Václav Havel, Yuri Orlov and others – people, whose lives are an example of unconditional fight for the good, for freedom and democracy.

Every attempt of representatives of western democracies to arrange themselves with Islam Karimov behind the back of the people of Uzbekistan, leering at energy resources, should be considered as an attempt to equal the good and the evil, human rights and lawlessness, justice and arbitrariness, judiciary and inquisition.

To decipher the logic of Mrs Merkel and other western politicians looking for brotherhood with Mr Karimov, is not very difficult:

- the German (or American, or other European) people need democracy and freedom; the Uzbek people however does not need it so urgently.

- the Uzbek people could do without gas, oil, freedom and human rights, but the German (or American, or other European) people cannot.

- we already had a mad dictator – a world scale criminal – and we don't need one again; but the Uzbek people shall die under the tyranny of its own mad and criminal dictator.

This means political incorrectness towards the Uzbek people. We will consider Mrs Merkel only then a democratic leader of the German people when she will equal the status of her own and the Uzbek people; if she makes proof of political correctness.

Perhaps does our opinion aggrieve and even affront these western politicians, who support dialogue with Karimov's regime. Well, hypocrisy never was rewarded during the history of mankind.

The Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan spoke for years about the things happening in Uzbekistan. Yet the West did not believe us, or believed hardly, even in spite of his presence in the country through embassies, mass media and different governmental and non-governmental organisations.

The West did not believe us, when, for instance, we:

1. declared that in an independent Uzbekistan, in the beginning of the 1990s, we had political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. We were the first to publish a list of 30 prisoners in 1993. Some years later, the number of political prisoners amounts not to dozens or to hundreds, but to thousands.

2. declared that in law enforcement organs and penal colonies, torture is widespread and is being used systematically, and that in the middle of the 1990s. Only in 2003, Mr Theo van Boven, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture acknowledged this fact in his report after having visited Uzbekistan's penitentiary institutions. The Special Rapporteur's 22 recommendations, enumerated at the end of the report and intended to be implemented by the country's government, are still being ignored.

3. published on 20 September 1999 a declaration about the existence of a secret concentration camp in Zhaslyk in the Republic of Karakalpakstan – the detention facility UYa 64/71, which was created by the authorities of Uzbekistan in 1997 on the premises of Soviet army barracks and bomb shelters, on a territory used for testing binary chemical weapons. This concentration camp is used today to detain prisoners convicted on religious and political grounds.

The West did not believe us until Mrs Acacia Shields, head of the Tashkent office of the US human rights organisation Human Rights Watch, visited Zhaslyk together with HRSU members.

4. declared and proved that all politics – interior and exterior – conducted by Islam Karimov are contrived and built upon lies. The US administration got to know this last year, after the Andijan events. Islam Karimov conducted as well contrived politics towards Russia, Turkey, China and all neighbouring countries. He betrayed everyone he met, even his allies.

Many people in the West still believe in the myth, set up by Islam Karimov and his special security services, about the so-called Islamic extremism and terrorism that allegedly threatens the stability of Central Asia in general and of Uzbekistan in particular. Islam Karimov's fight against these "-isms" was a huge fraud. We firmly declare that Islamic extremism and terrorism never existed in Uzbekistan and repeat once more that this is a myth, invented by Islam Karimov in the beginning of the 1990s in order to assure Western and Russian support, as both feared the Islamic factor at all times. Islam Karimov was very keen in using this fear to solve a very personal problem – how to stay head of state for life. He solved this problem without remorse and consideration for human life. He sacrificed tens of thousands of young people incarcerating them and killed thousands in Andijan. We speak about thousands, and still, as it was the case previously, the West does not believe us. But we still have the sincere conviction that in some years' time (perhaps in many years' time), this number will be confirmed by the thousands of persons who witnessed this bloody massacre.

The West – naïve, but perhaps not as naïve as it seems – believed in Karimov's fairytale on extremism and terrorism. Even if we can admit that in the beginning of the 1990s, there were some people in Uzbekistan with extreme opinions, we have to know that they did not determine the political agenda, in the same way that German neo-nazis do not determine the political agenda in Germany. But let us for one short moment assume that Islam Karimov is fighting Islamist extremism and terrorism. Then why does he so violently oppress human rights defenders? They aren't terrorists and all they are fighting for is that the authorities stick to their own Constitution and the laws. Why did he expel international democratic organisations and mass media? Are they terrorists and extremists as well, if Islam Karimov is fighting against them? Why, after the Andijan events, did he look for friendship with pseudo-democratic Russia, if, only one year later, he fancies the EU?

No, this all does not go together. We think that it is time for the EU and the US to understand the essence of Islam Karimov's politics of lies, the politics of one of the greatest political liars of modern times. The faster they understand it, the better. We consider that if the EU and the US engage in a dialogue with Islam Karimov, if they lift the sanctions against Uzbekistan, they will commit another, possibly irreparable mistake.

When western politicians exchange with Islam Karimov, they create a paradox situation: the authorities accuse us of being western spies, enemies of the people, bogus democrats, etc. Hence, western politicians and in particular the government of Mrs Merkel, by supporting a dialogue with Karimov's regime, covertly consent to the authorities' aforementioned accusations against human rights defenders. If this is the case, then Uzbekistan's human rights defenders or at least HRSU members cannot feel anything but disappointment for western politics. This is very sad.

More and more often the opinion is voiced that western democracy is hypocritical and that one should not believe in it, and even less follow its example. We did never support this point of view. Yet the current politics of Germany and, partly of the US and the EU, support this point of view. So to whom should we listen? Which choice do we have to make?

At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, when we entered the political and the human rights stage, we firmly believed in the ideals of western democracy. We still stick to this belief, in spite of anything. But we are about to be defeated by Islam Karimov, who since his very rise to power fiercely fought against the slightest emergence of democratic elements in Uzbek society. Whom does the West support?

In mathematics, a theory is considered wrong, if it is contradictory within itself. Applying this assertion to public and political life, in other words to politics, we can claim that the idea put forward by Germany and the EU – to reach positive developments in Uzbekistan through contact with Islam Karimov's bloody regime – is absurd, for the reason of being contradictory in all aspects.

Nevertheless we remain optimists. The great chess player Wilhelm Steinitz said: "When you play chess, you might not reach extraordinary heights, but you should never regret the time you devoted to chess". Paraphrasing Steinitz's quote, we shall say that, defending human rights in Uzbekistan, we did not accomplish a lot, but we will not regret the time we spend on it.

for the HRSU, the chairman Talib Yakubov

12-XI-2006

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