Human Rights Developments

There were contrary tendencies of abuse and reform in Uzbekistan in 1996, although almost all human rights continued to be denied. The government maintained complete control of the media, and perpetrated or allowed the abuse of detainees and prisoners, interference with the independence of the judiciary, and a crackdown against members of the Islamic community. Nevertheless, the release of some prisoners of conscience, improvement in the right to monitor, and the federal authorities' greater willingness to address new abuses brought to their attention by international actors made 1996 a more promising year for human rights in Uzbekistan. Generally, the government's pledges of reform brought Uzbekistan greater international approval than its actual human rights record warranted. By year's end, increased attacks on dissidents suggested that the promises were empty words. Perhaps the most pervasive violation of human rights in Uzbekistan remained denial of free speech, typified by total government control of the mass media and the widespread intimidation of journalists. A May 8 presidential decree and repeated presidential exhortations to journalists to be more critical of the government rang false. Media were still used fundamentally for state propaganda. The government attempted to boost its image in February by bringing a delegation of high-profile journalists from Russia to tour Uzbekistan, but it strictly controlled their movements during their stay. Several journalists who asked to remain anonymous reported that they had been threatened with loss of their jobs because their line of inquiry was displeasing to the government. In separate incidents, President Karimov and the head of the state television and radio, Shahnoza Ghanieva, deliberately misrepresented protests of abuse by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki representatives as statements that the organization had, on the contrary, found all reports of abuse to be unfounded. The Russian-language media were particularly hard-hit in 1996. In February, Interfax correspondent Sergei Grebeniuk was found murdered. A police investigation did not result in any arrests, sending a chilling message to journalists, particularly Russians, in Uzbekistan. In January, Goskompechat' froze publication of the Russian Cultural Center's newspaper Vestnik Kul'tury (Toshkent) immediately after the first issue had appeared and, in August, Russian Radio Mayak was reportedly ordered closed beginning in January 1997. The information blockade was so severe that many Russian-speakers reportedly cited it as the reason for their emigration in 1996. Abuse during arrest, detention, and incarceration remained serious problems in 1996. Residents were detained and interrogated without legal grounds and mistreated for the purposes of intimidation or extortion. The release of some political prisoners this year gave a crucial glimpse into abusive practices. According to testimony taken by a then-member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, Safar Bekjon was beaten 106 times during six months in Karshi prison, or almost once per day, and Gaipnazar Kushchanov was regularly beaten by guards, losing three teeth as a result, in Kyzyl Teppe pre-trial detention center. Police entrapment of dissidents also continued in 1996. On August 12, police raided the home of Kochkar Ahmedov, a member of the banned Birlik movement. He was later accused of possessing several grams of marijuana and two pistol cartridges that allegedly were found during the raid. The charges fall into a well-known pattern of charges falsified by the police against dissidents. His trial had not begun as of this writing. The families of opposition figure Shukhrullo Mirsaidov, activist and Radio Liberty journalist Iadgor Obid, and independent cleric Obidkhon Qori Nazarov were badly harassed by the police in the capital, Toshkent, and threatened with eviction. Most dramatically, on November 9, Mr. Mirsaidov's son, Hasan, was kidnapped, beaten, threatened with death, and released – an uncanny revisiting of the same kidnapping and beating he and his father had suffered in 1995 in the darkest days of government repression. Freedom of association also remained severely limited in 1996. Genuinely alternative political parties remained banned for the fourth straight year. The government continued to deny the existence of a state-sponsored crackdown on leaders of independent, as opposed to state-run, mosques and their followers in Toshkent and in the Farghona Valley. There, the government harassed, detained, fired from work, and illegally deported dozens of these individuals. On February 24, for example, some fifty security agents surrounded the Tokhtaboi mosque in Toshkent during prayer time, and a representative of the local administration announced that the mosque's prayer leader, Obidkhon Qori Nazarov, was dismissed from work. Then the forces reportedly beat some twenty people, put four under administrative arrest for alleged "hooliganism," fined others, and ordered his deputy, Tahir Ibrahimov, deported to Tajikistan, where his family lived. These events, coupled with the failure to find three high-profile clerics believed to have been "disappeared" by security forces – Abdulla Utaev (1992), Abduvali Qori Mirzo and Ramazanbek Matkarimov (1995) – silenced many Muslims. At the same time, a June amnesty on the eve of President Islam Karimov's working visit to the United States liberated five prisoners of conscience: Rashid Bekjon, brother of exiled Democratic Party Erk leader Mohammed Solih; Abdulla Abdurazzakov; Safar Bekjon; Gaipnazar Kushchanov; and Mukhammadnabi Mirkomilov. An August 7 amnesty released political dissidents Makhmadali Makhmudov, Tolibjon Artykov, Shavqat Mamatov and Khoshim Suvanov, and also reduced the sentences of other prisoners of conscience by a quarter to a half. But four new political arrests were also made: on February 13, three scholars affiliated with Samarqand State University – Kholiknazar Ghaniev, Bakhtiar Nabii-oghli, and Nosim Boboev – were arrested for possession of the banned Erk (Toshkent) newspaper. Under international pressure, the men were released on April 13 and the charges dropped.

The Right to Monitor

Despite some abuse of human rights activists, the right to monitor improved this year, as did the government's willingness to respond to reports of abuse. Fear of reprisals generally prevented local residents from investigating and reporting on violations of their own civil and political rights, however. In March, secretary of the unregistered Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan Polina Braunerg and her son were arrested in Almalyk and interrogated about her "spying" activities. After international outcry, the case against her and her son was suspended but the charges were not dropped. At the end of 1995, when leading activist Mikhail Ardzinov was in the United States to receive a human rights award from Human Rights Watch, police reportedly broke into his Toshkent home, removed his telephone and camera, and sealed his apartment. During the September seminar of the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, activist Ahmadjon Abdullaev was detained and interrogated for an hour after having met with a representative of Amnesty International, and others reported heavy surveillance. It is likely that the police's overnight detention and mistreatment on August 30 of John MacLeod, the director of Human Rights Watch/Helsinki's Toshkent-based Central Asia office, was meant as intimidation for his activities. At the same time, some new doors opened to monitoring and reporting by local residents in 1996. An intense international support campaign secured eleventh-hour permission, illegally denied, for the long-banned Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan to hold its organizing congress on September 7. The congress was held without interference, epitomized by the presence of society chair Abdumannob Polat, who had returned to Uzbekistan for the first time since fleeing it for asylum in the United States in 1993. On June 14, the Ministry of Justice registered the nongovernmental Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, despite the group's failure to comply with all provisions of the law on social organizations, strongly suggesting that it enjoyed government backing: the ostensible reason for prior rejection of the registration application of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan had been its failure to meet all legal requirements. International monitoring also expanded in 1996. The two-and-a-half-year visa ban on Human Rights Watch/Helsinki was lifted and a field investigation permitted in November 1995 as well as numerous high-level meetings. In July, a branch office was registered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (registration by the Ministry of Justice was pending) and began operating. The parliament's human rights commission completed its first full year of activity as a channel for citizens to seek government intervention on cases of abuse. It was not active on cases of political harassment, but did give an unusually candid assessment of government impediments to monitoring (Narodnoe Slovo, Toshkent, July 16), such as that "the people responsible cannot be bothered to make the effort, or lack the basic competence [to do so], which means the state funds spent on checking endless complaints are wasted."

The Role of the International Community

With the exception of the U.S. government and OSCE and, to a lesser extent, the U.N. and the government of the United Kingdom, the international community left human rights off its visible Uzbekistan agenda in 1996. Attempts by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki to inform the international business community involved in Uzbekistan about state-sponsored abuse and urge that it use its influential voice to press for reform had no apparent impact in 1996.

United Nations

In February, the UNDP, in conjunction with ODIHR and the U.N. Centre for Human Rights, conducted a government needs assessment trip, which in part included human rights concerns, and submitted a proposed program for implementation. With the exception of representatives of the U.N. Centre for Human Rights and ODIHR, however, the delegation failed to act on information contained in a detailed briefing paper submitted by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, and rejected opportunities to consult with local activists. A UNDP representative in Toshkent reported that the UNDP office had made some interventions during the year but declined to mention which.

European Union

On June 20, Uzbekistan and the E.U. signed an Agreement on Cooperation and Partnership which conditions implementation on respect for human rights as outlined in OSCE documents. However, that element was not stressed prior to the signing. On the contrary, during an April 8 visit to Uzbekistan, European Commissioner Hans van den Broek inexplicably praised Uzbekistan's "serious progress in ensuring that human rights were defended." The European Parliament can still use its power to reject final approval of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Uzbekistan to show concern that Uzbekistan seriously breached its human rights clause even before the agreement was ratified.

OSCE

The OSCE worked actively in Uzbekistan in 1996. It helped promote a human rights dialogue with the Uzbekistan government by maintaining a regional liaison office in Toshkent, sending delegations, and conducting two seminars on human rights topics in the fall of 1996. Although these seminars fixed much-needed scrutiny on Uzbekistan's human rights record, neither ODIHR nor the OSCE as such insisted on making even minimum improvements a prerequisite for conducting the seminars and failed to insist at the planning stages on adequate participation by nongovernmental actors at all seminars. The addition of a full-time human rights officer promised to strengthen the otherwise lackluster human rights work of the OSCE's regional office.

United States

The U.S. remained in the forefront of international governmental efforts to address human rights concerns in Uzbekistan in 1996, but prematurely weakened its stance by dramatically enhancing its support for the government. The embassy conducted important interventions on behalf of victims, paid welcome and rare attention to the crackdown against Muslims, and the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor consistently stressed that the progress to date fell short of international commitments and submitted specific demands and case work to the government. The U.S. is likely to have won the release of five prisoners of conscience in June, encouraged an open exchange of information with the government, and also used its membership in the OSCE effectively to promote human rights. But it also offered an unprecedented degree of support for Uzbekistan, based more on promises of reform than actual reform. The most dramatic evidence of the new policy came in June when President Karimov came to the U.S. for a "working" visit (functionally an official visit). The trip granted him a long-coveted meeting with the U.S. president (which took place on June 25), previously withheld as a sign of U.S. disapproval of serious ongoing abuse in his country. It also afforded him several weeks of photo opportunities and assistance in securing business contracts that reportedly almost tripled U.S. investment in Uzbekistan, but allotted only a single meeting in which to communicate human rights concerns (put to excellent use by Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck and his staff). However, because of the new policy of conciliation, when U.S. human rights demands were almost entirely unmet by the end of the year, the U.S. seemed hesitant to use available leverage to ensure compliance in the future.
Comments:
This report covers the events of 1996

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