Human Rights Watch World Report 1999 - Uzbekistan
- Document source:
-
Date:
1 January 1999
Human Rights Developments
The year 1998 was disastrous for human rights in Uzbekistan. In a sweeping effort to eliminate religion as a potential source of political opposition, the government of Islam Karimov employed mass arbitrary arrests, torture of men in custody, religious discrimination, and harassment of independent human rights activists and journalists. Beginning in December 1997, the government of Uzbekistan stepped up its almost seven-year campaign against independent Muslims. It was triggered by the brutal murder of several policemen in Namangan, one of whom was beheaded. In response, police arrested hundreds of people in the Fergana Valley and Tashkent, many of whom were practicing Muslims who do not follow "official" Islam. Some men were taken directly from the street simply because they had beards, a perceived sign of piety. Police routinely fabricated evidence by allegedly planting small amounts of narcotics or ammunition on suspects, and beat and threatened arrestees, both at the time of arrest and during interrogation. On January 23, a group of about 100 women assembled outside a police station in Tashkentto protest the arrest and detention of their male relatives. Police broke up the demonstration [an extraordinary event in this repressive country] and detained the women until late evening. Police fined human rights activist Mukhtabar Akhmedova a portion of her monthly pension for her alleged role as an organizer of the protest. Several show trials of those arrested during the crackdown took place in May, June, and July and were featured prominently in the state-controlled media, which were already running a propaganda campaign justifying the mass arrests as a necessary measure to counter a surging "fundamentalist" Islamic movement allegedly bent on overthrowing the existing state order. In one of the trials, which involved eight men, several defendants testified that police beat and tortured them with electric shock and suffocation while in detention, and coerced them into signing self-incriminating statements. The sentences in this trial, heard by the Supreme Court and seriously compromised by due process violations, ranged from three years in a reform colony to the death sentence. Following sustained protest by the international community and human rights groups, the three-and-a-half year prison sentence of Rakhmat Otaqulov was commuted to forced labor and he was allowed to return home. Otaqulov, a Muslim religious teacher whose arrest was widely believed to be politically motivated, was convicted on June 10, 1997, for alleged illegal possession of narcotics and pistol cartridges. His brother, who actively protested his arrest, was among the eight defendants sentenced in the Supreme Court trial. The government systematically closed independent mosques and harassed religious leaders, several of whom disappeared. In September 1997, Ne'matjon Parpiev, imam of a mosque in Andijan and former assistant to Sheikh Abduvali Qori Mirzoev, reportedly disappeared. Sheikh Mirzoev and another assistant, Ramazanbek Matkarimov, are believed to be in police custody or to have died in custody after the National Security Service (SNB) detained them in 1995. Leading independent imam Obidkhon Nazarov suffered persistent government harassment in 1998 and has not been seen since March 5. The Spiritual Directorate had removed Nazarov from his position as imam in December 1995 for "disobedience to decrees of the Spiritual Directorate." On April 29 the Fergana regional court sentenced his brother, Abdumalik Nazarov (arrested in the December crackdown), to nine years in prison for possession of illegal narcotics. Also in April, the government attempted to evict the Nazarov family from their home, but that effort failed thanks to intervention by international observers and local supporters. The criminal charges against and harassment of Nazarov were presumably designed to silence him and to discourage others from active participation in non-official Islam. The Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations, adopted by the Supreme Council (or parliament) on May 1, sets out a legal framework for the broader repression of non-official religions. It serves to marginalize religious groups that might be perceived as a forum for opposition to President Islam Karimov's administration, and it criminalizes the practices of some foreign religious groups that have places of worship in the country. The law's article 5 prohibits proselytism; penalties range from a fine of fifty to 100 times the minimum monthly wage (about U.S.$11) to three years of imprisonment. The law also prohibits private teaching of religious principles. Article 14 forbids non-clerics from wearing "ritual" attire in public. Wearing such clothing can result in a fine of five to ten times the amount of the minimum monthly wage or administrative arrest for up to fifteen days. Under the law, religious groups face excessively burdensome registration requirements: for example, they must have one-hundred members who are citizens of Uzbekistan and over the age of 18. As of September, however, preliminary reports indicated that the government was allowing for exceptions on the membership requirement, and it appeared that it was not implementing the law fully with regard to non-Muslim groups. The law, together with amendments to the criminal code, sets out penalties of up to five years of imprisonment for religious leaders who fail to register their groups and for those who participate actively in a prohibited religious group. In 1998, dozens of students were expelled from state institutions of higher education for wearing Islamic attire. Female students who wore hijab (traditional Muslim covering, usually including a head scarf, sometimes covering the face, and a long, loose-fitting robe or dress) were expelled, and male students with beards were subjected to pressure to shave or else were expelled. University administrators pointed to the law, particularly the prohibition on "ritual" dress in public, to support their decisions to deprive pious Muslim students of their right to education. Even primary and secondary school girls were expelled for wearing hijab . The SNB followed several expelled university students who had met with Human Rights Watch, and warned them not to speak with foreigners again. Pastor Rashid Turibaev of the Baptist Full Gospel Christians Church in the Karakalpakstan autonomous region was sentenced in late October 1997 to two years of hard labor and internal exile for carrying out church services, on charges of organizing unsanctioned gatherings, meetings, and demonstrations. In May, police in Shakhrisabz reportedly raided the homes of Jehovah's Witnesses. There was no free and independent media in Uzbekistan. The State Control Inspectorate continued to censor all press materials, and a new government body, the Qanoat (Uzbek for Abstemiousness) Center, was established in 1998 to review all religious literature and video and audio tapes, with the aim of stopping the flow of certain religious materials from abroad. Rahmonberdi Abdurakhmanov, an official of the Procuracy General, aptly stated in July that with the establishment of the Qanoat Center, "no non-state organization or state organization has any right to do anything concerning religion without the knowledge of our state." On August 1, unidentified men in plain clothes assaulted and beat Russian journalists Vitalii Ponomarev and Nikolai Mitrokhin on the street in Tashkent in broad daylight. The attackers had apparently been waiting for the two journalists to emerge from the home of Murat Zahidov, chair of the Committee for the Protection of Individuals of Uzbekistan. Ponomarev and Mitrokhin had just returned from the Fergana Valley, where they were investigating cases of arbitrary arrest of Islamic religious leaders. The government apparently attempted to silence criticism by prosecuting journalists for slander as a criminal offense. On June 11, the Syr Darya regional court sentenced radio journalist and satirist Shodi Mardiev to eleven years in prison for slander, illegal acquisition or sale of foreign currency, and extortion. The charges against Mardiev were brought by Talat-Abdukhalikhazada Abasov, deputy procurator of Samarkand. Mardiev had satirized Abasov in a June 1997 radio broadcast that reportedly exposed Abasov's abuse of power in favoring a local business man. Sixty-two-year-old Mardiev was reportedly held in solitary confinement until the time of his appeal, which he lost. He is in seriously poor health and is said to have suffered two brain hemorrhages while in detention. In a positive development, participants in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's June seminar on women's issues were given a forum to discuss openly the pervasiveness of domestic violence in Uzbekistan. This was a welcome first step toward addressing domestic violence, but major obstacles remained, among them, police indifference to women's complaints.Defending Human Rights
In 1998, the government again refused to register the two leading human rights groups in the country, the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) and the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan (IHROU). On December 21, 1997, three IHROU members, Mikhail Ardzinov, Jamal Mirsaidov and Ergash Kasimov, were stopped by police officers in Samarkand while on their way to a founding meeting of the Tajik National Cultural Center of Samarkand. Police took the men to a precinct station in Samarkand, where they were held for the duration of the scheduled meeting. After several hours, Mr. Ardzinov attempted to leave, but two officers grabbed him and, along with five or six others, beat him repeatedly and threw him to the floor. He and Mirsaidov were then asked to sign a prepared statement against the organizing of unsanctioned meetings and, after refusing to sign, were threatened by procurator Bohadir Sadulaev with fifteen days in prison. Once released, Ardzinov and Mirsaidov left the building to find approximately thirty police officers and men in plain clothes awaiting them. Police returned Mirsaidov to the police station; ten of them surrounded Ardzinov, beat him, and forced him into a police vehicle. He was then forcibly transported to Tashkent by three men in plain clothes, who forced him to keep his head down and taunted him. When police released him, they warned him not to return to Samarkand. Mirsaidov was put under ten days of administrative arrest, but released after three days, when the American Embassy voiced objection. Police held Kasimov for fourteen hours and then released him after he signed a statement verifying he had been warned not to organize unsanctioned meetings. Members of the Namangan branch of the HRSU reported continual harassment by local authorities. Unidentified men in plain clothes followed the group's members, and unmarked police cars were regularly parked outside their homes. Family members of arrested men who shared information with the group were called in by local police, questioned, and threatened that their relatives' sentences would be extended if they continued to speak with human rights activists. In January, members of the group sent a letter to Ombudswoman Sayora Rashidova, chair of the government's Human Rights Institute, expressing their desire to set up a joint commission to examine human rights violations in the Namangan region. In February, the Namangan procurator questioned the group's members for hours about the letter and about their sources of information on human rights abuses and events in Namangan. The HRSU members were permitted to leave without divulging their sources.The Role of the International Community
Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
The OSCE intensified its advocacy through its Central Asian Liaison Office in Tashkent in 1998. The October 1997 Memorandum of Understanding provided a framework for technical assistance projects in democratization, human rights, and electoral democracy, including a human rights education course held in May 1998. In his meetings with Uzbekistan government officials in April, Chairman-in-Office Bronislaw Geremek stressed the absence of civil liberties, and condemned the use of repression against suspected "extremists." The OSCE also lodged official protests on several specific cases of illegal detention, and pressedfor access to the detainees for the international community. Experts from the Liaison Office journeyed to the Fergana valley to monitor trials and investigate violations. In addition, during a June visit to Tashkent the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities rebutted Uzbek officials' insistence that they faced the threat of religious and political extremists by stressing the importance of upholding international commitments.European Union
The European Union continued its suspension of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement signed with Uzbekistan in June 1996, pending an investigation of the human rights situation there to be conducted in mid-1998 by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which at this writing is preparing to report its findings. In the absence of this agreement, the E.U. provided technical assistance in the fields of police training and promotion of civil society and sponsored a project of the International Helsinki Federation to increase awareness about human rights.United States
As in previous years, the United States continued its strong criticism of Uzbekistan's human rights violations. The Embassy in Tashkent took an active role, sending diplomats to monitor trials against accused "Wahabis" in Namangan, and registering several official protests with the Uzbek government against probable use of torture and blatantly prejudicial legal proceedings. The State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1997 used blunt language in describing Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state where civil and political freedoms are severely limited or nonexistent, including the right to worship freely. The report issued by the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in March also decried the new pressure against independent religious groups. This censure stood in contrast the statement made by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during her November 1997 visit to Samarkand, praising religious freedom in Uzbekistan. Nevertheless, U.S. aid appropriations for Uzbekistan continue to grow, unhindered by that country's appalling record of rights violations. The requested assistance to Uzbekistan leapt from an estimated thirty-two million dollars spent in fiscal year 1998 to thirty-six million for fiscal year 1999. Yet Uzbekistan exhibited no progress at all towards the principles cited in the U.S.-Uzbekistan Joint Commission statement issued during its first meeting in February 1998, "reaffirming the commitment of both governments to the principles of a free and democratic society, including respect for human rights, and free speech and assembly." The chairman of the Export-Import Bank, James A. Harmon, signed an agreement to provide a $215 million long-term guarantee for U.S. companies to export industrial equipment, calling Uzbekistan a "dynamic and stable country."Relevant Human Rights Watch report:
Uzbekistan: Crackdown in the Farghona Valley: Arbitrary Arrests and Discrimination, 5/98Comments:
This report covers events of 1998
Disclaimer: © Copyright, Human Rights Watch
This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.