Our new friends.
Uzbekistan Frees Government Critic
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 25, 2004; Page A20
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, Feb. 24 -- Government officials on Tuesday ordered the release of a 62-year-old woman who had been imprisoned after she protested her son's death by torture. The decision came hours before Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived to discuss the growing military partnership between the United States and Uzbekistan.
U.S. officials and human rights groups had criticized the Feb. 12 conviction of Fatima Mukhadirova, whose son, Muzafar Avazov, died in an Uzbek prison in August 2002 after he was submerged in boiling water, according to a U.N. inquiry. At a court hearing here Tuesday, her sentence of six years at hard labor was commuted to a fine of roughly $250.
Both mother and son were alleged to belong to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that seeks the creation of an Islamic state in Uzbekistan.
The case underscored the delicate and difficult nature of U.S. support for Uzbekistan, the most populous of five Central Asian republics that gained independence when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the country since 1990, supported the U.S. military campaign in 2001 that overthrew the Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States now gives Uzbekistan, a country of 25 million, about $13 million a year in military aid and has more than 1,000 troops stationed in the country, nearly all of them at the Khanabad air base 125 miles north of the Afghan-Uzbek border.
However, the State Department and human rights groups have repeatedly accused Karimov's secular and authoritarian government of religious persecution and police brutality. In December, the State Department ruled that Uzbekistan had failed to follow human rights standards required by the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which is intended to mitigate threats from Soviet-era weapons.
That program allows for a waiver if there is a need to safeguard nuclear material. Because the country has large deposits of uranium, the Bush administration issued a waiver allowing Uzbekistan to continue receiving nonproliferation aid. But under different federal legislation, the State Department must make another human rights certification in March. If Uzbekistan does not pass again, the government would become ineligible for all direct U.S. aid, including military assistance.
Rumsfeld held closed-door meetings with Karimov and the Uzbek foreign and defense ministers. At a news conference that followed, Rumsfeld was repeatedly asked about human rights, but he focused on Uzbekistan's cooperation with the fight against the al Qaeda network and other terrorist groups.
"Uzbekistan is a key member of the coalition's global war on terror," Rumsfeld said. "Needless to say, the United States and the NATO countries are always interested in seeing reform, not only in the military area but also in the political and economic area."
This was Rumsfeld's third visit to Uzbekistan since 2001. Pentagon aides said human rights were one of several topics in his meetings, as well as border security and trafficking of weapons and narcotics.
Mukhadirova had been charged with possessing illegal religious literature and attempting to overthrow the government. On Monday, the U.S. Helsinki Commission, a bipartisan federal panel that monitors human rights, condemned Mukhadirova's sentence. Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), the chairman of the panel, called the sentence "truly shocking" and said it "compounded one deplorable travesty of justice with another."
The U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan, Jon R. Purnell, said of the release, "We're glad they made that decision. Human rights issues form a regular part of our ongoing dialogue with Uzbek authorities."
Allison Gill, a researcher based here for Human Rights Watch, said that more than 6,000 Uzbek Muslims are in prison because of their religious beliefs and that Mukhadirova's case is unusual only because of the amount of international attention it has received.
"The government of Uzbekistan, since 1998, has conducted a systematic campaign of persecution of Muslims who practice Islam out of state-controlled institutions and mosques," Gill said in an interview. "Her case was very typical."
David Lewis, the Central Asia project director for International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research group, said he believed Mukhadirova was released for political reasons. "The release is clearly due to international pressure, but it is not yet evidence of any systemic change in the Uzbek criminal justice system," Lewis said.
Bakhtier Ibragimov, who oversees relations with the Americas at the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Rumsfeld's visit was not a factor in Mukhadirova's release. "It was the court's decision, not on someone's order," Ibragimov said. "We have an independent judicial system, just like the United States."
washingtonpost.com
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Wonder who their Antonin Scalia is?
lurqer |
