Uzbekistan, which has resisted allowing the United Nations to investigate reports of violent deaths and torture in its prisons, has changed its mind. It has agreed to allow U.N. Special Rapporteur Theo van Boven into the country to look into the allegations, and yesterday he arrived in the capital, Tashkent.
During the next two weeks, van Boven plans to travel to prisons across the country to study compliance with the international convention against torture.
Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country that was formerly part of the Soviet Union and borders Afghanistan, has become an important American ally in the region. The United States and other Western governments have been pressuring Uzbekistan and its president, Islam Karimov, to improve its human rights record.
Following are excerpts from reports by human rights organizations and the U.S. government on the situation in Uzbekistan, a country of 24.7 million people:
In a significant move, the government finally extended a long overdue invitation to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture to visit the country, but in nearly all other respects, the last few months have been marked by a series of serious setbacks to human rights and democracy.
Torture and other abuses in Uzbek prisons and police precincts remain commonplace. [Recently] we have documented three deaths arising from highly suspicious circumstances in custody, bringing the total number of such deaths documented by Human Rights Watch to 11 in the past 16 months. ...
Religious prisoners, whose apparently tortured bodies were delivered to their families for burial in August, provide more details about the horrific treatment suffered by many prisoners in Uzbekistan.
A doctor who saw one of the bodies, that of Muzafar Avazov, concluded that it bore burns that could only have been caused by immersing him in boiling water. His hands reportedly had no fingernails.
A preliminary government investigation reached the improbable conclusion that the deaths were the result of a quarrel with fellow-prisoners: according to a two-page statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hot water which they claim was available in the prisoners' cell was splashed on Avazov, which caused the burns. The statement did not address the point about Avazov's fingernails. ...
The government's violent crackdown against independent Muslims continues unabated, with no sign of progress on the sorely needed legal reforms that would improve the climate for religious freedom or provide protection from torture of those detained for their religious beliefs, practices and affiliations.
Thousands of people remain imprisoned on account of their peaceful religious activities and our Tashkent office has continued to document religious arrests and trials at an unrelenting pace.
The months since [spring] have seen a worrisome trend of intensified crackdown against human rights defenders in Uzbekistan. On May 24, police arrested Yuldash Rasulov, whose work for the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) focused on the government's crackdown against independent Muslims.
Law enforcement agents kept him incommunicado for a month before allowing any family members or others to visit him in detention. For 40 days, he was held in the notorious basement cell of the Ministry of Interior, where torture is a routine method to extract confessions. Rasulov remains in detention to date, and is currently on trial, on charges of "religious extremism."
... In another recent case, a court ordered human rights defender Elena Urlaeva to undergo forced psychiatric treatment, reminiscent of Soviet-style silencing of dissent. This order was executed on Aug. 27, when Urlaeva was arrested and placed in a locked ward in the main psychiatric institution in Tashkent, where she has been subjected to forced medication and has been denied visits even from her family.
U.S. State Department Report on Human Rights Practices:
Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. The Constitution provides for a presidential system with separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches; however, in practice President Islam Karimov and the centralized executive branch that serves him dominate political life. ...
The Oliy Majlis (Parliament) consists almost entirely of officials appointed by the President and members of parties that support the President. Despite constitutional provisions for an independent judiciary, the executive branch heavily influences the courts in both civil and criminal cases. ... The police and the National Security Service committed numerous serious human rights abuses.
The Government's human rights record remained very poor, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses. Citizens cannot exercise the right to change their government peacefully; the Government does not permit the existence of opposition parties. Security force mistreatment resulted in the deaths of several citizens in custody. Police and NSS forces tortured, beat, and harassed persons.
... The security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained persons, on false charges, particularly Muslims suspected of extremist sympathies, frequently planting narcotics, weapons, or banned literature on them.
Human rights groups estimated that the number of persons in detention for political or religious reasons and for terrorism, primarily attendees of unofficial mosques and members of Islamist political groups, but also members of the secular opposition and human rights activists, was approximately 7,500. ...
The Government continued to deny registration to opposition political parties as well as to other groups that might be critical of the Government; unregistered opposition parties and movements may not operate freely or publish their views. The Government restricted freedom of religion. The Government harassed and arrested hundreds of non-official Islamic leaders and believers, citing the threat of extremism.
Committee to Protect Journalists:
If you didn't know better, Uzbekistan in the summer of 2002 feels an awful lot like being back in the U.S.S.R. ... Sure, there's a slight thaw in the air, but old, repressive habits die hard. "Our officials are mostly from the communist era," says a former city editor at the newspaper Samarkhand. "In an authoritarian system [like ours], it's easier to rule people who are poor and uniformed."
... The government monopolizes printing presses and newspaper distribution, finances the main newspapers, and has the power to grant or deny licenses to media outlets. Because Uzbek journalists remain vulnerable to intimidation from the police, security services, judges, prosecutors, government inspectors, and media regulators, a culture of Soviet-style self-censorship still pervades the local press.
... Recent events may make it easy for [Karimov] to maintain such controls because, suddenly, Uzbekistan has new value on the international stage. ... Washington negotiated a deal last fall with Karimov that gave the U.S. military full access to the Khanabad air base, a former Soviet military facility near Uzbekistan's southern border with Afghanistan. In exchange, the United States nearly quadrupled its annual financial assistance to Uzbekistan, from $55 million in 2001 to some $193 million this year.
... Three members of the media are currently imprisoned in Uzbekistan for their work.