By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Mar 31 2004 (IPS)

Led by the United States, western nations must pressure the Government of Uzbekistan to end its human rights abuses, says Human Rights Watch in a new report, released after three days of violence in the Central Asian nation that reportedly killed more than 40 people.

In the report, whose release coincided with the bloodiest day yet in three days of bombings and gun battles, New York-based HRW charged that the government of President Islam Karimov has arrested and tortured thousands of non-violent Muslim dissidents who practise their faith outside state-controlled mosques.

HRW called on Uzbekistan’s western allies, of which the United States is the most important, to apply real pressure on Tashkent to improve its human rights performance.

"The Uzbek government is conducting a merciless campaign against peaceful Muslim dissidents," said Rachel Denber, the acting director of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia division. "The scale and brutality of the operations against independent Muslims makes it clear that these are part of a concerted and tightly-orchestrated campaign of religious persecution."

Both the 319-page report and the violence in Tashkent and Bukhara pose major dilemmas for Washington and other western donors that have treated the Karimov government as a close ally in the U.S. "war on terrorism".

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Karimov provided Washington with access to strategic bases from which U.S. intelligence and military operations were run during and after the U.S.-led effort to oust the Taliban government in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.

In exchange, President George W. Bush publicly denounced the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) as an affiliate of the al-Qaeda terrorist group of Osama bin Laden, and sharply increased military, security and economic assistance to Karimov’s government.

Two years ago, Karimov, who also ruled over Uzbekistan when it was still a Soviet republic, was received by Bush at the White House, and Tashkent has since become a regular pilgrimage site for senior administration officials, most recently Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld who visited there last month.

Washington and other western countries have long warned Karimov that his failure to respect human rights and implement serious political and economic reforms, and his repression of independent Muslims in particular, could destabilise the country.

But he has responded mainly with token gestures, while insisting that any far-reaching relaxation of his control would likely lead to a major upsurge of terrorism by the IMU and another, much larger group, the Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has called for the replacement of his regime with a Central Asian caliphate, albeit by non-violent means.

As a result, the Bush administration has tried to walk a tightrope with Karimov by, on the one hand, condemning human rights abuses and urging reforms, and, on the other, supporting him as a strategic ally in the "war on terrorism".

This balancing act – reminiscent of U.S. alliances with anti-Soviet autocrats during the Cold War – has been on display in just the past week, with the White House expressing its solidarity with Tashkent Monday by declaring, "These attacks only strengthen our resolve to defeat terrorists wherever they hide and strike, working in close cooperation with Uzbekistan and our other partners in the global war on terror".

Yet on Tuesday the State Department stressed, "more democracy is the best antidote to terror" in Uzbekistan.

Tashkent has blamed the violence, which has reportedly included at least two suicide bombings, on the work of "international terror", as well as members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group that, according to the HRW report, has been the principal target of the regime’s brutality and repression.

A series of detailed eyewitness reports by a pseudonymous EurasiaNet correspondent with access to radio communications by the state security forces, stressed the fighting may be the work of a "home-grown insurgency, rather than a strike by international terrorists", with many people in the streets asserting the attacks were in response to police abuses.

The HRW report also lends credence to the notion, suggested in its title, ‘Creating Enemies of the State: Religious Persecution in Uzbekistan’, that the revolt could indeed be homegrown, given the nature and extent of Karimov’s repression.

It estimates that some 7,000 independent Muslims are currently in prison and subject to torture and other abuses. "Uzbekistan cannot hide behind the global war on terrorism to justify religious repression," said Denber.

A particularly notorious case came to light last year when Fatima Mukhadirova, a shopkeeper, persuaded the British Embassy in Tashkent to investigate the August 2002, death of her son, Muzafar Avozov, in prison based on photographs of his corpse.

An independent examination by the University of Glasgow concluded that the father of four and member of Hizb ut-Tahrir had died after being immersed in boiling water, although the photographs also showed that he suffered serious wounds around the head and neck and that his fingernails were missing.

For her efforts, Mukhadirova was herself sentenced to six years of hard labour, although she was released after a major international outcry on the eve of Rumsfeld’s visit.

But Avozov was hardly the last to suffer torture, which the HRW report describes as a routine action against detainees and prisoners in Uzbekistan, but whose practice is particularly severe against independent Muslims in order to force confessions or testimony against others.

The report documents 10 deaths from torture over the past five years, although that toll excludes cases for which there is no direct evidence, such as the death under suspicious circumstances of a 44-year-old independent Muslim prisoner, Abdurahman Narzullaev, just two weeks ago after he participated in a prison hunger strike.

Based on five years of research throughout Uzbekistan, including some 200 interviews with victims and their relatives, as well as other witnesses, human rights defenders and government officials, the report notes that independent Muslims are arrested on vague charges of "subversion," "encroachment on the constitutional order," or "anti-state activities," tried "in grossly unfair proceedings," and routinely sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Those targeted for arrest include people whom the state deems "too pious," a term that may include those who pray at home or wear a beard.

The report noted that western countries, including the United States, have conditioned some of their aid on improvements in the human rights situation. Denber called on them to strongly denounce such abuses and withhold aid pending substantial progress.

"It is shameful that the international community has stood by and allowed this (repression) to continue," she said.

"If Uzbekistan’s allies want the world to believe that they are against the persecution of Muslim dissidents, they are going to have to take some action to show where they stand."

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