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UZBEKISTAN: 'Torture on the Rise'

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Jun 16 2008 (IPS) - Use of torture has increased sharply in Uzbekistan following the last election of President Islam Karimov, a rights group says.

The number of cases of disappearances and torture have risen since early this year, says Elena Ryabinina, researcher on rights abuses in the Central Asian Republics at the Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Centre.

Her group together with the Tashkent-based Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights headed by activist Surat Ikramov have monitored a new wave of abuses in the country. Ikramov's organisation, established in 2002, now has 136 members tracking and defending the rights of Uzbek citizens.

The abuses are being linked to the regime of Karimov, who has already had two consecutive terms in office – the maximum allowed under the Uzbek constitution. But in December 2007 he won a third term, against four largely unknown opponents.

Uzbekistan is Central Asia's most populous country. Its 26.8 million people, concentrated in the south and east, form nearly half the region's population, and are mostly engaged in cotton farming in small rural communities.

The groups' report says that between 1997 and 2007 more than 12,000 people were arrested and convicted on political and religious grounds. The centre has published a list of about 8,000 of them.

"The more successfully the regime destroys the democratic opposition that speaks about the need for a peaceful change of power, the greater torture takes its terrible forms," Ryabinina told IPS.

The softening of European Union sanctions was interpreted by regime as an indulgence for further violations, Ryabinina said. "It seems to me that this approach is extremely short-sighted."

Gulnova Oltieva's family has been devastated by the regime's ways. Her husband was tortured and killed last year. She had to flee Uzbekistan with her children in December 2007, and now lives in Kazakhstan.

"Some of those who are imprisoned are dying each month because of torture," Oltieva told IPS. "The prison workers have absolute authority, they beat prisoners as they want, and sometimes kill outright." Bodies are hidden from the public and from relatives, and are carried out under special supervision for secret burial, she said.

Bukhara prison, about 600 km southwest of Tashkent, is known to hold thousands of inmates who are tortured and kept under deplorable conditions, Oltieva said. "My husband Yusuf Juma, my son Mashrab Yusufjon, were killed there through torture," Oltieva said.

Common methods of torture include beatings with truncheons filled with water, electric shocks, asphyxiation with plastic bags and gas masks, and sexual humiliation. Those convicted for religious extremism are particularly targeted for torture, activists say.

"The frequent use of torture points to a political culture adopted by the authorities to suppress the opposition and human rights groups," Elena Urlaeva from the Human Rights Alliance in (capital) Tashkent told IPS. Victims have nowhere to seek legal redress, she said.

Urlaeva says the setting up of an independent tribunal for genocide in Andijan could help check the arbitrary ways of Karimov and his government. In May 2005, gunmen attacked several government buildings in this eastern city of Uzbekistan and forcibly released 23 men who were charged with religious extremism. A clash between government forces and protesters left hundreds of civilians dead.

Mihra Rittmann, researcher with the Europe and Central Asian division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS that "for the past several years the government of Uzbekistan has sought numerous opportunities to convince its multilateral partners that it has undertaken serious reforms to end torture, and that torture and other forms of ill-treatment are not a pervasive problem in the country." The government, he said, should hold perpetrators of torture and ill-treatment accountable, and ensure that detainees can make complaints about torture without fearing retribution.

The government has adopted important laws to introduce habeas corpus and to abolish the death penalty, Rittmann said, but there has been no significant reduction in the widespread use of torture. Fundamental reform is needed if torture is to be eradicated, he said.