Uzbekistan

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No Former Soviet State a Safe Place for Uzbek Refugees
by Murat Sadykov, Eurasianet
24 April 2013

On May 13, 2005, military forces loyal to Uzbek President Islam Karimov opened fire on protestors in the eastern city of Andijan, with estimates of dead ranging from more than 150 up to 1,000. Today, refugees from Andijan are among those being extradited from Russia and Kazakhstan under a “terrorist” label. (Photo: EurasiaNet)

Azamatjon Ermakov used to have a relatively peaceful life ferrying traders and their goods around on his donkey cart in a village in Uzbekistan’s Andijan province. He had embraced Islam in 1995 and became a regular at the local mosque. But his daily routine was broken in 2005 when government troops opened fire on protestors in the provincial capital, killing hundreds.

Ermakov managed to avoid trouble amid the initial crackdown, but four years later, in 2009, Uzbek law-enforcement agencies reportedly sought his arrest for religious extremism – a charge commonly used to silence government critics after the Andijan massacre. He fled to Russia.

That November, Ermakov was detained in Nizhny Novgorod on an Uzbek extradition request. After two years in and out of prison, while the European Court of Human Rights urged Russia not to send him home and Amnesty International warned that he faced, in Uzbekistan, “a real risk of being tortured and otherwise ill-treated,” he disappeared from prison, somehow passing through a Moscow airport on November 2, 2012, bound for Uzbekistan, activists later learned from Russian officials. (read more)

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Uzbekistan frees dissident writer ahead of US visit
by Agence France-Presse
23 April 2013

Uzbekistan has unexpectedly released an Uzbek writer who spent 14 years in jail for opposition views, ahead of a visit by an American official, a rights group said Tuesday.

Seventy-two-year-old writer and opposition activist Mamadali Makhmudov was sentenced to a lengthy prison term in August 1999 on charges of attempting to overthrow the Central Asian country’s regime.

As his first sentence neared the end, a court in April sentenced Makhmudov to three more years in prison for violating prison rules, according to rights activists who campaigned for his release.

But last Friday he was unexpectedly released, in a move a local rights group said was motivated by this week’s visit of a senior US State Department official.
(read more)

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Uzbekistan: Police Raid Christian Homes
by Murat Sadykov, EurasiaNet
14 April 2013

Broadening their campaign to crackdown on unofficial religious activities, police in Uzbekistan have carried out surprise raids on unregistered Protestant churches and private homes in recent months, according to the Oslo-based religious freedom watchdog Forum 18.

    Homes of Protestant Christians from various Churches across Uzbekistan were raided in February and March, Forum 18 News Service has learned. In at least two cases, courts subsequently handed down huge fines. After a late March raid and fine on a Protestant couple in the capital Tashkent, a Protestant who knows them complained that the raiding authorities produced no warrants, no trial was held and that the fines given were “unbelievably high”. “The authorities know where believers live and know that they have Christian literature in their homes,” the Protestant – who asked not to be identified for fear of state reprisals – told Forum 18. “By raiding their homes the authorities harass believers and are trying to wear them down by the fines.”

(read more)

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“All believers are backward-looking fanatics who drag society down”
By Mushfig Bayram, Forum 18 News Service
12 April 2013

Uzbekistan’s authorities continue to attack unregistered worship and punish participants, as well as punishing individual believers for discussing their faith with others, Forum 18 News Service has learned. Police and National Security Service (NSS) secret police raided a small unregistered Baptist community’s Sunday worship service in south-eastern Kashkadarya Region. They disrupted the service and took down the name of each worshipper, a church member complained to Forum 18. They also without a warrant searched the private home where the worship was held, confiscating church members’ personal notes, postcards and family photos of the residents in the home, and seized all the money from the church’s cash-box. (read more)

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Uzbekistan warns population of extremist activity
By Maksim Yeniseyev, Central Asia Online
11 April 2013

The authorities have defined measures to further prevent propagation of extremism in the country, they say.
TASHKENT – Uzbekistan is turning up the heat on extremists.

After recent extremist activity within its borders, the general prosecutor’s office, other state organisations, and non-governmental entities have stepped up their anti-extremist information campaign.

Acting on a tip in February and March, the Interior Ministry (MVD) and general prosecutor’s office discovered and arrested members of two extremist groups – Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) – for conducting illegal activities, the MVD told Central Asia Online. (read more)

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Uzbekistan should free editor to receive medical care
By Committee to Protect Journalists
02 April 2013

New York -The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the ongoing imprisonment of independent Uzbek editor Muhammad Bekjanov, whose health has severely deteriorated in jail, and urges authorities to immediately release him so that he may receive medical care. Bekjanov and a colleague, both of whom were jailed in 1999, have been in prison for longer than any other journalists worldwide, according to CPJ research.

Bekjanov, editor of the now-defunct opposition paper Erk, was jailed on fabricated anti-state charges and handed a 14-year sentence, according to news reports. In January 2012, days before he was due to be released, an Uzbek court handed him another five-year prison term on charges of breaking unspecified prison rules. He is being held at a prison in the central Navoi region of the country, news reports said. (read more)

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Uzbekistan: Kerry Should Raise Rights Abuses at Talks
By Human Rights Watch
07 March 2013

(Washington, DC) – US Secretary of State John Kerry should publicly express concern about Uzbekistan’s deteriorating human rights situation during his meeting with the Uzbek foreign minister on March 12, 2013, and press for concrete improvements, Human Rights Watch said today.

Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Komilov and other high-level Uzbek officials will visit Washington, DC,  from March 11 to March 13, at a time of deepening US military engagement with Uzbekistan over its role in the war in Afghanistan.

“Uzbekistan wants a deal from the United States – ignore human rights abuses in exchange for transit rights for US troops leaving Afghanistan – and John Kerry shouldn’t bite,” said Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The US should know by now it has little to gain by a close association with a government that routinely abuses the fundamental rights of its own citizens, and unnecessary, since the Uzbek government needs the US as much as the US needs it.” (read more)

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For earlier articles, please see the “Archived Updates” section on Uzbekistan’s page.

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