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RIGHTS: West Turns Blind Eye to Torture in Uzbekistan

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 13 2011 (IPS) - Despite its formal adoption of due-process reforms in 2008, the government of Uzbekistan under President Islam Karimov continues to practice torture routinely, and the situation may be worsening, according to a major new report released here and in Berlin Tuesday.

But western governments are turning a blind eye to the abuse, in large part due to Uzbekistan’s strategic importance as a transport hub for supplies and troops that NATO is sending to neighbouring Afghanistan, according to the 104-page report.

The report, among other recommendations, urges the West to impose sanctions against specific government entities and individuals responsible for abuses.

“The West has to wake up to the fact that Uzbekistan is a pariah state with one of the worst human rights records,” said Steve Swerdlow, chief Uzbekistan researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), who conducted many of the more than 100 interviews of activists, victims and others on which the report is largely based.

“Being located next to Afghanistan should not give Uzbekistan a pass on its horrendous record of torture and repression,” he added, noting that the West should take a lesson from the so-called “Arab Spring” which has so far forced four abusive and corrupt Middle East rulers from power in popular uprisings.

Uzbekistan, ruled by Karimov with an iron hand since even before its independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has long been considered corrupt and a major violator of human rights, particularly those of Karimov’s Islamist and political foes.

In 2002, the apparent beating, torture, and subsequent death, apparently by being submerged by his interrogators in boiling water, of one religious prisoner, Muzafar Avazov, gained international headlines.

One year later, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded that torture in Uzbekistan’s criminal justice system was both “systematic and widespread”.

In response to these reports, the U.S. Congress approved legislation that banned direct aid and funding for arms sales to the Karimov government and imposed strict limits on training of Uzbek military officers.

The massacre of hundreds of mostly unarmed protestors by government security forces in the provincial city of Andijan in 2005 spurred greater outrage.

When the U.S. and other western governments demanded an independent international investigation, however, Karimov shut down access to the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase that had been used to ferry troops into Afghanistan since shortly after the 9/11 attacks here.

Geopolitics has made Uzbekistan’s strategic location – particularly its status as a central hub in the so-called Northern Distribution Network (NDN), a set of commercial agreements between NATO members and countries of the former Soviet Union to ship supplies overland to Afghanistan – more important than ever to Washington’s efforts to subdue the Taliban insurgency.

The NDN’s importance has grown significantly over the past year as strains between the U.S. and Pakistan, whose territory has long been the main supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan, have grown ever more acute.

About half of all external supplies for NATO troops are now shipped via the NDN, and about 98 percent of those supplies reportedly pass through Uzbekistan. With the indefinite closure to NATO of Pakistani land routes following the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in U.S. air strikes late in November, Karimov’s leverage may be at its zenith.

As part of his own rapprochement with the West, Tashkent adopted several reforms in 2008 and 2009, purportedly to reduce or eliminate the use of torture against detainees.

Of these, the most important was the introduction of habeas corpus, which guarantees detainees to have their detention reviewed by a court soon after arrest and well before any trial. The reforms were hailed by western nations as significant progress in redressing the problem.

But the new report, entitled “No One Left to Witness: Torture, the Failure of Habeas Corpus, and the Silencing of Lawyers in Uzbekistan”, concludes that the reforms have been used as “public relations tools”.

“There is no evidence the Uzbek government is committed to implementing the laws that it has passed or to ending torture in practice,” it says. “In fact, in several important respects, the situation has deteriorated.”

The report also cited an increase in the arrests and persecution of political and human rights activists; continued credible reports of torture, including several suspicious deaths in custody; the effective dismantling of the independent legal profession by, among other things, requiring attorneys to pass a bar examination every three years and disbarring dissident lawyers; and the closure of the country to independent monitoring and human rights work.

HRW itself was forced to close its office in Tashkent last March.

The report documents several methods of torture that are used routinely, not only against political or religious dissidents, but also against common criminals to obtain confessions.

They include beating detainees with rubber truncheons and water-filled bottles, hanging detainees by their wrists and ankles, subjecting them to rape and sexual humiliation, and asphyxiating them with plastic bags and gas masks.

“Talking about reforms while the police and prison officials go right on torturing people is no improvement,” Swerdlow said. “This won’t stop until Uzbekistan’s leaders, starting with President Karimov, publicly acknowledge the scale of the problem and urgently begin fulfilling Uzbekistan’s international commitments.”

Asked about the report, a State Department spokesperson told IPS that Washington has “serious concerns on a range of issues in Uzbekistan” and that, in its engagement with the government, “we constantly advocate for those who seek peaceful democratic reforms and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

As ties with Pakistan have deteriorated, however, Washington has increased high-level contact with Tashkent. Obama himself telephoned Karimov in September to congratulate him on his country’s 20 years of independence and express support for “build(ing) broad cooperation between our two countries.”

In October, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Karimov in the Uzbek capital. At a town hall meeting during the same trip to Central Asia, Clinton also defended Washington’s approach despite its human rights concerns. “(A)fter you’ve made your objections, if you have no contact, you have no influence,” she said.

The administration and the Pentagon are also working to secure from Congress an amendment to the 2004 ban on non-lethal assistance and other support for Uzbekistan’s security forces. If approved, it would permit Obama to waive the ban in the interests of U.S. “national security”.

“This waiver and the provision of non-lethal, defensive border protection equipment to Uzbekistan would not hinder our efforts to encourage respect for human rights (there),” the State Department spokesperson told IPS. “On the contrary, we believe this sort of engagement strengthens our influence across a range of issues.”

On the eve of Clinton’s trip to Uzbekistan, several major human and labour rights groups, including HRW, Amnesty International, the International Crisis Group, and the Open Society Policy Centre, wrote her a letter opposing all military and police assistance for Tashkent and warning, despite its importance to the NSN, against any return to “business as usual” with Uzbekistan.