Rights Crackdown Mars Uzbek Independence Day

As President Islam Karimov gave his Independence Day speech last week, his officials engaged in what looks like a systematic campaign to neutralise even the possibility of open public expressions of dissent around the event.

One human rights activist was beaten up, many others manhandled into buses and correspondents for foreign news agencies barred from official press conferences. This, as Karimov was declaring that “making the interests, rights and freedoms of the individual a reality” was a priority.

The September 1 Independence Day celebrations are a big annual event in the capital Tashkent. Amid tight security, more than 2,000 artistes perform mass folk dances and other performances, with the president and other dignitaries in attendance.

Independence was thrust on Karimov, and 12 years on the country has little to celebrate in terms of political development or human rights. It regularly receives dismal report cards from international human rights watchdogs, including the United States Department of State.

On August 28, three days before the carefully orchestrated party began on Independence Square, human rights campaigner Surat Ikramov was abducted in the capital Tashkent and badly beaten. Ikramov leads an “initiative group” planning to set up an association of human rights defenders.

He was active in defending independent journalist Ruslan Sharipov, jailed on August 13 on homosexuality charges. International rights advocates condemned both the charges and the trial, in which a confession believed to have been extracted under torture played a central part.

Surat Ikramov was abducted by a group of four men dressed in camouflage uniform and black masks. They dragged him out of his car, pushed him to the ground, bound his arms and legs, put a thick cellophane bag over his head and drove him in their car to the outskirts of Tashkent.

Ikramov says he was beaten and assaulted throughout the journey, and that this continued when the car stopped outside the city. His assailants left him there with his arms and legs tied, and the cellophane bag over his head. Luckily, Ikramov was able to take the bag off his head, and crawl to a police checkpoint. It took him four hours to get there.

Doctors at the emergency hospital in Tashkent reported that as a result of the beatings, Ikramov suffered two broken ribs, concussion, a haematoma on the left side of his face and numerous other injuries and bruises.

The men did not identify themselves, but it was clear this was no ordinary mugging. Ikramov believes that the attack was set up by the Uzbek security services, as retribution for his activity as a human rights activist and especially his role in defending Sharipov, whose case received a lot of publicity abroad.

Just prior to the beating, Ikramov again went to act as Sharipov’s lay defender when his conviction came up for appeal at the Tashkent city court. “On that day I arrived at the court and talked with Judge Ganisher Mahmudov, who advised me not to involve myself with Ruslan Sharipov’s case,” he said.

Ikramov’s beating meant he missed a protest meeting he was planning to stage outside the Uzbek parliament on August 29. He would have been prevented from going in any case. Around 30 of his colleagues from the human rights community turned up, but were not even allowed to get anywhere near the building, where the supreme council – a rubberstamp institution – was about to go into session.

Well-known human rights activist Elena Urlaeva was stopped by traffic police while driving through the capital. They clearly knew who she was since they accused her of carrying a bomb to blow up parliament. Urlaeva reports that she was beaten while police detained her for several hours at the local government office of the city’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district.

As the other protesters congregated at the underground station closest to parliament, they were picked out by people wearing civilian clothes, who forced them into minibuses and drove them away. They were subsequently released after being warned that further attempts to stage a protest would have bad consequences for them.

One of the would-be demonstrators, Human Rights Society member Abduljalil Boimatov, did not even get out of his house. Police detained him there in the morning and stopped him from leaving.

Meanwhile, the minority of journalists who do not work for the government-mouthpiece press and broadcast media were trying to get into press conferences held to mark Independence Day. For the first time since Uzbekistan became independent, several accredited journalists working for foreign media were barred from entering the parliamentary session. Karimov, who gave an interview to journalists during an interval, was thus protected from critical questioning.

“We don’t want to see you,” foreign ministry press secretary Ilkhom Zakirov told United Press International correspondent Marina Kozlova, after she asked why she had not been allowed into parliament. Three days earlier, Kozlova had been stopped from attending a press conference with US congressman Curt Weldon.

Kozlova and her colleagues think she has been kept out in the cold because officials think she asks too many hard questions. Prior to the congressman’s press conference, she had asked Uzbek deputy foreign minister Vladimir Norov why it was that people were prosecuted for homosexuality in Uzbekistan. Norov had just finished reeling off a list of the international conventions and laws his government had signed up to.

Two other journalists prevented from attending the meeting of parliament were Agence France Press’s Usen Askarov, whose official invitation was borrowed “to correct a mistake” and never returned, and Associated Press correspondent Bagila Bukharbaeva, who was told by Zakirov,“You’re not on the list.”

The atmosphere around this year’s Independence Day celebrations was tense. Matilda Bogner, Human Rights Watch’s representative in Uzbekistan, told IWPR that it was clear that the event was preceded by an upsurge in official action against independent human rights activists and journalists.

“Repression in Uzbekistan is increasing,” she said. “But I don’t know whether this was just in advance of the Independence Day celebration, or whether it’s going to continue.”

Galima Bukharbaeva is IWPR Project Director in Uzbekistan.