Uzbek Government Confident of Impunity for Abuses

After the justice ministry in Uzbekistan moved to close the office of New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch, the organisation’s country representative says it is time the international community stepped up pressure on a government that fails to respect basic civil liberties.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch said it received notification from the Uzbek Supreme Court on March 10 that the ministry had filed a petition to shut down its office. Human Rights Watch was not invited to the court hearing on the case.

The move followed the justice ministry’s decision in late December to deny accreditation to Steve Swerdlow, the rights group’s director in Uzbekistan. A letter from the ministry said Swerdlow had no "experience of cooperation with Uzbekistan" or "working in the region as a whole". It was the sixth time a Human Rights Watch staffer had been denied access to the country.

In an interview for NBCentralAsia, Swerdlow – now in the United States – outlined the action the Uzbek authorities had taken against his organisation and discussed the measures the international community should take to force the government to comply with its obligations on human rights and liberties.

NBCentralAsia: Mr. Swerdlow, what do you think was the reason for closing Human Rights Watch’s office in Tashkent?

Steve Swerdlow: This demonstrates that the Uzbek government feels very comfortable and confident that it will suffer no consequences for stepping up its war on freedom of thought, freedom of speech and other rights. They have shut down civil society and got rid of representatives of the international community like Human Rights Watch, which was the last independent voice testifying to what’s going on there. Yet they have gone unpunished.

This is a very alarming trend. Uzbekistan’s process of isolation has not only led to the human rights situation getting worse; the Uzbek authorities have come to realise that they don’t face any consequences for committing such breaches, nor will they.

President Islam Karimov was received in Brussels [in January 2011] in spite of the fact that the Uzbek authorities hadn’t fulfilled even one of the criteria the European Union set after it lifted its sanctions [imposed after 2005 Andijan violence] almost two years ago.

They have always attempted to halt Human Right Watch’s activities in Uzbekistan by denying it accreditation. In 2009, our consultant was deported from Tashkent Airport. Another researcher attacked in the town of Karshi.

I became director of Tashkent office in May 2010. We applied to the Uzbek government for a work permit for me at the time, but the authorities did not respond for six months. A few weeks before the European Union was due to discuss the human rights situation in Uzbekistan [October 2010], the authorities granted me a visa, but only for 30 days.

I went there and immediately applied for accreditation, but we were turned down on December 24.

NBCentralAsia: What is your assessment of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan at the moment?

Swerdlow: The situation remains dire. Human rights violations are magnified by isolation. Human Right Watch believes there are 13 human rights defenders in prison. Systematic torture and mistreatment in places of detention, including police stations and the prisons, are still a very grave problem.

Uzbekistan often receives praise for passing a habeas corpus law, which requires that anyone who’s detained appears in person in court, so that a judge can rule on the legality of custody. Everyone thought this would put an end to torture. But the reality is that habeas corpus exists only on paper in Uzbekistan.

Even though Uzbekistan has passed a series of legislative amendments guaranteeing lawyers access to their clients, many of them report that they are prevented from seeing clients in the initial hours after they are detained.

There are fundamental problems with the justice system every step of the way.

NBCentralAsia: By expanding their political cooperation with President Islam Karimov in order to address strategic issues in Afghanistan, the EU and the United States are open their doors to a dictator. In your view, how much real leverage can the key political players exert on Tashkent in order to improve human rights situation?

Swerdlow: The EU’s foreign affairs committee issues an annual paper which includes reports on the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. There are six basic criteria that the country should meet in order to enjoy full relations with the EU. We believe the EU could insist on these criteria being met, and use every opportunity to remind Tashkent of its obligations – not just the international obligations the country has undertaken, but also this specific document, which represents the views of every foreign minister and every EU member.

It’s also important that the traditional method of making public statements is used whenever appropriate. We believe it's time to criticise the Uzbek government publicly, given that there’s a human rights crisis where the situation with torture, human rights defenders and international organiations is clearly getting worse day by day. The time has come to deny it privileges, including economic ones.

We know how important high-level visits to Washington, Berlin and Tashkent are to Uzbekistan. Human Rights Watch is not against western governments meeting the Uzbekistan government, but we believe that the latter needs to be reminded of its obligations, and moreover that the Uzbek people needs to be shown that the West is standing up for human rights. The ordinary citizens of Uzbekistan need to sense that the West isn’t indifferent to their basic rights.

On the one hand, we understand that the West needs Uzbekistan so that freight can be transported to the forces in Afghanistan. But on the other hand, Uzbekistan needs the US and the EU, as well.

NBCentralAsia: What will your organization do next on Uzbekistan?

Swerdlow: So far, we haven’t got any official notification of possible accusations or of reasons why our office is being closed. As soon as the Uzbek side informs us, we will respond in public.

We are ready to return to Uzbekistan as soon as tomorrow if the authorities meet their obligations and give us accreditation.

Until that happens, western governments need to look at the examples of Tunisia and Libya, and think about their relationship with the Uzbek regime.

Interview conducted by Kamilla Abdullaeva, an NBCentralAsia contributor working under a pseudonym.

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.