Death highlights Uzbekistan's rights problems

ATTRACTING ATTENTION: The authorities say Andrei Shelkovenko hanged himself, but his mother and human rights groups believe he was tortured and then murdered

AP , GAZALKENT, UZBEKISTAN
Friday, May 28, 2004,Page 5

A week after Andrei Shelkovenko was allegedly tortured to death by police, his mother refuses to bury his body -- insisting on an independent autopsy to prove he didn't hang himself as authorities claim.

Her persistence, backed up with a lot of international pressure, has forced Uzbekistan's government to take what rights activists say are unprecedented steps to investigate the death of an alleged torture victim and for the first time allow foreign experts to examine the body.

Uzbekistan has long been accused of rights abuses. A UN report last year found torture was "systematic" in prisons. New York-based Human Rights Watch said Shelkovenko's death was the fifth in police custody it has documented since May last year.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/05/28/2003157257

Couldn't be happier to have them on board.


Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov visited the US in March 2002, where he was warmly greeted by President Bush and Rumsfeld.

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Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.
(snip/...)

For anyone who can withstand seeing two wildly abused ex-people, here's the site:
http://www.thenausea.com/elements/uzbekistan/tortures.html

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April 1, 2004
With Friends Like Uzbekistan...

by Jim Lobe
This week's outburst of apparently Islamist-related violence, which has killed more than 40 people in two major cities in Uzbekistan in the past three days, could spur renewed attention to the strategically located Central Asian country's deplorable human rights record.

In a new report whose release coincided with the bloodiest day yet in three days of bombings and gun battles, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged that the government of President Islam Karimov had arrested and tortured thousands of nonviolent Muslim dissidents who practiced their faith outside state-controlled mosques, and called on Uzbekistan's Western allies, of which the United States is the most important, to apply real pressure on Tashkent to improve its human rights performance.
(snip)

In the aftermath of the September 11 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Karimov provided Washington with access to strategic bases from which US intelligence and military operations were run during and after the US-led effort to oust the Taliban government in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001. Hundreds of US troops and intelligence officers are still operating from the Khanabad air base, which also acts as a supply facility for US operations in Afghanistan.

In exchange, President George W Bush publicly denounced the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) as an affiliate of al-Qaeda and sharply increased military, security and economic assistance to Karimov's government. Two years ago, Karimov, who also ruled over Uzbekistan when it was still a Soviet republic, was received by Bush himself at the White House, and Tashkent has since become a regular pilgrimage site for senior administration officials, most recently Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who visited last month.
(snip/...)

http://antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2216

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Uzbekistan dictator a cruel rogue among rogues

01.04.2004



(snip)
....But Karimov could well be the cruellest, accused of torturing opponents, muzzling freedom of speech and jailing up to 6500 political prisoners.
(snip)

However, since September 11, 2001, Karimov has come into his own, thanks to George W. Bush and the war on terror.

After opening an airbase to the United States military for the war against the Taleban in Afghanistan, he was thanked with a visit to the White House.

Despite the human rights abuses in his one-party state, Karimov looks likely to stay as the Bush Administration's man in central Asia.
(snip/)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3558216&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

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Tony Blair's new friend

Britain and the US claim a moral mandate - and back a dictator who boils victims to death

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 28, 2003
The Guardian

(snip)
....There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

But Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.

So, far from seeking to isolate his regime, the US government has tripled its aid to Karimov. Last year, he received $500m (£300m), of which $79m went to the police and intelligence services, who are responsible for most of the torture. While the US claims that its engagement with Karimov will encourage him to respect human rights, like Saddam Hussein he recognises that the protection of the world's most powerful government permits him to do whatever he wants. Indeed, the US state department now plays a major role in excusing his crimes. In May, for example, it announced that Uzbekistan had made "substantial and continuing progress" in improving its human rights record. The progress? "Average sentencing" for members of peaceful religious organisations is now just "7-12 years", while two years ago they were "usually sentenced to 12-19 years".
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1072313,00.html

His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learned his politics in the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamist terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.

An oppressive, murderous dictator.

Birds of a feather...

they have oil, and are strategically placed for Transport of Oil. Not that "it is the oil stupid".

Thanks for posting it. This warped creep is worse than saddam and He probably gave rummy torture tips on his visit.

yet I'm sure Trent Lott would come up with something!

Found a large version of the Rumsfeld photo, showing Feith was there, too. Whatta strange person.

Is that possibly Victoria Clark on the left side? Yikes.