Niedziejkore
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Uzbekistan’s status as a U.S. ally in the “war on terror” appeared to be in jeopardy when reports that Uzbek sodliers massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters emerged just over three weeks ago. But since then, major news outlets from the Guardian to the Washington Post have repeated government claims that an Islamist uprising provoked the government’s use of extreme violence. Not everyone is buying that theory.
According to Acacia Shields of Human Rights Watch, Uzbek security forces regularly use torture to elicit false confessions tying dissidents to a supposed Islamic revolutionary movement to take over Uzbekistan. She thinks it “unlikely” that the protestors killed in Andijan were mobilizing for a religious cause at all. Shields told GNN that “economics was one of the main motivators” for the tragic march.
Ignoring evidence compiled by Human Rights Watch, officials in Washington, Moscow and Beijing have been eager to dish out shaky theories about Taliban, Chechen or Uighur involvement in the so-called ‘uprising’ at Andijan, to support the empty justifications that dictator Islam Karimov offers for the slaughter of Uzbek civilians. Follow the money (read: oil) to see why.
U.S. trained troops used in biggest protest massacre since Tiananmen Square
Between 2,000 and 10,000 people rallied in the city of Andijan on May 13 to protest a scandalous trial of 23 prominent businessmen, who stood spuriously accused of opposition to Uzbekistan’s totalitarian government. Elite police and troops, including units trained in the U.S., responded to the crisis – opening fire on the crowd. Officially, 173 civilians were gunned down that day. Independent sources (confirmed by at least one army source) claim 500 or more died in the indiscriminate shooting. “Once the crowd had dispersed, eyewitnesses say the security forces went around finishing off the injured as they lay on the ground.” The city was then sealed off by tanks, and security forces are “making night raids on the houses of anyone who might have been among the crowd, or other witnesses,” the BBC reports.
“Gulbakhor Turayeva, a former doctor turned rights activist, said she counted 400 bodies lying in the yard of Andijan’s School No. 15 a day after the violence. She said there were about 100 other bodies there, but that she had been driven out of the school before she could make a precise count.” – The Moscow Times
The Andijan protest began with a prison break to free 23 businessmen who had been charged with ‘Islamic extremism’ but not linked to any violent crime. The Stalinesque government routinely uses this label as a pretext for arresting anyone who falls out of step with a government official. Praying privately at home is illegal for Uzbeks who are not registered with government-licensed religious institutions – such un-registered religious activities can serve as grounds for detainment and torture as a terror suspect (even imported Bibles are confiscated and destroyed). Almost as if Karimov were trying to provoke reactionary religious movements.
“We don’t care if 200, 300, or 400 people die.”
Nozima Kamalov, chairwoman of the Uzbekistan Legal Aid Society, describes Andijan as Uzbekistan’s “most prosperous city,” with a successful automotive industry and a relatively large middle class, unlike the more conservative capital city of Tashkent. Not where you would expect revolutionary Islamic fundamentalists to stage an uprising? The general consensus is that Karimov’s talk about battling ‘Islamic extremists’ is just window-dressing on the brutal persecution of any and all dissenters, in language meant to attract ‘anti-terror’ military aid from the U.S.
“We don’t care if 200, 300, or 400 people die. We have force and we will chuck you out of there anyway.” – Zakir Almatov, Uzbek Interior Minister, in Islam Online
The on-going crackdown on reporters and activists seeking information on the aftermath of the Andijan bloodbath leaves open to speculation the quesitons of how many people died, how many were women and children, and how many of the recently disappeared are alive but in detention. Over 3,000 Andijan residents are still missing, and some local human rights activists believe 1,000 may be dead. “One family told us [the BBC reporters] that militia in riot masks burst their door and took away their son for interrogation. Others report that their sons have been arrested while searching at a hospital for relatives still missing two weeks on.” One informant led Radio Free Europe reporters to a mass grave near Andijan, where gravediggers claimed 74 bodies were buried. This informant was stabbed to death the following day.
This week the government arrested 28 activists accused of planning to organize a rally in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, to protest the recent killings in Andijan. “Among those arrested Saturday were two rights activists who were public defenders for 23 religious businessmen whose criminal trial triggered the Andijan violence,” opposition leader Vasilya Inoyatova told Guardian reporters. On Sunday she met with a group of visiting U.S. Senators including John McCain, who demanded an international probe into human rights violations – the Uzbek government refused to even meet them. Unimpressed with their suggestion that U.S. aid for Uzbekistan might be interrupted if no investigation were allowed, the dictator-for-life Karimov may have noticed that the White House prefers to play along with the line that Islamic terrorists were responsible for the violence. The Bush administration’s reasons are probably split between attachment to our rent-free Uzbek airbase and the CIA’s habit of outsourcing suspects to Uzbek torture chambers.
Playing the Game
But Uzbekistan’s indifference to western protests over the Andijan massacre may also be connected to warming relations with China. Karimov is blithely playing both sides in this millennial version of the Great Game: just after the Andijan killings, he visited China, where he was welcomed with unconditional support for his crackdown on dissidents. Security ties were reaffirmed with talk about the cultural affinities between China’s separatist Uighur rebels in the Xinjiang province bordering Uzbekistan and the Muslim Uzbeks that are supposed to be trying to forge a Central Asian Islamic Republic. The Uighurs are even believed to be in contact with Uzbek radicals. A large package of trade agreements was signed during the visit, including a $600 million oil deal.
“Washington wants Uzbekistan’s oil and gas to flow to Japan rather than to China, and has reportedly worked behind the scenes in Moscow to block a gas pipeline to China and to push for infrastructure in Russia. A Russo-American accord on the energy issue is checked by Moscow’s strategic interest in restoring influence in Uzbekistan at the expense of Washington, which has moved Moscow closer to Beijing.
At the June 30 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.) in Tashkent, Moscow firmed up a strategic partnership agreement with the Karimov regime that includes joint military exercises, and Beijing granted Tashkent a $1.5 billion aid package—the largest that it has ever disbursed to a country. The S.C.O., which also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, is an effort by Moscow and Beijing to counter Washington’s influence in Central Asia, and to build an alliance that creates a “transcontinental bridge” between the European Union and Southeast Asia, excluding U.S. influence.” – Michael Weinstein, PINR (emphasis added)
Consistent with Weinstein’s argument that Moscow is effectively aligned with Beijing on this one, Russian officials are tactfully dancing around human rights issues in Uzbekistan while affirming Karimov’s right to gun down ‘terrorists’ as needed. Moscow News even implicates Muslim Chechens in the Uzbek ‘uprising.’
Kyrgyzstan is wedged between China and Uzbekistan, and was initially offered Chinese troops to help secure southern Kyrgyz regions bordering Uzbekistan against spillover unrest. Instead of joining China in supporting Uzbekistan’s crackdown on dissent, Kyrgyzstan was persuaded by the U.S. Senate delegation not to force most refugees from the bloodbath to return home. Even so, over a hundred Andijan refugees and Kyrgyz citizens of Uzbek origin have been handed over to the Uzbek authorities by Kyrgyz border guards, and asylum for other refugees may be only temporary.
But the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border town of Karasu, through which refugees from Andijan fled the country, is now under tight military control. Uzbek officials claim the occupation of the town was needed to put down an Islamist revolt in the week following May 13. “The locals strenuously deny claims that Islamic extremists were behind the revolt, saying the detained leader, Bakhtiyar Rahimov, was a well-liked figure trying to provide an alternative to life under the rule of President Islam Karimov. Rahimov is from a successful business family that owns a long-established sock factory in the town and a large farm,” the IWPR reports.
Negotiating Change in Uzbekistan
Can the Karimov regime be persuaded to end its infamous disregard for human rights, while the great powers are competing to do the dictator-for-life favors in order to influence which way Uzbek oil flows? Stephen Schwartz, a writer on Islamic affairs, points out, “The democratising revolution in Kyrgyzstan, which lies on the border near Andijan, electrified the Ferghana Valley. The unsettled Uzbeks now have, next door, a successful example of direct action against unjust rule.”
But Acacia Shields, former head of the Human Rights Watch desk in Tashkent, told GNN: “I don’t see what happened in Andijan as an attempt to mimic the revolution in Kyrgyzstan.” She underscores the fact that the Andijan protests were niether revolutionary or Islamic – the unarmed protestors were rallying for basic economic, not religious, motives. The arrest of 23 major employers who were leading an independent economic development initiative in the only prosperous city in Uzbekistan threatened their livelihoods, and they defied the climate of fear that dominates their country to rally in desperate opposition to the pending convictions of the economic pillars of their community.
Is the Karimov dictatorship in any danger of being replaced by Islamic radicals? Former Middle East correspondent Angelique van Engelen writes that while most Uzbeks are Muslim, “only a tiny percentage” could be construed as Wahhabi fundamentalists, and this group lacks the social or political traction to mobilize popular support for any kind of religious revolt. “If a situation is set to change drastically at all, it´s far more likely that revolutionary forces are driven by poverty stricken people living on Soviet-style collective farms, earning less than $2 a day,” she argues.
Shields confirmed that some people believed these business leaders had already been subjected to torture during their detention. “Because it is so systemic,” anyone considered a dissident in Uzbekistan may be charged with religious radicalism and opposition to the government, tortured in pre-trial detention, and subjected to continued torture in prison, she added. Her organization has documented several prisoner deaths resulting from torture in recent years, including one 2002 fatality from immersion in boiling water.
“Interviewees describe a variety of methods of torture used against Muslim detainees, including beatings by fist and with truncheons or metal rods, rape and sexual violence, electric shock, use of lit cigarettes or newspapers to burn the detainee, and asphyxiation with plastic bags or gas masks.” – Human Rights Watch
An unnamed senior State Department official told The Washington Post the Andijan incident prompted a “high-level review of the military relationship” questioning “whether, in the long run, ‘Uzbekistan is the right place for us to be.’” Speaking for Human Rights Watch, Shields said: “We’ve called on the U.S. government to suspend negotiations on extending the agreement on the military base until Uzbekistan allows for an independent international investigation” of the events at Andijan. Because of the strong security-based relationship the U.S. now has with the government of Uzbekistan, political pressure from Washington could bring about a full independent inquiry.
But the White House must stand behind the unsuccessful Senate delegation’s efforts and back the international community’s appeal for a timely investigation. Bush’s empty call for a “full inquiry” into the violence has been reported without reference to global appeals for an international and independent investivation. As long as the Bush administration and its press flunkies are willing to go along with the Karimov regime’s crass word games, the death toll at Andijan and the fate of thousands of political prisoners who have not been seen since the bloodbath on May 13 will remain untold.
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Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave.
Posts: 346 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Feb 2004
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