WORLDVIEW

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Americans may have heard of its legendary past, but few know anything about what is today called Uzbekistan. The most populous country in Central Asia with twenty-five million people, Uzbekistan sits astride what was once the famed Silk Road between China and the West. In its city of Samarkand, Alexander the Great found his bride in 327 B.C. Its land was overrun by Genghis Khan in 1220 A.D. A century later Tamerlane made Samarkand the capital of his empire.

Uzbekistan today is no more than a pitiful remnant of its former glory. One of the poorest republics of the former Soviet Union, since independence in 1991 it has been what the [U.S.] State Department (State) this February called “an authoritarian state with limited civil rights.”

And that is putting it mildly. President Islam Karimov, reports State, exercises “nearly complete control” over all branches of government. Government-controlled parties dominate the legislature, while the judiciary “takes its direction” from the executive. The government owns the country’s three national daily newspapers and, says State, controls information “even more tightly in the broadcast media.”

Torture by police is rampant. Uzbek law limits criticism of President Karimov, and, not surprisingly, reports State, “citizens generally did not criticize the president or the government on television or in the press.”

Where lawful dissent is muzzled, aggrieved people may eventually resort to unlawful forms of protest. On May 13 a group of people in the Uzbek city of Andijan, according to Human Rights Watch, “seized weapons at a military barracks and police station, led a prison break to free local businessmen unjustly accused of Islamic extremism, and took officials hostage in the local government building.”

Such actions would be crimes in any country, but they cannot justify what came next. Thousands of people gathered in a public square to protest deepening poverty and government repression. The overwhelming majority were unarmed.

According to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, government forces fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Except in one instance no other means of crowd control were tried, short of shooting the protesters. Hundreds died.

The government has since attempted to cover up what happened. It claims that only 173 people died, all supposedly armed protesters, or law enforcement officials and civilians they [the protesters] killed.

After what Human Rights Watch calls the government’s “massacre” of unarmed civilians, the government forced journalists to leave the city and confiscated their materials. It denied the Red Cross access to protesters who were arrested or wounded. One local guide dared to escort a Radio Free Europe correspondent to a mass grave outside the city. The next day, he was reportedly stabbed to death.

The government also attempts to pin the uprising on Islamic extremists, but Human Rights Watch found no evidence of this. Many witnesses said the speakers at the protest merely denounced poverty, corruption, and government repression.

What is needed now is an international investigation. Although the government has offered to allow foreign diplomats to monitor an investigation by the Uzbek Parliament, any such government-controlled investigation, in the words of Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, “would utterly lack credibility.”

The Bush Administration needs to clarify its policy toward Uzbekistan. A year ago the State Department found that Uzbekistan failed to meet minimum human rights standards and cut eighteen million dollars in American aid to the government of President Karimov.

But the Pentagon sees Uzbekistan as a strategic ally in the war against terrorism. Beginning with the war in Afghanistan in 2001, Uzbekistan has allowed the United States rent-free use of a military base. Despite Uzbekistan’s record of torture, our government has reportedly “rendered” (turned over) terrorism suspects to the Uzbeks for interrogation. Last year, shortly after the State Department cut aid, the Defense Department pledged twenty-one million dollars in new military aid. And discussions are now underway for the U.S. to keep the military base in return for hefty rental payments.

As Human Rights Watch recommends, those discussions should be put on ice until President Karimov allows a credible international investigation. And enough damning information has already been uncovered to require a complete cut-off of U.S. aid to Uzbekistan under the provisions of the Leahy Amendment, which the Administration should invoke.

Fighting terrorism is no easy task. In that effort we need allies, not all of whom will be nice people. But massacring hundreds of civilians is beyond the pale. The United States cannot be in bed—or be seen to be in bed—with a bloody regime that mocks every ideal for which we claim to stand.

Doug Cassel is Director of the Center for International Human Rights of Northwestern University School of Law.

Views expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Northwestern University, the Center of International Human Rights, or Chicago Public Radio.

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