INTERNATIONAL PEN WRITERS IN PRISON COMMITTEE
Uzbekistan Action
October, 2003


WRITERS UNDER ATTACK

'They put a gas mask on my head and sprayed an unknown substance into my throat after which I could hardly breathe. They also injected an unknown substance into my veins and warned me that if I did not follow their instructions they would give me an injection of the AIDS virus… I was clearly told that if I wrote any further appeals or complaints, I would commit suicide… I was forced to write a "death note" in which I wrote, as dictated, a goodbye letter and declared that I committed suicide of my own volition.' (1)

Ruslan Sharipov, a journalist and human rights defender known for his outspoken criticism of the Uzbek authorities, is serving a four-year sentence for having committed 'homosexual acts', an offense under Article 120 of the Uzbek Criminal Code. These charges were denied by Sharipov on July 16th and are widely believed to have been fabricated as punishment for his criticism of the authorities and his human rights activism. On the day of his trial, however, Sharipov appeared in court and rescinded his earlier denials - confessing to all charges and renouncing all of the critical articles that he had written since 2001. On September 5, 2003, Ruslan Sharipov wrote an open letter to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, containing harrowing details of his treatment in prison - some of which is detailed in the above statement.

This is not an isolated incident. In spite of legal obligations towards the protection of the right to freedom of expression and the prohibition of torture, international human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported extensively on the dire state of human rights in the country. They report that human rights defenders, independent journalists and opposition activists, already severely constrained by restrictive legislation and the government control of printing presses and newspaper distribution, are constantly at risk of beatings, arbitrary detention (including forcible psychiatric confinement), torture and fabricated charges at the hands of the law enforcement agencies for their criticism of the Uzbek authorities.

International PEN itself has been campaigning on behalf of three victims of such treatment - writers detained since 1999 and serving heavy prison terms of eight to fifteen years in prison on charges directly linked to their legitimate opposition activities. They too managed to disseminate distressing accounts of threat and torture to themselves and fellow prisoners from prison. One, the acclaimed writer Mamadali Makhmudov, passed the following statement to a Human Rights Watch representative when he was brought to trial in 1999:

'In the basement they regularly beat me ... they burned my legs and arms. They put a mask on me and cut off the air and hung me up by my hands... They told me they were holding my wife and daughters and threatened to rape them.'

The situation is getting worse. The crackdown that began in early 2003 has intensified significantly in recent months, and is said to be the harshest government action since that carried out in the aftermath of bombings in Tashkent in 1999 (2). As in 1999 the current crackdown has been labelled as a vital measure to stem the security threat said to be posed by Islamic 'radicalism' - a claim that has provided regular justification for the suppression of dissenting voices, chiefly Islamic opposition parties and religious groups, for more than a decade (3). Specifically, Human Rights Watch noted in its 2003 report that the Uzbek authorities are quick to level charges of 'wahabiism', at those whose only 'crime' is to support independent Islamic organizations (4).

While Uzbekistan's 'anti-terrorist' measures have arguably become more acceptable in the current international climate, the country's higher profile since September 11, 2001 (as a result of the strategic importance of the country to the United States-led coalition in the war in Afghanistan) has also opened it up to strong criticism from the international community.

Numerous measures have been taken, by the U.S., the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the United Nations amongst others, to encourage the Uzbek authorities to award increased respect to human rights. These measures included the signing of the U.S.-Uzbek Joint Declaration in March 2002, committing Uzbekistan to ensuring respect for human rights and political pluralism, and a warning from the EBRD in March 2003 that loans to Tashkent might be limited if aggressive steps were not taken to promote democratic and economic reforms. This pressure contributed to some modest gains, including the registration of the Independent Human Rights Organisation of Uzbekistan (NOPCHU) in March 2002, the first time the authorities had registered a local independent human rights organisation, immediately before a visit by Islam Karimov to the United States. Not long after the visit pre-publication censorship was officially stopped after the chief censor was fired and the State Inspectorate for the Protection of State Secrets was disbanded. Furthermore, following British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray's speech an effort was made to improve the image of the country by releasing political and religious prisoners in December 2002. Contrary to some claims, however, these gestures have failed to make any real difference to the scale of human rights abuses that continue to take place in the country.

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Footnotes:
1 Letter from Ruslan Sharipov to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, September 5, 2003. Click here for the full text.
2 About the bombings…the Uzbek government claimed to be an Islamic 'fundamentalist' attempt to assassinate President Islam Karimov and destabilise the country.
3 The arrest of Erk activists in 1999, among them writer Mamadali Makhmudov, is one of the best-known cases.
4 According to the BBC's Middle East Analyst Wahhabiism is a puritanical sect and the official ideology of Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian, is said to be wahhabi. It is often used by the Russian and Central Asian governments as a term of abuse for Muslim activists critical of the authorities. PEN is currently monitoring the cases of two journalists imprisoned in separate cases for their alleged 'wahhabi' links.
Uzbekistan has been ranked among the most repressive regimes in the world in Freedom House's 2003 global survey of political rights and civil liberties, the U.S. calls Uzbekistan 'an authoritarian system with limited civil rights', and the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has been particularly outspoken, stating in October 2002 in the presence of senior Uzbek officials that 'Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy, nor does it appear to be moving in the direction of democracy.' Ambassador Murray's speech is available in the campaign documents.

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