Uzbekistan: Rights Groups Urge Stronger U.S. Pressure On Karimov

by Andrew F. Tully

For a third time, the United States has criticized Uzbekistan's government for its handling of protests on 13 May in the eastern city of Andijon. But human rights organizations say the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush must go further to bring pressure on Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

Washington, 18 May 2005 (RFE/RL) -- The Bush administration's position is that only democratic reform will improve conditions in Uzbekistan.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters yesterday in Washington that if stability is Karimov's goal, it is best achieved through reform. He said improving civil society in Uzbekistan also will protect it better against terrorism.

The best way for Karimov to implement democratic reforms, Boucher said, is to work openly with other governments.

"There needs to be transparency, there need to be reforms and there needs to be international involvement to find out what happened to support the reform process if Uzbekistan is ever to achieve the kind of stability and the kind of integration the greater community that we all want," Boucher said.

Saying that is not enough, according to Allison Gill, the Uzbekistan researcher for the New York-based advocacy organization Human Rights Watch. Gill told RFE/RL that the United States should not wait for Karimov to reach out to the world community. Instead, she says, Washington should bring heavy pressure on him to institute the reforms that Boucher spoke of -- just as it did with other former Soviet states.

After all, Gill says, Uzbek forces open fire on 13 May on a crowd of civilians in Andijon. She says that some of the demonstrators may have been involved in freeing inmates of the local prisoners, but most were unarmed.

"How does that square with President Bush's stated policy of spreading democracy/" Gill asked. "Why is democracy good enough for the Ukrainians and the Georgians, but not for the Uzbeks? The U.S. needs to engage very, very firmly with the Uzbek government on this and condemn these abuses for what they are."

Gill says the problem is that Karimov is one of the early U.S. allies in the war on terrorism. But Karimov says those who don't practice a state-sponsored version of Islam are Islamic extremists, she says, and he accuses all his political opponents of being terrorists.

"Terrorism is a very convenient excuse for the Karimov government -- and, in fact, for the U.S. government -- to justify the response to protests," Gill said. "It seems to have been largely peaceful protesters expressing grievances against the government, mostly economic grievances. They called for justice, they called for an end to poverty and an end to economic hardship."