Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Apologies for the belated good wishes.

Chances are that anyone who has followed developments in Uzbekistan for the past two decades has heard of Elena Urlaeva. But for those who have not, or those who might not know her so well, we'd like to share with you a bit about the courageous woman we know.

Elena Mikhailovna Urlaeva is one of the world's strongest people. Her strength comes from her morality, her sense of fairness, and her respect for others.

There are, of course, many Uzbek human rights defenders, both inside and outside the country, who deserve great honor and recognition for their daily sacrifices to the cause of human rights. But we wanted to make sure to send our best wishes for Elena's 60th birthday, which she marked on January 21.

Elena was born in the western city of Andijon, though she grew up in Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent, where she still lives.

Elena is a human rights defender in a country where the government has not shown much regard for the rights of citizens for a quarter of a century. Uzbekistan's government has a long record of torture, forced labor, censorship, and religious persecution, and is believed to hold thousands of political prisoners.

Elena's been threatened, beaten, locked up, and confined to psychiatric hospitals, but none of that has stopped her from standing outside courtrooms to protest unfair legal proceedings against Uzbekistan's citizens, or from going out into the cotton fields at harvest time to try to document the use of forced labor.

Not so long ago, the cotton was picked by children forced by the government to work in the fields rather than attend school; but thanks to Elena and others like her, that is not so much the case anymore.

One particularly brutal attack on Elena took place in May 2015, when police officers in the town of Chinaz detained her as she was interviewing doctors and teachers forced to pick cotton. Police and medical staff under their control forcibly sedated Elena, and then subjected her to a body-cavity search, X-rays, and other cruel and degrading treatment during an 11-hour interrogation, saying they were looking for a memory card from her camera.

Elena has seen countless colleagues land in prison or be forced to flee the country over the years.

Anyone who endured even a fraction of the horrors Elena has lived through simply for peacefully criticizing the government would be easily forgiven for choosing to leave the ranks of Uzbekistan's courageous human rights defenders. But rather than retreat into the shadows, Elena keeps fighting.

Those of us who have been privileged to spend time with Elena in Uzbekistan have most likely been invited to visit her at her apartment on the outskirts of the city, which doubles as the nerve center for the human rights group she heads, the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, and is a meeting point for activists, victims of abuses, and visiting diplomats.

A collection of courageous souls who accompany Elena on various protests, alliance members monitor human rights in a country that has become one of the most closed in the world -- Uzbekistan has banned both our organizations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Human Rights Watch (HRW), just for doing our work. Alliance members also provide much-needed moral support and encouragement to the victims of abuse -- forced laborers, torture victims, political prisoners, and their family members -- who need it the most.

Apart from all the arrests and ill-treatment, Elena also lives a life of constant surveillance. For those of us who live in free societies, it is easy to take for granted just how invasive life can be for a human rights activist in authoritarian Uzbekistan.

One example came the day one of us visited Elena at her home in 2010. Five minutes after the visit began, we heard a knock at the door. Elena opened the door to find the neighborhood policeman. He had just come by to check everything was "OK." As she is with the many officials she deals with, Elena was polite but firm, rejecting the policeman's "offer" to come inside the apartment.

Relieved to be able to resume the conversation, the calm didn't last long. Five minutes later came another knock at the door. It was the meterman; he had come ostensibly to check Elena's water usage. Elena again sent him packing and, as if nothing had happened, launched effortlessly back into a discussion about a torture case she was monitoring:

"I went in to see this young man detained at the police station," she said. "He told me that several officers had forced him to confess to having stolen a cell phone. They put cellophane over his head and then put a gas mask on him. He couldn't breathe and eventually...."

Knock, knock, knock. This time it was someone insisting on checking the gas meter. Sending this one away, Elena almost pitied the man, saying he was a "shestyorka" -- a Russian slang term that is hard to translate but means an ineffectual, pathetic, powerless person forced to do someone else's bidding. This is Elena's life.

Elena's nerves of steel are what allow her to keep going. She understands all too well that behind the endless visits stands Uzbekistan's security service, the country's most powerful and feared institution, commonly known by its Russian acronym, SNB.

Last year was a tough one for Elena. In August, she lost her husband of 20 years, Mansur, whom the security services also constantly harassed as a way to get to her. Amid her grief, Elena did what she always does. She wrote a moving public letter about their love and commitment, which defied years of pressure by the authorities.

Ultimately, Elena's is a profile of profound courage in the face of incredible repression. Hopes are now high that Uzbekistan's new president may see that it is time to improve the country's abysmal record. But absent concrete evidence, this journalist and human rights activist are not holding our breath.

Elena, you're needed now more than ever. We sincerely hope that your years of activism and self-sacrifice will finally see an Uzbekistan that is more democratic, more open, and more just.

Happy birthday, Elena Mikhailovna! S dnyom rozhdenia! Tug'ilgan kuningiz bilan!

Steve Swerdlow is Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch and was director of Human Rights Watch's Tashkent office before the authorities forced its closure. Follow both authors on Twitter @brucepannier and @steveswerdlow

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.​

The new U.S. administration has a lot of people guessing, watching, and trying to predict what President Donald Trump's position will be on a myriad of issues.

In the case of relations with, for example, China, Russia, and Mexico, there are already signals about Trump's policy toward those countries.

The new U.S. president has not commented directly on Central Asia yet, but a January 31 article in Foreign Policy magazine titled Central Asian Autocrats Welcome The Age Of Trump explored some of the possibilities of the ties between the United States and the five Central Asian states in the coming months.

It's a good topic, so RFE/RL organized a Majlis, or panel, to talk about what U.S. policy toward Central Asia under new President Donald Trump might look like and what the Central Asian states can realistically hope for from the new U.S. administration.

Moderating the discussion was RFE/RL Media Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir. Joining him at RFE/RL headquarters in Washington to take part in the discussion was a former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, and currently a senior fellow at the Rand Corporation, William Courtney. Also participating from Washington was the author of the above-mentioned article in Foreign Policy magazine, Reid Standish. Good topic, like I said, so I was happy to jump into the conversation also.

So what can we expect the Trump administration to be looking for in U.S. ties with Central Asia?

The Trump administration has not made any direct statements about Central Asia as yet. But Standish noted there were people in Trump's administration who know something about Central Asia. "[Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson, earlier he was the CEO of ExxonMobil, obviously from his background as an oilman knows what's happening in the region in terms of energy," he said.

And Standish noted, "James Mattis, secretary of defense, was the head of CENTCOM, so he obviously has some pretty acute knowledge of the security situation in the region."

It's clear the Trump administration has "an intense focus on fighting Islamic extremism," Standish explained.

The Central Asian governments have been saying for many years, with some reason, that they are threatened with Islamic extremism. One of the region's southern neighbors is Afghanistan and between 2001 and 2014, all five of the Central Asian countries made some contribution to the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan.

The situation in the northern Afghan provinces bordering Central Asia has been getting progressively worse during the last three years, with fighting moving at times to within easy earshot of people north of the Central Asian border.

Iran Sanctions

But if Trump's tough policy toward Islamic extremism might be a comfort to Central Asian governments, his views on Iran promise to complicate Central Asia's relations with its other southern neighbor.

"We saw...Mike Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, came out and said that Iran was being put on notice," Standish said, and, "General Mattis...is also quite hawkish on Iran."

The lifting of some international sanctions on Iran after Tehran's conclusion of a nuclear deal with major world powers offered the Central Asian states the possibility of a new trade route to the southwest. Heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran would complicate the realization of this opportunity.

Courtney said there were some important aspects of U.S. policy toward Central Asia that were not likely to change under the new administration.

"For the quarter-century since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West and the United States have strongly supported the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of all of the new republics of the former Soviet Union," Courtney explained.

That certainly should be important to the Central Asian governments considering they are surrounded by giant neighbors China, Russia, and Iran immediately, and Pakistan and India not much farther away.

Russia Up, China Down

However, the Trump administration's policies toward Central Asia's leading trade and security partners -- Russia and China -- are very different and this could prove problematic for Ashgabat, Astana, Bishkek, Dushanbe and Tashkent to navigate through.

As Courtney pointed out, "What we've seen so far in President Trump's desire to improve relations with Russia is a question whether he might be willing to lift or ease sanctions unilaterally on Russia with regard to its aggression in Ukraine. If that were the case," he added, "then that would have troubling implications for Central Asia."

There have been worries in Kazakhstan in particular that a Ukrainian scenario was possible in the north of the country, along the border with Russia, where there is an ethnic Russian majority.

Standish did not think any tensions between Washington and Beijing would complicate the foreign policies of Central Asia too much, saying that if it did "that's a sign that relations between Washington and Beijing elsewhere have gotten pretty bad."

One of the big questions is whether the Trump administration would be willing to focus on security issues in Central Asia at the expense of pressing governments there to improve their poor records of respecting basic human rights.

Standish suggested it was probable that "human rights concerns won't prevent a deal, to use Trump parlance, between Washington and the Central Asian countries."

Courtney said, "More respect for human rights is something that Central Asia really can and should do," and pointed out that Central Asian governments should not forget there will be some in the United States who would insist on Washington pushing the governments there to show greater respect for basic rights.

"To expect the Trump administration to go against the will of Congress and counter a number of NGOs who are in favor of human rights, political liberties, that's really not so realistic," he said.

What the Trump administration's policy toward Central Asia is might not be clear but it is clear Central Asia will not be forgotten by the new U.S. president and his team.

Courtney recalled: "The United States developed reasonable relations with Central Asia before 9/11. No one had any idea how important those relations with Central Asia would become after 9/11 and U.S. engagement in Afghanistan."

And Standish noted that Central Asia "is a very important and strategically vital part of the world where relations with China, relations with Russia, energy security, Islamic extremism, all sorts of things intersect here," so the region is unlikely to fall off the Trump administration's radar.

The panel discussed these and many other issues concerning the Trump administration and Central Asia. You can listen to the full discussion here:

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Majlis Podcast: Trump And Central Asia

by RFE/RL

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Listen to or download the Majlis podcast above or subscribe to Majlis on iTunes.