Sadriddin Ashur is a correspondent in RFE/RL's Uzbek Service.
Dozens of mothers and widows in Uzbekistan were offered lump sums of cash as part of a housing scheme for low-income women. But some officials allegedly tried to profit by selling their old homes to the women who received the payment or denying them the money altogether.
Businesspeople in Uzbekistan warn that they'll struggle to fulfill President Shavkat Mirziyoev's demand to create jobs for young people as part of an ambitious plan to tackle widespread unemployment.
Reforms in Uzbekistan that force farmers to work through "clusters" is a new form of "hidden privatization" -- a scheme used during the 1990s by corrupt officials and their private-sector cronies in Eastern Europe to plunder assets.
An Uzbek woman says she was "permanently scarred" by a humiliating strip search, and could do without all the public attention her videotaped ordeal attracted.
Uzbek authorities have ordered that the homes of some 2,000 people in central Andijon be demolished to make way for new apartment blocks, with those evicted saying the tiny houses they've been promised are insufficient compensation. It's a scenario that has been repeated across Uzbekistan since a 2013 government decree.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has accused his country's powerful security service of committing atrocities that exceeded those of Stalin's Great Terror.
Uzbek schoolchildren don't have to pick cotton anymore, but they still have to meet collection quotas for metal, paper, and other recyclables needed by the state.
Uzbekistan's reliance on manual labor to power its billion-dollar cotton industry is well-documented. But there is another player in the Uzbek textile industry that is equally demanding -- and it has a voracious appetite.
Uzbek comedian Obid Asomov is a household name in the former Soviet states due to his role in the popular Russian satirical serial "Krivoe Zerkalo" (Distorted Mirror). But the comedian is essentially blacklisted in his native Uzbekistan. Asomov says he has an idea why.
