----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2000 6:15 AM Subject: [STOPNATO] Western press begins attacking Uzbeks... STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM Published: Tuesday, July 4, 2000 Repression battles zealotry Under the weight of a police-state regime in Uzbekistan, Islam has become the only outlet for the opposition to the government, turning ``civilians who have never been interested in politics into extremists.'' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- RICHARD C. PADDOCK LOS ANGELES TIMES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN Bahodyr Abdullayev, a devout Muslim, was arrested here in February after police found six bullets stuffed in a hole in the wall of his home. Relatives say the police had no problem finding the bullets because the officers themselves put them there -- borrowing a screwdriver from Abdullayev's son to make the hole. Abdullayev was tortured in jail until he falsely confessed to belonging to a banned Islamic party, family members say. In May, after a brief trial, he and 13 other defendants were found guilty of anti-government crimes. Abdullayev, a 40-year-old engineer, was sentenced on the spot to 19 years in prison. ``They told us it was going to be an open and fair trial, but nothing like that happened,'' said his wife, Mamura, weeping outside the courtroom. In the name of fighting Islamic terrorism, this former Soviet republic carved out of the plains and deserts of Central Asia has imprisoned at least 5,000 people, Uzbek human-rights advocates say. Dozens of prisoners arrested for their political or religious beliefs have been executed, and more than a dozen more have been tortured to death, activists say. Uzbekistan -- a landlocked nation roughly the size of California -- has emerged as one of the most authoritarian and brutal of the 15 countries that gained independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. President Islam Karimov has rolled back even the modest democratic gains achieved in the late 1980s under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Few dare to criticize Karimov, who was also Uzbekistan's top official during Soviet times. Indeed, ``offending the honor and dignity of the president'' is a criminal offense. Human-rights activists liken the current wave of repression to the Stalinist purges. All opposition parties have been banned. The government controls the country's television, radio and press and can monitor all Internet traffic. The secret police tap telephones, trail suspected dissidents, falsify evidence and conduct searches with impunity, critics said. Judges, who are appointed directly by the president, rubber-stamp the findings of prosecutors and hand out long prison sentences. In keeping with the tradition of the Soviet gulag, a harsh new prison has been built in the remote desert of northwestern Uzbekistan to house the flood of political prisoners. The high-security penitentiary, located on a military base in the closed city of Zhaslyk, has become known as ``the place from which no one returns.'' ``You can be arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or for being related to the wrong person,'' said Acacia Shields, a representative in Tashkent of New York-based Human Rights Watch. ``If you display suspicious signs of piety, that is enough to get you arrested. Wearing a beard is enough.'' During an April visit to Central Asia, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright personally appealed to Karimov to release leading human-rights activists and allow representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit prisons. So far, he has not acted on her requests. Karimov, Uzbekistan's first and only president, contends that tough action is needed to combat Islamic extremists who threaten the stability of the region. ``Such people must be shot in the head,'' he told parliament in 1998. ``If necessary, I'll shoot them myself.'' According to critics at home and officials in Washington, such ruthlessness is only fueling religious zealotry and foes of Karimov's regime. Certainly, Uzbekistan sits at the center of a volatile region. On its southern border, the extremist Islamic Taliban has seized power in much of Afghanistan. In neighboring Tajikistan, Muslim rebels waged a costly civil war with the government during much of the 1990s. In Kyrgyzstan, another neighboring country, Muslim militants seized civilian hostages and fought government troops near the Uzbek border last year. Both Russia and the United States fear that the extremists' goal is to form an Islamic state extending from the Caucasus to China and encompassing much of what was once the southern territory of the Soviet Union. ``It is common knowledge that attempts are under way to carve up post-Soviet lands along criminal lines with the aid of religious extremism and international terrorism,'' Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a visit to Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, in May. After Karimov won the presidential election in 1991 -- a victory he aided by barring his strongest opponent from running -- the Uzbekistan leader quickly put a stop to the flowering of democracy, banning opposition parties and locking up his critics. To build a national identity for the fledgling country, Karimov also created his own personality cult. Today, a smiling Karimov surrounded by adoring supporters beams out at the public from billboards across the country. Signs posted in prominent places bear the sayings of Karimov, such as ``Uzbekistan is a state with a great future.'' Karimov -- who had already extended his initial five-year term by three years -- was re-elected in January, winning more than 91 percent of the vote in balloting condemned by international observers as undemocratic. With the demise of communism, it had become legal to practice religion in Uzbekistan for the first time in 70 years, and Islam rapidly regained popularity in this traditionally Muslim region. Officials say more than 85 percent of the population adheres to one form of Islam or another. The result was that, with democratic parties and free speech banned, Islam became the only outlet for opposition to the government. Islamic extremists found growing support for their dream of a Muslim state. In 1998, the government, alarmed by the trend, adopted a measure restricting religion. In February 1999, six car bombs rocked Tashkent, killing 16 people and damaging the main federal building. Karimov denounced the blasts as an attempt to assassinate him and pledged to stamp out the ``dark forces'' behind the explosions. The president initiated a crackdown that continues today. Some human-rights activists estimate that tens of thousands of Uzbeks have been imprisoned. Rights activists and U.S. officials say the evidence is clear that the repression in Uzbekistan is backfiring. ``Indiscriminate government censorship and repression can cause moderate and peaceful opponents of a regime to resort to violence,'' Albright said in Tashkent. ``It can turn civilians who have never been interested in politics into extremists.'' ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb
