for those in tier 3............which now includes Uzbekistan.
From last year :
What US can't accept in Belarus, it supports in Uzbekistan.
Last week, President Obama signed into law a bill that expands sanctions against Belarus, whose authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko continues to imprison his opponents and critics. Lukashenko unleashed the latest crackdown hours after the flawed December 2010 presidential vote, which declared him winner of a fourth term. Repression in Belarus is ongoing. Last week, authorities further tightened their grip on the media by restricting access to blacklisted websites. On Monday, a district court in Minsk jailed an independent reporter for filming a one-man protest vigil in front of the KGB headquarters.
The Belarus Democracy and Human Rights Act of 2011, which Obama signed into law a week ago after its passage through Congress, updates legislation from 2004 and 2006. Its aim is to compel Lukashenko, also known as the last European dictator, to release his jailed opponents and stop repressing the media. Among others provisions, the law expands a ban on issuing U.S. visas to Belarusian officials involved into the crackdown. It requires the U.S. administration to monitor Internet censorship in Belarus, and inform the Congress of any arms sales to the regime.
But whereas the European dictator and his officials are not welcome in the U.S., his Uzbek counterpart, President Islam Karimov, has received stunningly cordial treatment from the Obama administration. A former Communist party leader, Karimov has ruled nonstop, with the help of referendums and rigged elections, since 1989. He personally oversaw the May 2005 massacre in the city of Andijan, and his regime virtually annihilated the independent press after it spread the word about those brutalities.
With five reporters imprisoned because of their work, Uzbekistan is the leading jailer of journalists in Eurasia. Until November, the president's own nephew, journalist Dzhamshid Karimov, was among those locked up. He had languished at a psychiatric facility since September 2006, when authorities abducted him from the street and forcibly hospitalized him without any medical diagnosis or court order.
http://www.cpj.org/blog/2012/01/what-us-cant-accept-in-belarus-it-supports-in-uzbe.php
Was ok when it was a supply route to Afghanistan.
= new reply since forum marked as read
