Uzbekistan’s Karakalpak Separatists Urge World Bank to Reconsider Aid

Uzbekistan’s Karakalpak Separatists Urge World Bank to Reconsider Aid
June 3, 2014 - 3:17am, by Murat Sadykov


It has become standard for rights advocates to use Uzbekistan’s controversial policies – forced labor in the cotton fields and the hounding of independent religious groups, for example – to demand Uzbekistan’s international partners push for reform. But a separatist group from within Uzbekistan taking its campaign to the World Bank is something new.

On June 1, a little-known freedom movement in Uzbekistan’s resources-rich, but impoverished northwestern region of Karakalpakstan urged the president of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim, to postpone loans to the Uzbek government until Tashkent has taken "concrete steps to end the use of forced labor" in the cotton sector. Alga Karakalpakstan ("Forward Karakalpakstan&quot said the $411 million for water management improvement and horticulture projects in cotton-growing Karakalpakstan will encourage the government to continue abusing the minority’s rights.

"The government owns all the land of Uzbekistan and forces farmers to meet annual quotas for cotton, and sell it to the state at a low purchasing price—under the threat of losing land, criminal charges and physical violence," said the English-language letter to Kim, describing a widely documented practice. "Every autumn, the Uzbek government forcibly mobilized 16-17 year old students of colleges and universities, pensioners, education and health professionals, and other public sector workers to pick cotton."

Alga Karakalpakstan's letter – distributed by activists at the “Shyrak Information Center,” which appears to have been set up earlier this year – complains that Karakalpakstan is "under political and economic blockade" and is "held captive" by the Uzbek government which, it claims, will use the loans for "other purposes."

The letter also claimed over 2,000 minority Karakalpaks are languishing in Uzbek prisons for desiring "freedom and independence." That claim cannot be independently confirmed. Yet the letter also charged that Karakalpak women are forcibly sterilized by government doctors, a practice that has been documented throughout the country.

More:
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/68428

[center][/center]
US looks away as new ally tortures Islamists
Uzbekistan's president steps up repression of opponents
Nick Paton Walsh in Namangan
The Guardian, Sunday 25 May 2003 21.05 EDT

Abdulkhalil was arrested in the fields of Uzbekistan's Ferghana valley in August last year. The 28-year-old farmer was sentenced to 16 years in prison for "trying to overthrow the constitutional structures".
Last week his father saw him for the first time since that day on a stretcher in a prison hospital. His head was battered and his tongue was so swollen that he could only say that he had "been kept in water for a long time".

Abdulkhalil was a victim of Uzbekistan's security service, the SNB. His detention and torture were part of a crackdown on Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an Islamist group.

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (£300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services - which the state department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique" received $79m of this sum.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/26/nickpatonwalsh