Boiled Alive - US Allies share America's committment to human rights

Muzafar Avazov's teeth were smashed and his fingernails ripped out by the time he died -- but the head of the Uzbek jail where he was killed says the prison is like a health farm. "Prisoners live in comfort, eat scrumptious food and play soccer. All is great," said Colonel Alikhaidar Kolumbetov, sitting in a throne-like black and gold armchair....

But Avazov's mother, who lives in a leafy area of the capital Tashkent 1,000 km (620 miles) away, does not believe him.

"Look what they did to my son in Jaslik. They tortured him in the basement and boiled him in hot water," said 61-year-old Fatima Mukadyrova, tears in her eyes, displaying photographs of a mutilated body with severe burns, cuts and bruises. The pictures clearly showed that the 36-year-old Avazov had no nails on his hands and feet and nearly all of his teeth had been broken...Uzbekistan enjoys warm ties with Washington...

"Are you from Reuters? Britain? Then tell Blair and Bush that when we build our Islamic state we will hold them accountable for Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, and for their support of the killing of Muslims in Chechnya and Uzbekistan," said Akram Ikromov, a 29-year-old sentenced to 18 years...

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=411840§ion=news

Our double standards (ie with our attitude to Iraq) are breathtaking.

Amongst them George Galloway & George Monbiot, whose article on the matter I am posting here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1072313,00.html

So what of Tony Blair, the man who claims that human rights are so important that they justify going to war? Well, at the beginning of this year, he granted Uzbekistan an open licence to import whatever weapons from the United Kingdom Mr Karimov fancies. But his support goes far beyond that. The British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has repeatedly criticised Karimov's crushing of democracy movements and his use of torture to silence his opponents. Like Roger Casement, the foreign office envoy who exposed the atrocities in the Congo a century ago, Murray has been sending home dossiers which could scarcely fail to move anyone who cares about human rights.

Blair has been moved all right: moved to do everything he could to silence our ambassador. Mr Murray has been threatened with the sack, investigated for a series of plainly trumped-up charges and persecuted so relentlessly by his superiors that he had to spend some time, like many of Karimov's critics, in a psychiatric ward, though in this case for sound clinical reasons. This pressure, according to a senior government source, was partly "exercised on the orders of No 10".

In April, Blair told us that he had decided that "to leave Iraq in its brutalised state under Saddam was wrong". How much credibility does this statement now command, when the same man believes that to help Uzbekistan remain in its brutalised state is right?

After all, Saddam had to go because he was such a bad guy...

Why aren't American media outlets running this story? Rhetorical question I suppose!
Hi DF where have you been? You always posted the most worthy stories that we should be fighting to have heard! Thank You!

so you'll have them ready when they find it expedient to play the "boiled his own people" gambit.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov and friends







From Amnesty International's 2000 report on Uzbekistan:

"The five members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir were reportedly tortured in order to force them to 'confess'. The methods included near-suffocation with a plastic bag, being hung upside down, having needles stuck under finger- and toe-nails, having their hands and feet burned and having electric shocks administered via a device fitted to the head ('electric cap')."
http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2000web.nsf/countries/c08e32af31b6d49e802568f200552981?OpenDocument

From The Guardian, "US Looks Away as New Ally Tortures Islamists", May 26, 2003:

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.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,963497,00.html

Doing your jobs will impede your lazily careerist progress.

Afterall they're trying their best to desensitize the American public to torture, by giving it play on shows like 24 & Threat Matrix. We can only guess what's going on at Gitmo, and what about the Canadian whom was flown overseas for torture.