http://www.eurasianet.org/department...av063003.shtml
Quote:
On June 3, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published an advisory detailing the apparent torture death of Otamaza Gafarov, who had been due to be released in September after serving a seven-year prison term for stealing state property. According to the HRW advisory, Gafarov died May 3 – a day before the start of the EBRD gathering. "When they [Gafarov’s relatives] retrieved his bruised body, prison authorities told them that he died of a heart attack, although one guard told the family that Gafarov’s death ‘happened differently,’" the HRW advisory said.
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"Attempts by Uzbek authorities to explain away the mutilated bodies they return to grieving families as the victims of ’high blood pressure’ or other natural causes have failed to mask an unrelenting pattern of torture and abuse," Smith added.
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Subjects who withstand violence rarely go free to describe it. Mr. N. of Tashkent Province says the police threw him naked in the snow, and then dragged him across a floor. He endured the torture and refused to make a false confession. Nevertheless, he ended up being sentenced to a 14-year-prison term.
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Islam Karimov and Bush
I wonder, did he look into Karimov's eyes to determine his character before or after he agreed to give him 500 million dollars this year.
Rumsfeld and Islam Karimov.
Repeating history.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/...20031207a1.htm
Quote:
After a month in Uzbekistan I was able to make up my mind. Uzbekistan is potentially a reasonably rich country, with oil and gas, gold and other metals and extensive high-quality cotton production. The benefits of these resources are, however, restricted to just a few families that support the exploitative economic mechanism established and maintained by the president and his cronies.
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There is another difference between Georgia and Uzbekistan that makes revolution unlikely in the latter. This is that, while the United States is withdrawing its support for the Shevardnadze regime, reducing aid and putting pressure on him to allow fair elections, in Uzbekistan the U.S. is increasing its economic support for the regime and does not put any pressure on it to reduce its exploitation or to allow its people democratic freedoms. It makes no mention of fair elections.
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As long as the government is supported by the U.S., as many other brutal dictatorships have been supported, there is no prospect of such justified and disenfranchised dissent turning into a successful revolution.
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Until we get someone in office who won't support this, and will instead put pressure on Karimov,
we are complicit