01-12-2004, 11:56 AM
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#18 (permalink)
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This vexes me. I am terribly vexed.
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Because this needs to stay in front of everyones minds come November.
Torture increasing in Uzbekistan
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Tashkent, 6 January 2004 (RFE/RL)
-- An Uzbek rights activist today said that state-sponsored torture is increasing in Uzbekistan.
Talib Yakubov, who heads the Uzbek Human Rights Society, says that torture is widely used by police and in prisons. He said, "Torture is a now a part of the nation's political policy," and blamed Uzbek President Islam Karimov for what he described as Uzbekistan's "torture structure."
International rights groups have consistently charged that torture is widely used by authorities in Uzbekistan.
The United Nations' special rapporteur on torture issued a report in April 2002 after visiting Uzbekistan, charging that abuse of prisoners in the republic was "systematic."
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US keeps Military programs in Uzbekistan.
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January 11, 2004
WASHINGTON - The United States is continuing to its military relationship with Uzbekistan, including paying to disable nuclear weapons from the old Soviet arsenal, under President Bush's waiver of rules that required improvements in the country's human rights record.
Both the finding that Uzbek President Islam Karimov's government failed last year to meet rights criteria of the Nunn-Lugar disarmament program, and Bush's waiver on national security grounds, were effective Dec. 31, State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said Sunday.
Nunn-Lugar, named for its authors - Sam Nunn, a former senator from Georgia, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind. - established a program in 1991 to work toward elimination of strategic nuclear weapons. The program has destroyed thousands of warheads and launchers.
To receive money under the law, U.S. partners in the program must satisfy human rights requirements unless the president says the national interest takes precedence.
Fintor said an assistant secretary of state, Beth Jones, called in Uzbekistan's ambassador, informed him of the two decisions "and emphasized the need for stepped-up efforts by Uzbekistan to improve the human rights situation. The United States will continue to work with Uzbekistan toward this goal."
The State Department's last report on Uzbekistan's human rights record was released in March. It criticized Karimov's government for its suppression of democracy and serious abuses of Uzbeks' rights
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Support Bush, you support this.
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