Countries at the Crossroads 2004 - Uzbekistan

(Scores are based on a scale of 0 to 7, with 0 representing weakest and 7 representing strongest performance.)

Executive Summary

Author

Adam Albion is Central Asia Analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state in which civil liberties are sharply curtailed, rule of law is applied in a discriminatory manner, corruption is widespread and the operations of government are nontransparent, while public voice is stifled by extensive media censorship and a political machine designed to concentrate power in the president's office. The country has experienced little reform since obtaining independence in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. Slight signs of progress showed in some decisions taken in the last two years, such as the prosecution of a handful of police officers and security agents for murder and torture of detainees, the registration of two nongovernmental human rights organizations, the official abolition of media censorship, and the introduction of currency convertibility. Yet the small number of sporadic improvements must be viewed against an essentially unchanged backdrop of repression and a monolithic unwillingness to make meaningful democratic reforms.

Uzbekistan has barely responded to either incentives or pressure to reform from the international community following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which led to its establishing a strategic alliance with the United States and consequently gaining a much higher profile in global affairs. The last two years have actually witnessed a deterioration in political conditions within Uzbekistan, evidenced in a renewed crackdown on journalists and human rights defenders, harassment of democratic opposition political parties, more mass arrests of Muslim believers, and fresh reports of deaths by torture of political prisoners.

Uzbekistan, a de facto one-party state, is characterized by a presidential regime that brooks no dissent and has outlawed opposition, although there are hints that some powers may be ceded to the legislature after 2004. The judiciary exercises very limited independence and functions essentially as an arm of the executive. Censorship of the media and free speech, although abolished on paper, is enforced informally yet ruthlessly, and self-censorship is now routine for editors and publishers. Emergence of an active civil society has been largely suppressed in the interests of maintaining the regime's grip on all aspects of political life, although a small number of active and courageous nongovernmental organizations have come into being, focusing on citizens' rights.

Civil Liberties – 2.31

While the national law prohibits torture, its use by Uzbek security forces – involving prolonged beatings, suffocation, and other methods – has been widely documented by international watchdog groups, both as an instrument to force confessions or incriminating information from prisoners in pretrial custody and as a form of punishment arbitrarily administered in jails. An April 2003 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, who visited Uzbekistan in December 2002, concluded that the use of torture was "systematic."¹ While Prime Minister Utkir Sultanov publicly acknowledged the possible existence of sporadic abuses, the government has disputed the broad sweep of van Boven's findings. President Islam Karimov drew international criticism when he broke a promise to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) by failing to condemn (or mention) torture in Uzbekistan in his televised speech at the bank's board of governors meeting in Tashkent in May 2003. Judges routinely dismiss claims by defendants that evidence against them was obtained by torture. Deaths in police custody are regularly explained as suicides or heart attacks, contradictory physical evidence on the corpses notwithstanding, and are very rarely investigated by the authorities.² In 2002, seven police and national security service (formerly the KGB) officers were given prison sentences ranging between 7 and 20 years for killing two suspected members of the banned extremist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Party of Islamic Liberation) while in custody, but no officers before or since in Uzbekistan have been held criminally liable for the deaths of detainees in their charge.

According to Uzbek law, individuals may be detained for a maximum of six days before charges are filed. Police may arrest an individual only after he has been charged and only with a prosecutor's order. A court date must be set within 15 days thereafter. Defendants have the right to a lawyer when they are arrested. In practice, however, arbitrary detentions and arrests without warrants are common, and suspects are often held without charge for longer than the law mandates, especially when an issue of national security is perceived to be at stake.³ Access to counsel is often denied. Moreover, many defendants have been tried for crimes different from those for which they were arrested. Of the approximately 7,000 known arrests between 1999 and 2001 on suspicion of Islamic extremism or terrorism, at least 4,200 also involved charges for other crimes, such as narcotics and weapons possession.⁴ However, the last two years have seen a much closer match in the majority of cases between the reasons for arrest and the charges filed.

Although the law forbids discrimination on the basis of gender, Uzbekistan's traditional social, cultural, and religious norms tend to conflict with legal presumptions of equal civil and political rights or equality of economic and educational opportunity. This is especially true in rural areas, where women commonly are discouraged from going on to higher education, marry young, and are expected to focus on the household. Declining incomes together with the rising cost of education have also worked against women as most families, when forced to choose, preferentially devote resources to boys over girls. While 2002 was declared "The Year of Women" in Uzbekistan, the attendant publicity primarily celebrated women's nurturing family role; the government did not acknowledge shortcomings in the position of women or offer practical relief. Domestic abuse is regarded as a private affair by the police, who almost never intervene, while women are socially pressured not to report abuse and create scandals. There has been no official reaction to an alleged rise in suicides, often by public self-immolation, by anguished wives.⁵ Patriarchal voting, whereby the male head of a household casts ballots for the whole family, is relatively common outside the towns. At the same time, the government has made an effort to improve the status of women with the appointment of a female deputy prime minister at the cabinet level specifically mandated to further women's role in society. No official or legal impediments prevent women from entering the workplace. Women are reasonably well represented in the judicial system, comprising 21 percent of all judges in 2002.⁶ Many urban women have also entered the small business sector, stimulated in part by the proliferating number of foreign-sponsored training programs for female entrepreneurs. Trafficking in women, however, generally for the purposes of prostitution, is a growing problem: the U.S. State Department has listed Uzbekistan as a "Tier 3" country, meaning that it is "not making significant efforts" to comply with the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.⁷

Freedom of association and peaceful assembly are constitutionally guaranteed in Uzbekistan, but with the catch-all proviso that the state may stop meetings from occurring on security grounds. Permission to hold demonstrations critical of the government has consistently been denied, and unsanctioned rallies are broken up by police.⁸ Nevertheless, public protests, traditionally rare in Uzbekistan, were observed to be increasing in 2003, notably in Tashkent by female relatives of men imprisoned for religious extremism. Security services, while undoubtedly rough and occasionally brutal, have usually not used excessive force against such gatherings, although they have removed protesters quickly in buses and reportedly threatened or exerted psychological pressure against detainees for many hours afterward at police stations.⁹

In the countryside many farmers find themselves compelled to join collective agricultural associations and sometimes contribute membership fees in order to sell their produce to the state, which is often the sole available or licit buyer. As a rule, however, the authorities are less concerned about forcing citizens to join pro-state associations than about hindering them from joining nongovernmental organizations, which are regarded with suspicion as being automatically antigovernment. (This observation applies to genuinely independent NGOs rather than the large number of so-called NGOs in Uzbekistan that in reality were established and are controlled by the state.) NGOs with a political character are regarded by the authorities with particular suspicion, and to date only two local NGOs dealing with civil and political rights have been granted registration: the Independent Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan and Ezgulik (Good Deed). After years of unsuccessful efforts, the former gained registration only in March 2002 on the eve of Karimov's state visit to Washington, and the latter in March 2003 before the EBRD meeting in Tashkent. Despite their legal standing both have complained of continuing harassment by the authorities.

The process of registering an NGO is clogged with red tape, and licenses can be revoked with little or no notice. NGOs that fall into official disfavor are also subject to complex financial audits that can turn up real or alleged breaches of tax law, providing justification to shut them down. There are trade unions in Uzbekistan, but their purpose is not to defend workers' rights, negotiate salaries, or otherwise represent their members' best interests. Rather, they exist primarily to organize workers more effectively for the benefit of the state as part of a hierarchical system of control.

Uzbekistan is estimated to be 88 percent Sunni Muslim and 9 percent Eastern Orthodox.¹⁰ It is a secular state where the practice of Islam is rigorously monitored and controlled. All mosques must be registered; non-registered prayer-leaders and congregations are severely harassed. The Spiritual Directorate for Muslims, a government-controlled institution, dictates the content of preachers' sermons and the substance of licit religious materials, which are carefully censored. Zealous displays of Muslim faith are frequently taken by the authorities as evidence of Islamic extremism, which is assumed in turn to harbor a radical political agenda. Thus, repressing non-state-sponsored forms of Islam has been translated into an issue of national security, with believers regularly jailed on charges of seeking to undermine the constitutional order of Uzbekistan. The regime's struggle against its perceived Muslim enemies became urgent after a series of car bombs exploded in Tashkent February 1999 – which the government blamed on Islamic extremists – and intensified further in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

Much of the pressure against Islamic groups is linked to the widespread presence in Uzbekistan of the extreme Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir, which apparently advocates the nonviolent overthrow of secular regimes in the Muslim world and their replacement by an Islamic state. Approximately 6,000 religious and Islamist prisoners are currently thought to be in Uzbekistan.¹¹ Some Christian groups, such as Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses, have also been denied registration or harassed by the authorities (notably on grounds of proselytizing, which is prohibited by law), but overall they have not suffered the same ruthless and systematic crackdown as non-approved Muslim groups.

Uzbekistan is a multiethnic state of 25.98 million¹² that has been strongly committed to national consolidation since gaining independence. While discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity is prohibited by law, a widespread perception that the best positions in government bodies and state enterprises are reserved for Uzbeks (who make up some 80 percent of the population) has generated tensions. Some of the remaining ethnic Russians have been particularly vocal about the "glass ceiling" phenomenon, and hundreds of thousands have emigrated to Russia and elsewhere since 1991. Meanwhile, many ethnic Tajiks are believed to have sought to improve their job opportunities and general standing in the state by officially registering themselves as Uzbeks, casting doubt on statistics that continue to show them at merely 5 percent of the population.¹³ There are large ethnic Tajik populations in the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara; both are "closely monitored for potential separatism."¹⁴

Recommendations

President Karimov should renew his country's commitment to outlawing torture by publicly condemning its use, backed up with vigorous efforts to try in open court and punish offenders among the police and security services. At the same time, the regime must stop the undiscriminating arrests and harassment of Muslim believers on the blanket principle that expression of faith is equivalent to opposition to Karimov's rule. While Uzbekistan's government may be acting within its rights when it outlaws movements that advocate violence and bans the dissemination of materials that preach ethnic or religious hatred, it should confine imprisonment and criminal prosecution to individuals guilty of plotting or inciting acts of violence. Such measures would go far to demonstrate to both domestic audiences and the international community that Uzbekistan is serious about improving its very poor civil rights record. Citizens' rights to freedom of assembly and peaceful protest must be respected, and the police, who have been given a virtually free hand to break up any gathering at will, must be reined in. More attention should be paid to the social needs of women, and a crackdown on trafficking in women is long overdue.

Rule of Law – 1.93

Uzbekistan's judicial system, which is funded from the state budget, consists of a Constitutional Court, a series of civil and criminal courts of general jurisdiction with a Supreme Court at the apex, and a Higher Economic Court to settle commercial disputes. The nation's high court judges are nominated by the president, whose choices in theory are subject to vetting and veto by the parliament but in practice have always been approved. Until 2001, lower court judges were also appointed by the president from candidates selected by the ministry of justice. In 2001 a more complicated procedure was instituted, with ultimate responsibility in the hands of a Supreme Qualification Commission whose 17 members are appointed by the president. Although the new procedure represents an improvement over the old, judges are still "essentially handpicked by the presidential administration."¹⁵

The outcome is a highly compromised, non-independent judiciary that shows all signs, especially in politically sensitive cases, of acting as an extension of the government to the point of taking orders from the executive branch. Judges regularly accept the arguments of state prosecutors, resulting in an extremely high rate of convictions. This is particularly true in cases against individuals accused of Islamic extremism. Standards of evidence rarely conform to international norms and many sentences have been handed down on the basis of confessions that defendants have said were extracted by torture, or testimony that witnesses have admitted was made under police pressure. The most notorious example in 2003 was the case of journalist and human rights defender Ruslan Sharipov, who in August was found guilty of being a practicing homosexual and allegedly having sexual relations with minors, charges to which he confessed reportedly under duress.¹⁶

The fact of executive de facto control or at least oversight over the justice system does ensure that judicial decisions are routinely enforced by the executive branch and complied with by governmental authorities. On the other hand, it means that ruling-party actors are not held accountable or prosecuted for the abuse of power or other wrongdoing.

There are approximately 1,000 judges in Uzbekistan's judicial system.¹⁷ Judges generally have adequate legal training before assuming the bench, being required to have graduated from a law school and practiced for at least three years as a lawyer. Their competence and impartiality is often severely impaired, however, by political pressure from above and the culture of corruption that is endemic to Uzbekistan's judicial system. Judges' salaries are very low, with a lower-court judge typically receiving the equivalent of $20 to $30 per month.¹⁸ The practice of offering and accepting bribes in exchange for judicial leniency, except for political cases in which the government has an interest, is reportedly quite widespread.¹⁹ The promise of such financial advantages from working within the judicial system is probably reflected in the large bribes currently required to gain admission to law faculties at Uzbek universities. This practice may be expected to depress the quality of graduates and consequently of the legal profession as a whole.

Defendants have the right to hire counsel, but judges have been known to deny the accused their choice of lawyer.²⁰ Meanwhile, the state is obliged to furnish defendants with an attorney free of charge when it is beyond their means. However, the defense lawyers provided are often ineffective and submissive to prosecutors, reinforcing perceptions that guilty verdicts are frequently predetermined or inevitable. Justice can be swift in Uzbekistan to the point of appearing peremptory. High-profile trials, such as those of accused Islamic extremists, are regularly announced only a day or two before they commence. Proceedings are not described in local media, which often report the existence of the trial after the verdict is given. International observers, family members of the accused, and members of the public are usually permitted to attend, although on occasion the authorities have appeared to try to limit numbers by holding trials in unreasonably small courtrooms or dissuading observers by obliging them to sign their names at the door.

Uzbekistan's security organs and military are under civilian state control insofar as they are fully subordinated to the president personally and the civilian power represented by the executive. There is no effective civilian supervision of internal security forces or military on the part of the legislature or judiciary, however. On the contrary, the nature of the regime has meant that the police and national security service (MXX, former KGB) continue, as under the USSR, to be instruments of dominance by the executive over the society in general, including other branches of the state apparatus.

Uzbekistan's laws on property rights do not offer full protection to property owners. Moreover, they are ambiguously worded in ways that blur distinctions between property, rent, and usufruct. The law does not permit ownership of land but merely provides for long-term lease. Even so, according to Uzbek law and practice a farmer leasing a field does not possess full rights to its produce as his property, as the government partially dictates what he may plant. Furthermore it obliges him to sell a large proportion of his crop to the state at low fixed prices. Privatization has been hindered by similar reluctance on the state's part to cede full property rights to individuals. For example, the state property committee may issue shares of a state enterprise and sell off a majority stake to a private buyer. Yet the government, even as minority shareholder, retains the right to continue issuing shares. Thus the nominal owner may find his percentage holding diluted from majority to minority at any time, meaning the effective dispossession of his property.

Recommendations

The emergence of an independent judiciary in Uzbekistan will require a new system of appointing judges in which they are not chosen by, and therefore beholden to, the executive branch. Furthermore, interference in the outcome of cases for politically motivated reasons must cease, as must judges' practice of deferring to state prosecutors, who are excessively powerful in the Uzbek legal system. By the same token, the zeal and effectiveness of defense lawyers on their clients' behalf must be strengthened by a mixture of better professional training and stimuli such as the threat of censure or disbarment for clearly throwing a case. Standards of evidence should similarly be raised, and the legal code must be amended to disallow incriminating testimony or confessions extracted, with a high degree of probability, under torture. Many more trials must be made open to the public to let Uzbek citizens observe the operation of justice in their country. The government should act to reduce temptations to accept bribes by raising salaries in the judiciary.

Anticorruption and Transparency – 1.31

Economic activity is tightly controlled by the state in Uzbekistan, and since the Soviet collapse the introduction of market reforms has been slow and piecemeal. The existing distortions have proven to be a major brake on national economic development overall while being beneficial to cliques with the power to divert or monopolize resources. The local currency was not made freely convertible until October 2003, allowing the government to strictly ration hard currency, which it had provided only to favored firms on an application basis. This system of allocating foreign reserves both was nontransparent and institutionalized corruption, as it greatly advantaged those businesspeople with access to hard currency and the government contacts that could supply it. Meanwhile, an extensive and shady network of interests links state officials, their relatives, and their associates to key economic assets in the country. Some senior politicians have considerable business interests, particularly in the cotton sector.²¹

Public offices, which can offer their holders lucrative sources of personal gain and patronage, are bought and sold. By one estimate, to become a district head requires a bribe of $100,000; to become a regional head costs half a million dollars.²² Within the civil service, official corruption is rampant and a source of popular discontent. Nepotism is rife. Aside from the normal operation of greed, bribe-taking has pervaded state bodies in large part because it has been rationalized (at least by bureaucrats themselves) as a necessary supplement to their inadequate salaries as well as remuneration for the price often required to secure the post in the first place. The same is true for traffic police, customs officials, air-ticket salespeople, university entrance registrars, and many other categories of state employees. The practice of bribing university professors and even high school teachers for good grades is common; in many institutions it is practically mandatory. Much red tape is involved in operations such as getting a license for a company, registering at a new place of residence, or transporting goods across a border, with bureaucrats reportedly resisting some of the limited efforts the state has made to simplify procedures or sometimes professing not to know about new provisions of law. Tangled regulations and requirements maintain opportunities for graft and corruption within Uzbekistan's civil service.

No adequate procedures allow for public oversight of officials, such as requiring them to declare assets or make other financial disclosures. Laws regulating conflict of interest are similarly underdeveloped, and in any case close connections between business and government regulators makes prosecutions unlikely. The parliament has an auditing commission, but no cases have come to light in which its operation led to high officials' being punished for financial abuses. The processes by which government budgets are drawn up and expenditures approved are also obscure and conducted with little or no input from the public. One partial exception is the mahalla committees, or local councils, which are quasi-governmental organizations where resident elders theoretically solicit the neighborhood's (mahalla's) views on the best use of the committee's funds.

Citizens possess limited legal rights to obtain information about the workings of their government, and these rights are further reduced by provisos against revealing state secrets. Anecdotal evidence suggests that bureaucrats regularly rebuff requests for information by implying it is secret or simply refusing to comply, while citizens have little way to petition further other than by dropping a letter in the complaints box. The process by which government contracts are awarded is wholly nontransparent, but kickbacks from telecommunications and building contracts (which have been awarded preponderantly to selected Turkish firms) are believed to have benefited the president and his family members personally. The government's record on administering foreign assistance, especially in the military-technical sphere, has been better, due in large part to more stringent oversight and reporting requirements by Western donors coupled with the government's eagerness to demonstrate competence and encourage more aid. Its record has been less good in the sphere of humanitarian and medical assistance, much of which has been targeted to the regions outside Tashkent where it is more subject to pilfering by the local authorities.

Uzbekistan ranked 100th out of 133 countries in Transparency International's 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index, with a score of 2.4 on a scale from 10 ("highly clean") to 0 ("highly corrupt").²³ The state has demonstrated some awareness of the need to address the pervasive inroads corruption has made into Uzbek society and government. Corruption probes were launched in 2000 and 2002 with substantial local publicity. A hotline was set up for whistle-blowers to expose violations of the customs regime. However, the probes led mainly to prosecutions of businesspeople and relatively low-level, provincial officials. Nobody within or close to the inner circles of power was touched directly, to judge by information made available in Uzbek media.

Recommendations

Law enforcement needs to be tougher to make inroads against graft, and enforcement should be applied more consistently against members of the bureaucracy and higher echelons of power. Moreover, red tape must be cut and the complicated registration procedures required to perform many everyday functions in Uzbekistan must be either simplified or abolished to eliminate many of the current opportunities for bribe-taking. The government should be cleaner and more transparent as an example to the rest of society, and for a regime that regularly pledges to operate in a more open and democratic manner it is imperative that it make the process of government budgeting and expenditure more accessible to the public. Ultimately, hopes for a less corrupt society in the future depend on educating the younger generation to embrace a spirit of civic honesty. The government should therefore target as a priority the corruption rampant in schools and universities, where young people currently encounter a wealth of negative role models.

Accountability and Public Voice – 1.35

Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state that severely curtails popular participation in the political process, expression of views in opposition to the government, and freedom of the media. Although the constitution enshrines fundamental civil rights and the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches under a presidential system, in practice power is concentrated in the president's office. President Karimov, who was first secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan when the country became independent, won a five-year term as president in a competitive but nevertheless flawed election in December 1991. The constitution, adopted in 1992, limited the president to two consecutive terms in office. Karimov's first term was extended to 2000 by means of a rigged referendum in 1995. In 2000 he won a second term in an election that was neither free nor fair, and subsequently he extended his tenure to December 2007 in a rigged referendum in January 2002. The referendum simultaneously lengthened the Uzbek president's term from five to seven years. In fact, Karimov's second term will be closer to eight years, and by the end of it he will have served as Uzbekistan's head of state for 16 years.

The prime minister and cabinet are essentially powerless, dedicated to implementing the executive's instructions. The unicameral parliament (Oliy Majlis, or Supreme Council) is largely a rubber-stamp, non-standing body that currently convenes twice a year for a few days to read and approve legislation, practically all of which is initiated by the executive. However, the same January 2002 referendum that extended Karimov's presidential terms simultaneously approved a proposal, submitted by the executive branch, to reform the parliament into a bicameral, permanent body consisting of a lower house of popularly elected deputies and a Senate (upper house) comprising a mixture of local council members and presidential nominees. The changes, due to take place following parliamentary elections scheduled for December 2004, have been described by Karimov as a measure to professionalize the legislature.

Under the current operation of the Oliy Majlis, pending legislation, as well as the agenda of bills to be passed, is usually announced in the press not more than one month before the biannual legislative session opens. Occasionally draft bills are printed in newspapers, ostensibly to stimulate public debate, although evidence is scant that public feedback has influenced the legislative or policy process. Sometimes the state-controlled television stages roundtables of commentators, or employees at state-run enterprises are convened at highly structured gatherings to talk about draft bills or newly promulgated presidential decrees. Criticism, however, is not allowed and the sessions are devoted to explaining and justifying the government's point of view.

Although multiple political parties exist in Uzbekistan and are represented in the legislature, they have all been established by the government itself, overtly support the president, and play no real role in the political life of the country. This is even true of Uzbekistan's dominant party, the People's Democratic Party (HDP), which is the direct successor to the Communist Party and was Karimov's political vehicle until 1996, when he formally withdrew from party participation on the grounds that the president should be above partisan politics. The parties are not true competitors for power, which is firmly centered in the executive, and their primary purpose is to serve as democratic window dressing: for example, Karimov's nominal opponent in the 2000 presidential election, HDP leader Abdulhafiz Jalolov, stated publicly that he voted for Karimov.²⁴ Genuine opposition parties have been banned. The government regards Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamist group operating clandestinely in Uzbekistan and other countries, as the most dangerous. In line with its stated aim to overturn secular regimes in the Muslim world and restore the Caliphate by peaceful means, its literature calls for Karimov's nonviolent ouster. Strenuous and largely successful efforts have been made to crush the group in the last two years.²⁵ Among the secular, democratic opposition, the most notable are the outlawed dissident democratic parties Birlik (Unity) and Erk (Freedom), both of whose leaders were driven into exile in the early 1990s. The two parties have been repeatedly denied registration as legal entities (a prerequisite to contesting elections). Recently, however, the government has taken a softer line toward Birlik and Erk. In 2003 it permitted them to hold their first party congresses in a decade, leading both parties to revive attempts to register in the hope of contending in the 2004 parliamentary elections.²⁶

In practice, independent media do not exist in Uzbekistan, with the exception of several business-oriented newspapers of limited circulation available in the capital. According to data from the National Press Center, there were 507 newspapers at the beginning of 2002, including three national daily newspapers.²⁷ The newspaper printing and distribution system is under state control. Until 2002 the press was subject to censorship by the state secrets protection agency. In May 2002, however, the state officially abolished censorship, despite the fact that it had already been prohibited for a decade by the constitution, contradicting recurrent denials that censorship existed. Its abolition was touted by the government as a major step toward political liberalization. Nevertheless, within days of this move the state press committee warned the publishers of six government newspapers that they would be held "entirely responsible for what they published" and that the state secrets protection agency would "continue to monitor the content of newspapers."²⁸ In addition, the chief editors of two marginally independent newspapers were fired by the government in 2002, showing that the government still controls the newsprint industry, albeit now indirectly. Consequently, self-censorship has replaced formal state censorship, and there has been no appreciable change in the tone or quality of journalism, which uncritically reports news from the government's perspective. State-controlled television offers little by way of news or current events analysis, offering instead a regular fare of traditional music programs that, anecdotal evidence suggests, annoy many viewers. All shows are prepared on tape as live broadcasting is prohibited, a policy that lends itself to censorship and a lack of spontaneity.

Recommendations

The Uzbek regime must allow genuine opposition parties to form, to build constituencies without harassment, to campaign openly, and to participate in free and fair national and local elections. In particular, the Erk and Birlik movements should not be denied registration any longer and should be permitted to field candidates in the 2004 parliamentary elections. The conversion from a unicameral to a bicameral parliament of full-time deputies needs to be accompanied by a genuine transformation into a professional legislature that represents constituents' interests and is not afraid to challenge the government, as indeed Karimov has frequently encouraged it to do. The president himself should demonstrate a public commitment to due political process by promising that he will step down in 2005 at the end of his officially reckoned second term and that henceforth presidential elections will occur regularly, as stipulated by the constitution, without resort to referendums and other extraordinary measures. Also, having abolished formal censorship of the media, the regime must now put an end to the continuing informal censorship that it enforces by intimidating journalists and threatening media outlets with closure.

Notes

1 "Uzbekistan: UN Rapporteur Says Use of Torture 'Systematic'" (Prague and Washington, DC: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [RFE/RL], 9 December 2002), http://www.rferl.org; "Uzbek Government Should Stop Torture," Human Rights Watch (4 April 2003), http://hrw.org/press/2003/04/uzbektorture040303.htm.

2 Deaths in Custody in Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper (4 April 2003).

3 Uzbekistan, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2002 (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of State, 31 March 2003), 6, section 1d, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18400pf.htm.

4 Ibid., 6.

5 "NGO Helps Turn Around Lives of Suicidal Women in Uzbekistan," eurasianet.org, 28 May 2003.

6 "Uzbekistan," Judicial Reform Index (Washington, D.C.: American Bar Association, Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative [CEELI], May 2002), 10, http://abanet.org/ceeli.

7 Trafficking in Persons Report, U.S. Dept. of State (June 2003), http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/21555.pdf.

8 Country Reports (U.S. Dept. of State), 13 ff, section 2b.

9 For example, "Uzbekistan: Round-up of Women Linked to Islamic Groups," Human Rights Watch (1 May 2002), http://hrw.org/press/2002/05/uzbek-women.htm; "Militiamen Beat Unmercifully Muslim Women," Muslim Uzbekistan, http://www.muslimuzbekistan.com/eng/ennews/2003/03/ennews08032003_1.html.

10 "Uzbekistan," in CIA World Factbook 2003 (Washington, DC: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency), http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uz.html. There has been no census since January 1989, when the last Soviet census was held.

11 "Central Asia: Islam and the State" (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 10 July 2003), http://www.crisisweb.org.

12 CIA World Factbook.

13 Ibid.

14 "Uzbekistan," Economist Intelligence Unit (London: The Economist, 2003), 28.

15 Judicial Reform Index, 7.

16 "Fear of Torture and Ill-Treatment, Ruslan Sharipov," Amnesty International, 13 August 2003, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGEUR620102003?open&of=ENG-UZB.

17 Ibid., 10.

18 Ibid., 18.

19 Ibid., 27.

20 Country Reports (U.S. Dept. of State), 9, section 1e.

21 Economist Intelligence Unit, 9; Uzbekistan's Reform Program: Illusion or Reality? International Crisis Group (ICG), ICG Asia Report no. 46 (February 18, 2003), 23, http://www.crisisweb.org//library/documents/report_archive/A400894_18022003.pdf

22 "Central Asia: Corruption a Common Feature of Daily Routine" (Prague and Washington, DC: RFE/RL, 17 July 2002), http://www.rferl.org.

23 Corruption Perceptions Index (Berlin and London: Transparency International, 2003), http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2003/cpi2003.en.html.

24 "Uzbekistan: Voters 'Choose' Incumbent President" (Prague and Washington, DC: RFE/RL, 11 January 2000), http://www.rferl.org.

25 Radical Islam in Central Asia: Responding to Hizb ut-Tahrir, ICG, ICG Asia Report no.58 (30 June 2003), http://www.crisisweb.org//library/documents/report_archive/A401032_30062003.pdf.

26 "Uzbekistan: Opposition Meets Openly for First Time in 10 Years" (Prague and Washington, DC: RFE/RL, 20 June 2003), http://www.rferl.org.

27 IREX Media Sustainability Index 2002 (Washington, DC: International Research and Exchanges Board), 1, http://.irex.org.msi.

28 Uzbekistan Annual Report, 2003 (Paris: Reporters Without Borders), 1, http://www.rsf.org.