Reply #3: Uzbekistan’s Growing Police State [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Uzbekistan’s Growing Police State

By Anora Mahmudova, AlterNet. Posted May 27, 2005.


Back in 1996, I heard a Peace Corps volunteer in Feghana exclaim that if American workers were not paid their salaries on time, there would be riots all over. But his Uzbek colleagues, university teachers, did not see their salaries for months and waited patiently. They would say at least they have jobs, when so many are unemployed.

By 2004 people could not stay silent any more. They have been picketing their factories, organizing impromptu demonstrations in the bazaars when government decided to raise taxes yet again. Finally, the biggest demonstration involving thousands of people in Andijan ended in a massacre of hundreds of men, women and children.

The US's main Central Asian ally in the "war on terror," and designated torturer for suspects handed over by Washington, has just refused Kofi Annan's request to allow a UN inquiry team into the massacre of 800 peaceful demonstrators shot dead in the main square in Andijan. So far, there have been no threats of intervention by Washington.

Instead, "balanced" statements by the State Department say that Uzbekistan should open up and work toward democracy -- and that both sides should show restraint -- putting the massacred and their murderers on a par. Even calls for an independent inquiry are unenthusiastic.
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http://www.alternet.org/story/22097/