x3n: Uzbekistan: Shades of oppression

Of the places that I've visited, Georgia is positively the most open, democratic, and capitalist, followed only by Kyrgyzstan in distant second. Georgia is the most tourist and business-friendly place I've been, where (at least in Tbilisi), the police are not intimidating, and there is some measure of free expression. Sure the protests of early November were violently and probably inappropriately broken-up, but they simply could not have occurred in any other place in this region -- certainly not some of the more extreme expressions of public dissatisfaction, such as decrying the president by shouting "Misha!" and saluting sig heil. Elsewhere, I have been told that even lesser criticisms would result in beating, fines, job-loss, and/or prison. And when it comes to oppression, topping the list, there's no place like Uzbekistan! While I must admit that Turkmenistan was a very close second, since the passing of Turkmenbashi, by all appearances it seems things are improving there.

Uzbekistan's situation as only one of two doubly-landlocked countries in the world (the other is Liechtenstein), bespeaks it's isolation and the oppressive system that binds the country. And while Uzbekistan's police have been reformed in recent years and they no longer seem to shake-down tourists, they were swarming on every corner of the cities that I visited, checking documents on the street, stopping vehicles at checkpoints that appear every 10 km or so on major highways, and one can only imagine how invasive the police presence must be in the daily lives of the nearly 28 million Uzbekistani nationals. For instance, according to people I've spoken to, it is extremely difficult to start a business there, as the state bureaucracy tends to arbitrarily tax and regulate small businesses to death. The oppressive police force is, in effect, a parasitic organ of the state that feeds off of living cultural and economic activity only to perpetuate its own existence and that of the ruling party. "Stalin would have probably been jealous if he’d found out that there are people in this world even better than him at frightening people," testified Uzbek asylum-seeker Mukhammadsolykh Abutov from Russia.

According to Transparency International 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index, "which ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians," Uzbekistan ranks at the very bottom, rated at 175 of 179 countries and is exceeded only by Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar (Burma), and Somalia. When a group college students in Tashkent -- some recently graduated and unemployed -- were asked how to get rich in Uzbekistan, they immediately replied "drugs, gambling and prostitution." And according to two reports written by the former British Ambassador Craig Murray on Uzbekistani billionaire Alisher Usmanov, those students are exactly right. According to one of the reports,

When Usmanov negotiated a major oil and gas deal with Uzbekistan on behalf of Gazprom, the Russian state-owned company, $88m was paid in cash to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the Uzbeki president. Murray has since repeated that allegation in his book, Murder in Samarkand, an account of his time as the ambassador to Uzbekistan.

So if we can learn anything at all from this, we can be certain that it is good to live at the largess of an autocracy. However, for an ordinary Uzbekistani, it would seem that life's aspirations are much more modest with very few avenues of opportunity. Naturally, any discussion relating to politics is extremely dangerous for the average Uzbekistani, and although it is not impossible to find people who "will talk," the average person seems frightened and oppressed. While ethnic Uzbeks (comprising about 80% of the population) are markedly warm, kind, family-oriented people, ordinary life in Uzbekistan seems a dull shade of gray, with little evidence of any living culture, intellectualism, arts, or creativity. Rather, the Uzbekistani people seem frightened and in some sense, dumbed-down, as if they are the end product of a society which has long hammered-down "the nail that sticks out." And it is not uncommon to find Uzbeks -- particularly young men -- staring off into infinity with a stupefied, wall-eyed, bovine stare that seems to signify something like spiritual defeat.

One assumes that this descends from the governing system, which instead of facilitating growth and progress, appears designed to make life impossible. Everything -- from the poor banking system, the absurdly denominated currency (time spent "counting money" is a significant activity in virtually every transaction), poorly maintained highways, the routine police checks everywhere, the internet crawls where it exists, censorship is pervasive, the food shops are pitifully understocked in some places, economic opportunity is extremely limited, and the dense, inevitable bureaucracy overhangs virtually every part of public life -- whether by necessity or design, all of this serves to make daily life more difficult and the disempowers the people.

Likewise, religious activities are severely curbed, and religious oppression in this Sunni Muslim nation again serves to prevent and viable opposition or organization. Religious organizations, parties, and radicalism is perhaps the force the Uzbekistani government fears most, and all mosques and madrasahs are sanctioned and monitored by the state. This religious oppression culminated in April of 2005 at the infamous Anijon Massacre, when as many as 5,000 ordinary citizens were slaughtered by Uzbekistani security forces in the town of Andijon in the Fergana Valley. In an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, an obviously terrified Mukhammadsolykh Abutov writes,

[The] people shot at on the square in Andijon were not terrorists or extremists. And we don’t even have such an organization! All of those accused of being involved in extremist organizations are there because of trumped up charges from the security service. It’s a pretext for repression, for crushing dissent among the people! Those who are in prison – thousands and thousands of people were not terrorists, and couldn’t have been! Our people are simply unhappy with the leaders of the republic. The disgruntlement is of a social nature, nothing else. The people are poor and hungry!

Academic Justifies Slaughter of Unarmed Demonstrators

Is this any surprise from a government that has reportedly boiled people alive in oil and has (appropriately, perhaps) adopted Amir Timur (Tamerlane) as their national symbol? While history has no shortage of butchers, Timur distinguished himself in the realm of genocide, killing an estimated 17 million in the course of his military campaigns, and after the conquest of Baghdad in 1401, 22 pyramids were constructed outside of the city from the severed heads of 90,000 people.

Here are some videos that further explicates the darker side of Uzbekistan through the fascinating story of former British Ambassador Craig Murray.

Warning: These videos contain extremely graphic content.

Life and Death under Karimov (Part I)