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The Guardian – Uzbek mother who publicised ‘boiling’ torture of son gets hard labour

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The Guardian – Uzbek mother who publicised ‘boiling’ torture of son gets hard labour

(by Nick Paton Walsh)

The elderly mother of a religious prisoner allegedly boiled to death by Uzbekistan’s secret police has been sentenced to six years in a maximum security jail after she made public her son’s torture.

Fatima Mukhadirova, 63, a former market vegetable seller, is the mother of Muzafar Avazov, who died in the notorious Jaslik high security jail in 2002. She was convicted of attempting to “overthrow the constitutional order”.

An Uzbek judge yesterday said she had “set up an underground cell of women propagating the ideas of [banned Islamic fundamentalist group] Hizbut Tahrir”. The secret police had found “incriminating” pamphlets in her flat, a common occurrence in arrests of group members.

The British ambassador to Tashkent, Craig Murray, last night told the Guardian: “This is appalling. She took photographs of her son’s corpse which she gave to the British embassy. The Foreign Office sent them to the University of Glasgow pathology department. Their forensic report said the body had clearly been immersed [in boiling water] because of the tide marks around the upper torso.” He said that Ms Mukhadirova’s continuing campaign seemed to explain why she had been targeted by the authorities. She now had a sentence of hard labour. “The chances of her surviving that are very limited,” he said.

Uzbek prison authorities maintain that Mr Avazov died after inmates spilled hot tea on him. But the forensic report said that his teeth had been smashed and his fingernails torn out. His body was covered in burns.

Mirzakayum Avazov, Ms Mukhadirova’s youngest son, said: “My mother was simply trying to defend her sons and looked for justice. She only wanted those guilty of Muzafar’s death to be punished.”

Mr Murray’s persistent protests over the country’s human rights record contributed towards a recent Foreign Office investigation into his conduct. Uzbekistan has provided the US and UK with an essential military base for operations in neighbouring Afghanistan, and receives more than $100m (?53m) a year in American aid, for being an ally in the “war on terror”. Many believed that No 10 felt that Mr Murray’s remarks drew unnecessary attention to the moral flaws in an important logistical alliance.

The US state department recently indicated that Uzbekistan’s human rights record was so bad that American aid would have to cease.

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Gay Times – Our man in Tashkent

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Gay Times – Our man in Tashkent (by Richard Smith)

Richard Smith reports on the case of Ruslan Sharipov, the gay human rights campaigner imprisoned for criticising the Uzbekistan regime ? and the British ambassador the US had removed from his post after he spoke out against the dictator who’s America’s new ally in their “war against terror”

You could say that Ruslan Sharipov is lucky. At least he hasn’t been boiled to death. That’s one of the Uzbekistani security services favourite ways of dealing with people they don’t like. And they really don’t like Ruslan Sharipov. This journalist and human rights activist has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Uzbeki regime. There’s quite a lot to complain about over there. The former Soviet republic in central Asia is one of the most repressive states in the world. It’s a one-man show run by this spectacularly grubby little dictator, Islam Karimov. His politics are usually described as “Neo-fascist”. At least by those who are being honest. He’s turned the place into a police state. Uzbekistan is a secular Muslim country that doesn’t allow freedom of worship ? or of speech, or of assembly or of the press. Torture is routinely used as an investigation technique. Critics of the regime are imprisoned, locked up in mental institutions or just “disappear”. There are elections. But only parties and candidates Karimov approves of can stand. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe thinks they’re so obviously fraudulent that they don’t even bother sending election monitors anymore. Here’s the delightful Mr Karimov on the delicate art of politics: “I’m prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic. If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head.”

In 2001 Ruslan Sharipov published a series of articles denouncing state repression of Muslims and began investigating the deaths of a number of political and religious activists. Sharipov also started a human rights group ? they’re banned in Uzbekistan ? which took on police corruption and human rights abuses. He’s currently serving four years in prison for his trouble. He’s not alone. Over 7,ooo of his fellow citizens are in jail because of their political or religious beliefs.

The authorities found it pretty easy to put Ruslan away. He’s gay and he’s out and homosexuality is still illegal over there. So they arrested him for that – along with some other charges that were more made-up than a drag queen’s face about how he was running this ring of teenage rent boys.

His life trajectory since those first articles appeared would have given Franz Kafka nightmares. He started getting little visits from the National Security Services. They “advised” him he should stop criticising the police and the president. His house was broken into repeatedly and he was beaten up three times within the space of twelve months. In August 2001, they accused of him belonging to a terrorist group and took him in for “questioning”. On May 26th last year, they arrested him under Article 120 of the Uzbeki Criminal Code ? “the satisfaction of a sexual urge by a man with a man”. The next day he was charged with inappropriate behaviour (ie sex) with minors and of managing prostitutes ? which he denied.

He never stood a chance. The Uzbekistani legal system has a conviction rate of close to 100%. Things started to go from bad to worse. Thinking that the oxygen of publicity might generate enough international outrage to save him, Ruslan asked for an open trial. The judge ordered it to be conducted in secret. His mother and his lawyer began getting threats. His supporters were harassed by the police with abusive phone calls and late-night visits. But the case against him started to collapse. The alleged “victims” became hysterical during cross-examination and there was no evidence to support the allegations. Even a heavily intimidated jury would find it hard to wave this one through…

But on August 8th proceedings took a dramatic turn. Ruslan Sharipov announced in court that he was changing his plea to guilty. He said he wanted to dismiss his legal team and asked that his mother, the key witness, be removed from the courtroom. Then he offered to ask for forgiveness from President Karimov and to retract all the articles he’d written that were critical of his regime. On August 13th, Ruslan was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.

It was only later, when he managed to smuggle a letter out of prison, that people discovered what had prompted this “change of heart”. His interrogators had got him to plead guilty by torturing him and threatening him with rape and murder. “They put a gas mask on my head and sprayed an unknown substance into my throat, after which I could hardly breathe,” Sharipov wrote. “They also injected an unknown substance into my veins and warned me that if I did not follow their instructions they would give me an injection of the Aids virus.” Sharipov was told that if he didn’t “confess” his brother, mother and lawyer would also be tortured. “I was clearly told that if I would write any further appeals or complaints, I would commit suicide, that is I would ‘kill myself’.” This was no empty threat. Several prominent critics of the regime have “committed suicide” when they were in custody or prison.

Sharipov’s lawyer, Surat Ikramov, fought to arrange an appeal hearing. One night as he was driving home his car was hijacked by four masked men. They beat him so badly that two ribs were broken and he lost consciousness. Ikramov had organised a peaceful protest outside parliament the following day. Police placed all known protestors under house-arrest.

At the appeal hearing in September, Sharipov arrived with serious facial injuries and broken glasses. The police said the van taking him to court had crashed – but only he’d been injured. The charges of “inappropriate behaviour” were dropped and the sentence reduced by one year. Fearing for his safety, Ruslav requested that he serve his time in Tashkent Prison, and not a penal colony. His interrogators had told him there were men in the latter who’d happily finish him off.

In a second letter smuggled out of prison, Sharipov wrote that now he really did regret making criticisms of the Uzbeki regime: “It would be foolish to say that I did not know what my actions would lead to. In fact, I understood perfectly. But it is an entirely different matter to actually go through this hellish nightmare yourself, in which no one will help you and no one will hear you.”

So who will hear Ruslan Sharipov’s cries? And who will speak up for him? Faced with intimidation, imprisonment, torture, rape, murder and being boiled alive, you can understand why so few of his fellow compatriots are willing to speak out about the sorry state of affairs in this most sorry of states. In October 2002, just months after he’d taken office, Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray delivered a speech at the opening of the offices of Freedom House in Tashkent. Protocol dictates that you’re supposed to be, erm, diplomatic at these things. But Murray was so incensed at what he’d witnessed all around him that he just let rip. “Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy, nor does it appear to be moving in the direction of democracy,” he told the assembled meeting of the great, the good and the unspeakable. “The major political parties are banned; parliament is not subject to democratic election and checks and balances on the authority of the executive are lacking. There is worse ? we believe there to be between 7,000 and 10,000 people in detention whom we would consider as political and/or religious prisoners. In many cases they have been falsely convicted of crimes with which there appears to be no credible evidence they had any connection.

“But let us make this point ? no government has the right to use the war against terrorism as an excuse for the persecution of those with a deep personal commitment to the Islamic religion and who pursue their views by peaceful means. Sadly the vast majority of those wrongly imprisoned in Uzbekistan fall into this category.”

The US ambassador, John Herbst was also present. He was livid. When the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, brought up Murray’s speech in a meeting with President Karimov soon after, he was livid too. But then emperor’s never like it when someone points out that they’re naked. Murray was also sending fat dossiers to the UK documenting Uzbeki human rights violations. As the war against Iraq loomed, his communiqu?s became increasingly incensed. He was baffled by Britain’s official silence on Karimov’s crimes. They were every bit as appalling as those in Iraq that were being used to justify the war. But Britain and America weren’t invading Uzbekistan ? thank god ? they were bankrolling it.

When Murray went on holiday last August an official investigator was sent to Tashkent. He claimed he’d unearthed allegations of “ambassadorial indiscretions”: Murray had sex in his office with female visa applicants, supported the visa application of the daughter of a friend, drove a Land Rover down a flight of steps and regularly went out drinking heavily until late in the embassy car.

Murray was called back to London from holiday and threatened with demotion or the sack. Rumours were circulated in diplomatic circles that he was losing his mind. Unsurprisingly, Craig Murray was soon being treated for clinical depression. He’s likened his case to that of the weapons’ inspector Dr David Kelly (“But I have every intention of staying alive.”) One Foreign Office source said the pressure on him was “partly exercised on the orders of No 10? He was told the next time he stepped away from the American line, he would lose his post.”

It’s funny, isn’t it? How in their fight against the “axis of evil” our glorious leaders are more than happy to make some rather evil allies. Karimov has been ever such a big help in the “war on terror”, you see? Uzbekistan is the United State’s new “strategic ally”. Two days before the start of the war against neighbouring Afghanistan, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld met with Karimov in Tashkent and agreed to open its air space to US military aircraft, to share intelligence and to permanently lend the US a military base at Khanabad. America immediately dropped Uzbekistan from its list of “states of concern”. The World Bank announced that Uzbekistan would now get some massive loans and debt relief. In return, Uzbekistan agreed to privatisation schemes and to open up its oil and gas reserves to foreign (ie US) exploitation. US arms sales to Uzbekistan are now worth over $4 million a year (Britain has granted Uzbekistan an “open-ended export licence” for arms sales ? another shining example of New Labour’s unethical foreign policy). In 2002, Uzbekistan got $500 million in US aid. $79m of this was earmarked for “law enforcement and security services”. Or ? if you need it translated from Doublespeak ? for torture. The State Department’s official line is that they “value Uzbekistan as a stable, moderate [sic] force in a turbulent region.” Now where have we heard that one before?

Poor Craig Murray. He was operating under the belief that he was representing a country that had noble ideals about human rights, that championed freedom, justice and democracy, and the freedom to speak out when your country has done something you don’t agree with.

Eventually, last November, the Foreign Office backed down and allowed Murray to resume his post ? after he’d had medical clearance for a stress-related illness. The man who’d dared to speak up for those who can’t speak out had got away with a mighty big bang on the ear.

Meanwhile Ruslan Sharipov is still rotting away in prison, waiting to be boiled.

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The Guardian – UK envoy to Uzbeks cleared of all charges

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The Guardian UK envoy to Uzbeks cleared of all charges (by David Leigh and Rob Evans)

Britain’s embattled ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has been cleared of all disciplinary allegations and is flying back to his post in Tashkent at the weekend. Sources there said he is contemplating legal action against the Foreign Office for trying to force him to resign.

Mr Murray was at the centre of an unprecedented row last autumn after falling foul of Washington’s policy of supporting the former Soviet police state in Uzbekistan. The US, which has a base in the central Asian state, has been backing the regime of President Islam Karimov, despite its record of torture, imprisoning opponents and, on one occasion, allegedly boiling prisoners to death.

After Mr Murray clashed with the then US ambassador, it is alleged that pressure was exerted from Downing Street to restrain his outspoken comments. He was subsequently recalled, presented with a string of alleged disciplinary offences and invited to resign.

All the charges against him, which ranged from backing an overstayer’s visa application to womanising, drinking and driving an embassy Land Rover down some lakeside steps, have collapsed. He has, however, according to Whitehall sources, been reprimanded for “talking about the charges to embassy colleagues”.

A source told the Guardian that as a senior ambassador he had read many of Mr Murray’s dispatches from Uzbekistan. “They were honest, well-written and accurate.”

The Foreign Office minister, Bill Rammell, signalled the department’s retreat from the attempt to sack Mr Murray shortly before Christmas, when he told the Commons: “We endorse his comments about the human rights situation in Uzbekistan.

“Our concern about Islamic extremism… does not mean that we turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, or regard perceived threats to security as justification for imprisoning young men simply on religious grounds.”

These were key points in Mr Murray’s dispatches home, and in his quarrels with the then US ambassador.

It is understood that his lawyers want an investigation into the way the complaints against him were handled.

He has not been the only career diplomat to complain of politicisation and victimisation at the Foreign Office. Clive Howard, an employment lawyer at the solicitors Russell Jones and Walker, yesterday accused it of running an “incompetent” personnel department staffed by some diplomats with little experience.

He has now represented four other diplomats who claim that they were mistreated.

Two cases have been secretly settled.

A third diplomat was recalled to Britain after alleging fraud at an embassy, but was then investigated for separate offences. He was initially told he had been found guilty of misconduct in an internal report, but this proved to be untrue when he later saw the document.

In the fourth case, a diplomat complained fruitlessly about the behaviour of a member of the personnel department. Three years on, his lawyers are still demanding an internal investigation.

The senior officials’ trade union, the First Division Association, appointed a senior woman academic last November to investigate another allegation of victimisation in the Foreign Office.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We reject any allegations that we victimise staff or treat them unsympathetically. We are a huge organisation. We try to deal with staff in a fair and civil manner. We get it right most of the time; sometimes we don’t.”

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BBC Radio 4 – Today Programme – The Craig Murray Affair

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BBC Radio 4 – Today Programme – The Craig Murray Affair

Craig Murray is now preparing to return to his post, after reports on this programme and in the press.

According to the Foreign Office, he has always been our ambassador to Uzbekistan, temporarily absent on sick leave. His friends though believe there was an attempt to force him out, after his outspoken criticism of his Uzbek hosts, which reportedly irritated the US, now a strategic partner of Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan was Craig Murray’s first job as ambassador. Top of his year’s Foreign Office intake, he was a veteran of many difficult postings. He was known as a hardworking, talented, but forthright diplomat. From the moment he was formally accredited in the Uzbek capital, he drew attention to human rights abuses in the country. Uzbekistan retains one of the most repressive regimes in the former Soviet Union: constantly criticised by agencies like Human Rights Watch.

In private correspondence within the Foreign Office, Craig Murray drew parallels between the record of Uzbekistan and that of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But it was his comments in October last year which drew most attention.

Before an audience of Uzbek dignitaries and other foreign diplomats, at the opening of the American-backed ‘Freedom House’ foundation in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, he launched a full scale attack. He spoke of prisoners tortured by being boiled alive. Of thousands detained for political or religious reasons. And he said that Uzbekistan was not a functioning democracy, nor making sufficient steps towards that.

According to those who were there, the American ambassador looked uncomfortable. The Uzbek Foreign Ministry summoned Craig Murray on a Sunday to explain himself. But to human rights activists like Talib Jakubov, this was support they’d only dreamt of. “It was like a flash of lightning” he told me in Tashkent. “It made the American ambassador’s speech look pale, watery by comparison”.

Over the next 10 months, Craig Murray continued to mention human rights at every opportunity, to meet activists, and the families of those in prison. But as he came to the end of a month’s leave this summer, he was abruptly called back to London.

There, friends say, he was told he had a week to resign or be recalled. He was told of possible disciplinary charges arising from his conduct.

Craig Murray had inherited a troubled embassy. The Foreign Office had sent out investigators to look into difficulties with some members of staff, not the ambassador himself. They apparently heard rumours about Craig Murray’s behaviour.

The ambassador’s friends in Tashkent freely admit he had an unconventional approach to his job: they say he travelled far more than most diplomats in Uzbekistan, he liked to talk to people, and he would often stay out late into the night doing just that.

Eric Reynolds, a British businessman in Tashkent, told me that he’d often shared a pint with Craig Murray in the early hours of the morning. “He could make a pint last an hour”, he told me. “He wasn’t a fast drinker, never a heavy drinker”.

Local journalists say they’d heard gossip about the ambassador’s alleged private life. Human rights activists believe such rumours were deliberately spread by the agencies of the Uzbek government.

The leading human rights lawyer Surat Ikramov told me he’d heard from his own government sources that the Uzbek Foreign Ministry were running such a campaign. He was so concerned that in June he wrote to Jack Straw to try to warn him. The letter was hand carried to London, but the Foreign Office say they have no record of receiving it.

The Uzbek Foreign Ministry strongly deny any such activity and there is no evidence to connect them to the rumours. They say only that they are sorry the ambassador is unwell.

The deputy foreign minister said he believes Uzbekistan is generally misunderstood, especially in western Europe. He told me of improvements in the prison system and a drop in infant mortality. He said “we know we have problems … we are not dumb,” but he said Uzbekistan welcomed criticism when accompanied by concrete help (he cited American aid to train prison and police staff). However when asked about the prisoners boiled alive, the cases singled out by Craig Murray, he claimed that other prisoners in the same jail had confessed to the murders. Craig Murray had commissioned an independent report from photographs of the body before coming to his own conclusion.

Friends say after being given the ultimatum by London, Craig Murray suffered a sudden depressive illness. He was “medivac-ed” (evacuated for medical reasons) back to London for treatment at the expense of the Foreign Office. Friends say he has now completely recovered.

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The Guardian – A good man in Tashkent

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The Guardian – A good man in Tashkent (by John Bowis MEP)

Earlier this year I led the delegation of MEPs to Uzbekistan. We were given one of the best and most honest briefings I have ever received from a British diplomat (Tony Blair’s new friend, October 28). Our ambassador, Craig Murray, believed he should speak out when he was convinced of human rights abuses. He was right to do so, even if that meant treading on local and transatlantic toes.

My experience is that the Uzbek government does listen to criticism, firmly and fairly made. They made it clear we could visit any place and meet any people we chose. So we were able to see grim prison conditions and to hear from human rights NGOs. But two days after our return, Ruslan Sharipov, a journalist critical of the government, was arrested and imprisoned on the grounds of his sexuality and we are still aware of political prisoners and a muzzled press.

Now we hear of turmoil at the British embassy in Tashkent and the ambassador being put under enormous pressure, and then summoned home for “treatment”. In the parliament last week, I issued a habeas corpus challenge to the British government. I repeat the challenge I made to the foreign secretary: restore a good man to his post. The gainers will be the Uzbek people, but also the good name of British diplomacy.

John Bowis MEP

Conservative, London

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The Guardian – Tony Blair’s new friend

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The Guardian – Tony Blair’s new friend (by George Monbiot)

The British and US governments gave three reasons for going to war with Iraq. The first was to extend the war on terrorism. The second was to destroy its weapons of mass destruction before they could be deployed. The third was to remove a brutal regime, which had tortured and murdered its people.

If the purpose of the war was to defeat terrorism, it has failed. Before the invasion, there was no demonstrable link between al-Qaida and Iraq. Today, al-Qaida appears to have moved into that country, to exploit a new range of accessible western targets. If the purpose of the war was to destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction before he deployed them, then, as no such weapons appear to have existed, it was a war without moral or strategic justification.

So just one excuse remains, and it is a powerful one. Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. While there was no legal argument for forcibly deposing him on the grounds of his abuse of human rights, there was a moral argument. It is one which our prime minister made repeatedly and forcefully. “The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the moral case for removing Saddam,” Tony Blair told the Labour party’s spring conference in February. “Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity. It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane.”

Had millions of British people not accepted this argument, Tony Blair might not be prime minister today. There were many, especially in the Labour party, who disagreed with his decision but who did not doubt the sincerity of his belief in the primacy of human rights.

There is just one test of this sincerity, and that is the consistency with which his concern for human rights guides his foreign policy. If he cares so much about the welfare of foreigners that he is prepared to go to war on their behalf, we should expect to see this concern reflected in all his relations with the governments of other countries. We should expect him, for example, to do all he can to help the people of Uzbekistan.

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

His crime, like that of many of the country’s prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learned his politics in the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamist terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.

But Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov’s soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia’s massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.

So, far from seeking to isolate his regime, the US government has tripled its aid to Karimov. Last year, he received $500m (?300m), of which $79m went to the police and intelligence services, who are responsible for most of the torture. While the US claims that its engagement with Karimov will encourage him to respect human rights, like Saddam Hussein he recognises that the protection of the world’s most powerful government permits him to do whatever he wants. Indeed, the US state department now plays a major role in excusing his crimes. In May, for example, it announced that Uzbekistan had made “substantial and continuing progress” in improving its human rights record. The progress? “Average sentencing” for members of peaceful religious organisations is now just “7-12 years”, while two years ago they were “usually sentenced to 12-19 years”.

There is little question that the power and longevity of Karimov’s government has been enhanced by his special relationship with the United States. There is also little question that supporting him is a dangerous game. All the principal enemies of the US today were fostered by the US or its allies in the past: the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Wahhabi zealots in Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein and his people in Iraq. Dictators do not have friends, only sources of power. They will shift their allegiances as their requirement for power demands. The US supported Islamist extremists in Afghanistan in order to undermine the Soviet Union, and created a monster. Now it is supporting a Soviet-era leader to undermine Islamist extremists, and building up another one.

So what of Tony Blair, the man who claims that human rights are so important that they justify going to war? Well, at the beginning of this year, he granted Uzbekistan an open licence to import whatever weapons from the United Kingdom Mr Karimov fancies. But his support goes far beyond that. The British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has repeatedly criticised Karimov’s crushing of democracy movements and his use of torture to silence his opponents. Like Roger Casement, the foreign office envoy who exposed the atrocities in the Congo a century ago, Murray has been sending home dossiers which could scarcely fail to move anyone who cares about human rights.

Blair has been moved all right: moved to do everything he could to silence our ambassador. Mr Murray has been threatened with the sack, investigated for a series of plainly trumped-up charges and persecuted so relentlessly by his superiors that he had to spend some time, like many of Karimov’s critics, in a psychiatric ward, though in this case for sound clinical reasons. This pressure, according to a senior government source, was partly “exercised on the orders of No 10”.

In April, Blair told us that he had decided that “to leave Iraq in its brutalised state under Saddam was wrong”. How much credibility does this statement now command, when the same man believes that to help Uzbekistan remain in its brutalised state is right?

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The Guardian – Ambassador accused after criticising US

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The Guardian – Ambassador accused after criticising US (by David Leigh, Nick Paton Walsh, Ewen MacAskill)

Britain’s ambassador in Tashkent, who mysteriously returned to this country last month on temporary sick leave, was the victim of threats from Downing Street related to his outspoken views on US foreign policy in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

Inquiries by the Guardian have discovered that Craig Murray, one of Britain’s youngest ambassadors, was subsequently called back from his Uzbekistan post, threatened with the loss of his job, and accused of a miscellaneous string of diplomatic shortcomings in what his friends say is a wholly unfair way.

The accusations against him included:

? Supporting the visa application of the daughter of an Uzbek family friend who overstayed in England;

? Drinking too convivially with Uzbek locals;

? Allowing an embassy Land Rover to be driven down steps.

Mr Murray’s subsequent episode of depression, for which he had medical treatment, was preceded by what one Foreign Office source calls “a campaign of systematic undermining”.

A senior source said the former ambassador had been put under pressure to stop his repeated criticisms of the brutal Karimov regime, accused among other things of boiling prisoners to death. The source said the pressure was partly “exercised on the orders of No 10”, which found his outspokenness about the compromises Washington was prepared to make in its “war on terror” increasingly embarrassing in the lead up to the Iraq war.

“He was told that the next time he stepped away from the Ameri can line, he would lose his post,” said the source. During a visit earlier this year at the height of the political tensions prior to the Iraq invasion, the former development secretary, Clare Short, is reported to have said to him: “I love the job you are doing down here, but you know, don’t you, that if I go, you go.” She eventually resigned over the Iraq war.

When the affable and energetic Scottish diplomat arrived in Tashkent a year ago at the age of 45, he was a rising star. He had survived the 1998 Sierra Leone scandal, and indeed been promoted.

A firm run by Lt Col Tim Spicer, accused of shipping arms to war-torn Sierra Leone, claimed to have got approval from Mr Murray, then deputy head of the Equatorial Africa department. But Mr Murray told an inquiry he had been “set up” by Spicer, and a committee of MPs absolved him of anything other than “a certain naivety”.

Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet police state on the strategically important border with Afghanistan, was another potential political minefield. Uzbek security services use “torture as a routine investigation technique”, according to the US State Department. But Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led them to finance much of the regime’s security apparatus. In exchange the US gets a military base in Khanabad as a centre for operations in Afghanistan. Last year Washington gave the government $500m (?298m) in aid, $79m of which was specifically for the same “law enforcement and security services” they accused of routine torture.

Mr Murray upset the regime of President Islam Karimov with his blunt remarks on torture. His comments also began to accentuate the differences in the Foreign Office’s supposed ethical foreign policy and its support for US actions. In October last year at Freedom House, Mr Murray read a speech that had been cleared by the Foreign Office to the assembled dignitaries, including top Uzbek officials and the US ambassador.

He said: “We believe there to be between 7,000 and 10,000 people in detention whom we would consider as political and/or religious prisoners. No government has the right to use the war against terrorism as an excuse for the persecution of those with a deep personal commitment to the Islamic religion, and who pursue their views by peaceful means.”

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, brought Mr Murray’s hard-hitting speech up in a meeting with Mr Karimov. This was said to have incensed Mr Karimov. Mr Murray sent numerous reports to London about human rights abuses, and his dispatches became increasingly heated during the build-up to the Iraqi invasion. He argued Uzbekistan’s human rights abuses were as bad as those being used as ammunition against Baghdad. Yet Washington was financing Uzbekistan, rather than invading it, he said.

He received many internal emails of support, and some of criticism. He became personally involved in exposing torture, commissioning a forensic report on the bodies of two political prisoners, Muzafar Avazov and Husnidin Alimov, which concluded they had probably been boiled to death.

Last June a Foreign Office investigator arrived in Tashkent following an unconnected row in which an embassy official had sacked three locally hired staff. According to local sources, the investigator kept asking pointed questions about the ambassador himself.

“Somebody seems to be out to get him,” one source noted at the time. The report is said to have exonerated the ambassador from any blame for the personnel problems.

But in August, when Mr Murray went on holiday, a second investigator went out to Tashkent. He appears to have gleaned allegations of ambassadorial indiscretion.

According to friends, Mr Murray had supported the visa request of a young Uzbek girl who wanted to study in Britain. The daughter of a distinguished Uzbek professor, she had been granted a visa to attend a month-long course. Yet she stayed on afterwards for about 10 days of tourism. The consul section of the embassy became agitated, and asked Mr Murray to intervene. Mr Murray rang her father, and asked for her swift return.

In Who’s Who, he lists “drinking and gossiping” as his recreations. But one source close to the embassy insisted: “I have never seen Craig drunk at work. He knew how to entertain as part of his job, but he was not a drinker. It’s absurd.” Another source said: “He had a lot of respect from a lot of people. That would not have happened if he was drunk.”

His driver was said to have driven an embassy Land Rover down some terraced steps to get to a lake shore, on an embassy picnic. “He was just showing how well-built the British car was,” joked one friend. “I heard another senior embassy official drove another one down there im mediately behind him. But he wasn’t disciplined.”

Yet Mr Murray was called back from holiday to London, and threatened with demotion or the sack.

“One can certainly suppose the Uzbeks hated him,” said one Tashkent source close to the embassy. “There is no solid information on American involvement, but people close to him seemed to think they knew it had happened that way.” A US official at their Tashkent embassy said: “The US government had nothing to do with Mr Murray’s leaving Uzbekistan.”

The Foreign Office denies that the US has put pressure on Downing Street. It claims that if there had been such pressure, the FO would not have included critical comments about Uzbekistan in its annual human rights report last month.

A spokesman yesterday refused to comment on whether there were any disciplinary issues involving Mr Murray. He insisted that he remains the ambassador to Uzbekistan.

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The Guardian – US looks away as new ally tortures Islamists

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The Guardian – US looks away as new ally tortures Islamists (by Nick Paton Walsh)

Abdulkhalil was arrested in the fields of Uzbekistan’s Ferghana valley in August last year. The 28-year-old farmer was sentenced to 16 years in prison for “trying to overthrow the constitutional structures”.

Last week his father saw him for the first time since that day on a stretcher in a prison hospital. His head was battered and his tongue was so swollen that he could only say that he had “been kept in water for a long time”.

Abdulkhalil was a victim of Uzbekistan’s security service, the SNB. His detention and torture were part of a crackdown on Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an Islamist group.

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America’s strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington’s new best friend in the region.

The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (‘300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services – which the state department’s website says use “torture as a routine investigation technique” received $79m of this sum.

Mr Karimov was President Bush’s guest in Washington in March last year. They signed a “declaration” which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen “the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies”.

The cooperation grows. On May 2 Nato said Uzbekistan may be used as a base for the alliance’s peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan.

Since the fall of the Taliban, US support for the Karimov government has changed from one guided by short-term necessity into a long-term commitment based on America’s strategic requirements.

Critics argue that the US has overlooked human rights abuses to foster a police state whose borders give the Pentagon vantage points into Afghanistan and the other neighbouring republics which are as rich in natural resources as they are in Islamist movements.

The geographical hub of the US-Uzbek alliance is 250 miles south of the capital, Tashkent. Outside the town of Karshi lies the Khanabad military base, the platform for America’s operations in Afghanistan.

The town of Khanabad has been closed for months by the Uzbek government. Locals say the restrictions are compensated for by the highly paid work the base brings.

Journalists are not allowed in to see its runway, logistical supply tents and troop lodgings, all set on roads named after New York avenues. One western source said: “[The Americans] expect to be here for over a decade.”

This will suit the Uzbek government, which welcomes America’s change in attitude as its own security forces continue to repress the population. Uzbeks need a permit to move between towns and an exit visa to leave the country. Attendance at a mosque seems to result in arrest.

In the city of Namangan, in the Ferghana valley, there are many accounts of the regime’s brutality. A fortnight ago, Ahatkhon was beaten by police and held down while members of the Uzbek security service stuffed “incriminating evidence” into his coat pocket. They called in two “witnesses” to watch them discover two leaflets supporting Hizb-ut-Tahrir. He was forced to inform on four friends, one of whom – an ex-boxer – is still in pain from his beating. Abdulkhalil and Ahatkhon prayed regularly. This seemed to have been enough to brand them as the Islamists the Karimov government fears.

The Ferghana valley has been a base for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which the US and the UK say has links with al-Qaida. But the group is thought to have been crippled by the operations in Afghanistan. Analysts dismiss US claims that the IMU is targeting American military assets in the neighbouring republic of Kyrgyzstan.

The fight against the IMU has been used to justify the repression of Islamists. But the Islamic order advocated by Hizb-ut-Tahrir fills a void left by devastating poverty and state brutality.

Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said: “The intense repression here combined with the inequality of wealth and absence of reform will create the Islamic fundamentalism that the regime is trying to quash.”

Another senior western official said: “People have less freedom here than under Brezhnev. The irony is that the US Republican party is supporting the remnants of Brezhnevism as part of their fight against Islamic extremism.”

The US is also funding some human rights groups in Uzbekistan. Last year it gave $26m towards democracy programmes. A state department spokesman said America’s policy was “reform through engagement” and that Uzbekistan had “taken some positive steps”, including “registering a human rights group and a new newspaper”.

Matilda Bogner of Human Rights Watch’s office in Tashkent said: “I would deny there has been any real progress.

“The steps taken are basically window dressing used to get the military funding through the US Congress’s ethical laws. Nothing has changed on the ground.”

Hakimjon Noredinov, 68, agreed. He became a human rights activist after a morgue attendant brought him his eldest son, Nozemjon. He had been left for dead by the security service but was still alive despite having his skull fractured. Nozemjon is now 33, but screamed all night since they split his skull open. He is now in an asylum, Mr Noredinov said. “People’s lives here are no better for US involvement,” he said.

“Because of the US help, Karimov is getting richer and stronger.”

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Speech To Freedom House

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I am most happy to be here today to join in Freedom House’s Open House. This is a welcome addition to the resources available to the community which is working to improve basic human rights here in Uzbekistan. The organisers are to be congratulated on the initiative, as are the US government for their assistance with finance.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a Scot, and proud of my race. Our national poet, Robert Burns, notes in his great poem “The De’il’s awa’ wi’ the Exciseman” that “Whisky and Liberty gang the gither”, which for those whose Scots is a wee bit rusty means “Whisky and Liberty go together”. Well we all know how difficult it is to find real whisky in

Tashkent. It does exist, but mostly on diplomatic premises. There is still a lot of wisdom in old Robert.

It is also a great pleasure to see such a gathering of those promoting human rights in Uzbekistan, both from outside and inside the country, and from both governmental and non-governmental sectors. I am also pleased to see representatives of the media here today – I trust I will see these proceedings fully and openly reported.

Let us have no illusions about the size of the challenge we face. We must all agree that independent Uzbekistan had a great handicap to overcome in the very poor legacy on issues of freedom from the Soviet Union. But nonetheless this country has made very disappointing progress in moving away from the dictatorship of the Soviet period.

Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy, nor does it appear to be moving in the direction of democracy. The major political parties are banned; parliament is not subject to democratic election and checks and balances on the authority of the executive are lacking.

There is worse: we believe there to be between seven and ten thousand people in detention whom we would consider as political and/or religious prisoners. In many cases they have been falsely convicted of crimes with which there appears to be no credible evidence they had any connection. Reputable Human Rights groups such as Human

Rights Watch and Amnesty international have brought to our attention specific instances where the same crime is used serially to convict a number of people. There appears to be a belief that such persecution of an individual can be justified by labelling them as an “Islamic extremist”.

Now, with the US and other allies, the British government remains in the very forefront of the commitment to the war against terrorism. And we are most grateful for the invaluable assistance rendered to the coalition by the government of Uzbekistan in respect of operations in Afghanistan. We acknowledge that we face the same global

threat.

Nobody should seek to underestimate the genuine security concerns of the government of Uzbekistan and the difficulties it has faced in countering those who seek to use religion and the problems of poverty to promote terror. Uzbekistan’s strategic situation has put it in the forefront of countries struggling to deal with problems such as terrorism and narcotics trafficking.

But let us make this point: no government has the right to use the war against terrorism as an excuse for the persecution of those with a deep personal commitment to the Islamic religion, and who pursue their views by peaceful means. Sadly the large majority of those wrongly imprisoned in Uzbekistan fall into this category.

But it is not only Muslims who suffer; the British Embassy yesterday observed the trial of a Jehovah’s Witness, being prosecuted for pursuing his beliefs. It should not be a crime to practice your religion, nor to tell others about it. And a number of those imprisoned are ethnic Russian human rights defenders, colleagues of some of my audience. I would like to say at this point how deeply I admire you on a personal level. I am very conscious that I stand here in a very privileged position, in the literal sense. You on the other hand daily risk persecution to stand up for the rights of your fellow citizens. You have my deepest respect and one day your countrymen will be in a position to show you their gratitude.

Uzbekistan is to be congratulated on a good record of ratifying key UN Conventions on human rights; unfortunately there appears to be a gap between obligation and practice.

World attention has recently been focussed on the prevalence of torture in Uzbek prisons. The terrible case of Avazoz and Alimov apparently tortured to death by boiling water, has evoked great international concern. But all of us know that this is not an isolated

incident. Brutality is inherent in a system where convictions habitually rely on signed confessions rather than on forensic or material evidence. In the Uzbek criminal justice system the conviction rate is almost 100%. It is difficult not to conclude that once accused by the Prokurator there is no effective possibility of fair trial in the sense we understand it.

Another chilling reminder of the former Soviet Union is the use of commitment to lunatic asylums to stifle dissidents. We are still seeing examples of this in 2002.

Nor does the situation appear to be getting any better. I have been told by people who should know that there are significantly more political and religious detainees now than there were this time last year. From my own meetings with human rights groups from across the country there appears to be a broad picture of a reduction in the rate of arrests in the first half of this year, but a very substantial increase around August. Just last week saw another highly suspicious death in police custody in Tashkent. There is little sign of genuine positive change in Human Rights.

And that is what we want to see; genuine change. By that I mean change which actually increases the liberty of Uzbek citizens in their daily lives. Uzbekistan’s international obligations require genuine respect for Human Rights. For example officially censorship

has recently been abolished. But you would not tell this by watching, listening to or reading the media which is patently under strict control and contains no significant volume of critical comment or analysis of central government policy.

Let me give you an example. In August the government embarked upon a series of closures of major bazaars in Tashkent, and subsequently across Uzbekistan. I witnessed it happen in Namangan, for example. This is not the forum to address the motive for those closures or the rights and wrongs of this action. But it was a radical action, effected with some degree of physical and moral resistance, and closed off the retail outlets through which the majority of manufactured goods are sold in this country. It directly affected the livelihood of an estimated 50,000 people. Furthermore I have in the last two weeks visited a number of factories in Uzbekistan which have halted production and laid off their workers because their distributors have been put out of business by the bazaar closures.

As I say, I make no comment on the rights and wrongs of this, though I note that the IMF has recommended that these issues be reversed, not least because of the resulting increase in inflation. But everyone in this room knows this has been a burning political issue in the last two months. Yet one could have watched Uzbek television or listened to Uzbek radio solidly throughout this period, and read the newspaper every day, but still have gathered almost nothing of the flavour of what I have just told you. There is little

reporting of basic facts and almost no free debate. I trust that the proceedings of this event will be fully and fairly reported.

What then are the components of the real change we wish to see? They are not difficult but they require political will. I believe that people are born with an instinct for liberty and that freedom and democracy come naturally to people everywhere, once they are given the chance.

Giving people freedom does not mean that anarchy and instability will follow. Indeed, it is repression which by allowing no outlet for pressures in society, risks causing resentment, alienation and social tension. Uzbekistan’s partners and friends want to see a country which is stable, free and prosperous. For that to come about there needs to be change – releases of political prisoners; registration of political opposition parties and human rights groups; the opportunity for people to express their opinions in free elections and through a free media and the right to free assembly; and to practice their religious beliefs without fear of persecution. Deeper economic reform is needed also. We are ready to support that process of change and by embarking upon it Uzbekistan will be able to transform its standing in the international community and earn the goodwill and increased support of partners whose engagement is at present limited by the problems I have addressed today.

I thank you for your kind attention.

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