Association for Democracy in Uzbekistan – Confidential letters

RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism…

Confidential letters from Ambassador Craig Murray…

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Letter #1

Confidential

FM Tashkent

TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts

16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism

SUMMARY

US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy.

DETAIL

The Economist of 7 September states: “Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism.” The Economist also spoke of “the growing despotism of Mr Karimov” and judged that “the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record”. I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.

Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements.

The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev’s time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion.

This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov’s repression may keep the lid on for years – but pressure is building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the “War against Terrorism” and that Karimov is on “our” side.

If Karimov is on “our” side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary – the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World’s old communist leaders.

We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the “too difficult” tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups.

Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns in the new Great Game.

MURRAY

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Letter #2

Confidential

Fm Tashkent

To FCO

18 March 2003

SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY

SUMMARY

1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL

2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan’s geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov’s vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and “dismantling the apparatus of terror? removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms”. Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.

MURRAY

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Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL

FM TASHKENT

TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63

OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay’s circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as “From detainee debriefing.” The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;

“The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.”

While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present

question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family’s links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood’s legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael’s views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

The Observer – Trouble in Tashkent (by Nick Cohen)

In the middle of October, Craig Murray, our man in Uzbekistan, delivered a speech which broke with all the established principles of Foreign Office diplomacy. ‘This country,’ the brave and honest ambassador told an audience in Tashkent, ‘has made very disappointing progress in moving away from the dictatorship of the Soviet period … The major political parties are banned; Parliament is not subject to democratic election and checks and balances on the authority of the electorate are lacking. There is worse: we believe there to be between seven and 10,000 people in detention who 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.’

The state-censored Uzbek media didn’t report his accurate description of life in the dictatorship. Such news is unfit to use. I would guess that until 11 September few outsiders would have cared about Murray’s denunciation of the near 100 per cent conviction rate of the state’s prosecutors and the gangsterism of its post-communist elite. (I would also guess that until 11 September few outsiders would have been able to find Uzbekistan on a map.)

The ‘war’ on terrorism changed all that. I was in Washington in January and saw how events in Uzbekistan pushed delighted conservatives to declare themselves masters of an ‘Empire’. Until then, ‘the American Empire’ was an insult. The Right didn’t accept the Republic could have become any such thing. After Osama bin Laden unwittingly turned America from a superpower into a hyper-power, the men around Bush no longer could or wanted to deny that an empire was what they had. It was the opening of US bases in Uzbekistan which forced them to talk plainly. Here were American troops in a former Soviet Republic in the centre of central Asia and no one – not Russia, not China – could do anything about it. The world was their playground.

Uzbekistan represented a new peak for American imperialism but was also a test of what type of empire the American empire would be. On the level of realpolitik, the thugs in charge of Uzbekistan suited the West well. The President, Islam Karimov, was a Soviet apparatchik who found Muslim fundamentalism a useful justification for repression. Since 1997, his government has pursued a campaign against Muslims who worship outside the state-controlled religion. Some were insurgents dedicated to the most frightening versions of theocracy. But not all.

Alerts from Human Rights Watch give a flavour of how the war against terrorism became a war against democracy. Elena Urlaeva didn’t look like a potential suicide bomber. She was a member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, who protested outside the Ministry of Justice in Tashkent. She was shipped, Brezhnev style, to a mental hospital and stultified with drugs. Meanwhile, independent doctors have put their careers and more at risk by examining the bodies of prisoners who die in custody. One, the corpse of Muzafar Avazov, had no fingernails and ‘bore burns that could only be caused by immersing him in boiling water’. Neither of the above stories is exceptional.

For most of the time Karimov seems as much mad as vicious. In October, for instance, all the billiard halls in Uzbekistan were closed. The national team was banned from travelling to tournaments and the Uzbek Billiard Federation was abolished. No law was passed against billiards. One day Uzbeks could play billiards and the next they couldn’t. The Associated Press said that the word on the streets of Tashkent had it that some bureaucrat’s son had lost big at the table.

What isn’t banned is glowing accounts of approval for the regime from the West. The state media use them to reinforce Karimov’s power and dispirit his opponents. And it is Britain which is providing the greatest comfort, despite the best efforts of our ambassador.

In May the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will hold its annual meeting in Tashkent. Clare Short will be in the chair. The charter of the bank, whose capital is provided by European tax payers, stands out from those of other international financial institutions because it instructs the staff to do more good than harm. The bank can only help ‘countries committed to and applying the principles of multi-party democracy, pluralism and market economics’.

The bank will be able to insist on privatisations. The Uzbek elite will go along with market economics as long as it gets its cut. But Uzbekistan won’t accept multi-party democracy without a fight, and the bank’s amoral directors aren’t prepared to start one. What the Economist calls the European Bank for Repression and Dictatorship is as uncomfortable with human freedom as its Uzbek friends. Human Rights Watch and civil-liberties groups from Albania to Tajikistan have begged it to apply pressure. The timid protesters don’t want Europe to cancel the propaganda triumph the conference will bring and stop supplying public money to a government which is little more than a crime gang. They merely want the bank to demand that favours should be conditional on Uzbekistan releasing political prisoners and freeing the press.

Jean Lemierre, the president of the bank, who, by his own charter’s standards, should be looking for other work, has refused. A few days ago he was in Uzbekistan and was quoted by the country’s lackey media as promising a ‘foreign capital inflow to the region’. Short, to her credit, has condemned the huge corruption in Uzbekistan, but has refused to impose conditions in return for aid.

We are 15 months into the ‘war’ and still have no answer to the question: Will the American Empire and its European clients be agents of national liberation or the perpetuators of a status quo which creates mass murderers?

At the moment the European Bank and Clare Short’s Department for International Development are doing precisely what bin Laden would want them to do. Or as Craig Murray said in words which apply as well to Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as Uzbekistan: ‘Giving people freedom doesn’t mean that anarchy and instability will follow. Indeed, it is repression which risks causing resentment, alienation and social tension.’

American ambassador has praised Uzbekistan for human rights

By Shavkat Turon, writing in OzodOvoz

On December, 10, 2004 the plenipotentiary ambassador of the USA in Uzbekistan John Purnell, talking with journalists of foreign mass media, has told, that Uzbekistan has made considerable progress in sphere of human rights. The correspondent of Ozod Ovoz Shavkat Turon informs from Tashkent.

The praise of the American diplomatic corps head has sounded in hotel Le Meridien in Tashkent on the celebratory action organized by representations of Freedom House and USAID in honor of the World day of human rights. In interview to the correspondents of radio BBC, “Ozodlik”, Deutche Welle and other foreign news agencies John Purnell has told: In comparison with former years Uzbekistan has made considerable progress in sphere of observance of human rights .

The main American diplomat in Uzbekistan has proved the words up to conversation with foreign journalists, during special speech to participants of the celebratory action organized in honor of the World day of human rights.

John Purnell began the story from apart, having told, that by education he is a historian. Therefore I want to address to history , – the ambassador has told and informed, that in the beginning of 80th years he worked as the 2-secretary of the USA embassy in the former USSR, in Moscow. Then the simple Soviet people marked this holiday that came to Pushkin’s monument in Moscow and simply removed the caps. And the Soviet militia arrested them only that they removed the headdresses. Thank God, that now it is not present: nobody pursues people for removal of headdresses , – John Purnell has told.

And after this speech the American ambassador has given interview to foreign mass media and has noted considerable progress in sphere of observance of human rights in Uzbekistan .

The American flattery aside the official Tashkent has been perceived by participants of celebratory action easy. One of the Uzbek human rights activist, invited on the celebratory action, has told, that all world has got used to hypocrisy of the USA concerning the dictatorial regime in Uzbekistan. Americans are not Scots, and John Purnell is not Craig Murray , – has told the Uzbek human rights activist.

Shavkat Turon is pseudonym of the correspondent of Ozod Ovoz in Tashkent

Amnesty International – Uzbekistan: Britain’s ambassador was right to speak out (by Carlos Reyes-Manzo)

The news that Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has been removed from his post after speaking out about torture in Uzbekistan is stunning. I, for one, had allowed myself a small cheer when Mr Murray started denouncing horrifying human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. Here was a diplomat prepared to break with the usual protocol-driven reticence.

According to Amnesty International, people are routinely tortured under Uzbekistan’s authoritarian President Karimov. Mr Murray has been posted to represent British interests in Tashkent. Should he have denounced the fact that his hosts allowed people to be boiled to death? Should he have complained that Uzbek detainees are tortured into false confessions and secretly executed? Or look the other way and keep quiet?

Actually, I suspect most career diplomats would have found a convenient third way. Report it back to London, but keep quiet publicly. His superiors might well have said that Uzbekistan is now a strategically important partner in the “war on terror”. And that we have to accept that Karimov is dealing with an insurgent terrorist threat. Interrogations will be rough, but necessary.

Mr Murray appears to be made of different stuff. His recent complaints have focused on the question of whether the Foreign Office and MI6 are receiving information from torture in Uzbekistan filtered through the FBI. And if so, what would they do with it? This seems to have riled his FCO superiors and brought about his removal. He sees himself now as a “victim of conscience”. Who is the principled party here?

Under international law information extracted from torture is legally inadmissible in a court. The UN’s convention against torture expressly forbids the use of torture “evidence”. It is effectively dirty information and must be discounted. However, in a little-noticed ruling in August, the Court of Appeal decided that while information obtained by torture was inadmissible in UK courts, this was only the case when directly procured by UK agents or in whose procurement UK agents have connived.

Amnesty International denounced this alarming view as “giving a green light to torturers” around the world. I agree. Yet this appears to be the FCO’s current position. If we don’t do it ourselves then information we get from foreign torture chambers is okay.

When I was tortured under Pinochet’s military junta in the 1970s, I looked to countries like Britain to resist the barbarity of Pinochet’s methods. Britain was a safe haven from torture for me and has been my home now for many years. However, I am increasingly distressed at the UK’s apparent new-found “flexibility” over torture.

Let me be clear about torture. It is an abomination. Nobody can describe the pain. Nobody can truly describe the real horror of torture.

I was arrested in front of my wife and two small children in Santiago in 1974 by members of SICAR (Servicio Inteligencia Carabineros). I was blindfolded and taken to a secret detention centre under a car park under the presidential palace, La Moneda. I was tortured there for three months before being transferred to another torture centre known as “La Casa del Terror” (The House of Torture) at no.33 Calle Londres. Three more months of torture followed.

For me, there were two mental stages. The first was shock: I was in shock and my mind was frantically working, getting ready for what was coming. The second stage was acceptance: acceptance that I would die, but die with dignity.

Whether or not I’d given my tormentors information and whether or not that information was truthful, it can only be right that such material never surfaces in a court of law. As a matter of fact, most information beaten out of people in police cells is pure rubbish. People will confess to anything and denounce anybody if pushed to the limits of endurance.

Craig Murray’s fear that the FBI is passing information from torture victims to UK officials is, in my experience, highly likely to be borne out. After surviving torture and time in a Chilean concentration camp, I was exiled to Panama. But I was later picked up by Chilean and Panamanian police and interrogated and beaten all over again. On this occasion, interrogations were also carried out by a CIA agent. If, then, intelligence services collaborated against the “communist threat”, they are doing it now in the “war on terror”.

The huge intelligence failures over Iraq have certainly alerted us to the dire uncertainties attaching to secret “intelligence”. How much more questionable if the information derives from blood-spattered torture victims?

When Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998, I hoped we were at a turning point in the fight against torture. Putting Pinochet on trial was vital, not just to me, but for thousands of survivors of torture still alive in Chile and around the world. Britain had, it seemed, taken a brave step in allowing his arrest and detention. The promise seemed to be: no more immunity for torturers.

Pinochet escaped justice here, but may still be tried in Chile. His London arrest was a marker laid down at the feet of the likes of Uzbekistan’s President Karimov.

On 9 October, the trial of an Afghan warlord suspected of orchestrating torture in Afghanistan opened at the Old Bailey. This is ground-breaking as it tries him for alleged torture in a separate country. It’s a real step forward.

Torture is recognised as an international crime and perpetrators can and should be prosecuted in courts far away from the original scene of the crime.

But, contrast this with the fact that simultaneously people in Britain may currently be detained indefinitely under anti-terrorism measures partly on the basis of blood-stained information. Foreign nationals are even now being held indefinitely without trial at top-security prisons at Belmarsh in South London and Woodhill in Buckinghamshire. They have been “certified” as suspected terrorists by the Home Secretary David Blunkett and the special proceedings to justify these measures are the very ones over which the Court of Appeal gave its green light on the use of “third party” torture material.

The fearful symmetry, then, is contained in the fact that we may be locking people up here based on information tortured out of British nationals in places like Guantanamo Bay.

We are at a fork in the road. We go either with Mr Murray and reject torture in all its forms; or we equivocate, look for justifications, and decide that Donald Rumsfeld has a point when he distinguishes between “abuse” and “torture”.

In the year of Abu Ghraib and international intelligence failures, we need to break with torture forever. Allowing the virus of torture “evidence” into our legal bloodstream is something we must resist. Anything else and the torturers have won.

Carlos Reyes-Manzo now lives with his family in London. He is an award-winning human rights photo-journalist.

Published in The Scotsman

About a dozen people protested in the Uzbek capital today at the sacking of the British ambassador – an outspoken critic of the human rights situation in the Central Asian nation.

The protesters gathered outside the British Embassy in Tashkent, holding signs that read: “Uzbek people love our friend Murray,” “Don’t give up Mr Craig Murray, fight for democracy and freedom in Uzbekistan.”

“We are here to defend Craig Murray who has been betrayed by the British government,” said one of the demonstrators.

Public protests are rare in the tightly controlled former Soviet state.

The Foreign Office sacked Mr Murray two weeks ago, saying he had lost the confidence of senior officials and colleagues.

He had harshly criticised Uzbekistan’s government for widespread human rights abuses, including putting more than 6,000 political prisoners in squalid jails where dozens of people have reportedly died from torture.

He recently accused British and US intelligence services of using information collected from people tortured by Uzbekistan’s security services.

The Foreign Office denied the claims and said Mr Murray’s removal was not related to the allegations.

Daniel Grzenda, the embassy’s third political secretary, said officials visited the protesters today and told them that “the embassy respects their right to picket and will note the messages and pass them to London.”

The Central Asian country emerged as a key US ally after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and hosts hundreds of American troops supporting operations in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Daily Telegraph – The envoy silenced after telling undiplomatic truths (by Robin Gedye)

It is clear when you meet Craig Murray, suspended as ambassador to Uzbekistan for speaking out on human rights, that he is not the Foreign Office type.

He opens the door to the top-floor flat in London Docklands, where he is staying, in an orange T-shirt, loose-fit jeans and trainers.

He went to grammar school and Dundee University and, as he points out, cannot pronounce his Rs. But then, how could the FO refuse a candidate who came in the top three in his year when he took the Civil Service entrance exams in 1984.?

“I always felt a little uncomfortable in the Foreign Office,” suggests Mr Murray with uncharacteristically diplomatic understatement.

As he speaks, Nadira Alieva, a 23-year-old Uzbek teacher and his girlfriend, flits through the room, her brown hair artfully backcombed, in tight jeans and a T-shirt that reads: “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to London.”

Mr Murray continued: “I applied to scores of firms when I left university. What I wanted was to work in sales in the distillery industry but I didn’t receive a single reply. It was only when I passed the Civil Service exams that I decided on the Foreign Office.”

Mr Murray’s brains ensured a rapid rise. Deputy high commissioner in Ghana, first secretary in Warsaw, second secretary in Lagos and, in August 2002 at the age of 43, Uzbekistan as the youngest serving British ambassador.

Two years later he has been hauled back to London and suspended on full pay after “losing the confidence of his colleagues” in one of the most embarrassing scandals to hit the august corridors of Her Majesty’s diplomatic corps for many years. He faces a disciplinary inquiry and, almost inevitably, dismissal.

His crime is hard to pin down. Was it his telegrams to London which spoke in undiplomatic terms of torture and corruption, or was it his friendly press relations?

“While still in Tashkent I’d get two or three requests a week for interviews,” Mr Murray explained. “And as is the rule, I routinely passed them on to London for clearance.

“Their response was always to tell the journalist, ‘Mr Murray does not want to do interviews’, which annoyed me because I really wanted to speak about the atrocities.” Whatever else he has done, Mr Murray is a man of principle who felt compelled to detail the human rights abuses he saw in a country which, shortly before he arrived, had become America’s New Best Friend in Asia.

Run by Islam Karimov, a post-Soviet apparatchik with a Stalinist mindset, Uzbekistan happens to border Afghanistan and was willing – for a large injection of United States money – to provide Washington with one of the region’s largest air bases. Two months into his new posting, Mr Murray delivered a speech at the opening of new offices for the human rights organisation Freedom House that changed the tone of relations between London and Tashkent fundamentally and marked the beginning of the end of his career.

His mistake was to tell a stunned audience of diplomats, aid workers and Uzbek officials what they already knew. “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,” he said.

One of those present said the tension in the room could have been cut with a knife.

Unfortunately for Mr Murray, the repercussions extended far beyond Uzbekistan’s frontiers. In the Foreign Office there was total confusion. The speech had been authorised but clearly no one had realised that it would cause such offence.

While the official line insisted that Mr Murray “accurately reflects our concerns”, there was a sudden awareness that London had a problem. Other incidents followed. Mr Murray spoke in public of the absence of reform and freedom of speech and about repression. The British embassy, seen as a backwater under its previous ambassador, became a magnet for dissidents.

“They turned up at my door with broken teeth and burns from torture. Some would spend the night in my home. On one occasion the grandson of a dissident I had met was murdered within hours of my speaking to his grandfather. They left his body on the doorstep. His hands and knees had been smashed with a hammer. It was a warning not to speak to me,” he said.

“Very little can prepare you for the brutality and viciousness of the Karimov regime. Most diplomats isolate themselves from it.”

In August 2003, Mr Murray was called in to the Foreign Office on his way back to Tashkent after his summer holidays and confronted with a list of 18 charges of misconduct. These included accusations of drunkenness, womanising and “unpatriotic behaviour”. He was asked to resign and refused.

Specifically, the charges claimed that he had seduced visa applicants in return for entry stamps to Britain, travelled through Tashkent to visit drinking dens in the official car “with the flag up” and driven an embassy Land Rover down a flight of steps to a picnic area In fact, Mr Murray cannot even drive.

All charges, bar one – that he was guilty of talking about the charges laid against him – were dropped through lack of evidence and Mr Murray was allowed to return to work. But far from silencing him, the attempt to blacken his name provided endless headlines. “I am stunned by their incompetence,” said Mr Murray. “If they had pulled me out immediately it would have been in the papers for a couple of days and that’s it.”

Instead there were protests outside the British embassy and 15 British businessmen signed a letter to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, supporting Mr Murray.

While in London awaiting the outcome of the charges against him Mr Murray had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital and put on suicide watch for 10 days. It was shortly after Dr David Kelly had died and there were fears that the official hounding of Mr Murray might see another fatality.

No sooner had Mr Murray returned to Tashkent, however, than the awkward memos to London resumed.

He was warned that he was being “unpatriotic” and newspapers started printing stories querying his sanity.

Clearly, someone was briefing against him. Close associates believe that if not the Foreign Office, it would have been MI6 – Mr Murray, after all, was jeopardising a strategic military outpost.

How could America continue to pay President Karimov $295 million per year if he was a major human rights offender? It couldn’t, and funding was cut earlier this year because of human rights abuses.

British officials suggest that behind it all lies Downing Street, pressured by the Bush administration to silence the diplomatic embarrassment.

When Mr Murray fired off a memorandum to the Foreign Office last July suggesting that Britain’s intelligence services were wrong to use information gleaned from torture victims, his masters threw caution aside. It was clearly time to silence him. He was stripped of his security clearance, making him ineffective as an ambassador.

Yet even this proved insufficient as Mr Murray continued to speak out. Last week, the memo was leaked to the Financial Times.

Because of the leak and a linked appearance on Radio 4’s Today, Mr Murray was suspended from his post.

As he watches the rain sweeping up the Thames, Mr Murray might perhaps take comfort in the memory of Sir Henry Wotton, the British diplomat and poet who died in 1639 and who ruined his own career as James I’s envoy to Venice by suggesting that an ambassador “is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country”.

The – Guardian – UK Embassy Bash Falls Foul of Uzbek Secret Police: It is an event more usually associated with cocktails, canapes and polite laughter. But in Uzbekistan, the annual party held by the British embassy in honour of the Queen’s birthday has been the object of dark threats from the secret police.

“What are they going to do?” asked the source. “Ban him twice?”

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.

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.

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

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.”

By David Stern writing in Eurasianet

Three months after British Ambassador Craig Murray delivered a speech in Uzbekistan, diplomats and analysts are still debating how Murray has changed the tone of relations between Britain and this former Soviet republic. Murray caused a sensation for doing one small thing that very few people seem to have done here: he told the truth.

Uzbekistan, which sits north of Afghanistan, became a critical ally to the United States and United Kingdom in the autumn 2001 campaign to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan. Despite this elevation in status, though, the country has made only marginal improvements in its record of repressing dissidents. At the opening of the Uzbekistan offices of Freedom House on October 17, Ambassador Murray ? with top Uzbek officials and diplomats present ? delivered the diplomatic equivalent of a salvo. Ambassador Murray said: “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.”

The shock value of these statements ? as well as others discussing widespread torture in Uzbekistan and the government’s refusal to convert its currency or foster cross-border trade ? cannot be overstated. In one fell swoop the British diplomat stripped away the euphemisms that characterize much of the West’s relationship with Uzbekistan. He continued: “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.”

Analysts point out that what the ambassador said was in essence nothing new. His count of political prisoners was higher than other published estimates: Human Rights Watch announced in a January 14 report that “conservative” guesses peg the number of prisoners of conscience in Uzbekistan at between 6,500 and 7,000. But many Western officials have criticized President Islam Karimov for the abuses Murray discussed, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly pressed Karimov to commit to democratic reforms before finalizing a bilateral treaty. Most of Murray’s statements are common currency among foreign diplomats and businessmen in the privacy of their homes and workplaces. Yet his speech stood so far apart from official parlance that it struck some listeners as provocative. “You could have cut the tension in the room with a blunt knife,” said one of those present at the Freedom House opening.

In the months since Murray’s speech, Karimov’s government has tried sporadically to improve its image. Authorities released activist Yuldash Rasulov of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan on January 3 as part of an amnesty declared in December. He had gone to jail on what western advocates called trumped-up charges, and Human Rights Watch applauded his release. Many suspected political prisoners remain behind bars, though, and a United Nations rapporteur announced in December that he had seen “systematic” use of torture while touring Uzbekistan’s prisons. [For background, see the Eurasia Insight archives.] In a January 14 report that broadly criticized the Bush Administration for downplaying human rights concerns as it prosecutes a war on terrorists, Human Rights Watch credited the administration for promoting reform in Uzbekistan.

Murray’s strident words, then, had an easy time finding sympathetic ears. More broadly, however, Murray’s choice split the foreign community into two camps. Some diplomats and analysts saw his speech as a result of fatigue, brought on after years of wielding more carrot than stick in the hope that Tashkent would respond to positive reinforcement. This approach has yielded very little progress, they say, since Uzbekistan’s human rights environment has basically stagnated. Other experts believe Murray’s gambit was naive and counterproductive. In this way, the British diplomat also revealed the sharp division that exists within Western governments and organizations over how best to deal with Karimov’s repressive regime during the murky next phase of antiterrorist operations. The main question in this debate is whether criticism of abhorrent policies in Uzbekistan spur the government to reform or instead cause it to circle its wagons and become more defensive.

Observers say that a number of European governments are prone to take a softer tone than the United States, which tends to conduct hard talk in private discussions. Murray’s remarks raise questions about Britain’s and Europe’s role as a counterweight to the United States’ approach. The Human Rights Watch report, which accused the European Union of “undue deference to Washington,” highlight the sensitivity of Murray’s statements.

The irony of Murray’s speech, some say, is that it caused friction between the US and British embassies ? the two foreign representations that are most concerned with democracy and human rights in Uzbekistan. US Ambassador John Herbst was present at the Freedom House function and had delivered, according to observers, a typical American take on human rights in Uzbekistan ? that problems exist but progress has been made. After this predictable address, Murray delivered his broadside. “The British ambassador’s speech was an embarrassment for the United States. It showed up the crack in the shield and many thought that he upstaged [Herbst],” said someone who was present.

In the end, Murray’s decisions about protocol may give his critics some high ground. Some say that no matter what he said, Murray should not have spoken out so early in his tenure, just months after he had arrived in Tashkent. They say that such a speech should have waited until the newly appointed diplomat had time to raise the issues with Uzbeks themselves. This would not have necessarily brought about a change, but it would have given the British ambassador a better defense when others challenged his approach. Murray in effect hamstrung himself, say experts, compromising the rest of his work in the country.

Even if that analysis proves accurate, though, the stridency in Murray’s words has emboldened some other critics of Karimov. “To me the fundamental question is not why did he say this, but why the other ambassadors didn’t?” said one Western observer.