Post by 1949 on Jun 2, 2005 17:42:42 GMT -5
Uzbekistan: A “democracy too far” for US President Bush
23 May 2005. A World to Win News Service. Events in the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan have shed much light on what US President George Bush means when he says that the US is waging a global campaign for freedom and democracy. In early May, Bush went through Latvia and Georgia, two small nations that had been dominated for several decades by Russian imperialism. He seized on the long pent-up frustration and resentment at Russian domination to draw large crowds as a setting for grandiose speeches about how promoting freedom and democracy is at the heart of US policy. “Now across the Caucasus, in Central Asia and the broader Middle East, we see the desire for liberty burning in the hearts of young people. They are demanding freedom – they shall have it,” Bush proclaimed in Tbilisi’s Freedom Square.
Perhaps the problem with the people in the small city of Andijan, in Uzbekistan, whose brief rebellion was so bloodily suppressed only a few days later, is that they believed Bush meant what he said. Perhaps they got so caught up in the tidal wave of global imperialist propaganda about US-sponsored freedom sweeping the region that when they took to the streets of the city to protest at the rule of one of Central Asia’s most vicious, repressive regimes, headed by President Islam Karimov, they thought the US would actually use its powerful influence with the regime to stop its murderous hand.
It’s true that they had reason to know better. After all, the US came to an arrangement to support the head of the largest Central Asian country shortly after the 9/11 events. Although Karimov, a product of the Brezhnev era, first came to power in Uzbekistan when it was still a part of the USSR, the US was happy to accept him as a recycled pro-American in return for a major air base in Khanabad, used as a key staging point for the Afghanistan invasion. The US was certainly not ignorant about the nature of his rule even at that time. His government had already been subject to widespread condemnation for torture and repression. A 319-page Human Rights Watch report in 2004 concluded that “torture is rampant”. It detailed how one opponent of the regime, Muzafar Avozov, was even boiled to death.
Much is still unknown about the events that began in the early hours of 13 May in Andijan, mainly because the Karimov regime sealed off the area and cut off communications. It seems that the trial of 23 local businessmen sparked an armed attack on the prison where they were being held. The prisoners escaped into the city, which led to a demonstration of thousands in the city centre. An account in the New York Times (23 May), gathered from interviews with 30 survivors, said, “Speaker upon speaker complained of Uzbekistan’s poverty, police abuse, corruption and suppression of personal liberties.” A furniture maker, Rakhmat Zakhidov, 38, was quoted as saying, “I liked these speeches, because I have the same pain.” One of the 23 businessmen released, Abduvosid Egomov, 33, told a reporter, “We are ready to die instead of living as we are living now… like dirt.” There is widespread unemployment in Uzbekistan and living standards have dropped sharply in recent years, with the average wage now only 35 US dollars a month.
Government troops met the protesters with a hail of lead. Wounded survivors who fled to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan recounted how troops arrived suddenly in the city’s central square on armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and fired randomly on the throngs of protestors. Makhammed Mavlanov, a trader who was wounded, said, “Tanks came, with soldiers. Shooting started. There was no fight. It was just mass death.” (NY Times 17 May) The protestors fled in a column down Culpon Prospect, where they were met with withering fire from riflemen, snipers and APCs. As the demonstrators fled for their lives and the streets began to run red with blood, a number of the demonstrators began to chant “Ozodlik”, the Uzbek word for freedom.
In the days that followed, opposition parties claimed they had recorded up to 1,000 names of the dead. Karimov said that this was a lie and that his soldiers had killed “only 137 people”. Even this figure would still make Andijan one of the bloodiest slaughters of unarmed demonstrators in years anywhere in the world. Karimov challenged his critics to prove the bigger numbers. It’s true, this would be very difficult – because the Karimov regime prevented journalists and human rights observers from entering the areas, saying that this was for “their own protection”(!), and cut off phone and internet communications. A group of foreign officials was given a two-hour tour of the town organised by the interior ministry, but was prevented from speaking with any residents. The most extensive survey to date indicates that the numbers almost certainly exceeded Karimov’s claims.
Karimov went so far as to assert that his armed thugs had not shot any civilians at all, that “only terrorists were liquidated by government forces” – as if armoured personnel carriers firing on unarmed crowds had infallible pinpoint accuracy. A number of human rights observers said that on the contrary the dead include substantial numbers of women and children. As for the charge that all Karimov’s opponents are “Islamic terrorists”, former UK envoy to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who spoke at a meeting of the group Akramiya to which the 23 prominent local businessmen belong, denied this. He and many other observers say Karimov stepped up his attempts to portray all opposition to his regime, including human rights activists, as Islamic fundamentalists so as to be in tune with the US “war on terror”.
When reports of the bloodbath first emerged, White House spokesman Scott McClellan issued a statement that backed Karimov by repeating his claim that the victims included known “terrorists”. When worldwide indignation at the outrage forced the US government to back off this naked support for the slaughter, it then issued a call for both sides “to exercise restraint” – a “fair-sounding” policy that in its even-handedness treats Karimov’s armed-to-the-teeth US-trained stormtroopers and crowds of unarmed protestors as the same.
The events in Uzbekistan reveal a stark contrast in the way US policy is applied in this part of the world. Only a few months ago in Ukraine, the US and its global media waged a relentless campaign against former Ukraine President Kuchma. A global spotlight was turned on government corruption and on “electoral irregularities” and “media bias”, which contributed heavily to bringing about the “Orange Revolution” and the installation of a more pro-US government under Yushchenko. A similar approach was used in Georgia’s “Tulip Revolution”, where the government of Shevarnadze was hounded relentlessly to its doom and the Harvard University-educated Sakaashvili rose to power. Then, in Kyrgyzstan, the Akayev government suffered the same fate only two months ago.
But for corruption and repression, the Karimov regime far outdistances Kuchma, Shevarnadze or Akayev. It is true that there would be difficulties documenting “media bias” against the opposition in elections last year – because Karimov didn’t even allow the main opposition parties to run! In the last presidential election in 2000, he won 91.7% of the vote. As for corruption, it’s not clear what that would even mean in the Uzbek context, as for all practical purposes the Karimov clan practically owns the country. And as for repression, besides countless reports from human rights organisations documenting torture, the US State Department itself has acknowledged that the Uzbek security forces “use torture as a routine investigation technique”.
Yet despite this record of iron-fisted repression, and despite the blood of probably hundreds running on the streets of Andijan, there are no calls from the world’s self-proclaimed champion of freedom and democracy for the regime to go. The global US-dominated press, instead of campaigning to hound Karimov for office, simply calls for “restraint on both sides”! Ukraine’s Kuchma, Georgia’s Shevarnadze and Kyrgyzstan’s Katayev could be forgiven if they are somewhat confused about why they rot in history’s dustbin while Karimov has escaped the long arm of US imperialism, at least for now. But there is no real mystery. For all Bush’s boasts about how promoting freedom is what US policy is all about, what Bush is promoting most of all is the interests of US imperialism. It is no accident that all the men who rose to power through the upheavals in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan shifted their regimes decisively in a pro-US direction and opened their country’s doors to its economic penetration and their armed forces to US advice and assistance. The main freedom Bush is promoting in these countries is the “freedom” to become more tightly integrated into the US-dominated imperialist system. This is why US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praises Karimov for his “wonderful cooperation”, why Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill admires his “very keen intellect and deep passion” for improving the lives of his people, and why Bush himself has invited Karimov to the White House. (The Blair government tried to distance itself from Karimov in the wake of the Abidjan slaughter, but its efforts looked pathetic in light of the fact that only last year it fired the former UK envoy to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, for having criticised Karimov for torture and human rights abuses.)
The truth is that the Bush government works with Karimov not despite his vicious security apparatus, but precisely because that apparatus works for them. The US trained Uzbek security forces and has given the country several hundred million dollars in military and security aid since 2002, including $10 million last year for “security and law enforcement support”, according to the US Embassy website. “Camp Stronghold Freedom” in Khanabad is home to several thousand US troops. The CIA uses what it calls “extraordinary rendition” to send people it wants tortured to Karimov’s dungeons. (Reporters who have examined flight logs say they reveal at least seven flights by CIA-linked planes to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent from destinations in the Middle East and Europe from 2002 to late 2003.) In return, the US is continuing to give the Karimov financial and military assistance and support in the media and official forums like the UN, where the US has even refused to join calls for an international inquiry into the Andijan massacre.
This doesn’t mean that the US might not back some other force in the future. But for now at least, Uzbekistan is still “a democracy too far” for George Bush.
- end item-
A World To Win News Service
23 May 2005. A World to Win News Service. Events in the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan have shed much light on what US President George Bush means when he says that the US is waging a global campaign for freedom and democracy. In early May, Bush went through Latvia and Georgia, two small nations that had been dominated for several decades by Russian imperialism. He seized on the long pent-up frustration and resentment at Russian domination to draw large crowds as a setting for grandiose speeches about how promoting freedom and democracy is at the heart of US policy. “Now across the Caucasus, in Central Asia and the broader Middle East, we see the desire for liberty burning in the hearts of young people. They are demanding freedom – they shall have it,” Bush proclaimed in Tbilisi’s Freedom Square.
Perhaps the problem with the people in the small city of Andijan, in Uzbekistan, whose brief rebellion was so bloodily suppressed only a few days later, is that they believed Bush meant what he said. Perhaps they got so caught up in the tidal wave of global imperialist propaganda about US-sponsored freedom sweeping the region that when they took to the streets of the city to protest at the rule of one of Central Asia’s most vicious, repressive regimes, headed by President Islam Karimov, they thought the US would actually use its powerful influence with the regime to stop its murderous hand.
It’s true that they had reason to know better. After all, the US came to an arrangement to support the head of the largest Central Asian country shortly after the 9/11 events. Although Karimov, a product of the Brezhnev era, first came to power in Uzbekistan when it was still a part of the USSR, the US was happy to accept him as a recycled pro-American in return for a major air base in Khanabad, used as a key staging point for the Afghanistan invasion. The US was certainly not ignorant about the nature of his rule even at that time. His government had already been subject to widespread condemnation for torture and repression. A 319-page Human Rights Watch report in 2004 concluded that “torture is rampant”. It detailed how one opponent of the regime, Muzafar Avozov, was even boiled to death.
Much is still unknown about the events that began in the early hours of 13 May in Andijan, mainly because the Karimov regime sealed off the area and cut off communications. It seems that the trial of 23 local businessmen sparked an armed attack on the prison where they were being held. The prisoners escaped into the city, which led to a demonstration of thousands in the city centre. An account in the New York Times (23 May), gathered from interviews with 30 survivors, said, “Speaker upon speaker complained of Uzbekistan’s poverty, police abuse, corruption and suppression of personal liberties.” A furniture maker, Rakhmat Zakhidov, 38, was quoted as saying, “I liked these speeches, because I have the same pain.” One of the 23 businessmen released, Abduvosid Egomov, 33, told a reporter, “We are ready to die instead of living as we are living now… like dirt.” There is widespread unemployment in Uzbekistan and living standards have dropped sharply in recent years, with the average wage now only 35 US dollars a month.
Government troops met the protesters with a hail of lead. Wounded survivors who fled to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan recounted how troops arrived suddenly in the city’s central square on armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and fired randomly on the throngs of protestors. Makhammed Mavlanov, a trader who was wounded, said, “Tanks came, with soldiers. Shooting started. There was no fight. It was just mass death.” (NY Times 17 May) The protestors fled in a column down Culpon Prospect, where they were met with withering fire from riflemen, snipers and APCs. As the demonstrators fled for their lives and the streets began to run red with blood, a number of the demonstrators began to chant “Ozodlik”, the Uzbek word for freedom.
In the days that followed, opposition parties claimed they had recorded up to 1,000 names of the dead. Karimov said that this was a lie and that his soldiers had killed “only 137 people”. Even this figure would still make Andijan one of the bloodiest slaughters of unarmed demonstrators in years anywhere in the world. Karimov challenged his critics to prove the bigger numbers. It’s true, this would be very difficult – because the Karimov regime prevented journalists and human rights observers from entering the areas, saying that this was for “their own protection”(!), and cut off phone and internet communications. A group of foreign officials was given a two-hour tour of the town organised by the interior ministry, but was prevented from speaking with any residents. The most extensive survey to date indicates that the numbers almost certainly exceeded Karimov’s claims.
Karimov went so far as to assert that his armed thugs had not shot any civilians at all, that “only terrorists were liquidated by government forces” – as if armoured personnel carriers firing on unarmed crowds had infallible pinpoint accuracy. A number of human rights observers said that on the contrary the dead include substantial numbers of women and children. As for the charge that all Karimov’s opponents are “Islamic terrorists”, former UK envoy to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, who spoke at a meeting of the group Akramiya to which the 23 prominent local businessmen belong, denied this. He and many other observers say Karimov stepped up his attempts to portray all opposition to his regime, including human rights activists, as Islamic fundamentalists so as to be in tune with the US “war on terror”.
When reports of the bloodbath first emerged, White House spokesman Scott McClellan issued a statement that backed Karimov by repeating his claim that the victims included known “terrorists”. When worldwide indignation at the outrage forced the US government to back off this naked support for the slaughter, it then issued a call for both sides “to exercise restraint” – a “fair-sounding” policy that in its even-handedness treats Karimov’s armed-to-the-teeth US-trained stormtroopers and crowds of unarmed protestors as the same.
The events in Uzbekistan reveal a stark contrast in the way US policy is applied in this part of the world. Only a few months ago in Ukraine, the US and its global media waged a relentless campaign against former Ukraine President Kuchma. A global spotlight was turned on government corruption and on “electoral irregularities” and “media bias”, which contributed heavily to bringing about the “Orange Revolution” and the installation of a more pro-US government under Yushchenko. A similar approach was used in Georgia’s “Tulip Revolution”, where the government of Shevarnadze was hounded relentlessly to its doom and the Harvard University-educated Sakaashvili rose to power. Then, in Kyrgyzstan, the Akayev government suffered the same fate only two months ago.
But for corruption and repression, the Karimov regime far outdistances Kuchma, Shevarnadze or Akayev. It is true that there would be difficulties documenting “media bias” against the opposition in elections last year – because Karimov didn’t even allow the main opposition parties to run! In the last presidential election in 2000, he won 91.7% of the vote. As for corruption, it’s not clear what that would even mean in the Uzbek context, as for all practical purposes the Karimov clan practically owns the country. And as for repression, besides countless reports from human rights organisations documenting torture, the US State Department itself has acknowledged that the Uzbek security forces “use torture as a routine investigation technique”.
Yet despite this record of iron-fisted repression, and despite the blood of probably hundreds running on the streets of Andijan, there are no calls from the world’s self-proclaimed champion of freedom and democracy for the regime to go. The global US-dominated press, instead of campaigning to hound Karimov for office, simply calls for “restraint on both sides”! Ukraine’s Kuchma, Georgia’s Shevarnadze and Kyrgyzstan’s Katayev could be forgiven if they are somewhat confused about why they rot in history’s dustbin while Karimov has escaped the long arm of US imperialism, at least for now. But there is no real mystery. For all Bush’s boasts about how promoting freedom is what US policy is all about, what Bush is promoting most of all is the interests of US imperialism. It is no accident that all the men who rose to power through the upheavals in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan shifted their regimes decisively in a pro-US direction and opened their country’s doors to its economic penetration and their armed forces to US advice and assistance. The main freedom Bush is promoting in these countries is the “freedom” to become more tightly integrated into the US-dominated imperialist system. This is why US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praises Karimov for his “wonderful cooperation”, why Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill admires his “very keen intellect and deep passion” for improving the lives of his people, and why Bush himself has invited Karimov to the White House. (The Blair government tried to distance itself from Karimov in the wake of the Abidjan slaughter, but its efforts looked pathetic in light of the fact that only last year it fired the former UK envoy to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, for having criticised Karimov for torture and human rights abuses.)
The truth is that the Bush government works with Karimov not despite his vicious security apparatus, but precisely because that apparatus works for them. The US trained Uzbek security forces and has given the country several hundred million dollars in military and security aid since 2002, including $10 million last year for “security and law enforcement support”, according to the US Embassy website. “Camp Stronghold Freedom” in Khanabad is home to several thousand US troops. The CIA uses what it calls “extraordinary rendition” to send people it wants tortured to Karimov’s dungeons. (Reporters who have examined flight logs say they reveal at least seven flights by CIA-linked planes to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent from destinations in the Middle East and Europe from 2002 to late 2003.) In return, the US is continuing to give the Karimov financial and military assistance and support in the media and official forums like the UN, where the US has even refused to join calls for an international inquiry into the Andijan massacre.
This doesn’t mean that the US might not back some other force in the future. But for now at least, Uzbekistan is still “a democracy too far” for George Bush.
- end item-
A World To Win News Service