Yearbook 2008
Uzbekistan. In January, President Islam Karimov was sworn
in for a third term, despite the president being allowed to
run for re-election only once.
According to
Countryaah reports, Uzbekistan's security service was identified at the
beginning of the year as guilty of the murder of
regime-critical Uzbek journalist Alisjer Saipov in
Kyrgyzstan in 2007. According to a report by the
International Crisis Group, there were strong indications
that Uzbekistan's security service was behind Saipov's
murder.
In April, the regime-critical poet Yusuf Juma was
sentenced to five years of forced labor accused of attacking
the police. Juma, who denied the accusations, had been
arrested while participating in a protest against the
regime. His son was sentenced by the same court in Buchara
to three years of conditional punishment, but according to
the family, the son had been tortured and forced to admit
under threat that his father would otherwise receive a
20-year sentence.
In June, a couple of political prisoners were released,
probably following pressure from the United States. One of
them was Ahmadjon Odilov, 83, the political prisoner who
served the longest sentence in Uzbekistan.
In October, regime-critical freelance journalist Solijon
Abdurachmanov was sentenced to ten years in prison for drug
offenses. He denied and claimed that he was subject to a
plot. The verdict fell shortly after a media freedom forum
was held in Tashkent and it was followed by another 10-year
prison sentence against a human rights lawyer accused of
blackmail. According to human rights groups, the charge was
fabricated.
Despite the suppression of human rights suppression in
Uzbekistan, there were strong forces within the EU that
wanted to lift the sanctions against the country. The United
States also showed signs of wanting to approach the regime
in Tashkent, to counter Russia's influence in the region and
to facilitate its transportation of supplies to Afghanistan.
Ahead of the NATO summit in Romania in April, President
Karimov said yes to transport by road through Uzbekistan to
Afghanistan.
In December, health care officials anonymously confirmed
to foreign media that more than 40 children, most of them
newborns, had been infected with HIV at a hospital in the
city of Namangan in the Fergana Valley. In the local media,
the case was not reported, which was reportedly handed over
to prosecutors.
|
