Friday, June 03, 2005
Poverty, Repression Hobbling Uzbeks
The U.S. continues to walk a tightrope in the aftermath of the Uzbek unrest, offering a tepid response but wary of appearing to close to Karimov, even as Bush slipped and called him a “friend.”
Meanwhile the attention from the massacre has shed light on living conditions in Uzbekistan. Tales of crippling poverty are common as adequate food has become difficult for many to afford, especially in the south, the Aral basin in the west, and in the Ferghana valley, the scene of last month’s violence.
The plight of the people in the Aral basin of western Uzbekistan was initiated by myopic policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet state is gone, but the Karimov regime is a close replica, especially for the sharecropper farmers.
“The government controls our lives very tightly. If we don’t obey, we’ll end up in trouble,” said an Uzbek farmer. “All we want is freedom, and the state is punishing us for wanting freedom.”
Farmers are still subject to severe Soviet-style regulations and penalties. They are banned from buying their own land and have to sell cotton to the government at fixed, below-market prices. Planting and picking cotton is still done by hand, with children, students and women from all over the country being drafted in to help every year. Farmers are allowed to lease plots from big Soviet-style collective farms, but they can be stripped of their allotments if they fail to fulfill state output quotas.
Karimov controls agriculture and trade almost as harshly as he does political dissent, so most farmers are reluctant to discuss their hardships. Some of those who resist get arrested. None of the farmers would give their full names to the reporter.
“I’ve heard of many farmers who ended up in real trouble. I don’t want to talk about it. Of course we are afraid,” said one farmer as his wife and daughter turned the soil nearby.
The head of the IMF mission to Uzbekistan has called on the government to allow farmers to grow and sell whatever they felt was necessary under given market circumstances. “This would be key to improving living standards in the rural areas.” The Karimov government has promised to gradually dismantle the collective farms, but the farmers are skeptical.
The government also tightly controls religious practice. Lawrence A. Uzzell, president of International Religious Freedom Watch, an independent research center that investigates state-enforced religious conformity, spent seven years in Russia monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet Republics. He reports here on a recent survey of religious freedom in Uzbekistan.
Meanwhile the attention from the massacre has shed light on living conditions in Uzbekistan. Tales of crippling poverty are common as adequate food has become difficult for many to afford, especially in the south, the Aral basin in the west, and in the Ferghana valley, the scene of last month’s violence.
The World Bank reported that the proportion of Uzbeks living below the national poverty line was 28 percent of the population in 2002. However, some analysts believe that the real figure is much higher, with the number of poor being especially high in remote provinces."We eat only bread at home," said an eight-year-old schoolgirl, adding that meat had become a luxury for her family. She recalled eating meat the last time when she visited relatives in a neighbouring province.
The plight of the people in the Aral basin of western Uzbekistan was initiated by myopic policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet state is gone, but the Karimov regime is a close replica, especially for the sharecropper farmers.
“The government controls our lives very tightly. If we don’t obey, we’ll end up in trouble,” said an Uzbek farmer. “All we want is freedom, and the state is punishing us for wanting freedom.”
Farmers are still subject to severe Soviet-style regulations and penalties. They are banned from buying their own land and have to sell cotton to the government at fixed, below-market prices. Planting and picking cotton is still done by hand, with children, students and women from all over the country being drafted in to help every year. Farmers are allowed to lease plots from big Soviet-style collective farms, but they can be stripped of their allotments if they fail to fulfill state output quotas.
Karimov controls agriculture and trade almost as harshly as he does political dissent, so most farmers are reluctant to discuss their hardships. Some of those who resist get arrested. None of the farmers would give their full names to the reporter.
“I’ve heard of many farmers who ended up in real trouble. I don’t want to talk about it. Of course we are afraid,” said one farmer as his wife and daughter turned the soil nearby.
The head of the IMF mission to Uzbekistan has called on the government to allow farmers to grow and sell whatever they felt was necessary under given market circumstances. “This would be key to improving living standards in the rural areas.” The Karimov government has promised to gradually dismantle the collective farms, but the farmers are skeptical.
The government also tightly controls religious practice. Lawrence A. Uzzell, president of International Religious Freedom Watch, an independent research center that investigates state-enforced religious conformity, spent seven years in Russia monitoring religious freedom in the former Soviet Republics. He reports here on a recent survey of religious freedom in Uzbekistan.
Unregistered religious activity is still illegal, with believers often punished simply for holding prayer meetings in private homes... It is almost impossible for minorities to register new congregations, with only one (a Jewish community) receiving official registration during all of 2004. Religious literature is censored: Imported books such as Bibles have been confiscated and destroyed. Muslims cannot travel as pilgrims to Mecca without specific permission from the state. All missionary activities are banned.Apparently the faith-based community looks the other way when an air base is on the line.
Last autumn saw a new surge of prosecutions of Protestants... The regime continues to ‘see any informal group of Muslims as a potential terrorist organization and [to] sentence its members to lengthy prison terms. It is clear that the majority of Muslims arrested after the terrorist attacks in March and April 2004 were 'guilty' only of meeting to read the Koran and talk about God.’
The US advisory commission on international religious freedom recently recommended that Washington add Uzbekistan to its official list of "countries of particular concern" - the world's most brazen persecutors of religion. The commission also urged that aid to the Uzbek government "be made contingent upon establishing and implementing a specific timetable for the government to take concrete steps" in observing human rights standards.
That would be a dramatic change from what happened last summer. As required by US human rights law, the State Department cut aid to Uzbekistan by $18 million. Within weeks, the Pentagon gave Karimov a new infusion of $21 million.
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