Uzbekistan at the Crossroads
Is Tashkent getting serious about human rights?
It’s no small thing that Uzbekistan – a country with a dreadful human rights record – welcomed the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein for a visit in May. Does the brief, but significant, visit herald a new age for human rights in the country?
Nine months after the death of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s cantankerous first president, the country’s new president, former Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has energetically pursued a carefully calculated opening. Mirziyoyev quickly made concerted efforts to reset the tone of relations between Tashkent and Central Asia’s other capitals. This shift was warmly welcomed from Astana to Dushanbe, Bishkek to Ashgabat – Uzbekistan is, after all, at the core of Central Asia. Next, Mirziyoyev set his administration to the more difficult task of rehabilitating relations with international organizations snubbed by the Karimov regime, like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and touching on relations with partners further abroad, namely Russia and China.
Throughout this budding opening, regional analysts have quietly asked whether the quest for reform would extend to human rights.
Uzbekistan has a particularly bad reputation when it comes to human rights. Zeid’s visit ended on May 12, the day before the 12th anniversary of the Andijan massacre. The 2005 incident in Andijan, which resulted in at least 170 and perhaps as many as 500 deaths, has come to represent Tashkent’s limited tolerance of dissent. As monumental as Andijan has become as a reference point for the state’s neglect of basic human rights, it’s not Tashkent’s only sin.
As Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted in its annual World Report, released in January 2017, “the installation of former Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev as president failed to usher in any meaningful improvements in Uzbekistan’s abysmal human rights record.”
Authorities maintain rigid control over the population, severely curtailing freedoms of association, expression, and religion. Thousands of individuals remain imprisoned on politically motivated charges, torture is widespread, and authorities regularly harass rights activists, opposition members, and journalists. Muslims and Christians who practice their religion outside strict state controls are persecuted. Authorities force over 1 million adults to harvest cotton every fall under harsh conditions, netting enormous profits for the government.
Given the weight of the state system in Uzbekistan – formed from the bones of the Soviet system and predicated on an absence of dissent – shifting to a new course is a herculean task. It would require not only a change in the tone of government-public relations but serious reforms that have implications for the elites, in government and the security services, who have benefitted from the system as it existed under Karimov. Mirziyoyev owes his career to that system.
But, if human rights advocates are right and respect for human rights fosters more prosperous and stable states, Uzbekistan may try to make changes under new leadership that seemed impossible under Karimov.
Zeid’s visit is a meaningful first step. At a May 11 a press conference, the high commissioner outlined the substance of his visit and his view of Uzbekistan’s intentions. The visit was short, encompassing only one real day of meetings. Zeid said both the Uzbek government and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) didn’t want to postpone the trip until autumn, but couldn’t fit in a longer trip this spring. Indeed, after meeting with Zeid for 90 minutes, Mirziyoyev boarded a plane for Beijing to make his first state visit to China and attend the Belt and Road Forum.
Since the OHCHR was established in 1993, no high commissioner has visited Uzbekistan. In 2008, when the OHCHR set up a regional office in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Zeid said that “Uzbekistan made it clear that the office covered four countries, not five.”
That much will change. According to Zeid, “After my meeting with the president… we have a clear agreement that our Regional Office will from now on work closely with all five Central Asian republics… which should enable the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the wider UN human rights system, to deepen cooperation during what appears to be a key moment in Uzbekistan’s history, with the government embarking on an ambitious and – on first sight at least – very dynamic program of reform.”
Zeid lauded Mirziyoyev’s 2017-21 Action Strategy, comprised of five priorities: improving the public administration system; ensuring rule of law, and reform of the justice system; developing and liberalizing the economy; developing the social sector; and ensuring security, religious tolerance and inter-ethnic harmony, and constructive foreign policy. “Human rights – all categories of human rights – figure very prominently” across the five priorities, Zeid said.
However there’s a significant gulf between words and action – especially when it comes to human rights – thus broad skepticism from the human rights advocacy community and the perpetuation of “cautious optimism” among regional observers.
The OHCHR regional office, for example, has been nominally operating in the other four countries of the region since 2008, with little noticeable impact on the status of human rights in most of the region. Allowing the office to also interact with Uzbekistan in an official capacity is either a meaningful first step or an empty symbolic gesture.
On Twitter, the European media director for HRW, Andrew Stroehlein, commented that "if Uzbekistan really wants to show it's changing direction, it takes more than a visit. Start by releasing 1000s of political prisoners."
Nonetheless, it is remarkable that the UN’s voice on human rights sat down in Tashkent with government officials and then 60 members of civil society organizations, one of which remarked “This is the first time in 12 years that we have had a meeting like this.” Zeid held a press conference in the Uzbek capital – also a rare occurrence – and spoke frankly about many of the state’s human rights problems: political prisoners, torture, forced labor. Zeid applauded Uzbekistan for its “clear-eyed acceptance that there are problems.”
Ultimately, it will be up to Tashkent to not just recognize that there are “problems” but to accept that they are the product of an oppressive state; further, only Uzbekistan can reform the balance between the state and its people.
“Uzbekistan is, in my view, at a crossroads,” Zeid said, echoing many regional observers. “It is going to be a long and difficult road… with obstructions and setbacks, but I do believe the journey has begun.”