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July 21, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
However, Steve Swerdlow, a longtime researcher on Central Asia for HRW, believes that’s not necessarily the case. What the step towards cooperation does not confirm is Uzbekistan’s willingness to play fair with journalists and researchers, he says. After all, even under Karimov, the closed country used to allow foreign media to operate. The conditions for their work, however, were far from ideal.
Between 2005-2010, “the government would often use the threat of revoking the accreditation of our international representatives in order to keep us away from sensitive topics”, Swerdlow says. This was particularly true after the Adijan massacre, which led to the exodus of the BBC from the Central Asian nation because of harassment by the authorities.
Swerdlow says ILO’s recent positive findings about the state of child labour in the country follow a familiar pattern. “I think because Uzbekistan is such a controlled environment, we feel the independence of ILO’s findings were compromised by the participation of Uzbek government officials,” he says.
“The question is, will the government allow re- porters and human rights correspondents to do their job without interfering?” Swerdlow says. “Is it really the case that when we get to Tashkent, the government would allow NGO representa-
tives to go about their work consistently with their charters and obligations?”
In other words, just because Uzbekistan is inviting foreign media and watchdogs back into the coun- try, the tactics may not have changed.
Some of the ways in which the new Uzbek leader has approached human rights so far suggest he is not sincerely trying to clean up the country’s atrocious record, he argues.
“Uzbekistan still has one of the worst human rights records across a very wide spectrum
of issues – whether its over a million people forced to pick cotton, or it’s torture, or 10,000 or so political prisoners, near total censorship of internet,” Swerdlow says. “The [prisoners] who were released [by Mirziyoyev], were not released quickly. These are elderly and sick individuals
– none of them posed a ‘risk’ of being able to actively take up human rights work.”
“Most of these human right abuses could be ended with a stroke of a pen – prisoners could be released, journalists can be allowed to come, tor- ture can be prohibited,” Swerdlow explains, refer- ring to Mirziyoyev’s absolute power.
“The [Uzbek government’s] statements are welcome but far from enough...[until] we see any actual evidence of improvement,” Swerdlow says.
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