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Asia The Economist December 16th 2017 33

Also in this section
34 Myanmar’s surfeit of committees
34 A communist victory in Nepal
35 Japan’s 70-year-old row with Russia
37 Banyan: Of peaks and patriotism

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Uzbekistan vited the BBC to open a local bureau.
Another abuse that appears to be on
From a low base the way out is the use offorced labour. The
governmenttightlycontrolscotton, Uzbek-
istan’s third-biggest export (after gold and
gas), setting quotas for farmers and fixing
both the wages of pickers and the price at
which the state buys the crop. It normally
Almaty dragoons public-sector workers to harvest
An Uzbekspring has sprung, butsummeris still a long wayoff
the bolls. But this autumn thousands of
TRANGE things have been happening each time he makes a promise ofreform. doctors, nurses and teachers were sent
Soverthe pastyearin Uzbekistan, Central At least some of the changes are real. home from the fields. The government
Asia’s most populous country and one of Since MrMirziyoyevtookoffice, 16 political says greater mechanisation and higher
the world’s most repressive police states. prisoners and journalists who had lan- wages for pickers will soon allow it to do
Political prisoners have been walking free guished behind bars for years have been without forced labouraltogether.
from jail. There has been less resort than released, and 16,000 people have been re- Foreign policyisalso beingoverhauled.
usual to forced labourto bringin the cotton moved from security “blacklists” to which Karimov had threatened war with Tajiki-
harvest. Journalistshave started airing pro- the paranoid regime had added them be- stan and Kyrgyzstan if they went ahead
blems in the tightly censored media. For- cause it perceived them as a threat. In No- with plans to build hydropower plants on
eign human-rights advocates, who have vember, for the first time in 12 years, the rivers that flow into Uzbekistan, and
long been banned from the country, were Muslim call to prayer began ringing out sealed many crossings on the border with
unexpectedly allowed to visit. from minarets around Uzbekistan, after Kyrgyzstan after a democratic revolution
The author of these head-turning the fiercelyseculargovernment, which has there. Mr Mirziyoyev, in contrast, has been
changes appears to be Shavkat Mirziyoyev, jailed thousands of people who are too pi- to Kyrgyzstan, the first visit by an Uzbek
the president, who took power a year ago ous forits liking, lifted a ban. president since 2000, and signed an agree-
after the death of Islam Karimov, the ment on demarcating the border between
strongman who had run Uzbekistan for Cutting backon torture the two countries. Soon afterwards, sever-
the previous 25 years. Karimov had protes- Mr Mirziyoyev has pledged to do away al sealed bordercrossings were reopened.
ters shot and his opponents tortured— with “exit visas”, meaning permits to tra- The economy, which has been held
some were allegedly boiled alive. Mr Mir- vel abroad, a relic from when Uzbekistan backby smotheringregulation, protection-
ziyoyev had been Karimov’s prime minis- was part of the Soviet Union. He is also ism and appropriation, is also changing.
ter for 13 years, and few expected him to overhaulingthe repressive criminal-justice Mr Mirziyoyev has allowed the currency,
run the country very differently. But he system, introducing protections against ar- the som, to float and has lifted most restric-
claims his “profound reforms” will trans- bitrary detention and prohibiting the use tions on changing money, although getting
form Uzbekistan into a “democratic state of evidence obtained by torture, which is any foreign exchange from banks is still
and a just society”. rife in Uzbekistan’s jails. In September a tricky. Firms are no longer obliged to sell
Mr Mirziyoyev has plenty of fans. Dil- delegation from Human Rights Watch, an some of their hard-currency earnings to
fuza Ismailova, a quaveringchanteuse, has international pressure group, was admit- the government at a discount. The curren-
released a paean to him entitled “My Sul- ted for the first time since 2010. The previ- cyreformshave all butrid Uzbekistan ofits
tan”. But others doubt his sincerity. The ously sycophantic and subservient media blackmarket, which wasnettingthe vested
video accompanying a satirical song by have started airing discussions of petrol interests controlling it multi-billion-dollar
Ulugbek Haydarov, a journalist hounded shortages, the rigging of university-en- profits, at the expense ofordinary Uzbeks.
into exile under Karimov, shows the new trance exams and other social and eco- Criticspointout, however, thatall these
president’s nose growing, Pinocchio-style, nomic woes. The government has also in- changes merely scratch at the surface of 1