Uznews.net, Tashkent, 26 Jul 2008 – Human Rights Watch has described the expulsion of its representative Igor Vorontsov from Uzbekistan as the Uzbek authorities mocking the EU and urged it to preserve its sanctions against Uzbekistan.
Igor Vorontsov’s expulsion was first such case in the history of Human Rights Watch’s relations with the Uzbek authorities.
Uzbek official had expressed their displeasure with the work of this organisation in Uzbekistan and last year refused to extend the accreditation of its representative Andrea Berg but they had never expelled its experts from the country.
Considering this move in terms of the dialogue the EU has been holding with Uzbekistan since it imposed sanctions over the massacre in Andijan in 2005, Human Rights Watch said that Uzbekistan had made no significant steps to improve the human rights situation but on the contrary it had backed away in many aspects of the problem.
“The Uzbek government is mocking the EU, and Brussels should respond forcefully to make clear it won’t accept this kind of behaviour,” Veronika Szente Goldston, Europe and Central Asia advocate at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“This is a real test of the Uzbek government’s commitment to human rights and of the EU’s resolve to insist on real reform.”
Goldston also said that she did not agree with the reasons given by Uzbekistan for denying Vorontsov accreditation. The Uzbek Justice Ministry said that Vorontsov lacked professional skills and did not understand the mentality of Uzbeks, so he could not understand reforms conducted in the country.
During talks Uzbek officials told the organisation that they could consider another candidate proposed by Human Rights Watch unless he or she was not ethnic Russian. Vorontsov is an ethnic Russian from Russia.
This is discrimination and wrong because the Uzbek government cannot decide for an independent human rights organisation as whom it should hire, Human Rights Watch believes.
Actually Vorontsov’s ethnicity is just the Uzbek authorities’ trick found in this specific case, the organisation believes, because many other experts of the organisation have faced obstacles created by the Uzbek government to their work.
Uzbekistan’s decision has nothing to do with Vorontsov’s personality, it is an attempt to stop Human Rights Watch, Goldston said. She added that the organisation would not stop investigating human rights violations because of this decision and continue to cover the human rights situation in Uzbekistan from anywhere.
After the EU’s second decision to freeze the sanctions against Uzbekistan for another six months last April, the Uzbek authorities have taken several negative steps in the human rights sphere in addition to Vorontsov’s expulsion, Human Rights Watch said.
On 7 June, Uznews.net’s correspondent Salijon Abdurahmanov was arrested in Karakalpakstan on charges of storing drugs. This charge is trumped up and Abdurahmanov’s detention is linked to his journalistic activities, the human rights organisation believes.
On 11 July, human rights activists from the Tashkent-based Mazlum organisation Agzam Turgunov was detained again in Karakalpakstan on politically motivated charges, Human Rights Watch said.
This behaviour of Uzbekistan foes against all criteria set by the EU for abolishing the sanctions, it believes.
Uzbekistan is also holding 11 human rights activists in prison and continuing to persecute those civil society activists who are trying to work in the country; moreover, it has stopped torturing prisoners.
Most importantly, Uzbekistan is continuing to refuse justice to victims of the massacre in Andijan on 13 May 2005.
Human Rights Watch urged the EU to preserve sanctions against Uzbekistan and not to lift them until Uzbekistan fulfils EU demands to improve the human rights situation in the country.
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