Campaign against independent Islam denounced

In a new report released on Tuesday, the US NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) has strongly condemned what it described as Tashkent's institutional practice of persecuting Muslims who practice their faith outside state control. "The problem of religious persecution in Uzbekistan needs to be recognised," Acacia Shields, Central Asia researcher for the watchdog group told IRIN from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, just prior to the report's launch. "We estimate that at least 7,000 people have been arrested, tortured, or otherwise victimised during this campaign against independent Islam." According to the report, "Creating Enemies of the State: Religious Persecution in Uzbekistan", security forces regularly torture religious detainees upon arrest to coerce confessions, using electric shock, beatings, asphyxiation with plastic bags and gas masks, rape and sexual violence. In a comprehensive picture of the government's concerted campaign against independent Muslims which began at the end of 1997, the report cites examples of night-time police raids and illegal searches, to the gruesome torture by police in pre-trial detention, unfair court proceedings, and continued mistreatment in prison. Based on five years of extensive research, including first-hand accounts from the campaign's victims, HRW claims that police and local government officials also subjected family members of independent Muslims to degrading public denunciations and arrest, holding them hostage to force confessions from their relatives. "I certainly believe this campaign is about power, and it is about the government's perception that religion - specifically Islam - is a potential rival for the hearts and minds of the people in Uzbekistan, and that people will give their loyalties to religious leaders over the long-time political elite who have power here," Shields explained. "What we understand from this campaign is that the government really has expressed a distrust of people's ability to make their own religious decisions, and to practice their religion on their own, outside the control of the state," the activist added. And though Tashkent, a staunch US ally in its war against terror, flatly refutes such claims - justifying its action as counter-terrorism instead - international observers of Central Asia's most populous nation remain unconvinced. According to a one report by the Washington-based United States Commission on International Freedom, "while the overnment of Uzbekistan does face threats to its security from certain religious groups that have used violence against it, the government's mass arrest of religious believers and reports of torture nevertheless suggest that gravely troubling religious freedom violations are occurring in the country." Another report by Forum 18 News Service, an agency covering religious freedom in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe said, although Uzbekistan was a member of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and had ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which enshrined guarantees of freedom of conscience, Uzbekistan's laws and in particular the law on religion of 1998 severely limited believers' rights. Asked what needed to be done, Shields remained pragmatic. "We have seen that progress can come when there is increased scrutiny and objective evaluation of events," she said, calling on the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Beliefs to visit the country. "This would be an important step towards evaluation and international cooperation in solving the problem," the human rights expert maintained, adding: "It's really time for the international community to initiate some action." But action must first start from within. The first step was really for the Uzbek government to acknowledge that reform was needed and that the people already arrested needed to be given redress and justice, she explained, adding that they had recommended that the government decriminalize legitimate religious belief and practice - specifically the right to Study religion at home or in private, the right to religious association, to distribute religious literature, and the right to exchange information. But such self-initiated reforms seem unlikely any time soon. The launch of Tuesday's report, originally scheduled at a press conference at the Hotel Dedeman in Tashkent, was shifted to HRW's office after what appears to be government pressure on the hotel's management to cancel the venue. For a complete copy of this report: http://hrw.org/