Rights groups slam government for cancelling capital punishment conference

International and local human rights groups have criticised the Uzbek government's recent decision to disallow the holding of a conference to discuss capital punishment in the country. "We were told that the conference was banned 12 hours before its [scheduled] beginning," Tamara Chikunova, the head of Mothers Against the Death Penalty and Torture, a local rights group, told IRIN from the capital, Tashkent, on Monday, adding that they had been told on 4 December at 19:00 local time that the authorities decided to disallow it. The rights group had been planning to hold a conference under the theme: "The Death Penalty: Analysis, Tendencies and Realities" in Tashkent on 5 December, sponsored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the British embassy, Freedom House and the OSCE's Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Chikunova said. Some 100 participants from international organisations, rights groups, embassies and the Uzbek government had been invited to attend. Many of the international participants arrived in Uzbekistan only to find that it had been cancelled. Chikunova said she had not been told by any government official of the decision to disallow the conference, but that EC diplomats, who had been expected to address it, were informed by foreign ministry officials of its cancellation. She noted that the authorities had justified their decision by stating that if an organisation - meaning her group - was unregistered it was nonexistent and therefore unqualified to conduct such an event. "We have submitted documents for registration, but we were not registered," Chikunova explained, adding that they had initially applied under the name of Mothers Against Death Penalty, but their documents were not even accepted. "They [the authorities] proposed changing the name to something more 'soft'. "We changed it to Mothers Against Crimes Against Individuals, but our papers are still at the justice council of the Tashkent city administration, and we didn't get any answer. Moreover, it is not a secret that most of the rights organisations in Uzbekistan are not registered." There were three types of response by the authorities on the issue. The first referred to the need to register. The second that registration was not possible. The third consisted of silence. Chikunova said her group fitted into the third category. Anna Sunder-Plassmann, a researcher on Central Asia at Amnesty International (AI) and one of the would-be conference participants, told IRIN from Tashkent that she deeply regretted what had happened. "We came here especially to participate in the conference, and we were looking forward to having an open dialogue with the government, [and] all the experts that were invited and human rights defenders. It is a great disappointment that the authorities didn't adequately react to this opportunity to discuss views on the death penalty," she said. She said the incident demonstrated yet again the policy of secrecy pursued by the Uzbek authorities and their unwillingness to discuss the death penalty openly. It had also shown the general pattern of limitations of freedom of expression obtaining in the country. "I was shocked and disappointed that after flying halfway around the world to find that the government of Uzbekistan was muzzling free speech on the issue of the death penalty," Reny Cushing, another invited delegate to the conference from the US, who heads the US-based Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, a group opposed to capital punishment, told IRIN from Tashkent. "I don't understand why the current Uzbek government wants to stifle or muzzle the debate about the death penalty," he said. Cushing said the US government currently had a special relationship with Uzbekistan and that he hoped that his government would prevail upon its Uzbek counterpart to recognise Mothers Against the Death Penalty and Torture and to allow the issue of capital punishment to be freely discussed. "It's not just about the death penalty but it is also about free speech too. It [banning the conference] violates international human rights standards," he asserted. Concurring, Surat Ikramov, the head of Initiative, a group of independent human rights activists in Uzbekistan, told IRIN from Tashkent that the government should have allowed the conference. "The authorities made a big mistake. They should have allowed the conference, because the organisation of such a conference would be in favour of the state. There wouldn't be anything dangerous for the state, but there would have been mainly discussions about abolishing the death penalty and so on," he noted. Human Rights Watch (HRW), also expressed concern over the incident. "Once again, the Uzbek government has revealed its hostility towards nongovernmental organisations," Rachel Denber, the acting director of HRW's Europe and Central Asia Division, said in a statement on 6 December, adding that the government was thereby suppressing debate in the country on important human rights issues. Uzbekistan, a staunch ally in the US-led war on terrorism, has drawn strong international criticism of its human rights record and crackdown on rights activists, the media and independent Muslims. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in March adopted a country strategy for Uzbekistan that set three human rights benchmarks for the government to fulfil, one of which was the registration and free functioning of independent civil society groups. The bank gave the government a one-year deadline for compliance with these benchmarks.