Tashkent warns foreign NGOs against supporting political organisations

Uzbekistan's Justice Ministry has formally rejected the re-registration of billionaire philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI), at the same time warning three American non-governmental organisations accused of damaging the country's reputation and acting against Uzbek law. According to a degree issued in December 2003, all foreign NGOs present in the populous Central Asian state were to re-register with the Justice Ministry, a change to the previous procedure of registering with the Foreign Ministry. Two Uzbek opposition parties were also refused registration on the basis of forged documents. On Friday, Uzbek Justice Minister Abdusamad Polvonzoda told reporters in the capital Tashkent that his ministry had received 76 applications from international NGOs for re-registration since March 2004 and only three of them were not re-registered. And while the OSI had been officially denied re-registration, three other US funded NGOs - the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the Washington-based Freedom House - were also warned to refrain from collaborating with "non-registered politicised organisations in Uzbekistan". "If they continue breaching the laws of Uzbekistan the decision on their registration could be re-considered," said Polvonzoda. Addressing parliament earlier this month, Uzbek President Islam Karimov criticised some international NGOs for what he said was acting against the rules and laws of the nation. "The OSI was trying to discredit the country's policies. Materials it had published and supplied to universities distort the essence and the content of the socio-economic, public and political reforms carried out in the country," he said, a claim denied by the OSI. "Uzbekistan is stifling civil society and has a horrendous human rights record," Soros said last month in a statement reacting to the closure of the OSI's Tashkent office. Only in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, the only other country where the OSI had been forced to close, had such circumstances been faced, he said. The OSI, which aims to build free and open societies around the world, has spent more than $22 million in Uzbekistan since 1996. As for the American-funded IRI and NDI, Tashkent accused both groups of supporting opposition movements within the country. "They tried to maintain dialogue and support politicised organisations such as Erk (Freedom), Birlik (Unity) and Ozod Dehkonlar (Free Farmers), which are not legally registered in the country, and by doing so they breached the laws of Uzbekistan," Polvonzoda maintained. The justice minister also accused Birlik and Ozod Dehkonlar of submitting false membership signatures. But according to Vasila Inoyatova, the Birlik movement's leader in Tashkent, the ministry had enlisted security service and police to check the signatures of the party members. "Some members - especially students - were threatened to withdraw their membership," she told IRIN. Reacting to the minister's statement that the Erk party had never submitted documents to be registered, Atanazar Oripov, first secretary of the party, remarked that Erk had been officially registered in 1991, but was later banned in 1993. "We received a letter from the Justice Ministry signed by a head of department at that time. According to the law, our registration could be abolished only by a court decision," Oripov told IRIN, adding that they had already applied to the Uzbek Supreme Court several times. Last week one of the prominent regional leaders of the Erk party, Gulomzhon Kholmatov, 71, was arrested in the eastern Namangan province on suspicion of illegal poppy cultivation. Two other Erk activists have already faced criminal charges recently in Sukhandarya and Bukhara provinces of the country. Oripov maintained that the arrests were linked to the parliamentary elections due in December. "It is aimed at crushing all remnants of opposition. We have seen such methods ahead of each election," he added. Erk and Birlik were the only two opposition movements that enjoyed popularity after Uzbekistan's independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union 1991 but faded from attention as their high-profile members were arrested or fled into exile. The Erk party leader lives in Norway and was sentenced in absentia for allegedly orchestrating a spate of bombings in Tashkent in February 1999 which killed at least 19 and injured dozens more. The subsequent investigation and trials led to a conclusion by the authorities that an alliance of Islamic extremists and banned democratic opposition figures was responsible. Recently the Uzbek parliament adopted a law banning all political parties from receiving any foreign support. Tashkent imposed new registration requirements on international NGOs following the ousting of President Eduard Shevardnadze in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, in which Shevardnadze accused Soros of funding the opposition who forced him to resign. And while some independent political analysts have noted that the Uzbek authorities had downplayed the possibility that a Georgia-style revolution might be replicated in Uzbekistan, concern has intensified following a spate of suicide bombings and shoot-outs at the end of March and early April that left at least 47 people dead.