US human rights report needs to inform policy - HRW

The US State Department’s annual report on human rights needs to inform Washington’s policies in Central Asia, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday. “The report is strong, and it is generally strong every year. What concern me are the next steps; how does the US use the report when formulating policy towards Central Asia? With growing repression and no independent investigation of the Andijan massacre [where up to 1,000 civilians were killed by Uzbek security forces in May 2005], I believe the EU [European Union] has taken significant action, but the US is in a worrying holding pattern with Uzbekistan”, Rachel Denber, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IRIN from New York. Many Central Asian states failed to improve their human rights record in 2005, according to the survey, with violations worsening in some countries, such as Uzbekistan. The ‘2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices’, released on 8 March, said the Uzbek government’s human rights record, already poor, had “worsened considerably” during the year. Among the abuses highlighted in the report are repression of the opposition and the media, suspicious prison deaths and systematic torture of detainees. The report also points to corruption and high levels of unemployment as reasons behind rising social unrest in the country. HRW pointed to religious discrimination in Uzbekistan and said that the government has imprisoned individuals on “fundamentalism” charges, whose peaceful Islamic beliefs and practices fell outside the government’s strict controls. Approximately 7,000 people are believed to have been imprisoned since the government’s campaign against independent Islam began in the mid-1990s, a campaign justified by referring to the “War on Terror”, according to HRW. The report was more favourable on Kyrgyzstan. “The March overthrow of the [Askar] Akayev regime resulted in a considerable improvement in the government's respect for human rights, although problems remained,” the report noted. Corruption remains a major problem, particularly the payment of bribes to avoid investigation or prosecution. The human rights ombudsman blamed abuses of detainees on corruption and low levels of professionalism among police officials. In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov retained his monopoly on political power for life. As a result, the US report noted that political participation in the country remained very limited. Political parties other than the president’s Democratic Party of Turkmenistan were effectively banned. At the same time anyone belonging to a political party other than the Democratic Party (the former Turkmen Communist Party) was subject to harassment, the report said. “It is wrong and a great disappointment to see that Turkmenistan is not among the countries classified as the world’s most systematic human rights violators in the US report,” Denber said. “The absence of Turkmenistan in this part of the report is a mystery to me since the country has one of the worst human rights records.” On Kazakhstan the report pointed to aggressive persecution, harassment and arrests of independent media. Restrictions on basic human rights were also pointed to in Tajikistan where the report raised concerns over citizens’ inability to change their government peacefully and democratically. In both countries, unhealthy, life-threatening prison conditions and abuse and mistreatment of detainees were also reported. The report also focused on widespread corruption, limited press freedom and violence against civilians in the region, emphasising that further action was needed. “Again, the US report is strong, but what is concerning is the role it will play when the US is formulating its foreign policy and maintaining relations with other countries, countries with serious human rights violations records,” Denber added.