Low-level anti-government protests increase

Rights activists have reported an increase in the number of low-level protests being held in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. The country has a poor human rights record, and public demonstrations against the government of President Islam Karimov are generally not tolerated. "People are finally showing their dissatisfaction in a public way," Matilda Bogner, the office director for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Uzbekistan, told IRIN from Tashkent. Bogner's comments follow the latest such incident, on Wednesday in front of Uzbekistan's Cabinet of Ministers building, in which some 20 protestors carrying placards called for Karimov's resignation. Such demonstrations have been increasingly common since the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development held its annual summit and business forum in Tashkent in May - an event widely criticised by both international and local rights groups. "There are continuous protests in front of government buildings such as the office of the prosecutor-general and Cabinet of Ministers," Tolib Yakubov, the head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, confirmed. "A group of 15 people were protesting near the building of the president, and law enforcement officials took away their placards and tore them up," he told IRIN. According to Yakubov, plain-clothes security officials were particularly concerned about placards relating to the president. "There were some placards demanding the resignation of the prosecutor-general, but nobody tried to take them away," he said. Moreover, law-enforcement officials had shown greater restraint when in full view of foreign journalists or diplomats, suggesting that Tashkent might be concerned about negative publicity. But it was the fact that such demonstrations were tolerated at all that was particularly significant given the country's rights record. "They are not given permission to hold the protests, and they are intimidated, but they're not detained, so in that sense they are allowed," Bogner said. She added, however, that harassment of protestors was continuing, noting incidents in which threats had been made and placards ripped up. "It's not without incident. There have been threats - including threats of death," she said, but noted that HRW had received no reports of detentions. But not everyone was "permitted" to protest, including female relatives of alleged religious extremists being incarcerated throughout the country - estimated to be in the thousands. "They are not allowed to protest," she said. Commenting on the significance of the recent protests, Bogner concluded: "There has been a slight increase in the ability of people to hold protests, and that's good - but it doesn’t go far enough." According to HRW, since the first half of the 1990s, Tashkent has basically destroyed political opposition before subsequently cracking down on those practising Islam outside the state structure. Moreover, journalists had been controlled and restricted from publishing critical material. "When they do, the government responds strongly," Bogner said in an earlier interview.