Global IssuesEU Hosts Uzbek Dictator
In what appalled human rights defenders have described as an episode of 'shame and discredit' for the European Union, Brussels played host to one of the world’s worst dictators Monday.
Uzbek president Islam Karimov, whose regime has been accused of a litany of horrific human rights abuses over the last two decades, met European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in the Belgian capital for talks that the EC has been at pains to stress were to include the issue of human rights.
But both Karimov and EC officials faced protests over the meetings and furious human rights groups have said the meeting has laid bare the EC’s double standards on human rights.
'The EC has shamed and discredited itself with these meetings and the way they have gone about them,' Sasha Koulaeva of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) told IPS.
News of Karimov’s visit to Brussels was greeted at first with perplexity and then outrage by rights groups.
The Uzbek regime has long been held by the international community as having one of the world’s worst records on human rights.
Brutal state suppression of civil society, any form of dissent and almost all freedoms have been well documented over the two decades Karimov has ruled.
Schools close in the summer when children as young as seven are forced to pick cotton — the country’s major export. Religious persecution and torture in custody and prisons is widespread — in one documented case a prisoner was boiled alive in jail.
The EU imposed sanctions on the country following a 2005 massacre in the town of Andizhan when Karimov’s troops opened fire on peacefully protesting civilians, killing hundreds. Karimov refused to allow an independent investigation of the killings. Those sanctions were lifted in 2009.
EC officials did not publicise the visit in advance and only confirmed it was taking place when human rights groups got word of it and asked Brussels about it.
Activists have suggested this was likely deliberate as the EC knew it would face severe criticism.
'What is most disturbing about this is the way the EC has gone about this — in secret. No one was told about this visit and we only found out two weeks beforehand. Under Belgian law protests can only be held legally if they are announced two weeks in advance so we could not even hold a protest.
'There is to be no press conference and no one is admitting to having invited him. Is the EC ashamed of what it has done?'Koulaeva told IPS.
There then followed weeks of embarrassed denial by officials in Brussels. The EC said that NATO had invited Karimov — a claim NATO denies — and that Barroso had decided to meet him simply because he was here. The EC then claimed that Belgian state officials were meeting the Uzbek president — again denied by the Belgians.
Rights groups including the FIDH, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been unanimous in their condemnation of the visit.
One Western human rights activist who has worked in Uzbekistan told IPS: 'Karimov’s visit to Belgium is nothing short of outrageous if you look at it in terms of Uzbekistan’s human rights record. What’s more, Karimov is no friend of the EU given that he stonewalled calls for an independent and international investigation into what happened in Andizhan in 2005.'
The Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group has suggested the EC has 'sold its soul' while Amnesty International said that human rights were being sacrificed for trade relations.
Koulaeva told IPS: 'The EC is turning a blind eye to all the terrible human rights crimes committed by Karimov’s regime. It is showing the arrogance and double standards of the EU and its diplomacy that it thinks that it can turn a blind eye to human rights crimes.
'This gives the impression that the EU does not care about its own standards. Dialogue is good but clear benchmarks must be laid down and adhered to.
'The EU imposed sanctions on Uzbekistan for failing to allow a proper investigation of the Andizhan massacre. That condition was not fulfilled but the sanctions were lifted. It is all very well to say that Uzbekistan made a move in abolishing the death penalty — and abolition of the death penalty is in itself a good thing — but when a regime can undertake hundreds of extrajudicial killings, as at Andizhan, ending the death penalty is a meaningless act anyway.'
The meeting with one of the world’s most brutal leaders is also an embarrassment for the EC, coming as sanctions are prepared against Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenka’s regime, and the EC condemnation of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia.
Following the meeting between Karimov and the EC president, Barroso issued a short statement saying that he had 'raised all key concerns of Europe, notably regarding human rights and fundamental freedoms, which stand at the heart of EU foreign policy' and that the Uzbek president had 'expressed his commitment to further deepen democratic reforms in Uzbekistan.'
Karimov was also due to hold talks with the Commission officials on energy.
Uzbekistan has become strategically important to the West. It is thought to have large reserves of gas.
Barroso this month already met the hardline Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev in Baku and paid a visit to Turkmenistan — another Central Asian state under repressive dictatorship. Both countries have important energy supplies.
But it is perhaps its place as a NATO ally - under an agreement from 2009 Uzbekistan has allowed its territory to be used as a supply route to Afghanistan by Western forces - which means that the West is, according to many human rights defenders, reluctant to take a hard line with Karimov.
And, they add, Karimov is more than willing to use it to his own advantage in relations with the West.
'From NATO’s point of view Uzbekistan is of great strategic interest and Karimov is emerging as a trusted partner. Some 60 percent of Coalition Forces’ fuel needs in Afghanistan now transit through Uzbekistan. Karimov is vital and he knows it,' one western human rights worker told IPS.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service