Crackdown in the Farghona Valley

Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Republic of Uzbekistan has made little progress in moving away from Soviet-style repression of human rights. In recent years it has acknowledged some human rights problems, such as poorly trained police officers, but as a rule the government dismisses the abuses as necessary to stabilize the country during its transition toward its stated goals of democracy and a free-market economy. But a government policy of intolerance toward what it perceives as the primary threat to state stability - Muslims whom the government generally refers to as "Wahhabis" - makes a travesty of the government's assertion that the stability born of repression is necessary to achieve democracy. The human rights abuses committed during a crackdown in the Farghona Valley, an Islamic stronghold, that began intensively in early December 1997 are a natural outgrowth of the government's unchecked repression of what can loosely be referred to as "independent" Muslims or those who chafe at state-regulated Islam. It also represents the most dramatic and worrisome escalation of human rights abuses seen in recent years in this already highly repressive country.