The legalization of Uzbekistan's first independent rights monitor is a positive development, but much more progress is needed, Human Rights Watch said today. On Monday, March 4, the government of Uzbekistan registered the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan (IHROU), giving the group legal status to operate in the country.
Finally, a decade after independence from the Soviet Union, the government has recognized the legitimacy of a truly independent local human rights organization," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
The IHROU, headed by Mikhail Dmitrivich Ardzinov, was founded in 1996. Since its establishment, the Uzbek government had repeatedly refused to legally register the group, thereby consigning it to the status of an illegal organization.
In recent months, the Bush administration had made registration of rights groups a priority in its relations with Uzbekistan. The administration has also asked Uzbek officials to register another independent rights group, the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan "Ezgulik," which is also preparing to apply for legal status. President Islam Karimov is due to visit the United States for a meeting with President Bush on March 12.
"This shows that the U.S. government has leverage and can achieve real successes when it chooses to use that leverage," said Andersen, "But it should be the first in a series of steps by the Uzbek government to show the U.S. and the rest of the international community whether it is committed to making genuine progress in human rights."
The IHROU's lack of legal status has been used by authorities as a pretext for the harassment, physical mistreatment, and imprisonment of its members. IHROU member Makhbuba Kasimova, a former schoolteacher and mother of five children, who researched abuses against independent Muslims, was jailed in July 1999 on spurious charges that she hid a criminal in her home. At her 15-minute trial, the prosecutor charged specifically that she was a member of an "illegal organization." The court sentenced her to five years in prison. She was released on the order of President Karimov in December 2000 as the result of an international campaign on her behalf and concerted U.S. government pressure to gain her freedom.
Kasimova's colleague, Ismail Adylov, was also imprisoned on false charges in August 1999, and released in July 2001. In a visit to the United States this past November to be honored by Human Rights Watch, Adylov recounted the torture and humiliation he had experienced in prison and vowed to continue his work on behalf of those who remained in custody.
