IHF Report: Uzbek Human Rights Community Being Decimated EU Sanctions Should Not Be Lifted until Uzbek Government Ends Persecution Vienna/Brussels 27 February 2007. A report published by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) today highlights the ongoing and systematic persecution of members of the dwindling human rights community in Uzbekistan. Labeled “a special category” subject to control by the authorities, human rights activists are routinely subjected to intimidation, surveillance, defamation campaigns, torture and ill-treatment, politically motivated prosecution and imprisonment. “Anyone who speaks out about repressive and corrupt government practices or engages in efforts to promote international human rights standards in today’s Uzbekistan puts the life and safety of themselves and their families at risk,” said Aaron Rhodes, IHF Executive Director. He continued: “The EU, and the rest of the international community, has an obligation to protect the country’s human rights movement from being silenced and should address this issue as the top priority in their relations with the Karimov regime.” The IHF calls on the EU to prominently raise the situation of human rights defenders in its dialogues with the Uzbek government and make any further weakening or lifting on the EU sanctions imposed on Uzbekistan in late 2005 conditional on concrete and meaningful steps toward ending the current patterns of persecution. The IHF report, which will be presented at a meeting of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament in Brussels on 28 February, is primarily based on first-hand information obtained during a recent IHF fact-finding mission to Uzbekistan. The IHF delegation met with a number of those committed and courageous individuals who continue their human rights work despite the unprecedented pressure they have faced in the aftermath of the May 2005 events in Andijan, when hundreds of civilians protesting government policies were killed through the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by security and law enforcement officials. As documented by the report, human rights defenders are held under surveillance, prevented from moving around freely inside of the country, and often banned from traveling abroad. The authorities have sought to discredit and mobilize public sentiments against them by orchestrating media defamation campaigns and shows of alleged “spontaneous public outrage” and by accusing them of “immoral” behavior, such as sexual harassment or organized prostitution. A considerable number of human rights defenders, political opposition activists and independent journalists have been convicted and imprisoned on apparently politically motivated charges, ranging from fraud and blackmail to “anti-constitutional” and “extremist” activities. Many of them were allegedly ill-treated and tortured in an attempt to force them to confess and they are frequently singled out for disciplinary sanctions, solitary confinement and abuse in prison. Two human rights activists are known to have been placed in prison facilities for religious prisoners, which are infamous for their brutal treatment of inmates. The Soviet-era technique of forcibly detaining dissidents in psychiatric hospitals has been used repeatedly against human rights defenders and political activists – primarily women – in the post-Andijan period. Relatives of human rights activists have also been threatened, dismissed from their jobs, beaten, arrested and prosecuted and imprisoned on fabricated criminal charges. The IHF report entitled The Decimation of the Human Rights Community in Uzbekistan can be found at the IHF website at http://www.ihf-hr.org. It includes a set of recommendations to the EU member states, including important benchmarks to be used in the review of the EU sanctions currently in place vis-à-vis Uzbekistan. For more information: Aaron Rhodes, IHF Executive Director, + 43-676-635 66 12 Brigitte Dufour, IHF Deputy Executive Director/Brussels representative, +32-473-363 891 Talib Yakubov, General Secretary of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (IHF affiliate) (Russian), +33-632 68 19 17