On October 24, the Uzbek service of BBC published on its website an interview with Mr. Nik Powell, director of the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom. Recently, Tashkent hosted a Film Festival “Golden Cheetah”, and Mr. Nik Powell headed its jury.

The film festival was organized by the “Fund Forum,” led by Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of President Islam Karimov.

The international human rights organization “Fiery Hearts Club” considers Mr. Nik Powell’s stance on the situation in Uzbekistan as outrageous and insulting to the thirty million population of the country. In the interview, Mr. Powell openly justifies different appearances of repressive policies of Islam Karimov’s despotic regime.

First, Mr. Powell asserts that the Uzbek authorities are fighting against religious extremism, and he fully justifies it by saying that this is a worldwide practice. We strongly disagree with the statement of Mr. Powell.

The Uzbek authorities are fighting not only against religious extremism and terrorism. The so-called “fight against religious extremism,” in the realities of Uzbekistan, is aimed at tight control of political processes, the main purpose of which is to ensure survival of the dictatorial regime, to prevent increasing religiosity, and thus, to suppress the formation of civil society.

Laws in Uzbekistan ban and restrict even the primary religious needs of believers. It conclusively proves that authorities lack understanding of values ​​and logic of freedom of conscience and religion. It is noteworthy that Mr. Powell does not talk about universal values ​​of freedom of conscience and religion, but on the contrary, fully justifies the line of Islam Karimov, who holds thousands of political prisoners in jails.

Mr. Powell stresses that “the fight against religious extremism also exists in Western countries.” Yet, he fails to mention that Western countries are legal states, the right to freedom of conscience and religion is ensured, the judicial system and media are independent, which, in the case of Uzbekistan, is not the case.

Second, Mr. Powell justifies child labor in Uzbekistan saying that “this is a long tradition of Uzbeks, and such practice is quite common around the world.” This statement is ridiculous for several reasons. In Uzbekistan, child labor is prohibited by country’s legislation, which was passed by the ruling authorities themselves.

Child labor in Uzbekistan is not about individual cases, but on the contrary, it is a collective forced labor, organized by the administrative resources of the authorities. This practice of massive and forced labor of children in Uzbekistan is hardly seen in other parts of the world.

What is surprising is that Mr. Powell, on the one hand, admits that he did not have time to learn more about the situation in and around Uzbekistan, but, on the other hand, he easily justifies one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Unfortunately, it is Uzbekistan that well preserved the totalitarian traditions from the Soviet Union, where there were thousands of political prisoners, practice of mass forced child labor, and no independent civil society institutions.

Mutabar Tajibayeva,

Head of the International Human Rights Organization “Fiery Hearts Club”

Paris, France. October 25, 2012.