International human rights organization “Fiery Hearts Club” is closely following the recent developments around the activities of the Swedish telecom giant TeliaSonera in Uzbekistan.

Recently, in late May, the Swedish public television aired a new documentary film about the corrupt cooperation of TeliaSonera with the eldest daughter of Islam Karimov – Gulnara Karimova, and the pro-government structures of Uzbekistan.

In the documentary film of Swedish journalists called “Mission: Investigate. Courier from Moscow” TeliaSonera senior executives admits that they paid many millions dollars “as a charity” to various organizations belonging to Gulnara Karimova. Also, the film of Swedish journalists clearly shows that TeliaSonera had a good understanding of the general situation in Uzbekistan, and deliberately adapted to these conditions.

In the former Soviet Union region, Uzbekistan, with a population of 30 million people, has become a bastion of tough authoritarianism, preserving many traditions of the totalitarian Soviet regime. Unfortunately, each year the country is put among the tops in the rankings of human rights violations – due to censorship in the print and electronic media, children’s forced labor, forced sterilization of women, the absence of civil and political rights and freedoms. Today, Uzbekistan has become the leader of the post-Soviet authoritarian world with tens of thousands of political prisoners, with cases of mass executions of civilians, with its government system controlled by one man, assassinations and attempted murders of civil society activists outside the country.

Gulnara Karimova is a new, more aggressive symbol of Uzbekistan’s authoritarian system, built by her father Islam Karimov for the last quarter-century. By her actions, she reveals the deep layers of thought, which keep hatred for human rights and urge to gain fabulous wealth through violence and corruption, coercion and intimidation as a way to promote her interests. No need to be naive and assume that the leadership of TeliaSonera was not aware of all this.

The money paid to Gulnara Karimova was spent for advertising her activities, formation of public opinion in Uzbekistan, which is advantageous for the family of Islam Karimov. In other words, the funds were used for preservation and strengthening of authoritarian, repressive traditions of the ruling elite.

In the last documentary film, the leadership of TeliaSonera has clearly stated the company’s commitment to respect and protect human rights. This means that if interests of TeliaSonera, in those countries where it operates, clashes with human rights and freedoms, the company will not at least ignore the human rights.

We believe that the activity of TeliaSonera in Uzbekistan, in itself, has many positive aspects: developing information and communication systems, TeleaSonera contributes to the erosion of informational isolationism of the authoritarian regime by gradually integrating the Uzbek society to globalism and informationalism.

Today, in Uzbekistan there is a presence of a strong contradiction between the reality and the future, between authoritarianism and the inevitable changes in the direction of freedom, between corruption and transparency. We do not encourage TeliaSonera to stop its cooperation with official Tashkent. On the contrary, we encourage TeliaSonera to promote a business behavior in Uzbekistan, which will be in line with the rules and international laws.

However, “Fiery Hearts Club” believes that TeliaSonera must stop cooperating with the secret services and law enforcement agencies of Uzbekistan. The company must take all measures aimed at ensuring that the Uzbek government receives only legal opportunity for wiretapping the criminals, but not the opponents of Islam Karimov.

We are convinced that TeliaSonera must do more than just making statements about respect for human rights in Uzbekistan, and we believe that the company must begin to take concrete actions. We strongly recommend TeliaSonera to think about the ways to protec human rights in Uzbekistan, including through support to civil society in the country.

International human rights organization
“Fiery Hearts Club”

Paris, France