Coordination Council of Uzbekistani Civil Society “Alternative Uzbekistan”

March 29, 2015 Paris, France

PRESS RELEASE

On the eve of the upcoming presidential elections in Uzbekistan on March 29, 2015, we are announcing creation of Coordination Council of Uzbekistani Civil Society “Alternative Uzbekistan”.

A group of renowned Uzbek civil society activists, human rights defenders, independent journalists, religious activists, victims of torture and political repression and citizens of foreign countries who not indifferent to human rights situation in Uzbekistan are among the initiators, founders of the new coalition.

The idea of Coordination Council was prompted by the activity of Virtual Elections Commission. After the exact date of the upcoming presidential elections was made public and preparations work for the elections have started a group of Uzbekistani civil society activists who live abroad initiated the idea of conducting alternative and fair elections online. It has been clear from the beginning that incumbent president Islam Karimov is not intending to step down and on the contrary is determined to run for presidential elections.

The Virtual Elections Commission aimed at conducting fair, democratic, free and genuinely competitive elections with participation of all well-deserved citizens who want to be elected. Different from the Uzbekistani Central Elections Commission totally controlled by incumbent president Karimov the Virtual Elections Commission abstained from creating political and legal barriers for candidates to the presidential office. The Uzbek Central Elections Commission had already officially registered three out of 12 presidential candidates registered by the Virtual Elections Commission in that capacity. The remaining nine candidates registered by the Virtual Elections Commission represent democratic political opposition who reside both inside and outside of Uzbekistan.

The Virtual Elections Commission hasn’t registered incumbent president Karimov as one of the candidates for the upcoming presidential elections who is already officially registered by the Central Elections Commission as Karimov is grossly violating article 90 of the Uzbek Constitution by running for the presidential office again. This article of the Uzbekistan stipulates, “The same person shall not be elected for more than two terms to the presidential office in the Republic of Uzbekistan”.

Moreover, the Virtual Elections Commission has submitted a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s office of Uzbekistan requesting opening a criminal case against citizen of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov and leadership of Liberal Democratic Party that is promoting incumbent president’s candidacy to the upcoming presidential elections, for gross violations of the constitutional provisions.

Within a short period, the idea behind the Virtual Elections Commission has become indeed popular. Most visitors of the Virtual Elections Commission’s website have casted their votes for presidential candidates displayed online through the website results of which were automatically calculated and made public immediately. The Virtual Elections Commission’s activities have strongly irritated the Uzbek government. Because of continuous hacking attacks organized by the Uzbek secret services from March 15 to March 24, 2015 and despite our efforts to stand against such attacks several days ago, the Virtual Elections Commission’s website had to stop its operations.

As a result, of hacking attack the Commission’s website, its e-mail, online radio and digital system of vote calculation were completely paralyze and the Commission ceased its activities. The hackers deleted all available information from the website and uploaded it with pornographic video and photo materials.

The Coordination Council of the Uzbekistani civil society aims at serving as a common platform for uniting and coordination of efforts of the civil society activists from Uzbekistan to improve the situation with implementation of and respect to rule of law and international obligations of the Uzbek government. Following the upcoming presidential elections in Uzbekistan, the Coordination Commission will make public a more detailed information about its goals and objectives, implementation plan and members of the Council through its website http://alteruz.info/

Today the western politicians are not bothered with incumbent president Karimov. They are turning their blind eyes to gross violations of elections laws in the course of the upcoming presidential elections in Uzbekistan. Such position could only result in further strengthening of Karimov’s dictatorship, escalate the situation in Central Asian region, add up to growing public discontent and general deterioration of the human rights situation.

As an exemplary western attitude towards modern Uzbekistan, we can look at a recent remark by Richard Hoagland, a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. Speaking about the upcoming presidential elections in Uzbekistan Mr. Hoagland called it as “internal affairs of the country”. According to him, elections in Uzbekistan might not fit the US and European standards but Washington will continue its relationship with the Uzbek government. In a recent interview at the US Embassy in London another high-rank American diplomat have mentioned that the United States cooperates with Uzbekistan in exchange of intelligence data which satisfies the US national interests of both sides.

Some of independent observers have noted that the remaining candidates to the presidential elections in Uzbekistan such as Hotamjon Ketmonov, Akmal Saidov and Narimon Umarov are also supporting the incumbent president’s policies in their public speeches during elections campaign.

The situation in Uzbekistan has not unfortunately improved. The government has continued violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms. The most egregious types of human rights violations such as torture and similar ill-treatment and punishment in the country’s penitentiary institutions, persecutions, pressure, threats, arrests and imprisonment of the Uzbek civil society representatives, forced child labor and certain groups of the adult population in primarily agricultural works, and sometimes in other sectors, violation of freedom of religion and conscience in the course of fight against so called religious extremism and terrorism, restrictions and violations on freedom of movement of citizens haven’t disappeared.

Gross violation of constitutional provisions and international obligations concerning political rights and freedoms, including the right to elect and be elected should in particular be noted. There are no free and fair elections in Uzbekistan. The incumbent president has been amending the nation’s Constitution and elections laws for many times now in order to remain on power for more than 20 years. Each year the number of the Uzbek citizens striving to escape the country under the threats of politically motivated persecutions and applying for asylum in foreign countries is growing.

If up to 2000s it has mostly been civil society, political opposition and religious activists who escaped the country as political asylum seekers, lately different new categories of asylum seekers with their families have emerged, in particular Uzbek businesspersons who had to escape Uzbekistan under the threats of persecution and attacks of the local law enforcement agencies.

To the same extent, the activities of the Uzbek secret services abroad in European, United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine targeted at identifying, arrest and bringing back to Uzbekistan of Uzbek asylum seekers have grown. Cases of physical liquidation of some of the high profile Uzbek asylum seekers abroad, supposedly implemented by the Uzbek secret services, have become more frequent.

The Uzbek government has massively violated social and economic rights of its citizens as well. The minimal wages in the country have remained in the poverty level and do not comply to market prices. Massive unemployment especially among the youth and rural population is ripe (approximately 70% of the population in Uzbekistan live in rural areas). The number of the Uzbek citizens who has left the country as labor migrants makes up approximately 6-7 mln (under official data the total number of population in Uzbekistan is approximately 30 mln).

There are around a million of so-called internal labor migrants who migrate internally along the country in search of temporary job opportunities. Widespread shortage of natural gas, electricity, drinking water, and heating all over Uzbekistan except the capital city of Tashkent has been acute for the last 10 years. A whole new generation of population has grown up who has not seen a proper availability of necessary utilities. The population is not told how much are national revenues from export of natural gas, gold, silk, cotton, uranium and other commodities and how they are spent.

The official rhetoric on human rights has also changed. Until approximately 2005, the Uzbek government had not hesitated to violate fundamental human rights and kept rejecting this fact during negotiations with the foreign partners. Having felt international isolation because of bloody suppression of peaceful protests in Andijon in 2005, the Uzbek government has switched to a tricky way of negotiations on human rights issues and democracy with international partners.

The Uzbek government has immediately increased the volume of official propaganda on human rights issues and process of democratization (coverage in the government-controlled mass media, conferences, and seminars) meant to create an image of a government abiding by human rights and caring after its own citizens. Instead of rejecting human rights violations fully the Uzbek government started talking about “individual and separate facts of human rights violations”, “actions of some government officials who do not care about human rights” and “readiness to cooperate with the UN and OSCE and other international partners if and only if it doesn’t contradict to national interests, traditions and customs of the Uzbek people”.

At the same time, we can also note a change in the rhetoric of the western partners of Uzbekistan concerning human rights issues. Annual meetings and negotiations on human rights issues and democratization between the Uzbek side and its western partners moved more to the behind the doors format. A restricted number of civil society activists who are based both inside and outside the country have lacked a proper information on which issues were on the discussion at such events.

The situation in Uzbekistan has remained contradictory lately. There is no end to such problems as forced labor (massive forced labor of schoolchildren, students and government organizations in harvesting annual cotton harvest), torture, illegal court sentences, corruption among government bodies and other types of violations. The government has been short of stopping the above-mentioned types of human rights violations and to the contrary has only widened their scale.

At the same time, such contradiction has its own logic. The Uzbek political regime is taking every possible measure to survive and maintain its grip on the power in the face of deepening social and economic problems. Problems with the shortage of electricity, natural gas, heating and drinking water are increasing in scale at the nation-wide and escalating. Lately all regions of Uzbekistan except the capital city of Tashkent have faced shortages of electricity and natural gas. But the Uzbek ruling elite have instead decided to accumulate the national wealth in their own hands by exporting more natural gas which is why they made a decision to boost the export of natural gas from Uzbekistan. This situation is indeed causing a wide public discontent.

According to 2015 data, the total number of population in Uzbekistan is 30.686,531. For the sake of comparison the total number of population in neighboring Kyrgyzstan is 5.869, 119; Kazakhstan – 17.009, 202; and in Tajikistan– 8.494,558. The total number of population in Uzbekistan equals to the total number of population in those three countries in sum. Uzbekistan is also a leader in terms of prison population number. Despite those facts, most of the international development and aid programs assisting local civil society organizations are not active in Uzbekistan for many years now. The volume of international development aid and grants allocated to Uzbekistan is several times less than the volume of similar aid and grants to the above-mentioned three Central Asian peers.

The volume of financial aid and grants for independent civil society activists from Uzbekistan has dramatically went down while on the hand the so-called Uzbek GONGOs (government organized NGOs) started receiving increased financial aid from international donors.

In 2011 dictator president Islam Karimov’s smaller daughter Lola Karimova-Tillaeva, an Uzbek ambassador at UNESCO and leader of the Uzbek charity “You are not alone” sued the French newspaper Rue89 in an allegedly libel case because the paper dared to call her father a dictator. Uzbek human rights activists Mutabar Tadjibayeva and Nadejda Atayeva have participated in the court hearings as witnesses invited by the French paper. During the court hearings Lola Karimova-Tillaeva’s attorney Antoine Germain mentioned that her charity «You are not alone” had received 3,7 mln euros from the European Union. The French court decided the case in the French journalists’ favor. This decision is unique as it is the only court decision in which the court called a spade a spade and recognized Karimov as a dictator.

Today the Uzbek civil society has to continue its activities and survive through that process without international assistance. While discussing issues of assistance for the Uzbek civil society organizations representatives of the international donors’ community just shrug and hold skeptical views. Sometimes representatives of international donors’ community demonstrate a quite cynical approach when they express unbelief in improving the situation in Uzbekistan.

International Human Rights Association “Fiery Hearts Club” – one of the most progressive human rights NGos of Uzbekistan has also faced similar attitude of international donors and today is on the brink of bankruptcy. The organization had to wind down most of its important programs and stop its website. We feel the tremendous support of international human rights organizations and partners, but without the constant and continuous financial support of the international donor community such moral support will be insufficient to improve the situation in Uzbekistan.

The Uzbek government continues persecutions and physical attacks against, including assassinations and physical liquidation against the Uzbek civil society activists based abroad. It has been 10 years this year since tragic Andijon events when the government forces have killed hundreds of peaceful protesters in an Uzbek city Andijon in May 2005. The Uzbek government has not been held responsible for those crimes yet.

According to Mutabar Tadjibayeva – a renowned Uzbek human rights activist, the chairperson of the Virtual Elections Commission and one of the major initiators of new Coordination Council “Alternative Uzbekistan”, the position of the western powers on tacit approval of illegal and nondemocratic presidential elections in Uzbekistan equals to a support for the crimes of the dictatorial political regime in Tashkent against its own people.

The Uzbek Central Elections Commission, Constitutional Court have left appeals and calls of the Uzbek human rights activists on gross violations of the constitutional provisions concerning arrangement and conducting of the upcoming presidential elections without any answer.

The Coordination Council calls on the United Nations, OSCE and leaders of the western democratic countries not to ignore the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections in Uzbekistan and publicly condemn gross violations of the constitutional provisions and international standards in arranging and conducting of the elections, including violations of the existing laws by incumbent president Islam Karimov.

The Coordination Council thinks the upcoming presidential elections in Uzbekistan are not free and fair and would reject to recognize Islam Karimov as a new president of the country.

Sincerely,
The Coordination Council of Uzbekistani
Civil Society “Alternative Uzbekistan”