Human rights movement splits in two.

	Abduzhalil Boymatov, one of the first campaigners to call for the overthrow of President Karimov in 2003

The Society for Human Rights in Uzbekistan (OPChU) has split into two opposing factions. Differences of political opinion have rocked the movement, and two would-be leaders have emerged, each claiming that they are head of the organisation and each criticising the other.

OPChU is the oldest human rights organisation in Uzbekistan, but the war of words that has broken out between its members has been played out for several months on internet sites, in emails and in Skype conversations. The movement now has two opposing factions and two presidents.

One of the leaders, Abdujalil Boymatov, now lives in exile in Ireland. He has been head of the organisation since May 2009, and he now claims that he has become a victim of a plot to oust him.

The other leader, also a political émigré, is Khazratkul Khudoyberdi, the founder of the Swedish website Stopdictatorkarimov. He was elected leader of OPChU at the organisation’s congress in France on 15 July, which was attended by seven people.

Abdujalil Boymatov believes the schism within OPChU is founded on a divergence of political and ideological opinion between representatives of Uzbek civil society and opposition politicians. But this would not have resulted in such unfortunate circumstances, Boymatov says, if his opponents had not had the support OPChU’s de facto leader, the veteran Uzbek human rights activist Tolib Yakubov.

For health reasons, Yakubov could not take up his position as an active leader of OPChU, and after a lengthy search for a new leader, he gave his backing to Abduzhalil Boymatov, and proposed him as president to the organisation in 2009.

“In fact, Yakubov never envisaged that I would replace him outright as leader,” says Boymatov, “he still considered himself the head of OPChU.”

Yakubov had become the key player, so Boymatov was the obvious choice to become president of OPChU and was judged to be reasonably safe from the attacks of certain leaders of Uzbekistan’s political opposition.

Upheaval within OPChU began at the end of May during the Berlin conference of a new alliance of opposition groups – the People’s Movement of Uzbekistan (NDU). The alliance included the Erk party; the Andijan – justice and restitution party; Tayanch and other civil society activists.

These organisations and individuals, in Boymatov’s words, are not necessarily the most reliable and trustworthy people.

“The leader of the Erk party, Mukhammad Salikh, has been a pseudo-democrat for 20 years, and like President Islam Karimov, has never been subject to an election to

	Tolib Yakubov

become leader of his party,” Boymatov claims.

Other organisations which come under the NDU umbrella are supporters of Uzbekistan’s Islamists, Boymatov believes, and they support the idea of building an Islamic state in Uzbekistan.

The mutual antagonism of beliefs and ideologies within the NDU, Boymatov says, is the reason why OPChU refused to become part of the new alliance.

“What can the NDU bring to Uzbekistan – it’s an Islamic country ruled by the secular dictator Karimov,” Boymatov says.

But Tolib Yakubov had a different view of the NDU. He wanted to support the new alliance and saw OPChU as one of its founders. This sealed the fate of his recalcitrant protégé and would-be leader.

Boymatov’s criticism and characterisation of his opponents as undemocratic, Tolib Yakubov says, were excessive, and came to focus only on one individual leader of the Erk party, Salikh.

Boymatov began to criticise President Karimov, the leader of the Birlik Party Abdurakhim Pulatov and Mukhammad Salikh for staying as head of state and party for 20 years, but then he concentrated all his attacks just on Salikh, says Yakubov.

According to the veteran human rights campaigner, if an opposition party is able to operate normally within a country, then internal conflict and rivalry are only to be expected.

But if a party exists under a dictatorship and its leader, like Salikh, has lived in exile for 18 years, then the expectations of that party are different, Yakubov believes.

“When you are living under a dictatorship, you don’t expect people to follow the norms, but there should be an experienced leader at the head of that party,” says Yakubov.

But Yakubov claims that Boymatov was not ousted because of his criticism of their opponents, but because he broke the organisation’s statutes, for example, by not supplying a written answer to the invitation to attend the NDU conference.

Since the conference of the NDU in May and the decision taken there to replace the president of OPChU, many campaigners in Uzbekistan have been sending malicious and offensive emails to Abdujalil Boymatov.

The public airing of the Uzbek opposition’s dirty laundry has proved embarrassing for many, but not for those who continue the in-fighting and to publicly abuse and insult one another.

Tolib Yakubov confirms that none of the offensive emails and letters sent to Boymatov have come from members of OPChU. He thinks the campaign is being carried out by Uzbek national security services (SNB), which operates, according to Yakubov, a special disinformation department.

Boymatov thinks otherwise and even quotes from a letter from the second president of OPChU Khazratkul Khudoyberdi, who calls him a “chicken in a cowshed”.

“I won’t even read out to you the other insults I’ve received, including from Bakhodyr Namazov, a member of the organisation in Tashkent. They’re just too obscene,” Boymatov says.

Boymatov, who was supported by many OPChU members remaining and working in Uzbekistan, believes that the campaign isn’t a personal one against him, and he will not hold on to the post of president of the organisation.

He hopes that the ideological and political arguments which led to the split within OPChU do not risk splitting the whole of Uzbek society in future.

Among the supporters of democracy and an Islamic state, there are those who are patient and tolerant of criticism and those who are prepared to use all available means to silence their opponents.

“The split within OPChU, is a reflection of normal Uzbek society, and shows where the power lies, how people behave, the methods and means they use,” says Boymatov.

“For now this conflict says to me that there are very few genuine democrats in Uzbekistan,” he adds.

 

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