Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan

Prominent Uzbek Cleric Obidkhon Qori Nazarov Escapes Assassination Attempt.

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:17:56 +0000

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Uzbekistan

Prominent Uzbek Cleric Escapes Assassination Attempt

Obidkhon Qori Nazarov has been living in Sweden since he was granted political asylum in 2006.

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By RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service

February 22, 2012

Imam Obidkhon Qori Nazarov has survived an attempt on his life in the Swedish city of Stromsund.

A source close to Nazarov said he remained in critical condition after being shot three or four times.

Nazarov has been living in Sweden since he was granted political asylum in 2006.

With tens of thousands of followers and admirers, he is considered one of the most powerful opponents of the regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

Shortly after arriving in Sweden in March 2006, Nazarov broke eight years of silence in an interview with RFE/RL correspondent Alisher Sidikov.

He and his family had just received refugee status from the United Nations after living in hiding in Kazakhstan since 1998.

Nazarov was one of the most popular imams in Central Asia in the early 1990s, making him a target of Karimov’s government.

Nazarov, who was 47 years old at the time of the interview, left Tashkent for Kazakhstan after Uzbek authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of religious extremism and terrorism.

The United Nations concluded that Nazarov was a victim of political persecution by the Uzbek authorities and needed to be protected.

From exile, Nazarov became one of the leading supporters of the secular opposition and democratic change in Uzbekistan.

Calling For Peaceful Change

He told RFE/RL that the Karimov government hadn’t had a “fair attitude” toward Islam since the Soviet days, when “people in power used to put their will over the wishes of the people.”

“Now in Uzbekistan we see the same situation. They don’t want to give broad opportunities to the people,” he added. “While, in fact, Allah wants people to live freely and have lots of opportunities, [officials] wanted to rule using communist methods.”

Nazarov said he responded to pressure from the government by telling officials that times had changed and he “didn’t want to carry out their orders.”

That made him a terrorist in the eyes of Tashkent, which also accused him of leading fundamentalist Wahhabis in Uzbekistan.

Nazarov denied that charge. “What we are preaching is in line with Allah’s words and his prophet’s interpretation,” he told RFE/RL.

“But those who do not want us accuse us in many ways. It is ridiculous, but for the [Uzbek government], human rights defenders are the terrorists; journalists are the terrorists. In this situation, one should never react when they call you the same as well.

“I do not support a change of government with arms. We believe things can get better through peaceful means.”

Nazarov also refuted allegations that he and his followers were seeking the establishment of an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. His wish, he said, was to see freedom of religion so that Muslims and Christians and other religions could all benefit.

“We want a society where human rights are respected and freedom of religion is guaranteed,” he said.

http://www.rferl.org/content/exiled_uzbek_cleric_survives_attack/24493065.html

Russia in color, a century ago.

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:15:41 +0000

Russia in color, a century ago

With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948. [Editor's Note: I will be on vacation for a bit. Next entry will be published on 8/27] (34 photos total)

An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), circa 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC)

Self-portrait on the Karolitskhali River, ca. 1910. Prokudin-Gorskii in suit and hat, seated on rock beside the Karolitskhali River, in the Caucasus Mountains near the seaport of Batumi on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Molding of an artistic casting (Kasli Iron Works), 1910. From the album “Views in the Ural Mountains, survey of industrial area, Russian Empire”. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A woman is seated in a calm spot on the Sim River, part of the Volga watershed in 1910. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A chapel sits on the site where the city of Belozersk was founded in ancient times, photographed in 1909. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

View of Tiflis (Tblisi), Georgia from the grounds of Saint David Church, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (Khiva, now a part of modern Uzbekistan), full-length portrait, seated outdoors, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A closer detail view of Isfandiyar, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm. This photo would have been taken near the start of his reign in 1910, when he was 39 years old. He ruled Khorezm until his death in 1918. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

On the Sim River, a shepherd boy. Photo taken in 1910, from the album “Views in the Ural Mountains, survey of industrial area, Russian Empire”. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Alternators made in Budapest, Hungary, in the power generating hall of a hydroelectric station in Iolotan (Eloten), Turkmenistan, on the Murghab River, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A Georgian woman poses for a photograph, ca. 1910. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A group of women in Dagestan, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

General view of Artvin (now in Turkey) from the small town of Svet, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Pinkhus Karlinskii, eighty-four years old with sixty-six years of service. Supervisor of Chernigov floodgate, part of the Mariinskii Canal system. Photo taken in 1909. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

General view of the Nikolaevskii Cathedral from southwest in Mozhaisk in 1911. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A group of Jewish children with a teacher in Samarkand, (in modern Uzbekistan), ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A switch operator poses on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, near the town of Ust Katav on the Yuryuzan River in 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Cornflowers in a field of rye, 1909. From the album “Views along the Mariinskii Canal and river system, Russian Empire”. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Laying concrete for the dam’s sluice, 1912. Workers and supervisors pose for a photograph amid preparations for pouring cement for sluice dam foundation across the Oka River near Beloomut. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Sart woman in purdah in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, ca. 1910. Until the Russian revolution of 1917, “Sart” was the name for Uzbeks living in Kazakhstan. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

General view of the wharf at Mezhevaya Utka, 1912. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Peasants harvesting hay in 1909. From the album “Views along the Mariinskii Canal and river system, Russian Empire”. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Prokudin-Gorskii rides along on a handcar outside Petrozavodsk on the Murmansk railway along Lake Onega near Petrozavodsk in 1910. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A water-carrier in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan), ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A dog rests on the shore of Lake Lindozero in 1910. From the album “Views along the Murmansk Railway, Russian Empire”. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Factory in Kyn, Russia, belonging to Count S.A. Stroganov, 1912. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Russian children sit on the side of a hill near a church and bell tower near White Lake, in Russia, 1909. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Emir Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, the Emir of Bukhara, seated holding a sword in Bukhara, (present-day Uzbekistan), ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A boy leans on a wooden gatepost in 1910. From the album “Views in the Ural Mountains, survey of industrial area, Russian Empire”. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A metal truss bridge on stone piers, part of the Trans-Siberian Railway, crossing the Kama River near Perm, Ural Mountains Region, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

Nomadic Kirghiz on the Golodnaia Steppe in present-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A man and woman pose in Dagestan, ca. 1910. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

A general view of Sukhumi, Abkhazia and its bay, seen sometime around 1910 from Cherniavskii Mountain. Google Map, (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC) #

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

Uzbekistan: Empowering communities to address local needs.

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:32:14 +0000

Uzbekistan: Empowering communities to address local needs

The Government of Uzbekistan has been increasing the role of local authorities and communities in providing essential services and encouraging more funding to come from local resources.

Since 2005, the Enhancing Living Standards (ELS) Programme has helped bring communities together to discuss common challenges and take practical measures to improve living conditions. Financed by the European Union and implemented by UNDP, the programme covers the Andijan, Fergana, and Namangan regions, where some eight million people—nearly a third of Uzbekistan’s population—live.

Highlights

The programme covers the Andijan, Fergana, and Namangan regions, where some eight million people live.
Access to water increased by 55 percent, health services by 6 percent, and natural gas by 21 percent.
800,000 people benefited from the programme.

Community development plans

The programme has supported the design and implementation of community development plans which help local communities prioritize their needs and problems, and implement small-scale projects with financial help from local authorities. With UNDP’s support, local authorities and communities (also known as mahallas) have prepared more than 200 community development plans.

This participatory process has strengthened the relationship between local administrations and communities.

“We learned how to communicate with government authorities,” reported a local community group in the Besharik district of the Fergana region. “We liked that the programme taught us how to collaborate with the communal services departments.”

Local communities are now better informed and have gained the conﬁdence to speak out, express their hopes and concerns, and participate in decisions that affect their well-being. They also contribute to the projects by providing labour, materials, and funding. Since 2009, local authorities and mahallas have contributed $3 million to social infrastructure projects, more than 60 percent of the total funding.

Addressing basic needs

Community development projects have led to concrete improvements in people’s lives. In the Markazy mahalla of Andijan, the programme helped people to install a new artesian well, benefitting about 8,000 inhabitants. Now households have access to clean, piped drinking water, which is less expensive than relying on old wells that require electrical pumps.

Water supply improvement projects have also attracted volunteers and community contributions. In the Khujaarik community in the Andijan region, 3,000 people volunteered their services and funding to help monitor the water quality and report problems. As a result, the incidence of water-borne diseases has dropped by 72 percent since June 2010, as reported by the primary health care facilities in the target districts.

The ELS projects have benefited 800,000 people by providing them with better access to potable and irrigation water, sanitation, electricity and natural gas. In 2011, access to water in the areas where UNDP works with local governments and mahallas had increased by 55 percent, health services by 6 percent, and gas by 21 percent.

http://bcove.me/y6jkwnbk

Read the full story in our publication “Empowering Lives, Building Resilience”

http://www.beta.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/capacitybuilding/projects_and_initiatives/uzbekistan–empowering-communities-to-address-local-needs.html

Where is Uzbekistan’s Gas?

admin — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:44:58 +0000

by Nathan Hamm on 2/15/2012 · 0 comments

Gazeta.uz has a story trumpeting an increase in foreign trade turnover, rattling off a series of figures released by UzStat, the state statistics committee. Keeping in mind that Uzbekistan’s official economic’s figures should always be treated with extreme skepticism, there’s an interesting nugget in there.

Heating gas and petrol shortages have become an annual affair that this year appear to have gotten sharply worse and claiming lives recently in Andijon as a result of an explosion caused by makeshift measures to keep homes warm. There also have been small protests over the unavailability and high prices of fuels and the government’s campaign to switch customers off of natural gas.

Where is this gas? Uzbekistan produces and exports natural gas. Given the ways in which political elites predate on the population, some, including myself, have speculated that there’s been a preference to export at higher prices than to sell domestically. On the other hand, Uzbekistan The article notes a decrease in both the oil and gas and cotton sectors as shares of exports. (Fergana News breaks down the numbers, also noting an increase in food exports.) My back of the napkin calculations show a drop from about $3.27 billion to $2.78 billion year-over-year. Someone, hopefully, can enlighten me on the prices at which Uzbekistan sells its exports and whether or not these numbers show a decrease in exports or just the prices at which exports have been sold.

Several weeks ago, Alexander Benois said in a story on the widespread impact of fuel shortages that the government is meeting export commitments, but reducing extraction. Meanwhile, they are forcing businesses off of natural gas, and gas clearly isn’t reaching the general public in sufficient quantities. This leaves the gas sitting in the ground, where it can be used to negotiate additional export deals.

Doing this is doubly soaking the public, which is not only left cold, but also stuck with a big financial hit as prices for alternative fuels rise. While Uzbekistan’s government keeps society under heel on social and political issues, it is playing a much more dangerous game by so brazenly attacking the public’s pocketbooks and quality of life, especially when it is well within the government’s means to prevent these shortages. In the past, the government has backed off of extremely unpopular economic policies and/or blamed them on local officials in order to defuse small expressions of protest in the provinces. These tactical retreats have been followed up by attacking with renewed vigor. It is probable that the spring and summer will see expanded removal of businesses and residences from the natural gas grid, setting the stage for more widespread public suffering, and perhaps protest, next winter.

Photo: Nurata Fuel Stop by lensfodder.

http://registan.net/index.php/2012/02/15/where-is-the-gas/

A prosecutor told a federal judge this morning that Uzbek refugee Jamshid Muhtorov admitted he knew the Islamic Jihad Union was a combat organization that fights NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:49:39 +0000

Uzbekistan refugee knew of Islamic group’s threat, prosecutor says at Denver hearing

Posted: 02/15/2012 01:00:00 AM MST

By Felisa Cardona
The Denver Post

A prosecutor told a federal judge this morning that Uzbek refugee Jamshid Muhtorov admitted he knew the Islamic Jihad Union was a combat organization that fights NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Muhtorov, a 35-year-old Aurora resident charged with providing material support to IJU, a designated foreign terrorist organization, appeared in court for a detention hearing so a judge could decide whether to grant him bond while he awaits trial.

On Jan. 21, Muhtorov was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on his way to Istanbul, Turkey after agents tracked his emails and phone calls for months after he made contact with the administrator of a pro-IJU website.

The FBI found about $2,800 in cash, two shrink-wrapped iPhones, an iPad and a GPS device with him upon his arrest.

“At a later date I will make an argument why he had those devices,” assistant U.S. attorney Greg Holloway said.

During an hour and a half interview with agents, Muhtorov denied he was involved in terrorism.

“He asked how could he support terrorism when he could barely provide support for him and his family,” Holloway said. “He told the agents he thought it was a big mistake.”

But Holloway says he has a witness who claims Muhtorov, a former human rights defender in Uzbekistan, became radicalized and had an allegiance to global jihad.

Holloway said Muhtorov quit his job with a trucking company, said goodbye to his wife and two children and purchased a one-way airplane ticket to give his life to the cause.

The prosecutor described Muhtorov as a former human rights activist who might have been disappointed in his life as a refugee in the U.S.

“He is an educated man and the only jobs he could get were manual labor jobs and his wife had to work to help support the family,” Holloway said. “He was living in a crappy apartment and having to move because of bed bugs.You can see an escalation of frustration and communication of that frustration in the (documents).”

Holloway also claims to have a witness who said Muhtorov was looking for like-minded individuals who had an extreme view of Islam.

The witness told the FBI that Muhtorov’s teachers in regard to the proper practice of Islam were Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yememi-American cleric killed last year in a CIA drone strike.

But when Muhtorov’s defense lawyer, Brian Leedy tried to question FBI Special Agent Donald Hale about the identity of their witness, Holloway interrupted and said Hale could not answer because the information is classified.

Prosecutors also did not say whether a specific terrorist act or plan was underway involving Muhtorov. They have only conceded no attack was planned on U.S. soil.

In 2005, the IJU was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State and conducted attacks on coalition forces overseas and has links to al-Qaeda.

But the IJU is also a group that fought the dictator of Muhtorov’s home country of Uzbekistan where his sister remains jailed on a trumped up murder charge and where he was subjected to political persecution. Muhtorov’s brother also left the country in 2009 as a refugee and is living in Kazakhstan.

Leedy says Muhtorov was bickering with his wife, Nargiza, asking her to choose a life with him or her mother and after that, he made one-way travel arrangements toward Asia. His intentions were to visit his extended family, Leedy said.

Muhtorov was carrying cash because it is the easiest currency to travel with, his lawyer continued. He also purchased a one-way ticket because making arrangements to travel from that part of the world are difficult to plan in a round-trip flight, Leedy said.

“His travel plans were not run of the mill,” Leedy said. “It was complicated.”

Leedy asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty to release his client on bond and place him on GPS monitoring if he was concerned about him leaving the country.

Hegarty was still considering the motion for release this afternoon. But the judge indicated he was suspicious of Muhtorov’s motives for traveling abroad.

“A person who has a family, a wife and two small children, who quits his job and buys a one way ticket to Turkey and carries a significant amount of cash with him – that is a concern to me,” Hegarty said.

Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com

Follow Felisa Cardona on Twitter.

Read more: Uzbekistan refugee knew of Islamic group’s threat, prosecutor says at Denver hearing – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19966637#ixzz1mecmIMqo
Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19966637

Attack Of The Cloned Websites…This Time In Uzbekistan.

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:47:53 +0000

The mirror site of RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service

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February 15, 2012

A website has been set up to mirror the site of RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, in what could be a phishing scheme to harvest user information.

The site, ozod.orca.uz, is a crude knock-off of Ozodlik, with RFE/RL’s logo and branding. Since RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reported about the site on February 14, the mirror has been blocked.

Creating mirror sites can help websites under attack from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks or to circumvent websites that have been blocked. But it has also been used as a tool by repressive regimes to misinform.

To enter the ozod.orca.uz site and access Ozodlik articles, users had to provide a name, e-mail address, and password.

The frontpage of the mirror site also listed proxies advertised by Ozodlik, which has been blocked in Uzbekistan since the brutal suppression of unrest in Andijan in 2005. It also listed two Ozodlik emails and a third, yangilik@bk.ru, which does not relate to RFE/RL.

In recent weeks, an unknown person approached RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service by email and Skype asking if it was safe to set up a mirror site. RFE/RL declined to cooperate.

According to a Berlin-based computer specialist, who wishes to remain anonymous, the same person approached him and reportedly tried to recruit him to work for Uzbekistan’s National Security Service (SNB).

In Uzbekistan, the operators responsible for the .uz domain are closely linked to the state. To register a .uz domain, users would need to provide passport information to the hosting company. Most independent websites are hosted outside Uzbekistan. According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which monitors web censorship worldwide, Internet Service Providers risk having their licenses removed if they post “inappropriate” information.

A representative from the company that hosted the mirror site, Orca.uz, told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that anyone can register on their domain. “We are not aiming to persecute or pursue anyone. However, if there is a website that goes against Uzbek law or a porn site, we will remove that,” the representative said.

The site could have been a genuine attempt to set up a mirror of Ozodlik, rather than a phishing scheme, where fake sites are set up to gain user information by malicious means.

However, Galima Bukharbaeva, the editor of uznews.net, a leading independent website, says that mirroring sites is not a good way in Uzbekistan to avoid censorship.

“If we launch a mirror site, we will be somehow promoting it but after a while that site will also be blocked and even if we had a new IP that would then be blocked,” Bukharbaeva said.

If the website was connected to Uzbekistan’s security services, it could yield important password and log-in information from opposition-minded individuals. The authorities could also potentially track down users by IP addresses. Sources in Uzbekistan, who wish to remain anonymous because of fears about their safety, told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that they had been approached by security personnel to set up mirror sites of leading independent and opposition websites.

According to the ONI, Uzbekistan has the “most pervasive regime of filtering and censorship” in the CIS. In addition to filtering, “the security forces in Uzbekistan manually check Internet access at ‘edge locations’ (such as Internet cafes) and monitor users’ activities.”

The Uzbek authorities have also tried to lure users away from social-networking sites, which have become a forum for dissent outside state control. In August 2011, the Uzbek authorities launched Muloqot, which translates as “dialogue,” a slick Facebook alternative, tied to the state telecom monopoly and requiring users to sign in with an Uzbek telephone number.

Other repressive governments have experimented with cloning websites popular with the democratic opposition.

In the late 1990s, websites were set up to mirror the sites of exiled Kazakh opposition figures. The most well-known case was the website of Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a former Kazakh prime minister, who left Kazakhstan in the late 1990s saying he feared persecution. While the original websites were often political and critical of the Kazakh government, the mirrors presented nonpolitical or entertained-related content.

During postelection protests in Belarus in December 2010, independent and news websites (including RFE/RL’s Belarus Service) were mirrored, although it is unclear by who.

The sites would present sanitized versions of the content on opposition and independent websites and misinformation about the time and location of opposition rallies. The YouTube page of RFE/RL’s Belarus Service was also cloned and also offered sanitized content.

http://www.rferl.org/content/attack_of_the_cloned_websites_this_time_in_uzbekistan/24485124.html

Lola Karimova joins the race of “successors”.

admin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:21:10 +0000

According to the sources from “Uzbekiston Havo Yullari” (Uzbekistan Airlines), the national aviation company, there was an incident on the flight “Frankfort on the Main – Tashkent” on 30th of January.

Timur Tillayev, the businessman, more known as Lola Karimova’s husband, who was traveling back to the Uzbek capital, kicked up a row in the airliner salon and demanded to turn out all passengers from the first class cabin.
It seemed he was not troubled by the fact that the passengers gave a large amount of money for the first class cabin tickets (the first class cabin air ticket for this flight costs more then 2 700 000 Uzbek sum – about $ US1000. The economy class cabin ticket costs 780 000 Uzbek sum – $ US280).

Tillayev was accompanied by high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
It is remarkable that till this incident only Karimov’s daughters could afford such “haughty manners”, delaying flights for several hours, turning out the passengers from the business class cabin.
So, Timur Tillayev, Karimov’s son-in law, felt himself as a “lord” too. This businessman is famous in Tashkent actually as an exclusive holder of parking lots and paid toilets (he is also famous as “Timur WC”). According to some data, nowadays Karimov’s youngest daughter’s business empire includes more than 200 parking lots in Tashkent and 20 flea markets in the capital and in margin. Timur “WC” Tillayev controls a number of groups, which provide these markets with products. The industrial goods and food products are imported into the republic by contraband.
Timur “WC” Tillayev’s father Hakim Tillayev is known in criminal groups of Uzbekistan. In due time he was Salim Abduvaliyev’s nearest companion. However, Islam Karimov demanded to take away him from Tashkent because of his chronic alcoholism (the relative is disgracing after all). Nowadays Hakim Tillayev is in Moscow and spends life of a quiet chronic alcoholic.
The observers note that recently Lola Karimova and Timur Tillayev get together very seldom. She often spends her time in France, Seychelles or another paradise places. When in Uzbekistan she goes to the mountains with her suites and organizes orgies there. There have been rumors about Lola Karimova’s breach of faith for a long time. It seems that these rumors have reached Timur Tillayev’s ears just recently. A man far from clerical views, all of a sudden he became a man of faith and performs namaz (Muslim prayer) five times in a day. Meanwhile, he is not going to give up his dissipated life. He can not divorce Lola Karimova too, because he has already acquired a sizeable capital, which he will lose after divorcing. He does not want to repeat his predecessor’s mistake.
Meanwhile it comes out that Lola Karimova began to interfere in personnel issues too. For example, recently she has initiated recall of Bakhrom Aloyev, the ambassador of Uzbekistan to France, who was appointed to this post by the resolution of the Senat on October 29, 2008. Nowadays, Lola Karimova is considering the candidacy of her classmate from University of Diplomacy in Tashkent for this position. There is no doubt that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Senat will not refuse it.
The experts note some interesting tendency over Uzbekistan lately. Early Gulnara Karimova was the most appreciable and active person in all spheres of Uzbek life. Now Lola Karimova is trying to approach the foreground in leaps and bounds.
The stakeholders in Uzbekistan are waiting for repartition of the influence area with great concern. Though the opinions about Gulnara Karimova are still very negative, she continues to take an active part in welfare, art and in youth creative work. Lola Karimova is far from such kind of sentimentalities, she is cruel and avid. Such her character traits are aggravated by her complexes. The lips, filled by Botox and silicone, used for bust expansion (Lola Karimova’s appearance became more repulsive after that), indicate this fact.
It is possible, that Lola Karimova’s activation is related with the problem of successor. The experts coincide that the solution of this problem is in its final straightaway.

Azamat Ishmuradov

http://zamondosh.blogspot.com/2012/02/lola-karimova-joins-race-of-successors.html#more

Uzbekistan: Looking in the other direction.

admin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:40:11 +0000

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Uzbekistan: Looking in the other direction

The US has waived a ban on military assistance to the dictatorship, which has a key asset coveted by Washington

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Editorial
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 12 February 2012 22.36 GMT
Article history

For years, Hillary Clinton said at the National Democratic Institute in November last year, dictators told their people they had to accept the autocrats that they knew in order to avoid the extremists they feared. And, all too often, America accepted that narrative as well. This commendable mea culpa was addressed to the movers and shakers of the Arab spring. But from where, they would have done well to ask, had the US secretary of state just then returned? From Uzbekistan was the answer, the nastiest dictatorship in central Asia, whose name is synonymous with torture.

But Uzbekistan has one asset that Washington needs: a railhead into northern Afghanistan, which has become the key node of a US military supply line known as the northern distribution network. For this alone, America and the EU are prepared to look the other way, when confronted with what the US embassy cables described as a nightmarish world of rampant corruption, organised crime, forced labour and torture. Last month, Mrs Clinton formally waived a previous human rights based ban on military assistance to Uzbekistan.

Yet Uzbekistan’s human rights nightmare is not receding. On the contrary, there is evidence that it is growing, as a recent report by Human Rights Watch makes clear. HRW dismantles the claim that Uzbekistan’s adoption of habeas corpus and other procedural rights for pre-trial detainees has improved human rights. Nearly a decade after a special rapporteur found that torture in Uzbekistan was widespread and systemic, and nearly seven years after the massacre in Andijan, the plight of civil society activists continues to worsen. The habeas corpus hearings are described by one lawyer as judicial theatre. Torture is so prevalent that in seven cases since 2008, the European court of human rights ruled against sending detainees back on the grounds that they would be brutalised. Tashkent has refused to allow the UN rapporteur on torture to visit the country.

Despite having the muscles, the EU is as loath to flex them as Washington is. President Islam Karimov gloried in the reception he was afforded by the commission president José Manuel Barroso. Germany leases an airbase on the Afghan border at Termez and granted one of the architects of Andijan, the former interior minister Zohir Almatov, a visa for medical treatment in Hanover, just days before Almatov topped the list of names subjected to a visa ban.

Uzbekistan will not quietly go away. All the ingredients of conflict are there, including Uzbeks who have fought alongside the Taliban. There is every chance that, as US troops start withdrawing from Afghanistan, trouble could spread northwards, placing Uzbekistan firmly in the sights of Islamic militants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/12/uzbekistan-looking-in-the-other-direction-editorial?newsfeed=true

Tashkent human rights activist Abdullo Tojiboy-ugli is having to endure below-freezing temperatures in his home.

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:13:57 +0000


	In 2007 Abdullo-Tojiboy ugli announced he would stand in Uzbekistan’s presidential elections

08.02.12 02:55

Uzbek authorities freeze out human rights activist

Tashkent human rights activist Abdullo Tojiboy-ugli is having to endure below-freezing temperatures in his home months after his gas and electricity supplies were cut off, leaving him with no heating.

“Last Sunday the thermometer was showing 15 degrees below zero, even inside the house,” says Tojiboy-ugli.

He has kept out the worst of the cold by building a miniature stove with bricks and a metal sheet, in which he burns wood from his garden and small pieces of coal. “It doesn’t give out much heat but at least the house is not as cold as outside,” he says.

He has no outstanding gas or electricity bills. He lives alone in his four-room flat near the Uzbekfilm studios in the Chilanzar district of Tashkent. Tojiboy-ugli says that his children left home in August last year ago afraid they would be punished for ‘supporting a trouble-maker’.

Tojiboy-ugli’s gas and electricity supplies were cut off one month later.

“I owed a small amount to the electricity company, around 100,000 sums (then equivalent to US$40.00). I paid it straight away and paid for reconnection, but they still have not restored my gas and electricity supplies,” he says.

The campaigner has written several letters of complaint about this to the prosecutor’s office but nothing has been done to rectify the situation.

On 4th January Tojiboy-ugli took out a lawsuit with the Uchtepe district civil court against the energy company which has left him without heating, but as yet no date has been set for the hearing.

Tojiboy-ugli believes that he is being ‘frozen out’ deliberately because of his human rights activism and is planning to protest on 20th February by staging a picket outside the town hall – a protest he has given advance notice of in writing.

http://www.uznews.net/news_single.php?lng=en&sub=hot&cid=3&nid=19014

Uzbekistan: Ongoing detention of human rights defender Mr Akzam Turgunov declared ‘arbitrary’ by UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:09:46 +0000

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Posted 2012/1/31

Uzbekistan: Ongoing detention of human rights defender Mr Akzam Turgunov declared ‘arbitrary’ by UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

In an opinion recently made available, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) confirms that the ongoing detention of human rights defender Mr Akzam Turgunov is arbitrary, and calls for his immediate release.

Akzam Turgunov is the executive director and founder of “Mazlum” human rights centre, a human rights organisation in Tashkent that advocates on behalf of prisoners of conscience and protests against the use of torture.

He also served as Director of the Tashkent section of Erk (“Freedom”), a political opposition party. In July 2008, he was investigating police corruption charges and working as a lay public defender on behalf of a woman in a divorce settlement dispute in the town on Manget when he was arrested on extortion charges.

He was held without access to a lawyer, and boiling water was poured over his back and neck during his interrogation. Following an unfair trial in which the plaintiff was not questioned, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Akzam Turgunov is currently being detained at a prison camp and is forced to work in a brick making factory.

Front Line Defenders welcomes the opinion of the WGAD, adopted on 17 November 2011, which states that the charges against Akzam Turgunov were a fabricated means to punish him for exercising his rights to freedom of opinion, expression, association, and political participation. The WGAD holds that “the Government used an involvement of Mr Turgunov in the resolution of a settlement in civil matters to prosecute and punish him for his human rights and political activities.”

The WGAD also notes that authorities failed to adequately investigate the mistreatment of the human rights defender and calls on the government to “release Mr Turgunov and accord him an enforceable right to compensation.” The full text of the WGAD’s opinion is available on Freedom Now website

Front Line Defenders has previously called on the authorities in Uzbekistan to immediately and unconditionally release Akzam Turgunov and other human rights defenders who are being detained as a result of their human rights work in Uzbekistan – see h Original appeal by Front Line Defenders

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