SKYMAN
04-03-2001, 09:02 AM
3/28/01
Uzbekistan’s crackdown against unsanctioned religious activity has caused the country’s prison population to swell to over 250,000, a Tashkent-based leading human rights advocate said at an Open Forum, sponsored by the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute on March 28.
Talib Yakubov, the general secretary of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, said that upwards of 40 percent of those being held in Uzbek jails could be considered prisoners of conscience, whose Islamic beliefs were directly responsible for their arrest and incarceration. Most are serving prison terms of between 10-20 years.
Yakubov said Uzbek prisons are seriously overcrowded. Many of the country’s 73 penal facilities are designed to accommodate between 1,500-2,000 inmates, but now have populations of 4,000 or more. Several concentration camps have been built during the last few years specifically to house people sentenced for their religious activities. The most notorious facility is located near Zhaslyk, where Yakubov says an estimated 15,000 people are confined. Yakubov said that official figures put Uzbekistan’s prison population at about 63,000. He added that his organization based its higher estimates (about 300,000) in part on numerous eyewitness accounts of prison conditions.
President Islam Karimov’s administration has intensified the crackdown against Islamic believers in recent years, ostensibly in response to an armed insurgency conducted by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which operates out of bases in Afghanistan. The IMU has launched raids in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan the past two years, and many observers say Islamic militants are preparing for new incursions this summer. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Yakubov suggested the crackdown was a vast overreaction by authorities that did more to fuel popular discontent than to promote stability. On March 26, a group of women staged a demonstration calling for the release of relatives who had been jailed because of their religious beliefs [For additional information see EurasiaNet’s Daily Digest].
"There were elements of radical Islam present [before the start of the crackdown], but it was not a widespread phenomenon, only a thin layer," Yakubov said. "It [radical Islam] was certainly not a reason for the arrest of tens of thousands of believers."
Yakubov indicated that many Uzbeks, especially those living in the overcrowded Ferghana Valley, were sympathetic to the IMU’s goal of ousting Karimov’s administration. "I visit the region [the Ferghana Valley] quite often and I am frequently asked by local residents ‘when are they coming?’" Yakubov said. "It is sad that people have lost all hope [in the government]."
The buildup of a bureaucratic machinery to carry out the crackdown has reached alarming proportions, Yakubov said. Whereas there may have been roughly 40,000 law enforcement officers in all of Uzbekistan a decade or two ago, he said, now there are about 40,000 police in Tashkent alone. "The machinery has reached the level that it may be beyond the ability of anyone, even the president, to control," he said.
Posted March 28, 2000 ©Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org
Uzbekistan’s crackdown against unsanctioned religious activity has caused the country’s prison population to swell to over 250,000, a Tashkent-based leading human rights advocate said at an Open Forum, sponsored by the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute on March 28.
Talib Yakubov, the general secretary of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, said that upwards of 40 percent of those being held in Uzbek jails could be considered prisoners of conscience, whose Islamic beliefs were directly responsible for their arrest and incarceration. Most are serving prison terms of between 10-20 years.
Yakubov said Uzbek prisons are seriously overcrowded. Many of the country’s 73 penal facilities are designed to accommodate between 1,500-2,000 inmates, but now have populations of 4,000 or more. Several concentration camps have been built during the last few years specifically to house people sentenced for their religious activities. The most notorious facility is located near Zhaslyk, where Yakubov says an estimated 15,000 people are confined. Yakubov said that official figures put Uzbekistan’s prison population at about 63,000. He added that his organization based its higher estimates (about 300,000) in part on numerous eyewitness accounts of prison conditions.
President Islam Karimov’s administration has intensified the crackdown against Islamic believers in recent years, ostensibly in response to an armed insurgency conducted by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which operates out of bases in Afghanistan. The IMU has launched raids in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan the past two years, and many observers say Islamic militants are preparing for new incursions this summer. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Yakubov suggested the crackdown was a vast overreaction by authorities that did more to fuel popular discontent than to promote stability. On March 26, a group of women staged a demonstration calling for the release of relatives who had been jailed because of their religious beliefs [For additional information see EurasiaNet’s Daily Digest].
"There were elements of radical Islam present [before the start of the crackdown], but it was not a widespread phenomenon, only a thin layer," Yakubov said. "It [radical Islam] was certainly not a reason for the arrest of tens of thousands of believers."
Yakubov indicated that many Uzbeks, especially those living in the overcrowded Ferghana Valley, were sympathetic to the IMU’s goal of ousting Karimov’s administration. "I visit the region [the Ferghana Valley] quite often and I am frequently asked by local residents ‘when are they coming?’" Yakubov said. "It is sad that people have lost all hope [in the government]."
The buildup of a bureaucratic machinery to carry out the crackdown has reached alarming proportions, Yakubov said. Whereas there may have been roughly 40,000 law enforcement officers in all of Uzbekistan a decade or two ago, he said, now there are about 40,000 police in Tashkent alone. "The machinery has reached the level that it may be beyond the ability of anyone, even the president, to control," he said.
Posted March 28, 2000 ©Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org