Our Uzbek allies in "war on terror" ready to pay friendly bloggers

[JohnyCanuck]

(just don't mention that they torture children in front of their parents and have been known to boil people alive).

Blogger Junket to Uzbekistan: Torture chambers likely not among tour stops
By Ken Silverstein

A short while back I noted here that Gulnara Karimova, daughter and henchwoman of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, had recently hosted rock star Sting in Tashkent, the nation’s capital. Sting took in a fashion show and other events with Gulnara, whose father’s regime killed one prisoner by immersion in boiling water, and in 2005 slaughtered hundreds of protesters in the town of Andijan. “The scale of this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate and disproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre,” Human Rights Watch said in a study of the events at Andijan.

Now Gulnara has hired an American firm to bring bloggers to “a gala event in Tashkent,” to quote an email that Chris Stone, vice president at Atlas International Partners, has been sending to invitees. The email says that the event will “showcase the work of young Uzbek artists” and is being sponsored by the Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan Foundation, which is chaired by Gulnara Karimova. Here’s an excerpt from the email:

The Foundation wants to bring a couple of well-known bloggers over to Tashkent to live-blog the event — and it would like at least one to be a public policy or foreign affairs blogger, undoubtedly because Ms. Karimova is a political figure in Uzbekistan in her own right. That said, the live blogging would involve talking about the cultural and artistic aspects of the event, and your touristic impressions of Uzbekistan; it should not be overtly political…We believe that the Foundation’s primary aim is to get people talking about Uzbekistan as a cultural destination, like Egypt, rather than a place people think about only when there is a crisis in Central Asia.

We can offer you $1,000 in compensation, and would cover business-class airfare from the US to Tashkent (you would probably leave on the 14th or 15th and return the 18th or 19th, although you’re welcome to extend your visit if you want), your stay in the Intercontinental Hotel in Tashkent, and incidentals such as meals and visa fees.

Continued at: http://harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006092

[Buzz Clik]

1. I get so confused. I'm supposed to hate the Uzbek's now.

And why is that? :shrug:

[JohnyCanuck]

2. Are you supposed to hate the Uzbek's now?

It's up to you who you want to hate. Those who are spiritually inclined generally recommend that it is unwise to hate anybody as they believe that hate can rebound on those who express it. I personally don't have a problem with people hating a dictatorial, totalitarian regime that apparently does not shrink from boiling its people alive (among many other significant, horrific acts) in order to keep its hold on power.

Maybe the ex-British ambassador to Uzbekistan can explain it better than I can.

March 13, 2009
Trying Again to Stop Torture: My Formal Statement for the Joint Committee on Human Rights

WITNESS STATEMENT TO THE PARLIAMENTARY JOINT COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

My name is Craig Murray. I was British Ambassador in Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004.

snip

As Ambassador in Uzbekistan I regularly received intelligence material released by MI6. This material was given to MI6 by the CIA, mostly originating from their Tashkent station. It was normally issued to me telegraphically by MI6 at the same time it was issued to UK ministers and officials in London.

From the start of my time as Ambassador, I was also receiving a continual stream of information about widespread torture of suspected political or religious dissidents in Tashkent. This was taking place on a phenomenal scale. In early 2003 a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in the preparation of which my Embassy much assisted, described torture in Uzbekistan as “routine and systemic”.

The horror and staggering extent of torture in Uzbekistan is well documented and I have been informed by the Chair is not in the purview of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. But what follows goes directly to the question of UK non-compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture.

In gathering evidence from victims of torture, we built a consistent picture of the narrative which the torturers were seeking to validate from confessions under torture. They sought confessions which linked domestic opposition to President Karimov with Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden; they sought to exaggerate the strength of the terrorist threat in Central Asia. People arrested on all sorts of pretexts – (I recall one involved in a dispute over ownership of a garage plot) suddenly found themselves tortured into confessing to membership of both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Al-Qaida. They were also made to confess to attending Al-Qaida training camps in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In an echo of Stalin’s security services from which the Uzbek SNB had an unbroken institutional descent, they were given long lists of names of people they had to confess were also in IMU and Al-Qaida.

It became obvious to me after just a few weeks that the CIA material from Uzbekistan was giving precisely the same narrative being extracted by the Uzbek torturers – and that the CIA “intelligence” was giving information far from the truth.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html