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| Uzbekistan releases ill human rights activist | ||
| 2012-04-23 | ||
| Former Soviet Uzbekistan, one of the world's most closed states, has released a gravely ill human rights activist from prison, Human Rights Watch has reported. Human Rights Watch welcomed the release of Alisher Karamatov six years into a nine year sentence for religious extremism but also said that conditions in Uzbek jails were deplorable.
Imprisoned since 2006, Mr Karamatov was beaten on the soles of his feet, suffocated using a gas mask and made to stand for hours in freezing temperatures, the New York based lobby group said. Mr Karamatov's health had suffered in prison. His wife reported that he had developed tuberculosis in both lungs, developed sores over his body and woke up in the mornings with traces of blood in his mouth. She had asked for her husband's early release on health grounds. Uzbekistan has one of the worst human rights records in the world. This week the BBC reported that, under orders to control population growth, some doctors in Uzbek hospital were forcibly sterilising women after childbirth. The West, though, has had to make deals with the Uzbek authorities because it borders Afghanistan. Already this year, senior military commanders and politicians from NATO, including Philip Hammond, the British Defence Secretary, have visited Tashkent for talks with the Uzbek government. They want to withdraw their military equipment from Afghanistan in 2014 using Uzbekistan's railway network. Mr Swerdlow, the Human Rights Watch Researcher, said the Uzbek authorities should release other activists held in prison. "The US and EU should make clear that the Uzbek government needs to make deeper changes to improve its human rights record and that continuing to harass activists and journalists will lead to significant policy consequences," he said.
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| Posted by:Steve White |