George Monbiot exposes Tony Blair’s hypocrisy as Blair supports this tyrant while leaning on the walking stick he supported pre-emptively striking Iraq to rid the world of the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
There is just one test of this sincerity, and that is the consistency with which his concern for human rights guides his foreign policy. If he cares so much about the welfare of foreigners that he is prepared to go to war on their behalf, we should expect to see this concern reflected in all his relations with the governments of other countries. We should expect him, for example, to do all he can to help the people of Uzbekistan.
There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.
Monbiot also reveals the hypocrisy of the United States:
Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov’s soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia’s massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.
So, far from seeking to isolate his regime, the US government has tripled its aid to Karimov. Last year, he received $500m (£300m), of which $79m went to the police and intelligence services, who are responsible for most of the torture. While the US claims that its engagement with Karimov will encourage him to respect human rights, like Saddam Hussein he recognises that the protection of the world’s most powerful government permits him to do whatever he wants. Indeed, the US state department now plays a major role in excusing his crimes. In May, for example, it announced that Uzbekistan had made “substantial and continuing progress” in improving its human rights record.
The progress? “Average sentencing” for members of peaceful religious organisations is now just “7-12 years”, while two years ago they were “usually sentenced to 12-19 years”.
Monbiot is not alone in his criticisms. In March 2003 Acacia Shields, a researcher in the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, wrote this article.
I spent more than two years as Human Rights Watch’s representative in Uzbekistan investigating violations of religious freedom there. Those violations affect thousands of people, primarily Muslims whose religious beliefs, practices or affiliations fall beyond those sanctioned by the government. I collected documents on hundreds of cases, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, and observed trial after trial in which judges ignored allegations of torture and coercion and passed down prison sentences of up to 20 years to people whose only crime had been to exercise rights to freedom of expression and religion. These are rights guaranteed under international covenants that Uzbekistan has promised to uphold. The State Department has chosen to ignore this broken promise.
Not simply ignores, but according to Monbiot, generously encourages.