BACKGROUND

Since independence in 1991, the Republic of Uzbekistan has experienced deep economic contraction, and its population has been subjected to a staggering degree of social hardship.2 Uzbekistan's post-independence government, dominated by its president, former Uzbek Communist Party First Secretary Islam Karimov, has avoided implementing political or economic reform, however, fearing that liberalization of either sphere might erode its hold on power. Karimov's government began to attack, jail, and drive into exile leaders of the political opposition in 1992, continuing the Soviet practice of criminalizing dissent. For this, close political control over the judicial system was crucial. Any effort to fundamentally reform the judicial system and restore the rule of law has also remained blocked.3

In common with other republics of the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan inherited that state's legal system, policing structure, and accompanying social and official attitudes. The Soviet legal system was always subject to political control by the Communist Party, and it was generally punitive in its treatment of people identified as deviant, whether political or simply criminal.4 Because of Party domination, the judicial system offered people little means of redress against official abuses. Political domination of the judiciary, now exercised not by a party but by the executive branch of government, has continued in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. Although Uzbekistan now has most of the formal structures of a Western-style judiciary and policing system, the system is riven with grave defects. These result principally but not solely from a lack of true separation of the judiciary from executive power. Corruption, rife throughout the judicial system as elsewhere in Uzbekistan, is another factor leading to injustice.5

Hardening authoritarianism has left few outlets to express popular discontent over growing impoverishment and official corruption. Since late 1998, Uzbek law enforcement bodies have imprisoned increasing numbers of ordinary citizens suspected of opposition to the government on religious grounds.6 According to some accounts, the hunt for these supposed members of illegal religious organizations has overwhelmed the criminal justice system.7 Because Uzbekistan's police force retains the Soviet practice of setting quotas for the number of crimes to be solved, the flood of new arrestees to be processed, according to lawyers interviewed by Human Rights Watch, has prompted police to rely increasingly on torture to swiftly obtain confessions and thus expedite the investigation process.8 One lawyer told Human Rights Watch that "since February 16, 1999, they have stopped enforcing the criminal procedure code."9 In February 1999, several explosions rocked the capital, Tashkent, killing fifteen people and setting off a new wave of mass arrests throughout the country.

Since that time, the government has arrested thousands of men, though only a small portion were directly charged with involvement in the bombings. Most were accused either of possessing illegal drugs or weapons (the evidence of which, according to witness testimony, is often planted by police), or of ill-defined crimes of "religious extremism." Arrests continue to target people who pray alone or in groups, or who are alleged to have prayed in mosques affiliated with clerics the government accuses of opposition activity, singling them out for nothing more than the peaceful expression of their religious beliefs. Officials accused some of those they arrested of supporting armed rebel groups based outside of the country, if only through their real or purported religious activity. Several months after the Tashkent explosions and subsequent arrests, reports surfaced that young men were fleeing the country to neighboring Tajikistan. In August 1999, a group of armed men calling themselves the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan crossed the border from Tajikistan into another neighboring state, Kyrgyzstan, where they clashed with Kyrgyz armed forces and demanded passage into Uzbekistan. The group repeated armed incursions into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan itself in August and September 2000; some of its members are alleged to be based in Afghanistan.10

2 Dmitri Trenin, "Central Asia's Stability and Russia's Security," PONARS Memo No. 168 (November 2000). 3 U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT), "Assessment of the Criminal Justice System of the Republic of Uzbekistan," June 18, 1999. IMF analysts have noted the absence of the rule of law and the lack of institutional and legal reform as a barrier to economic transition and foreign investment. Emine Gürgen, "Central Asia: Achievements and Prospects," Finance and Development, a Quarterly Magazine of the IMF, September 2000 (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/09/gurgen.htm). Other IMF analysts concluded with regard to countries in a "stalled transition," including Uzbekistan, that "The imposition of the transparent, evenhanded rule of law and the protection of property rights have also met with opposition, because these reduce the economic value of the privileged position that (often nontransparent) vested interests have nurtured with bureaucrats and policy makers." Oleh Havrylyshyn and John Odling-Smee, "Political Economy of Stalled Reforms," Finance and Development, a Quarterly Magazine of the IMF, September 2000, (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/09/havrylys.htm). 4 Peter Solomon, Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin (Cambridge University Press, 1997). 5 Joseph Fitchett, "Central Asian Regimes Backslide on Democracy; Corruption and Repression Afflict the Region," International Herald Tribune, August 10, 2000; Human Rights Watch interview, February 1997, place and name of interviewee withheld. 6 For events in late 1997-98, see Human Rights Watch, "Republic of Uzbekistan, Crackdown in the Farghona Valley: Arbitrary Arrests and Religious Discrimination," A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 10, no. 4, May 1998. Regarding arrests in 1999-2000, see the report of the Russian human rights group Memorial Human Rights Center's Information Center for Human Rights in Central Asia, Spisok lits, arestovannykh i osuzhdennykh po politicheskim i religioznym motivam v Uzbekistane (ianvar' 1999 g.-aprel' 2000 g.) (Moscow 2000), hereinafter "Spisok lits." 7 Human Rights Watch interview with lawyer, name withheld, June 9, 2000. 8 On police quotas in the Russian Federation, inherited from Soviet practice, see Human Rights Watch, Confessions at Any Cost: Police Torture in Russia (New York: Human Rights Watch, November, 1999), p. 122-3. Uzbek lawyers confirm the use of quotas by police in Uzbekistan. Human Rights Watch interview, lawyer, name withheld, June 2 2000. 9 Human Rights Watch interview with lawyer, name withheld, Tashkent, May 30 1999. February 16, 1999, is the date that five bombs exploded in the capital Tashkent, which the government claimed was an assassination attempt on the president by unspecified Islamist forces. 10 See Ahmed Rashid, "Confrontation Brews Among Islamic Militants in Central Asia," Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, November 22, 2000.