On Friday 13 May Uzbekistan armed forces opened fire on thousands of unarmed demonstrators including women and children in the eastern city of Andijan. It appears that some 500 people were killed. Rebellion spread on Saturday to the nearby town of Korasuv, where demonstrators opened a border crossing to Kyrgyzia.<\/p>\n
Demonstrations against the regime of president Islam Karimov were triggered; it appears, by the jailing of 23 local businessmen, accused setting up an Islamist political organisation. Angry crowds stormed a local government building and a prison where large numbers of political prisoners were kept. They were relapses and small number of Kalashnikovs distributed, it seems.<\/p>\n
But local people have told reporters that the uprising had no connection with Islamist organisations. It was the result of mounting fury over unemployment, economic hardship and the repeated arrests carried out by the dictatorial regime.<\/p>\n
The White House issued a statement urging \u201crestraint\u201d on both the demonstrators and the regime\u2014 those who had been massacred and those who carried out the massacre. It has since criticised the shooting by the troops and the \u201cviolence\u201d of storming government buildings.<\/p>\n
\u201cA more representative and democratic government \u2026 should come through peaceful means not through violence,\u201d said the White House spokesperson. Curious for an Administration that has recently proclaimed that it is encouraging a democratic revolution worldwide. Washington has indeed been actively encouraging, even funding \u201cdemocratic revolutions\u201d in Georgia, Ukraine, and – so far unsuccessfully in Belarus.<\/p>\n
Imagine on the other hand what would happen if five hundred demonstrators were shot down by Hugo Chavez in Caracas in Venezuela?<\/p>\n
To understand these blatant double standards is actually quite easy. The above-mentioned regimes are regarded by the US as hostile to its interests. Uzbekistan on the other hand has performed very valuable services to the USA in its expansionist drive for oil and using strategic airbases for its penetration and takeover of central Asia. In Karimov\u2019s case the famous words used for about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza apply: \u201dOK he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he\u2019s our son-of-a-bitch\u201d.<\/p>\n
And Karimov certainly fits this category. Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has reported that Karimov\u2019s prisoners are brutally tortured to \u201cextract information [about reported terrorist operations], which is supplied to the US and passed through its Central Intelligence Agency to the UK.\u201d Indeed, for leaking such information and making clear his hostility to the regime, Home Secretary Jack Straw recalled Murray. Only when the mass bloodletting could no longer be concealed, and the US revealed its guarded concern, has Straw courageously criticised Karimov\u2019s bestial regime. In such grubby hands does the crusade for democracy lie.<\/p>\n
The regime has received hundreds of millions of dollars aid from the US – $79 million in 2002 alone The reason is that it provides the Americans with an important air base – Qarshi Hanabad \u2013 vital to supplying US forces operating in Afghanistan. It performs an even more secret service for the apostle of worldwide democracy – one that keeps the Americans hands clean, technically.<\/p>\n
Uzbekistan is one of the destination countries for so-called \u2019renditions programme\u2019 This involves the CIA shipping terrorist suspects to countries where the most savage torture methods can used: ones the Pentagon and the CIA dare not employed on USA territory or even at Guantanamo Bay, for fear of later discovery.<\/p>\n
The New York Times and other US newspapers say dozens of suspects have been transferred to Uzbek jails from destinations in the Middle East and Europe. There repeated beatings, water torture, electric shock, and disposals of prisoners who die under interrogation can be used with no come back. Other countries performing this filthy service for Bush and Co include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Morocco.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch released a 319-page report in 2004, which said \u201ctorture is rampant\u201d in the country. It claimed 7,000 people were imprisoned for political offences and documented at least 10 deaths, including Muzafar Avozov, who was \u201cboiled to death\u201d in 2002.<\/p>\n
The Observer reported on May 15th \u201cviolence \u2026 appeared to be spreading to neighbouring towns\u2026 raising fears that the volatile Central Asian state could erupt into a full-scale revolution\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRaising fears.\u201d Raising hopes more like. The liberal bourgeois press always fears revolution as the worst outcome. In fact it is not revolutions that are bloody and violent but counter-revolutions. The victorious people always display incredible generosity in victory, largely out of sheer relief that torture and terror are over<\/p>\n
The most peaceful outcome would be the speedy overthrow of Karimov breaking up of his secret police and armed forces and the arming of a mass popular militia. This would create the best and most democratic conditions for the workers, the rural and urban poor to work out a future free of corrupt ex-bureaucrats, crony capitalists, oil companies and US garrisons. The only solution is to turn a democratic and anti-imperialist revolution into a workers revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Friday 13 May Uzbekistan armed forces opened fire on thousands of unarmed demonstrators including women and children in the eastern city of Andijan. It appears that some 500 people were killed. Rebellion spread on Saturday to the nearby town of Korasuv, where demonstrators opened a border crossing to Kyrgyzia. Demonstrations against the regime of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-2652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}