JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — US-based Freedom House ranked Uzbekistan as the worst country in the world for civil liberties in its global report for 2014. Human rights groups criticise Uzbekistan for suppressing various basic freedoms, using torture in prisons and forcing children to collect its cotton.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its annual report on human rights across the world, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Kazakhstan’s record worsened in 2013. It said the authorities overused rules governing freedom of speech and the freedom to gather in order to crush dissent. Torture, HRW said, also remains prevalent in prisons.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that in Azerbaijan people’s right to freedom of expression and the freedom to gather had worsened in 2013. In its annual report, HRW said the presidential election in October 2013 had been the trigger for most of the crackdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov has expanded the number of crimes that can be punishable under anti-terrorism laws, local media reported.
The authorities have said this move was necessary to protect the country from Islamic militants who have previously attacked government targets. Human rights defenders, though, said the expansion was an excuse to lock up more people and silence the government’s critics.
It will now be punishable by up to seven years in prison if a person is convicted of the loosely defined term of training for a terrorist act.
The expansion of the state’s anti-terrorist powers came shortly after the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its annual global report.
HRW was bleak on Uzbekistan.
“Uzbekistan’s human rights record remained abysmal across a wide spectrum of violations,” HRW said in its report.
HRW also accused the United States and the EU of ignoring these human rights violations in return for help extracting their soldiers from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Lankaran, south Azerbaijan, sentenced Yadigar Sadiqov, a political activist for the opposition Musavat party, to jail for six years for hooliganism. Sadiqov denied the allegations and described the verdict as politically motivated. Police arrested Sadiqov in June for allegedly beating a man.
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(News report from Issue No. 167, published on Jan. 15 2014)
JAN. 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tashkent released from prison Khasan Choriev, the 71-year-old father of a United States-based Uzbek human rights activist, media reported. Mr Choriev had been convicted in August 2013 of rape, an allegation that his supporters said was fabricated. The authorities said Mr Choriev had earned his amnesty through his good behaviour.
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(News report from Issue No. 167, published on Jan. 15 2014)
DEC. 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –The forced sterilisation of women in Uzbekistan is still a widespread practice, media reported quoting a report by the US-based Open Society Foundations. The report, initially presented in New York on Dec. 13, said that doctors in Uzbekistan were under pressure to sterilise women to combat population growth.
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(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)
JAN. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human rights groups have said they are concerned about the pre-trial conditions of Anar Mammadli, arrested last month in Azerbaijan on tax evasion charges, media reported. Mr Mammadli is the head of the independent Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center and has previously criticised Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)
DEC. 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rights groups criticised Turkmenistan’s parliamentary election, officially heralded as the start of multi-party politics, as mere window dressing. The vote on Dec. 15 was the first time an election in Turkmenistan has been contested by two parties. In reality the opposition party was staunchly pro-president.
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(News report from Issue No. 166, published on Jan. 8 2014)
DEC. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Under pressure from the international community, Uzbekistan has reduced its use of students and school children to pick its cotton harvest but instead has increased the number of older professionals forced into fields, the New York Times reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)