Uzbekistan: The Uzbek government has detained and questioned hundreds of people in a campaign of intimidation aimed at securing testimony that backs its version of events about the killing of demonstrators in the city of Andijan in May, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
"Police and security agents threatened or severely beat many of those detained in order to coerce them to confess to belonging to extremist religious organisations and bearing arms while participating in the May 13th protest," the organisation said in an 81-page report.
The first 15 people charged with organising an armed revolt in Andijan were to go on trial yesterday in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. Prosecutors allege the 15 were part of a broad conspiracy, financed from abroad, that was designed to overthrow the government and replace it with an Islamic state. Prosecutors said another 106 people might face similar charges.
Deputy chief prosecutor Anvar Nabiyev said last week that "external destructive forces" had given organisers of the revolt $300,000.
Human rights groups charge that government forces killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in Andijan after a day of protests that were largely driven by anger over poverty and government repression. The protests began when armed men freed 23 prominent businessmen from a local prison early on May 13th; the men were on trial for alleged membership of a banned Islamic group.
The mass killing led to international demands for an independent investigation, but the Uzbek authorities rejected those calls.
After the killings, Andijan was effectively closed to outsiders, and locals were warned not to talk about the incident. The government announced that 187 people had been killed and 287 wounded in the violence, and said most of them were terrorists.
"It was in this atmosphere of fear that the authorities detained hundreds - and perhaps thousands - of people in Andijan with the purported aim of obtaining testimony about the crimes committed on May 13th, as the government has defined them," Human Rights Watch said.
The government has also arrested human rights workers, journalists and political activists who attempted to investigate the killings. - (LA Times-Washington Post Service)