To provide an adequate assessment of the ability of citizens of present-day Uzbekistan to exercise their constitutional rights, we have to look back at events that took place in the autumn of 2016, when the country’s authorities officially announced the death of President Islam Karimov.

Unconstitutional seizure of power

Without commenting on the true cause of the death of President Karimov, we draw the attention of the Special Rapporteur to Article 96 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which reads:

‘In case the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan fails to exercise his duties, the Chairman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan shall be vested with acting duties and powers by holding an election for President of the country within three months with strict observance of the Law on the Election of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan.’

That is to say, only a candidate who, under force majeure circumstances, will be able to lead the country for a certain time and will be the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces will be elected to the post of Senate Chairman. At that time, Nigmatulla Yuldashev was the Chairman of the Senate.

On 8 September 2016, at a joint meeting of the upper and lower chambers of Uzbekistan’s Parliament, Yuldashev, in gross violation of the country’s Constitution, stepped aside in favour of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who became the interim President of Uzbekistan. Yuldashev pointed to his lack of experience in government as the reason for his resignation.

In this case, Senate Chairman Yuldashev was obliged to act in accordance with Article 15 of the Law on the Senate of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which states: ‘The Chairman of the Senate shall be replaced by a Deputy Chairman in case of the former’s absence or inability to perform his or her duties.’

However, that didn’t happen. And in gross violation of the country’s applicable laws, an individual working in an unelected position (prime minister) was approved for an elected position (president/ interim president).

The Constitutional Court of Uzbekistan, which is responsible for exercising judicial review of the constitutionality of acts promulgated by the legislative and executive branches in order to ensure the primacy of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan, remained silent and did not impede these unconstitutional actions on the part of high-ranking officials.

To call a spade a spade, what took place in Uzbekistan on 8 September 2016 was an unconstitutional seizure of power. And three months later, Mirziyoyev, using all the advantages of incumbency, secured himself a guaranteed victory in an early, uncontested presidential election. Incidentally, the opposition – in exile to the present day and forbidden by the Uzbek authorities to return to the country – was not allowed to take part in the election.

After announcing that he was stepping down, Senate Chairman Yuldashev should have resigned and left his post. However, that didn’t happen; he remained in his post until June 2019. And on 20 June 2019, President Mirziyoyev appointed Yuldashev as Prosecutor-General of Uzbekistan.

An unaccountable individual who repeatedly disregarded and violated the Uzbekistan’s Constitution was appointed as the head of the body responsible for ensuring the rule of law in the country.

Yuldashev continues to work to this day as Uzbekistan’s Prosecutor-General.

Misleading the international community

The unconstitutional seizure of power in Uzbekistan took place with the direct participation and support of the Kremlin, as evidenced by the family connections between Mirziyoyev and Vladimir Putin’s close associate Alisher Usmanov, whom the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny suggested including on the sanctions list, since Usmanov, who has considerable connections and assets in the West, is one of the key enablers and beneficiaries of Russia’s kleptocracy.

The political strategists and PR specialists who spent decades creating an image of a democratic and liberal Putin have been doing the same thing in Uzbekistan over the past four years. While maintaining the trappings and symbols of freedom of speech and democracy, Mirziyoyev and his regime are exploiting a new form of autocracy.

Methods of targeted repression

Seventy years of the communist Soviet regime and almost 30 years of dictatorial rule by Islam Karimov encoded fear into the genes of the inhabitants of Uzbekistan. Taking this characteristic of the people into account, the Uzbek authorities switched from mass repression to targeted repression aimed at their opponents or people who are inconvenient for the regime.

Having given in to Mirziyoyev’s populist slogans, the country’s journalists and bloggers have tried to exercise their right to freedom of speech and expression. However, we all witnessed how, in November 2020, the Agency for Information and Mass Communication under the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan pressured local media to tone down their coverage of pressing social problems.

Despite the fact that the laws of Uzbekistan guarantee citizens the right to engage in public life in the form of rallies, meetings and demonstrations (Article 33 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan), to organise in trade unions, political parties and other public associations, and to take part in grassroots movements (Article 34 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uzbekistan), these rights cannot be exercised in practice.

A group of people united by common special interests (representatives of political movements, non-traditional religious movements, national minorities, etc.) are unable to formalise their activities with Uzbekistan’s registration authorities. And those non-governmental organisations that have undergone the registration process are completely under the control of the security services, as in former times.

Barring extraordinary circumstances, the next election of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan is scheduled for the end of 2021. And in order to lend at least some legitimacy to this election, the Uzbek authorities plan to create a government-supervised opposition inside the country.

The opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston, headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, whose goal is to build a secular, democratic, law-based welfare state in Uzbekistan, has been subjected to severe repression by the Uzbek authorities for several years.

On 18 October 2019, Uzbekistan’s central state news agency (uza.uz) published a controversial and defamatory article on its website about the founder of the movement, Hasanboy Burhanov.

On behalf of the Agency for Information and Mass Communication, arrangements were made to ensure that a large number of complaints were submitted to YouTube regarding video content that the movement posted on its channel. As a result, more than 20 videos were blocked that contained criticism of the family of President Mirziyoyev and a number of senior officials in his regime—and the results of investigations into their corrupt activities.

Then there were anonymous threats and insults, followed by direct threats from the ‘independent’ journalist Ismat Khushev from Canada, who has ties to both government officials (current and former) and organised crime, namely Gafur Rakhimov, an Uzbek mafia boss affiliated with the Russian mafia who is under The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctions.

In parallel with Khushev, who recorded an entire series of videos containing threats and profanities aimed at Burhanov, members of the Free Uzbekistan opposition movement and ‘all those who sympathise with it, read their materials and even visit their YouTube channel’, another director with close ties to the authorities, Shuhrat Musaev (Tashkent), recorded a whole series of video messages in which, using crude language, he threatened to kill Burhanov and their team.

Musaev, who is known to have close ties to the Uzbek security services, made threats on behalf of the state and, as in the case of Khushev, who, when visiting Uzbekistan, is a frequent guest of the Uzbek mafia boss Rakhimov, who said: ‘We’ll kidnap this Burhanov and bring them to Uzbekistan in handcuffs and put them in prison.’

As confirmation of these words, one can provide as evidence that, in October 2020, Uzbekistan’s security services kidnapped in Ukraine Alisher Haidarov, who during the investigation acknowledged that he had appeared voluntarily.

On the basis of this, it’s obvious why bloggers and journalists make such statements, and the state doesn’t refute the threats they make on behalf of the authorities. But when this failed to frighten or stop the members of our movement, the tactics became more heavy-handed.

In April 2020, to discredit the founder of the opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston, Burhanov, the Uzbek security services carried out a special operation in his hometown. Plain-clothes individuals accompanied by armed men interrogated Burhanov’s relatives and supporters for several hours.

In the process of the lengthy and unwarranted interrogations, those detained were forced to disparage Burhanov on video, and to discredit and curse him and members of the opposition movement. Out of fear of reprisals, Burhanov’s relatives have not communicated with him for a long time. Despite the fact that Uzbekistan’s security services are aware of this fact, they repeatedly demand that Burhanov’s relatives use any pretext to try to compel the opposition founder to return to Uzbekistan.

Conclusions

The current President of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, used unconstitutional methods to come to power, and he continues to use the same methods to rule the country. In Uzbekistan, there is no opposition; there are no independent opponents of the authorities; there is no place for dissent or for alternative opinions to those of the authorities.

Restoring historical justice is the only way towards a free Uzbekistan

For the citizens of Uzbekistan to be able to exercise their constitutional right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, the following are necessary:

– At the international level, a political and legal assessment should be provided of the colonial crimes committed by the occupying forces of the Russian Empire and the Soviet regime against the peoples of Turkestan (the countries of Central Asian).

– The genocide against the people of the Turkestan Autonomy (also known in the literature as the Kokand Autonomy), orchestrated by the Soviet government in 1918–1919, during which about 150,000 civilians were killed, should be recognised.

– The Russian Federation, as the legal successor to the Soviet Union (Article 67(1) of the Russian Constitution), must assume political and moral responsibility for all crimes committed from 1917 to 1989 against the peoples of Central Asia, offer them a formal apology for colonial atrocities, return plundered national treasures and provide financial compensation for the period of Soviet colonialism in the countries of Central Asia.

– With mediation by, and guarantees from, the UN, the European Union, and the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Canada, the opposition movement Erkin O’zbekiston should be able to return to Uzbekistan to take part in presidential and parliamentary elections.

Only if these conditions are met will it be possible to implement democratic reforms in the Republic of Uzbekistan and will citizens be able to exercise the political rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We are confident that the international community shares the demand of our opposition movement to ensure political freedoms for the people of Uzbekistan.