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Maximiliano Herrera  -The Editor

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Uzbekistan

US must stop supporting the butcher Karimov immediately.
He is an assassin, a corrupt dictator, who are starve and killed its own population.
US and Russia must agree together on that such kind of person doesn t deserve any help. He only deserves to be overthrowned and go to jail.

Re: Uzbekistan

Overthrowing the Uzbekistan government is none of Russia's and USA's business. Surely, they should offer help for civilians who suffer from the calamities.

Re: Uzbekistan

Overthrowing is one thing, supporting the Karimov's carnage is another one.
Tell me just one thing Karimov has done well in Uzbekistan: you will not find anything.
Politically, he is one of the most brutal dictator of the world.
Socially, unless Turkmenistan and even today's Tajikistan, crime and violence in Uzbekistan are rampant.
About transparency, well, another failure: Uzbekistan is amongst the world's most corrupted countries.
Economically: people in Uzbekistan are almost STARVING, in the past months all the trade has been barred and crushed by Karimov' govt.
Social indicator: child mortality, poverty rate, life expetancy are like some african countries.
Even literacy rate, which was higher when it was a former Soviet Union republic, is decreasing.
Whay can we say ?
Karimov is like the PLAGUE: he is able to use tribes to put them one against other, to exaggerate the risk of fundamentalism (anyway he is not the solution) and giving the USA a military base to gain its support.
If not a direct intervention, at least USA and Russia must stop supporting and dealing with him, he will not hesitate to kill THOUSANDS of people to stay in power.
He is not an ally in the war against terrorism, bulls... he is an ally of himself alone.

Re: Uzbekistan

I forgot to tell you that in his efforts to destroy trade (not only the smuggling, even the street vendors who have not any other way to survive), Karimov ordered to destroy a bridge to prevent the circulation of goods.
Well, one president who destroys the country's infrastructure to prevent his own people to work and survive... instead creating a program for curbing unemployment and poverty ....
Can one moster like him deserve to be a president of any country? He only deserves jail.

Re: Uzbekistan

Max,

Two points:
1. I do not totally rely on your facts as well as any other facts about Uzbekistan I can get from Western (and even Russian) mass media. Even what you say in your short posts seems to be an incorrect picture: in Soviet times, there was virtually no illiteracy in Uzbekistan. That is, all people who are older than 20-23 now are literate. So when you say "Even literacy rate, which was higher when it was a former Soviet Union republic" reveals bias towards showing Uzbekistan a more miserable place than it really is. Same about "tribes" - Uzbekistan has no tribes a-la Afganistan living in there, remember it was a part of USSR, which provided literacy, education, health care, etc, etc to everybody and everyone, and would not tolerate primeval societies on its territories.

2. Assuming Karimov is the evil incarnate, it is up to Uzbeks to decide what to do about him. If a foreign country interferes and brings another person to power, it will be a foriegn choice, not that of Uzbeks, and Uzbekistan will effectively turn into a colony. It may be cruel to leave people alone with their dictator, but I think it is far more cruel to recognize that one country can generally find "legal" pretexts to invade another country.

Re: Uzbekistan

However, same applies to a foreign country supporting a particular politician in a sovereign country. Who governs the country should be the choice of the people, not some foreigners.

Re: Uzbekistan

This kind of thinking ("he is the world's most brutal dictator and should be jailed") lead to the invasion of Yugoslavia, Afganistan and Iraq in the past couple of years, where thousands of civilians were *actually* killed.

Re: Uzbekistan

I said "one of the worst dictators".
About literacy rate, I have good reliable sources: many children are failing now to go to the school, because they need to help their families which are unable to get enough food to survive.
So that s why illiteracy is decreasing, the new gerneration of children are not 100% present to school classes like in the soviet era.
In Uzbekistan there are clans, there also are fundamentalist groups but I don think they can get the support a big share of the population as Karimov wants to make us believe.
There is an autonomous territory: Karapalkstan.
I think to avoid clashes in a future democratic Uzbekistan the solution can be expanding the autonomous regions.
And I repeat that again: altough I am not sponsoring a direct intervention, at least any country should stop supporting the butcher Karimov immediately.
Any cash given to him will be stolen and put in a foreign bank or otherwise used to buy weapon to kill people.
"Let the people decide" you stated, that is correct, but the problem that now they cannot decide because if they decide to say "Enough" to Karimov they will be massacred.
That s the point. Stop giving a cent to Karimov. Closing the relationship with this shameful and brutal government.

Re: Uzbekistan

> now they cannot decide because if they decide to
> say "Enough" to Karimov they will be massacred.

People have the government they deserve. If they deserved a better one, they would have it. In other words, Karimov would not have the power to suppress his people, if people were not actually satisfied with him. If they are dissatisfied, he will not stay in power, as you saw that in Georgia, for example.

A regime change may be much more violent than it was in Georgia, but I still would not support any active intervention from abroad. Including giving money to any Uzbek politicians from abroad.

> Closing the relationship with this shameful and brutal government.

Surely, it's difficult to draw a line between interference in the internal affairs of a country and partnership/collaboration. I think though that foriegn countries should not be allowed to go any further than expressing their protest against what happens in the country. Proclamations for a regime change (what you seem to be doing) is an interference into internal affairs of a different country.

Re: Uzbekistan

Uzbeks willot be able to change their government as far as many powerful and rich countries are pouring millions and millions of dollars supporting the massacre of uzbek population by this butcher.
He received $21 million from the US govt. short time ago, just to make you a sample.
An armed soldier with Kalshnikov and bullets can kill 100 unarmed people easily.
So, one-gov.loyal and well armed man can kill dozens of anti-govt. people. Even in this case, where Karimov is hatred by at least 90% if not 95% of the population, he is still able to stay in power.
If we don t proclame a regime change at least must proclame the respect for human rights and democracy.
If not, what we have created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for ?
It was intended to be universal , no matter of which nationality, religion or color of skin you have.
By I doubt that a man like Karimov may ever have respect for anybody except himself.

Re: Uzbekistan

Globally, taking the intercourse of the history , I agree that changes must come from the society and not pushed from, outside, if they want to be transformed into a real development.
But if we follow your theory of neutralism and not-interfiering, we must say that helping a change by sponsoring the opposition is interfering, but also stating that Karimov is an important ally against the terrorim and it is important to keep him in power by pouring him with millions dollars is also interfering, because they are "forcing" his staying in power, against the movement coming from the uzbek society. This money are used to massacre innocent people and it is not true that Karimov is a indispensable ally.He is ally only to himself, and uses the other for his personal ambitions: power.

Re: Uzbekistan

I like the idea that there should be some super-national body which has some control over any country in the world, at least in certain respects like human rights. I do think it would be a good solution to deal with brutal regimes and massive violations of human rights. However, this body should be truly international and totally unbiased towards any other country. I would welcome international inspectors going in to Uzbekistan and examining the situation there. If they find that violations of human rights do take place, there should be international forces that would carry out any military operation if needed. Once the operation is complete, I'd like to see international inspectors supervising how the economy of the country is restored and who and how gets political power in it.

Right now, all of this does not exist, and we have clear cases of brutal invasions of other countries by USA and its "allies" and subsequent exploitation of the resources of those countries. UN is totally ignored and USA finds it possible to threaten UN by reducing the finances it puts into it.

And before Karimov is overthrown, Bush and other idiotic "freedom-lovers" should be brought to justice for, most importantly, ignoring and effectively destroying UN, and, secondly, for the murder of civilians, destruction and robberies of countries around the globe.

Re: the future of this region

In the meanwhile, miscontent is spreading accross Azerbaijan, another ally of the US government.
So far, of the 5 former soviet republics, Kyrgyzstan is the only country too have a government change.
But, altough authoritarian and highly corrupted, it was the least authoritarian of these countries.
Few weeks ago, there also was a rare demostration against Nyavoz (who promised to set up a democratic country by 2009)in Turkmenistan.
Kazakh opposition is also trying to fill up a unique candidate for the January 2007 elections.
Aleksander Lukashenko is getting more and more isolated and the next year presidential election could lead towards a mass revolution (we hope pacific like in Ukraine) against the president.
Will these movements keeping spreading accross these countries ?
Will Armenia and Azerbaijan finally reach an agreement on the Nogorno Karabakh ?

The most stable of these government now seems to be Tajikistan, because Tajiks don t want anymore listen the word "war" "revolution" "conflict" after the civil war of the past decade.
Will Rakhmanov manage to keep in power until 2020 like he is willing to ?

Re: Uzbekistan

You seem to have ignored my point about Bush being the biggest human right criminal of all of them. Your concerns about the democracy in Central Asia actually play in hand to this criminal.

Recently strong evidence emerged that Americans are trying to stage more orange revolutions like the one in Ukraine.

Re: Uzbekistan

Don t see things always in your twisted way.
I am asking about a technical opinion, not a preference of what you want to happen, in fact I would like to know your opinion on what you THINK will happen.

Re: Uzbekistan

I think it will be a violent revolution in Uzbekistan not too far in the future. The current mobster regime will certainly be slaughtered if they not flee like the rats from a sinking ship.
It is ice cold now between the US and the current regime in Uzbekistan. The US will certainly cheer a regime change in Uzbekistan.