Milliband will stand idly by whilst EU endorses torture regime of Karimov in Uzbekistan

We posted on the 22nd April Karimov removes the past about the impending U turn by the EU to remove travel sanctions on Uzbek leaders.

Irisha based Uzbek exile Abdujalil Boymatov wrote a heartfely plea in the Guradian on Saturday - No soft line on Uzbekistan
My country today is an even more repressive place than it was in the Soviet era. Now is not the time to ease sanctions on the regime.

Whilst there were some releases earlier this year of political prisoners in a studied political fandango to appease EU apparatchiks, he points out that ...

"Human rights defender Mutabar Tadjibaeva of the Fiery Hearts Club has been held in isolation in prison and given forced psychiatric treatment. The sons and nephews of Ahmadjan Madmarov have been arrested and tortured to silence his voice. Even the president's own nephew, Jamshid Karimov, is held in a psychiatric hospital because of his criticism of the government. "

Rhetorically he asks ...."So why is the international community so keen for a rapprochement with the government of Uzbekistan? Could it have anything to do with the presence in the region of large quantities of oil, gas and uranium and the emergence of Uzbekistan as a strategic partner of the west in the "war on terror"? "

There are 22 comments, many, evidently from exiles about the appalling record of human rights that the EU will overlook tommorrow.

It will be a Labour Government who will silently accede to this shameful decision.

On the 17th January the Boy David Milliband in the New Statesman said he has "he has identified four great progressive causes for the world. " the 4th and last which he identifies as "build(ing) durable international institutions that recognise international inter dependence, "and that's what we're trying to do with the EU and the UN". These, he says, "are all great progressive causes".

"Now the PM says our foreign policy is going to be defined by hard-headed internationalism. "....." He adds: "We shouldn't cede the ground of universal values to the neocons."

Two months on and we give in to the body boilers, the continued child slavery of the Uzbek cotton fields, the rape of Uzbek minerals to enrich the Karimov caravanserai.

In the House of Commons last week he said .." “Ordinary Africans do not condone the way in which President Mugabe is clinging to power and beating his own people to death to ensure he retains it.”

...as he hands a licence to Mr Karimov to boil his citizens to death to ensure he and his family and coterie of gnagsters and drug runners retain power.

Meanwhile we are left with the official position of the FCO outlined by Jim Murphy in answer to a question in the House of Commons by Jeremy Corbyn In November 2007 ..

"The criminal justice system still convicts on the basis of confessions, with scant corroborating evidence, and thus encourages coercion. Anecdotal evidence suggests that judges continue to overlook allegations of torture made during trials. This suggests a lack of substantial progress to reduce the practice of torture. We continue to receive regular allegations of torture from victims, their relatives and human rights defenders. We have concluded, therefore, that torture and other forms of ill treatment are routine, particularly in the early stages of custody. We welcome the reforms to the criminal justice system that the Uzbek Government will introduce from 1 January 2008 to abolish the death penalty and implement a form of habeas corpus. The latter step is particularly key to combating torture."

Lest we forget ...

More about Mr Avazov here and of course in Craig Murray's "Murder in Samarkand" Amazon