Crackdown on bloggers and devout Muslims: end of Uzbek ‘reforms’?

01.11.2023, 12:43 exclusive.kz

Arrests of popular bloggers, anti-beard raids and pressure on halal restaurants to sell alcohol. All that has been happening in Uzbekistan in the past several months, activists say. They fear the country is returning to the times of late former president Islam Karimov, who clung to power for 27 years, brutally suppressed all dissent and waged an obsessive war on alleged Islamic radicals. When the current President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took over after Karimov’s death in 2016 he promised reforms. He ended the relentless clampdown on alleged Islamists and amnestied thousands of jailed Muslims. Mirziyoyev also made Uzbekistan more open to the world and allowed more economic freedom. Mirziyoyev slightly relaxed media control. Journalists and bloggers were allowed to raise social and economic issues, even criticise government and regional officials for various failures. The president himself was not to be touched, however. Still, this created enough space for the emergence of popular social media bloggers, with tens of thousands of followers, and a sense of some freedom of speech. Although the situation with political and civil freedoms has not got any better than under Karimov. In 2021 Mirziyoyev got ‘re-elected’ for a second five-year term, which under the constitution was to be his last one. Faced with the prospect of having to give up power in a few years, Mirziyoyev decided, it appears, to end his ‘reforms’. In April Mirziyoyev held a referendum to re-write the constitution. The presidential term has been extended to seven years, and Mirziyoyev has been allowed to seek two new terms. Mirziyoyev ‘won’ a presidential election in July, and if he runs for a fourth term, he will be in power till 2037, or until he is 80. Soon after the election, the government began a crackdown on bloggers and devout Muslims. Several journalists and bloggers have been arrested, some have left the country, and about a dozen more have stopped blogging citing official pressure. In July the authorities arrested blogger Olimjon Khaydarov from the eastern city of Fergana on charges of extortion and swindling. YouTube blogger Abdukadyr Muminov was in August sentenced to seven years and three months in jail on similar charges. Also in the summer, the Interior Ministry said it put two other bloggers, Sanjar Ikramov and Sherali Komilov, on its wanted list. They too are accused of swindling — a charge used in most cases against independent Uzbek bloggers, and which entails up to 10 years in jail. According to exiled Uzbek activist Mirakhmat Muminov and witnesses inside Uzbekistan, who asked for anonymity, the government has also launched a campaign against overt expression of Muslimness. Businesses are being forced to replace Islamic, Arabic names with others; halal cafes and restaurants are being forced to sell alcohol, or close down; in the capital Tashkent dozens of young men are getting detained and forced to shave beards every week. The Eltuz YouTube channel of exiled Uzbek journalist Kudrat Bobojonov reported last month about “anti-beard and anti-scarf raids” at a university in Tashkent. Shop owners in Tashkent are being made to sign a form, pledging to stay open during Friday prayers. “If this isn’t Islamophobia, what is it?” asked Facebook blogger Sardor Salim, sharing a photo of the form. In another post, Salim wrote that the Islamisation of society in Uzbekistan was “a way of overcoming the immorality of the political system” and could be described as “a grassroot [political] movement”. “The fight against the outward expression of religiosity, like beard and hijab, is not really a fight against beard and hijab, but aimed at maintaining the current status quo that allows political immorality,” he said in the 24 October post. Activist Muminov said that in terms of political and religious suppression in Uzbekistan, “we are seeing exactly what we saw before, under Karimov”. He said that Mirziyoyev, who had initially carried out purges within the security and law-enforcement bodies, “has now restored all the old repressive structures” within those organisations. One of the key figures behind Karimov’s ‘anti-terror’ campaign that targeted Muslims, Botyr Tursunov is now head of the National Guard. Tursunov is also the father of Mirziyoyev’s son-in-law Oybek Tursunov. Muminov added that Mirziyoyev’s government, apart from securing power until 2037, has also completed redistribution of property, in favour of his family and associates. “Now he is beginning to do the same thing as Karimov – crack down on all potential opponents. He is doing it slowly, because he has to bear in mind the power of the internet, but step by step he is tightening control.”