Left and Right

The caption under a rather dramatic photograph that accompanies an article headed "Taskent Under Siege" and published today in Kommersant Daily draws attention to the fact that

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) is the only remaining world leader prepared to continue relations with Islam Karimov (right).

The article, by Sergey Strokan, examines the attitudes of Western governments to Karimov's regime, and focuses on a new Human Rights Watch report on the massacre in Andijan on May 13:

The Human Rights Watch report, which was full of shocking details from the accounts of 50 eyewitnesses and victims of the Andijan events, contained evidence that the Uzbek authorities authorized the carnage in Andijan. In particular, the human rights activists claim that the authorities rejected the demonstrators' offer to enter into negotiations with them and the army units surrounding the demonstration site received the order to open fire to injure. Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the soldiers finished off the wounded, shooting them at point-blank range to eliminate unwanted witnesses. This explains why there were so many dead and so few wounded in Andijan. The bodies of the dead were also manipulated. By order of the authorities, the corpses of old men, women, and children were removed from the scene of the events, leaving only the bodies of young men for public viewing in order to pass off the massacre in Andijan as a confrontation between security forces and militants.

After presenting the report, Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, harshly criticized the Bush administration's policy regarding Uzbekistan. In Roth's opinion, if, despite all of the calls heard today, Tashkent refuses to conduct an independent investigation of the events in Andijan, the United States will have to seriously reconsider its relations with Karimov's regime and renounce its strategic partnership with Uzbekistan in the global antiterrorist coalition and end its military presence in that country.

"China, Russia, and the United States are fighting for influence in Central Asia, but I hope that no government of any of these countries wants to buy influence, while ignoring the murder of hundreds of peaceful citizens of Uzbekistan," Roth said in summing up.

(via global-geopolitics)