Panel talks of Asian unrest as son recounts father's jailing in Uzbekistan

By Bartholomew Sullivan
WASHINGTON D.C.
May 17, 2011

WASHINGTON -- Germantown businessman Gulambek S. Umarov told the Helsinki Commission his dissident father, held for years by the government of Uzbekistan, is recovering but that the use of "violence, terror and torture" are still widespread in his native land.

 

Umarov, 32, was on a panel of witnesses that included three academics discussing the likelihood that the so-called "Arab Spring" of democracy movements in the Middle East and North Africa might spread to the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union.

 

All of the witnesses said the regimes of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are aware of the democracy movements and are preparing for domestic rebellions.

 

But Umarov said a planned June 1 general strike, called for by dissident Uzbeks meeting in Germany last month, is "unrealistic."

 

A gathering of protesters in May 2005 in Andijan, Uzbekistan, led to a massacre by security forces. Umarov's father, Sanjar, was arrested on what his family insists were trumped-up charges shortly after the massacre and reportedly was tortured while he was in prison. He was released in November 2009 and returned to his home in the Aintree Farms section of Germantown.

 

Sanjar Umarov's status as a political prisoner was complicated by U.S. reliance on Uzbekistan's Northern Distribution Network, the infrastructure through which NATO troops in Afghanistan are supplied.

 

Congress passed a resolution calling for Umarov's humane treatment and release, and Gulam Umarov testified Wednesday that Tennessee Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and former congressman John Tanner and U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen and Marsha Blackburn were instrumental in his father's release.

 

Cohen was recently named a member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission for the Finnish city where the agreement between the Soviet Union, Europe and the U.S. was signed to support human rights in the region.

 

Robert O. Blake, assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, testified that the U.S. State Department considers a popular uprising in what commission members called the "Stans" unlikely in the near term. He said the leadership of the countries "have frequently and publicly called for building democratic institutions (and have) given speeches and issued decrees, but have done little to put them into practice."

 

Blake said the leadership of the "Stans" is suspicious of democratic reforms.

Both Paul Goble, director of the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, and Stephen Blank, professor of Russian National Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College, stressed that the Central Asian dictators try to characterize popular dissent as Islamic extremism, which tempers Western support for legitimate democratic impulses.

 

In response to a question from Cohen about the influence of radio programming beamed into the countries by Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, Goble said the U.S. made a mistake abandoning shortwave broadcasts in favor of FM stations licensed by the repressive regimes. He said the stations practice self-censorship in order to retain their licenses, defeating their purpose.

© 2011 Memphis Commercial Appeal.