Government News: Top Stories

Uncertain Uzbek refugees return home
by Bagila Bukharbayeva

The Associated Press Translate This Article
18 March 2007

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) - Less than two years after they fled Uzbekistan in the wake of the government's crackdown on protests in an eastern city, scores of Uzbeks have returned home—to an uncertain welcome from an authoritarian regime.

Sixty have returned from the United States alone to their impoverished Central Asian homeland, among them 10 women who had resettled in Boise, Idaho and came back this month.

Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch said she distrusts the Uzbek government's promises that no returnee will be harmed.

``There is the risk that they will not be forgiven,'' she said. ``There is nothing in Uzbekistan's contemporary history that shows that this government sticks to its promises.''

President Islam Karimov is accused by human rights groups and the U.S. State Department of arbitrary arrests, political persecution and torture.

There have been unconfirmed reports that some of the returnee have been arrested and others are being subjected to regular questioning. Some have appeared on state TV extolling the government.

In May 2005, protests in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan led to fighting that the government says was fomented by Islamic terrorists. Participants say the clashes were a desperate protest against Karimov, who has stifled dissent in the former Soviet republic.

Police and soldiers fired on the crowd, and authorities said 189 people were killed, most of them alleged terrorists.

Human rights groups said government forces killed 700 or more. These advocates said the leaders of the protest were later tortured to confess, and subjected to show trials.

About 400 Andijan residents fled Uzbekistan following the clashes, first seeking refuge in neighboring Kyrgyzstan. From there, a UN refugee agency sent them to Romania. Some were later resettled in the United States.

``In several cases the government pressured other countries to forcibly return Uzbek refugees who were under the protection of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,'' says the U.S. State Department's 2006 report on human rights in Uzbekistan.

Most of the Uzbek women in Boise have family members imprisoned in connection with the uprising. As relatives of alleged terrorists, human rights advocates fear the returning women may face repression.

Yodgoroi Yuldasheva, the unofficial leader of the refugees in Boise, told The Associated Press that the 10 women who returned Monday were promised by the Uzbek Embassy in Washington that they ``would not be touched'' upon return.

Yuldasheva said she and four more of the refugee women had asked the Uzbek Embassy for permission to return, and were still waiting for an answer.

``Our home is there,'' Yuldasheva told an AP reporter in October. ``Our families are broken up.''

Not all are convinced. ``A lot of fear is involved, but it's unclear where it comes from,'' said Leslye Boban from the International Rescue Committee, who works with Uzbek refugees in Boise.

``When I push for more information they really start to shut down and some will look to the floor.''

Some analysts suspect Uzbek authorities may have covertly tried to coerce the refugees into returning, in order to rehabilitate Uzbekistan's international image after the beating it took over the Andijan upheaval.

Robert Templer, Asia director for the International Crisis Group, said Karimov's government may be trying to bring the refugees back because of ``a desperate idea to rewrite the history of Andijan ... to cast doubt on what happened, to muddy the water.''

Yuldasheva's return would be a propaganda prize for Uzbekistan. She is the wife of Akram Yuldashev, an alleged Islamic militant whose jailhouse writings underpinned the ideology behind the revolt.

Uzbekistan put 23 of Yuldashev's followers on trial for religious extremism in 2005. The Andijan violence broke out on the day that the guilty verdict was expected, when an armed crowd broke into the city's prison, freeing the inmates and killing security officers.

Since then, Yuldashev has made three appearances on state television, saying he was sorry he encouraged the protests and calling on the refugees to come home, said Bakhtiyar Babajanov, an Uzbek expert on Islam.

Fifty-three Andijan residents left the United States last summer for Uzbekistan. In late December, 13 others in Ukraine turned down an offer to go to Sweden. The Uzbek government said they preferred ``to return to their homeland.''

After some of the refugees returned from the U.S., they appeared on state television and claimed the U.N. refugee agency had tricked them into going to America.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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