Human rights activists, journalists, religious clerics and other perceived regime critics are kept under abysmal conditions, according to Human Rights Watch

Uzbekistan has locked up thousands of people on politically motivated charges, with prisoners typically kept in abysmal conditions and subject to torture and ill treatment, Human Rights Watch said on Friday in a landmark new report on one of the world’s most repressive and secretive regimes.

The government of president Islam Karimov has jailed human rights activists, journalists, religious clerics and numerous other perceived critics, the report says. It profiles 34 victims, some of whom were kidnapped from abroad and locked up following sham trials.

Others wrongly behind bars include cultural figures, artists and entrepreneurs. Most were branded “enemies of the state” and jailed for nebulous offences such as “anti-constitutional activity” or “religious extremism”. The prisoners’ sentences are often extended arbitrarily for years, the report says.

The dossier is the fullest audit for a decade of the conditions inside Uzbekistan’s jails. It is based on 150 interviews with former detainees, relatives of serving prisoners and newly obtained court documents. It paints a bleak picture.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least 29 of the 34 prisoners have made credible allegations of torture or ill-treatment. They allege beatings with rubber truncheons or plastic bottles filled with water. Several complain of being given electric shocks and of hangings from wrists and ankles. Others say they have been subjected to threats of rape, sexual humiliation, and hurt to relatives. They were also denied food and water.

The report says that political repression has been a “constant feature of life” in Uzbekistan for the past two decades. It suggests the government in the capital Tashkent has pursued various “overlapping” campaigns of persecution.

The Central Asian state has seen a crackdown on the political opposition (1992-1997); the persecution of religious Muslims (from 1997 until present); and the Andijan massacre and its aftermath (2005-2007), when hundreds of protesters in the eastern Fergana Valley city of Andijan were shot dead.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Uzbek soldiers respond to the uprising in the city of Andijan in 2005. Troops fired into the crowd, killing hundreds of protesters. Photograph: EFREM LUKATSKY/AP

Since 2008 the regime has targeted those suspected of links with western and other governments. Some 10,000-12,000 political prisoners are estimated to be in jail. The exact figure is difficult to determine: the Uzbek regime has banned Human Rights Watch and the International Committee for the Red Cross, as well as foreign journalists, UN human rights experts and the BBC.

Hugh Williamson, Human Rights Watch’s director for Europe and Central Asia, said that “broadly speaking” the rights situation had got worse over the past ten years. “There are thousands of people in prison for political or religiously motivated reasons. Since the early 2000s there has been a pattern of Uzbekistan locking away its critics,” he observed.

The report is scathing about the international community’s often woolly response. The EU and US have previously complained about Uzbekistan’s human rights record, especially in the aftermath of the Andijan killings.

Over the past five years, however, the west has “softened” its criticism, it says. In 2009 Brussels lifted sanctions. Then in 2012 Washington loosened restrictions on giving military help to the Uzbeks. With supply routes from Pakistan under Taliban attack, Uzbekistan has become crucial to the US as a transit route for it to deliver war supplies to Afghanistan via the “northern distribution network”. “Both the EU and US have made compromises,” Williamson said. “They are not that cagey in admitting this to us.”

He added: ‘Uzbekistan is a very unstable country. There is a lack of [post-Karimov] succession plan. It’s wrong to turn a blind eye to human rights, democracy, the rule of law. You risk leaving a tinder box which may explode in your face in a few years’ time, a la Arab Spring.”

Human Rights Watch recommends tougher measures against top Uzbek officials involved in repression including visa bans and asset freezes. It also calls on the Uzbek regime to free political prisoners and end torture.

“The US, EU, and other key governments know all about president Islam Karimov’s use of prison and abuse to stamp out independent journalism, human rights monitoring, and political and religious freedom,” the report’s author Steve Swerdlow said. “Uzbekistan’s international partners need to tell President Karimov that there will be a serious price to pay unless his government stops imprisoning and torturing peaceful activists, journalists, and religious believers.”

One prisoner of is Muhammad Bekjanov. In 1999 agents from Uzbekistan’s feared National Security Service, the SNB, kidnapped him from his apartment in Kiev, Ukraine. Bekjanov was a member of Erk, a peaceful opposition party, and the editor of one of the country’s leading independent newspapers. He had fled a government crackdown two years earlier.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Muhammad Bekjanov pictured in his Kiev apartment in 1998. The Committee to Protect Journalists say he remains one of the world’s longest imprisoned reporters. Photograph: Human Rights Watch

A closed court sentenced him to 13 years in prison for “threatening the constitutional order”, among other charges. Days before he was due to be released in 2012, he was given another five years for unspecified “violations of prison rules”.

According to court documents, other inmates have suffered similar arbitrary term extensions, often for ludicrous offences such as “failure to keep one’s slippers in the proper place” and “wearing a white shirt”. Another peaceful opposition figure, Murod Juraev, imprisoned since 1994, has seen his sentence extended four times. In 2012 he was given a new term for “incorrectly peeling carrots” in the prison kitchen.

At least 18 of those profiled were denied access to counsel at critical stages of their cases, and eight were held incommunicado for up to a year. Others were denied medical treatment. Authorities have refused to reveal the whereabouts of Akram Yuldashev, a religious leader, since 2009, and it is unclear whether he is dead or alive.

Under international law, authorities commit an enforced disappearance when they refuse to acknowledge holding someone in custody or conceal the person’s fate or whereabouts, thereby placing them outside the protection of the law. “Disappearances” increase the likelihood of torture or other ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch says.

“Torture, kidnapping, incommunicado detention, solitary confinement, and extension of sentences are all unspeakable abuses that no one should suffer,” Swerdlow added. “Whether behind bars for 20 years or a shorter time, these people have been wrongfully imprisoned and shouldn’t spend even one more day behind bars.”

Uzbek authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the report’s findings.

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