Human rights inch ahead in Uzbekistan

Alimuhamad's father has already learned lessons about pursuing rights and justice. "I am struggling all the time to punish these people, because my son did nothing [wrong], and worked all the time," says Gulomiddin Mamadaliev, his broad hands deeply tanned from years in the fields. "He was religious, and prayed five times a day when he could."

One of the few farmers in the area who met the official cotton and wheat quota, Alimuhamad, a father of two, was praised last fall by the regional leader, or hakim, for being a good farmer.

After success in the courts, the father two weeks ago appealed – to go after bigger bosses, and the informants who put his son's name on a list of people suspected of being Islamic militants.

"They provoked this whole case," the farmer says.

From the clutter of his dim apartment, Mikhail Ardzinov, Uzbekistan's most prominent human rights activist, retrieves what he laughingly calls "one of my most popular tracts."

The booklet is 10 pages long – one for each year of Uzbekistan's independence when Mr. Ardzinov put it together two years ago – and is titled: "Human Rights and Democracy in Uzbekistan." Every page is blank, except the note at the end, which says: "To be continued...." Now there should be an update, he says: In March, his Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan (IHROU) became the first rights group ever to be officially registered in this Central Asian nation.

Receiving official permission to operate is one of several positive steps here that Ardzinov says are "good, but very little. We want very big."

Ardzinov, who was first questioned by the KGB in 1973, when Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union, says: "We are an authoritarian regime, and have a cult of personality with [President Islam] Karimov, who has a Napoleon complex." He jokes about a questionable referendum in January – which extended Karimov's rule one more time, to 2007 and also yielded the creation of a bicameral parliament.

"It took [Karimov] 10 years to understand that a two-chamber parliament is better than one," says Ardzinov. "In 10 more years, maybe he will say it is good for MPs to debate in parliament, and that TV can show it – but not now!"

Ardzinov was sitting in this apartment in 1981, when some paint fell from the ceiling and a KGB microphone slipped through. "I wanted to pull it down, but somebody pulled it up," Ardzinov recalls. "That really frightened me."

His problems were not over after Uzbek independence. In 1992, the KGB blasted his front door open – the shrapnel still mars the entryway and elevator wall. Ardzinov lost 28 pounds during a 10-day hunger strike while in custody.

In 1999, Ardzinov was beaten up by thugs who took his files and computers and bloodied his face. US and European donors replaced the hardware. The files were returned when his organization's registration was approved, after a five-year effort that he says was given a critical boost by US pressure. He received the final papers just days before Karimov traveled in March to visit George Bush at the White House, to receive praise as a key member of Washington's antiterror coalition. "Without the US and others, we would have been registered earlier," Ardzinov says drily, "but only for our graves."

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