Three-card monte hustle in NYC. Photo by RunsWithScissors.
Whenever you see Registan.net run an article about human rights, you have to ask: hmm, what's up here?
They may appear as if they care about human rights issues, and part of building up their street cred is to tell critics suspicious of their support of the establishment that they are wrong or out of touch or haven't read the archives and seen all their Genuine Expressions of Concern.
So at first blush when you see a lurid story about two young men intimidated by the National Security Service of Uzbekistan (the KGB's successor), you're supposed to think, "Oh, they care."
Well, no they don't, because Joshua Foust has blasted human rights activists in the West relentlessly, all over the place, and critics of Uzbekistan's brutal regime who risk appearing on Registan constantly find themselves facing legions of anonymous ankle-biters trying to make them fall off the ledge of their position.
So what's this really about? It strikes me that it is more of the same effort to try to accomplish two things:
o scare off supporters of the opposition or human rights groups, especially in the younger generation, especially related to anything in the US or Europe;
o enable the ankle-biters to come on in full force to knock any such supporters of human rights and harass and bully them into giving up -- and enabling their positions to stand without challenge.
Both of these purposes are served one again with a post about how the SNB (National Security Service, Russian initials) is threatening Jizzak activists.
With pictures even -- imagine!
Two Uzbek participants in a US educational program called FLEX (Future Leaders Exchange) and Awareness Projects International found that when they returned to their home town of Jizzakh after studying in the US, they were questioned and warned and threatened if they continued their "human rights activity".
Now, what does this remind you of? Yes, the suicide girl story -- she, too, returned to her home town of Andijan, was supposedly interrogated, threatened -- and then committed suicide. This sparked a tide of stories in social media about a Facebook-related suicide -- and it was all revealed as a hoax. That hoax I believe was perpetrated by the SNB, with the help of uzmetronom.com and other regime supporters, and amplified at first by Sarah Kendzior on Registan. Ultimately, it didn't work to scare people off the Internet, or so it seems (and as I pointed out, maybe they never even heard about it, so low is Internet penetration in Uzbekistan).
So now we have a possibly "more believable" story in which the two young men don't commit suicide, Facebook-related or really, but return to tell their tales -- and on Registan, of all places! With pictures, even!
And in this story, the two boys handily make it back to the US, where they alert US officials to the interrogation and threats. Hmm. Usually people like that not associated with the opposition or human rights groups (far and few between as we know) who still have relatives there (which these kids must, as they returned home?) don't talk. They don't make more trouble for themselves and their relatives.
Their story is likely true; it's hard to know, as the SNB isn't exactly on Twitter telling us when it interrogates students. But it's likely it had the desired effect -- the US officials running FLEX or other educational programs probably felt spooked and wrapped up their programs even more tightly. No more "human rights" chatter.
Why did I say "human rights" in quotation marks? Well, because what they did was indeed human rights related, but more in the anodyne vein that is allowed even in these countries -- issues like HIV prevention, "youth leadership," or even forced child labour -- which the government hasn't eradicated, but which it has accepted as a topic that it claims to have done something about. Done right, all these topics aren't safe or anodyne, but they can become a substitute in some US-sponsored programs trying to steer clear of hard-core topics like torture or political imprisonment.
These kids may have been very sincere in what they were doing (one of them said he studied the structure of the Uzbek regime and even called Karimov's third term "unconstitutional" -- so even their mild educational/summer camp programs really may have been seen as a threat) and maybe really experienced what they experienced.
Interestingly, they hewed to the USAID/US exchange menu of the "safer" rights: "Nurullayev says he also discussed mistreatment and sexual abuse of women, the widespread use of forced child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, and the catastrophe of the Aral Sea." Again, it may be perfectly feasible that a young Uzbek man on his own became concerned about sexual abuse of women and child forced labour and the environment, just like a New York liberal, but that's usually not the menu for groups inside the country that tend to focus on political and religious imprisonment, freedom of expression, torture, etc. -- or the "social justice" side of the rights equation related to education, jobs, travel abroad for work.
Now, that doesn't mean that I think people inside Uzbekistan hew to "Western values" that prefer hard-core civil rights to the softer social issues. It's a different point: it's precisely the USAID crowd that promotes the softer issues in their programs and that's where it sounds like it comes from, not from indigenous concerns (which wouldn't necessarily be free expression, either!)
But regardless of whether the stories are true, or the experiences valid or concerns sincere, the uses to which this story is now going to be put benefit...whom? Not the human rights movement. Not US educational programs. But the regime, because now people reading it will say, "Oh, we need to make sure educational programs don't cross the line," and young Uzbeks will say "Oh, we need to make sure we don't go overboard or we could get in trouble." Mission accomplished.
That's what I said about the suicide student's story; that's what I said about Kendzior's role in purveying it. To be sure, she debunked the story, but not before it had a good long run, my efforts to fight the ankle-biters led me to be banned from Registan (!) and the message sent was very well established: don't mess with the Uzbek regime.
The reason I think this story of the two students may be regime-sponsored -- or at least instigated by the regime at this point to "send messages" -- is because the Turkmen government has also gone after FLEX at this time -- and we know the security services of these countries compare notes and do things together, inside or outside of the CSTO.
So Turkmenistan put pressure on FLEX in recent weeks as well, deliberately holding a competition for students right at the time as the FLEX exams were being held, and asking teachers about their students' participation in it -- it seemed they wanted to discourage them from getting near a US program. They could formally assent to the program by signing exchange agreements with the US, but then turn around and harass participants.
Ultimately, I would say: treat this story critically. Ask about the details and the implications. Ask why Registan is pushing it, all of a sudden, and not, oh, Human Rights Watch or something...
And if US officials have any starch in their shirts, they should march right up to the Ministry of Education and ask why SNB agents are harassing participants in a program that is officially part of an exchange agreement, and not start filtering all the content.
