[Mb-civic] Boiling butcher's bill is paid for by Bush

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

"Karimov's Uzbekistan is the absolute market leader in torture right now.
The CIA would not shop anywhere else, which is why a mysterious 
Gulfstream 5 executive jet routinely delivers terrorist subjects from 
Afghanistan there for interrogation and, perhaps, percolation."


The Irish Independent - May 18, 2005
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=36&si=139742
3&issue_id=12482&eid=123501

Boiling butcher's bill is paid for by Bush

by Martin Samuel

ISLAM KARIMOV, President of Uzbekistan, boils people alive. Why? For 
the
same reason Saddam Hussein put his enemies in a shredder: because, at the
time, he could.

When the West is your pal you are able, quite literally, to get away with
murder. And what murder!

It is a surprise Karimov has time for governing at all, once he has spent
the morning formulating new ways to poach, grill, tenderise, smoke and
flambe his citizens to death.  Boiling water, electrocution,
chlorine-filled gas masks, drowning, rape, shooting, savage beatings,
Karimov's Uzbekistan is the absolute market leader in torture right now.

The CIA would not shop anywhere else, which is why a mysterious 
Gulfstream
5 executive jet routinely delivers terrorist subjects from Afghanistan
there for interrogation and, perhaps, percolation.

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador, drew attention to this last
year, and the noted socialist Tony Blair acted immediately. He sacked him.

Mr Murray's warnings echo louder than ever now, on the back of hundreds of
corpses in the streets of Andijan. Uzbek troops opened fire on an unarmed
crowd of protesters on Friday in an act of such brutality that the world
finally woke up to the wickedness of the war on terror's new best friend.

Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, called it a "clear abuse of
human rights" - no kidding, Sherlock - but struggled to make his voice
heard among Britain's American allies.  Little surprise. If they had
wanted his opinion, they would surely have given it to him.

Live and don't learn would appear to be the moral to this story. Karimov
may be a vicious, murdering, malevolent despot, but he is our vicious,
murdering, malevolent despot so, like Saddam, he can boil, shred and gas
away until we tire of uses for him. Saddam was in the right place, sharing
our hostility towards Iran at the right time, and so the West armed him to
the teeth in the name of a cause.

Karimov, a nasty member of the regional Soviet hierarchy even before
independence in 1991, stands beneath another flag of convenience. He is
frightened of Islam, rich in gas and oil, and within striking distance of
Afghanistan. An American airbase, which Karimov allowed to be built at
Khanabad, now protects the American-owned pipeline carrying Central Asia's
black treasure through Afghanistan to the sea. Is it not strange that all
the West's pals have the same thing in common? Just as celebrities end up
latching on to other celebrities, so the West always finds itself hanging
out with guys who are knee-deep in four-star.

The only reason the West could set the Iraqi people free was because the
military and financial support for Saddam Hussein's corrupt Government had
made it impossible for his citizens to rise up alone. So it is in
Uzbekistan. When Kabuljon Parpiyev, one of the leaders of the doomed
Andijan protestors, spoke to Zakir Almatov, the Uzbek Interior Minister,
at the weekend, he claims that he was told: "We don't care if 200, 300 or
400 people die - we have the force." It is the backing of the coalition
that makes Karimov cocksure and invincible. There are countries around the
world that would choose true freedom overnight: if only the coalition's
freedom-junkies would let them.

In 2002, the United States gave Uzbekistan $500m (€396m) in aid (as
opposed to $36m (€28.5m) four years earlier) of which $120m (€95.1) went
to the army and $79m (€62.5m) to the notorious SNB, Karimov's secret
police. It was the SNB who boiled Muzafar Avazov, an Islamist activist, to
death, having already beaten him severely and ripped his fingernails out.

The fate of his fellow prisoner Husnidin Alimov does not bear thinking
about, considering the Government restricted viewing of his lifeless body.

It was also the SNB who came to collect Avazov's 63-year-old mother,
Fatima Mukhadirova, sentenced to six years' hard labour for the crime of
telling the world about the murder of her son. (She was released the day
before Donald Rumsfeld was due to visit, during which he praised "the
wonderful co-operation we have received from the Government of 
Uzbekistan"
over the War on Terror.)

So the freedom the precious coalition claims to be exporting around the
world is not true freedom at all.

Rather, it is freedom being giving back, having conspired with sadists to
take away. What the Iraqi people enjoyed at the polling booths in January
was freedom on the allies terms, not theirs. Considering the dreadful
human toll, one would think Bush and Blair would then acknowledge that
mistake by not repeating it, but no: there were no opposition parties in
Uzbekistan's last election and there are no arms restrictions imposed by
these Government, either.

The West mould these little monsters such as Saddam, Karimov and General
Manuel Noriega and they do the dirty work until such a time when it is no
longer expedient, at which point the West extract revenge and dress it up
as a moral crusade; or enduring freedom.  There are those who believe
that, whatever its motives, the war in Iraq can be justified by free
elections and the removal of Saddam.

Yes, but only if that policy is consistent. If the coalition agenda is to
spread democracy worldwide, then it cannot be in bed with a tyrant like
Karimov. And if it is, then any good in Iraq is overpowered by the stench
of death and hypocrisy wafting across from central Asia.

As it stands, the War on Terror finds an exalted place in its ranks for a
man whose idea of government is a dissident casserole.

--


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