“After four decades of brutal dictatorship and eight months of deadly conflict, the Libyan people can now celebrate their freedom and the beginning of a new era of promise,” President Obama said last week. The capture and death of Muammar Gaddafi prompted him and other US officials to congratulate the Libyan people on their liberation from a despot accused of terrible violations of human rights, including the 1996 massacre of more than 1,200 prison inmates.
The kudos was as much for the US itself as Libya’s victorious Transitional National Council. After all, the United States played a decisive role in Gaddafi’s death. First President Obama joined the Nato coalition that served as the Benghazi-based rebels’ loaned air force. When the bombing campaign was announced in February, Gaddafi’s suppression of the human rights of protesting rebels was front and centre: “The United States also strongly supports the universal rights of the Libyan people,” Obama said at that time. “That includes the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. They are not negotiable. They must be respected in every country. And they cannot be denied through violence or suppression.” (No word on how police firing rubber bullets at unarmed, peaceful protesters at the Occupy movement in Oakland, California, fits into that.)
And in the end, it was reportedly a Hellfire missile fired by a Predator drone plane controlled by the CIA - in conjunction with an attack by a French fighter jet - that destroyed the convoy of cars Gaddafi and his entourage used to try to escape the siege of Sirte, driving him into the famous drainage pipe and into the hands of his tormentors and executioners.
US officials and media reports were right about Gaddafi’s human rights record: It was atrocious. They cautioned the incoming TNC to make human rights a priority: “The Libyan authorities should also continue living up to their commitments to respect human rights, begin a national reconciliation process, secure weapons and dangerous materials, and bring together armed groups under a unified civilian leadership,” Obama said. (No word on how Gaddafi’s execution fits in to that.)
Hypocrisy reigns
Yet, in the very same week, the United States was cosying up to another long-time dictator - one whose style, brutal treatment of prisoners, and notorious massacre of political dissidents is highly reminiscent of the deposed Libyan tyrant.
Like a business that maintains two sets of records, one for the tax inspector and the other containing the truth, the United States has two different foreign policies. Its constitution, laws and treaty obligations prohibit torture, assassinations, and holding prisoners without trial. In reality there are secret prisons such as Guantánamo. Similarly, there are two sets of ethical standards in America’s dealing with other countries. Enemies are held to the strictest standards. Allies get a pass. This double standard is the number-one cause of anti-Americanism in the world.
In yet another display that exposes US foreign policy on human rights as hypocritical and self-serving, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled to Uzbekistan to establish closer ties with the Central Asian republic’s president-for-life, Islam Karimov. Even as her State Department was ballyhooing the bloody conclusion of Gaddafi’s 42-year reign as a victory for freedom and decency, the former First Lady was engaged in the cynical Cold War-style of one of the worst human rights abusers in the world.
In the human rights brief on Karimov, one major highlight is Central Asia’s Tiananmen Square, the 2005 massacre of between 750 and 1250 peaceful demonstrators at Andijan, a southern town along the restive border with Kyrgyzstan, near the ancient Ferghana Valley. Karimov personally ordered Uzbek militia, Interior Ministry troops and regular army units to surround a square and gun down the protesters, then travelled to the site in order to witness the carnage. A few dozen people managed to escape, scrambling across a border crossing. Shocked Kyrgyz sentries, who had a view of the killing orgy, admitted the refugees. Uzbek troops chased the escapees into Kyrgyzstan, dragged them back and executed them on the Uzbek side of the bridge.
Prior to Andijan, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had a cosy relationship with Karimov, overlooking such untidy matters as the Uzbek leader’s habit of boiling political dissidents to death (more on that later), in light of the perceived high strategic value of his country. Uzbekistan has huge energy reserves and a unique placement. (Uzbekistan is the only state in Central Asia that borders all the others. It also borders Afghanistan. In 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan via the Uzbek town of Termiz.) Tashkent is the region’s biggest city, complete with its own metro system, European-standard international airport and daily nonstop flights to New York-infrastructure that became invaluable after America’s 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. US and Nato paid Karimov for the right to build airbases.
After Andijan, the US gave into pressure by international human rights organisations to pull back. Covert aid continued, however. The airbases, including one known as Karshi-Khanabad (K2), were technically “closed” (though the personnel and activities continued). In late 2005, the US imposed low-grade trade sanctions.
That’s all in the past now. In September 2011, Secretary Hillary lifted the sanctions, saying that the Karimov regime was “showing signs of improving its human rights record and expanding political freedoms”. As a goodwill gesture in advance of Clinton’s trip last week, Uzbek authorities released Norboi Kholjigitov, a human rights advocate jailed since 2005 on charges widely believed to have been politically motivated. Kholjigitov is said to be near death after years of abuse in prison.
In Tashkent, a US State Department official described Karimov’s most outrageous excesses as “a thing of the past”. In this case, the past isn’t merely prologue - it’s ongoing.
According to a 2010 report by Human Rights Watch:
“New research by Human Rights Watch reveals that the Uzbek government continues to intimidate and harass the families of Andijan survivors who have sought refuge abroad. The police regularly summon them for questioning, subject them to constant surveillance, and threaten to bring criminal charges against them or confiscate their homes. School officials humiliate refugees’ children. Five years after the massacre, on May 13, 2005, people suspected of having participated in or witnessed the massacre are still being detained, beaten, and threatened. The sentencing on April 30 of Diloram Abdukodirova, an Andijan refugee who returned to Uzbekistan in January, to ten years and two months in prison, shows the lengths to which the government will go to persecute anyone it perceives as linked to the Andijan events.”
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