Call me un-patriotic, go ahead. You know you want to.
It’s been pretty obvious to those of us who never liked the guy from the beginning, that when the President gets up in front of the cameras and gives all the same talking points about the War on Terror, protecting the American people at all costs, spreading democracy, liberating an oppressed people from an evil regime etc .. blah, blah, blah … that he’s, well, full of shit. And since the news about the secret torture camps came out, it’s been pretty obvious that he’s one hypocritical, evil bastard himself.
But recently there have been some confidential memos leaked from the UK about Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country where one of these secret prisons was allegedly located. Craig Murray was Britain’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and has been speaking out about the atrocities in that country since 2003, when he was threatened by his government that if he didn’t toe the “American Line” he would lose his job.
The memos are posted here at their original location, and a copy at Daily Kos.
Please, Please, Please Read!
As I read through these memos, I became angry, horrified, and ashamed.
I was ashamed because as Americans, we duck our heads in the sand, oblivious to what’s going on in the world around us, oblivious to what’s even going on within our own borders. When something is forced in our face enough that we have to sit up and say “Oh yeah, that’s not good”, we still shrug our shoulders and say “But what can I do?”
We sit idly by while this administration pours hundreds of billions of our tax money into an illegal war, based on lies. We feign outrage at the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but quickly forget. We don’t care that there are still thousands of foreign prisoners sitting in American run prisons, never to face a jury, possibly never to even be charged, just rotting.
When one of the most culturally unique cities in our country is devastated, partly due to apathy on the part of our own government, we band together, give of our time and money to help our fellow Americans in their time of need, for two weeks, and then quickly go about our lives, our brothers and sisters nothing more than an afterthought while they continue to struggle to rebuild their city, their homes and their lives.
When it comes to the suffering of others, we do everything we can to ignore it or justify it, anything we can to avoid having to take responsibility for it.
Here is one of the memos in full, outlining the relationship of the US with Islam Karimov, the Uzbek President.
Letter #2
Confidential
Fm Tashkent
To FCO
18 March 2003
SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY
1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.
DETAIL
2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.
3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.
4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?
5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).
6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror… removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.
7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.
MURRAY
And some bits from other memos on the treatment of these Uzbek prisoners.
“Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights.”
“President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more”
“I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed”
“At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.”
“This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling”
There is no escaping this, although I’m sure that 90% of America will never hear of these memos, will never even know where Uzbekistan is, much less what is going on there, but for me there is no escaping this.
We as Americans, by putting this President in power, by fucking re-electing him and his entire administration, we are to blame. The blood of those innocently tortured men, women and yes even children, is on our hands.
And the majority of us will never know, and of the ones who do, the majority will shrug their shoulders and say, “but what could I do?” I am ashamed.
Posted
Jan 03 2006, 01:41 PM
by
michael