At the beginning there was great hope that something would change in Uzbekistan, says Salidzhon Abdurachmanov.

The seventy-one year old still has hope.

But little has changed in his home country in the past five years.

Abdurachmanov is a journalist.

He has been living in Germany for more than a year because he was no longer safe in Uzbekistan.

The beginning of which he speaks was the end of the rule of the longtime dictator Islam Karimov.

The president, who ruled Uzbekistan for more than a quarter of a century, died in the late summer of 2016.

His successor, Shawkat Mirsiyoyev, promised reforms to open up the isolated country.

Othmara glass

Volunteer

  • Follow I follow

Indeed, there has been some progress, mostly economically.

Mirsiyoyev liberalized the local currency, the sum, against forced labor in the cotton fields, and released political prisoners.

But in the presidential elections, which took place on Sunday in the most populous country in Central Asia with just under 35 million inhabitants, the winner was already certain.

"Uzbekistan's political system is still deeply authoritarian," said a recent Human Rights Watch report.

The reforms have stalled.

In some areas there have even been setbacks, writes the organization.

Above all, the freedom of expression and freedom of the press has been severely restricted again.

Critical bloggers and journalists are brought to court on false accusations.

Abdurachmanov spent nine years in prison

Abdurachmanov knows how it is.

In 2008 the police found drugs in his car during a traffic stop.

A court sentenced him to ten years in prison.

“Nobody ever asked me where I got the drugs from,” he says.

A drug test was negative.

His lawyer accused the police officers of blotting drugs on the journalist.

In Uzbekistan, this is a common practice to remove critics from the market.

Abdurachmanow comes from the autonomous region of Karakalpakstan in northwest Uzbekistan. The region is particularly hard hit by the drying up of the Aral Sea. The journalist reported for media critical of the government about the ecological and health consequences in the region. A difficult topic for journalists in Uzbekistan to this day, it implies that the government is doing too little to protect the population.

Abdurachmanov spent nine years in prison.

In October 2017, eight months before the regular end of his prison term, he was released - under Mirsiyoyev.

“But even during his tenure, I was imprisoned for another year,” he says.

After his release, Abdurakhmanov returned to work as a journalist.

Then he learned that the prosecution was preparing criminal investigations against him.

"I had the choice to be silent or to go."

Shortly before the outbreak of the corona pandemic, he fled to Tbilisi.

Many journalists from Eastern Europe and Central Asia come there when they no longer feel safe in their home countries.

With the help of the organization Reporters Without Borders, he came to Germany last August.

On their annual press freedom ranking, Uzbekistan came in 157th out of 180 countries surveyed.

No real opposition candidates admitted

Abdurachmanow now operates a YouTube channel in Uzbek from Germany.

He is not the only journalist from Uzbekistan who has fled to Germany.

Bobomurod Abdullajew came to Germany at the beginning of last year.

He had mainly reported on the corruption under Karimov.

When his pseudonym was exposed in 2017, he was arrested.

The accusation: an attempted overthrow of the government.

According to his own account, the journalist was tortured during almost eight months of pre-trial detention.

Nevertheless, Abdullaev returned from Germany to Central Asia in spring 2020 and was arrested again in the summer.

He is now back in Germany.

Salidzhon Abdurachmanov emphasizes that economic progress has also been made under Mirsiyoyev.

But how people are treated is just "terrible".

In Germany he saw how people demonstrate for their rights without the police intervening violently.

There is still astonishment in his voice when he talks about it.

In Uzbekistan, journalists recently uncovered a multi-million dollar corruption scandal involving the Mirsiyoyev clan.

That will hardly hurt the president.

Real opposition candidates were not even allowed to vote.