last updated January 28, 2004
Introduction Women of Uzbekistan’s various ethnic minority groups are experiencing both shared and particular hardships. Ethnic Russians are combating lingering anti-Russian sentiment, manifest in official discrimination. Ethnic Tajiks, sometimes associated by the government with militant Islamic opposition groups, have been targeted for government repression. Independent Muslims are persecuted as well, with female Muslims under increasing attack. In addition, domestic violence against women is generally prevalent in Uzbekistan.
History and situation of ethnic minority groups Uzbekistan is predominantly ethnic Uzbek, with minority groups including ethnic Russians, Tajiks, and Kazakhs. Uzbekistan’s minority groups are not politically powerful. While some ethnic minorities are represented in national political institutions, they are not represented through ethnic-based parties or organizations, which are discouraged.
Ethnic Russians in Uzbekistan are experiencing official discrimination. As elsewhere in Central Asia, independence in Uzbekistan inspired efforts to diminish Russian influence. Consequently, discriminatory laws, such as restrictions on Russian political parties, refusal to grant dual citizenship to Russians, and the refusal to grant official language status to the Russian language, have been implemented. Ethnic Russians have limited access to government and private-sector posts. Ethnic Russians have responded by relying on Moscow to pressure Uzbekistan, and by emigrating to Russia.
Ethnic Tajiks have been heavily affected by Uzbek President Karimov’s war against domestic opposition groups. In 1992, many ethnic Tajik leaders and community members were arrested, and ethnic Tajiks have not had a significant political organization since 1994. In 2000, the Uzbek military forcibly resettled thousands of mostly ethnic Tajik families from southern mountain villages, burning and bombing villages, killing livestock, and destroying homes and fields, reportedly because Islamic militants had infiltrated these villages. In June 2001, 73 ethnic Tajik villagers received long prison terms on charges of supporting the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; all alleged that their confessions had been obtained under torture.
Issues faced by ethnic minority women Ethnic minorities who are also Muslim have suffered under the government’s brutal crackdown, begun in 1997, on Muslims with suspected associations with Islamic opposition parties. At all levels of education, students wearing Islamic attire, including girls wearing hijab, have been expelled from their schools. Many Muslim men have been arrested and tortured, “while their wives and mothers are subjected to Soviet-style hate rallies, at which neighbors are assembled to denounce them as ‘enemies of the people’.” In 1998, Muslim women protesting the arrest and detention of their male relatives were detained, and the female human rights activist who allegedly organized the protest was heavily fined. In 2001, there were several clashes between police and Muslim women protesting the detention of relatives, resulting in numerous cases of police brutality against the women. I n 2003, the International Helsinki Foundation reported on an apparently new trend: the direct prosecution of many Muslim women. These women received relatively lenient sentences, but their prosecution showed the authorities’ willingness to defy traditional Uzbek attitudes, which regard the detention of women as being very harsh.
Minority women in Uzbekistan are affected by the country’s generally high incidence of domestic abuse. Human Rights Watch has noted that women in Uzbekistan face “astounding rates” of domestic violence, while the government either fails to intervene, or intervenes “haphazardly and in ways that make women feel culpable for the violence.”
Compiled from:
Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2003: Uzbekistan.
Minorities at Risk, Minority Group Assessments: Russians in Uzbekistan.
Minorities at Risk, Minority Group Assessments: Tajiks in Uzbekistan.
Amnesty International, CENTRAL ASIA: No Excuse for Escalating Human Rights Violations, 11 October 2001
Washington Post, “A Word of Caution On a New Asian Ally,” 5 October 2001.
Human Rights Watch, World Report 1999: Uzbekistan.
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2002: Europe & Central Asia: Uzbekistan.
International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Human Rights in the OSCE Region: Europe, Central Asia and North America, Report 2003 (Events of 2002): Uzbekistan.
Human Rights Watch, Briefing Paper: Religious Persecution of Independent Muslims in Uzbekistan from September to July 2002, 20 August 2002.
Human Rights Watch, Women’s Rights, 2003.