Activities of an another one human rights organisation were paralised in Uzbekistan. Freedom House, an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world, has monitored rights in Uzbekistan since independence in 1991, and has been working with human rights defenders in the country since 2002, is forced to suspend its activities for the next six months.
The withdrawal schema adopted by the regime of the representatives of human rights organisations is basically the same. It is the Ministry of Justice which is always in the origin of civil suit filed against potentially dangerous for the regime international NGOs. As a rule the Ministry just invent some marginal delicts to accuse its victime of the infringement of domectic legislation. This was the case of the offices of OSI, IREX, Internews, BBC and Radio Liberty. The case of Freedom House chokes with its absurd allegations made by the Ministry of Justice. As Freedom House reports cited violations included allowing human rights defenders free access to the Internet(!). Charges also included noncompliance with a secret decree, issued by the Uzbekistan government Cabinet, the contents of which remain unknown (!). Looks like the governement is no more interested in the supporting of the illusion of the state of law in the aftermath of Andijon. Now, all reasons are quite good.
Freedom House is going to file an appeal against the decision of the Civil Court of Tashkent. Most probably, its appeal will be rejected as not motivated.
All regards are now turned to the office of Human Rights Watch as the last bastion of the foreign organisation for the local human rights defenders. Remind you that this organisation has recently assisted in the filing of lawsuit against former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs by uzbek victims of torture and of the May 13 massacre in Andijan (Four of the plaintiffs are victims of torture. Another four are victims of the Andijan massacre). While it failed to bring the state criminal to the justice due to the evasion of the minister from Germany the office of HRW considered as one of the most dangerous for the regime. So there is a strong probability that the Ministry of Justice using the successfully worked schema would try to force the office of HRW out regardless its noblesse and renommé.
