• Tuesday, January 25, 2011
• Inter Press Service

In what appalled human rights defenders have described as an episode of 'shame and discredit' for the European Union, Brussels played host to one of the world’s worst dictators Monday.

Uzbek president Islam Karimov, whose regime has been accused of a litany of horrific human rights abuses over the last two decades, met European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in the Belgian capital for talks that the EC has been at pains to stress were to include the issue of human rights.

But both Karimov and EC officials faced protests over the meetings and furious human rights groups have said the meeting has laid bare the EC’s double standards on human rights. 'The EC has shamed and discredited itself with these meetings and the way they have gone about them,' Sasha Koulaeva of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) told IPS.

News of Karimov’s visit to Brussels was greeted at first with perplexity and then outrage by rights groups. The Uzbek regime has long been held by the international community as having one of the world’s worst records on human rights. Brutal state suppression of civil society, any form of dissent and almost all freedoms have been well documented over the two decades Karimov has ruled.

Schools close in the summer when children as young as seven are forced to pick cotton — the country’s major export. Religious persecution and torture in custody and prisons is widespread — in one documented case a prisoner was boiled alive in jail.

The EU imposed sanctions on the country following a 2005 massacre in the town of Andizhan when Karimov’s troops opened fire on peacefully protesting civilians, killing hundreds. Karimov refused to allow an independent investigation of the killings. Those sanctions were lifted in 2009.

EC officials did not publicise the visit in advance and only confirmed it was taking place when human rights groups got word of it and asked Brussels about it. Activists have suggested this was likely deliberate as the EC knew it would face severe criticism.

'What is most disturbing about this is the way the EC has gone about this — in secret. No one was told about this visit and we only found out two weeks beforehand. Under Belgian law protests can only be held legally if they are announced two weeks in advance so we could not even hold a protest.

'There is to be no press conference and no one is admitting to having invited him. Is the EC ashamed of what it has done?'Koulaeva told IPS.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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