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A Tyrant's Charter

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  • A Tyrant's Charter

    A Tyrant's Charter

    The New Statesman
    23 May 2005

    In an era when TV determines an event's importance,
    the massacre in the Uzbek town of Andijan (see page
    14) has received less coverage than it deserves.
    Camera access denied, few stories supplied. The
    reported death toll of more than 700 constitutes one
    of the worst cases of bloodshed involving government
    troops and civilian protesters since Tiananmen Square
    in 1989. With such staunch friends in the White House,
    Islam Karimov, one of the most unpleasant
    cast-offs of the Soviet era, knew he could act with
    impunity.

    The Uzbek president has done George W Bush many a
    service since 9/11 - protection of gas supplies, an
    airbase for sorties into Afghanistan and beyond, and a
    willing venue for a spot of offshore torture. We may
    be bystanders, but we are not innocents. The roots of
    this barbarism can be traced back to the US Congress,
    to January 2002 and Bush's invocation of the axis of
    evil. By selecting three targets for his `war on
    terror' - Iraq, Iran and North Korea at the time,
    although, like any hit parade, countries go up and
    down - the president did not herald an era of regime
    change for despots the world over.
    `Democratisation', aka `liberal interventionism', when
    applied consistently and through international
    organisations, could be embraced by the left. But the
    agenda is based on a single criterion: US interest.
    The world is where it was during the realpolitik of
    the cold war, except now there is one superpower doing
    as it pleases. The UK response? A statement
    of concern a tad less weaselly than that of the US -
    for a regime whose human rights abuses are documented
    even by the Foreign Office. If the moral courage of
    Jack Straw and Tony Blair had matched their political
    guile, from Iraq to Uzbekistan, Britain's standing in
    the world would have been enhanced, not diminished, in
    recent years. Now, as long as you are on the right
    side of the `war on terror', there is no better time
    to be a torturer and tyrant.
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