10. Uzbekistan
Points: 11
Areas of human rights violation as identified by HRW: freedom of expression; imprisonment and harassment of critics; torture; Andijan massacre; forced labor; freedom of religion; sexual orientation and gender identity.
Political imprisonment and torture
Thousands of so-called state enemies have been imprisoned since the 1990s under dim allegations such as “threatening the constitutional order”. Many of them received arbitrary extensions of the sentence under absurd charges that they did not comply with prison order, or more specifically, that they failed “to lift a heavy object” or “to properly place one’s shoes in the corner”. Abuse of judicial system for intimidation and elimination of opponents is one side of human rights violation. The other is widespread torture in prisons. Human Rights’ report “Until the Very End”, which presents cases of 34 political prisoners, reveals that beatings, mock suffocation, electric shocks, and similar abuses are an integral part of prisoners’ treatment.
Forced labor
Besides political imprisonment and torture, forced labor is another issue in the country which is the fourth biggest exporter of cotton in the world. Every year the government mobilizes over million citizens, including doctors, teachers, public sector workers, to grow and harvest cotton. Citizens are made to contribute under the threat of losing wok, pensions, social benefits. They work long hours, without compensation, in hazardous conditions. According to different sources, at least six people died as a result of the unsafe working conditions during the 2015 cotton harvest.
In 2015, the government, for the first time in many years, spared children from forced work, but at the same time increased the number of adult laborers.
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