Associated Press
November 7

The top U.S. rights envoy said Thursday that the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the resulting increased cooperation with this former Soviet republic did not come at the expense of human rights.

"The American people would not let Sept. 11 decrease our commitment to human rights," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner said at the opening of the Human Rights Law Clinic at the Tashkent State Law Institute. "The new U.S.-Uzbek relationship comes with new responsibilities and expectations — especially in the area of human rights."

Washington's alliances with the countries of formerly Soviet Central Asia have raised concerns that human rights are being sacrificed to the military necessity of having bases close to Afghanistan. Hundreds of U.S. troops are using a base in southeastern Uzbekistan that remains one of the most-secret posts for anti-terror operations in Afghanistan.

Still, western officials have repeatedly insisted they are pushing for human rights as they dramatically increase amounts of foreign aid in the region, which is still run mostly by the same autocratic leaders from the Soviet era.

Craner said there had been encouraging signs in Uzbekistan on human rights: the U.N. envoy for torture is to visit later this month at Tashkent's invitation, an Uzbek human rights group earlier this year became the first to be registered here and the government has ended its monopoly on the Internet.

However, he said another human rights group was refused registration last month. He also noted the recent death of a prisoner in police custody in Tashkent.

"Such deaths are unacceptable in civilized societies," Craner said, stressing that a democratic society must protect the rights of all its citizens — "even of those that oppose all that it stands for."

The new clinic at the law school, training 17 students in its first year, is the first in Central Asia. In cooperation with the American Bar Association, it will offer free legal aid starting in February.

Law student Lena Udalova, 19, said freedom of expression was the key foundation for other human rights.

"If people could say what they wanted, everything would be open and all would be known," she said. "Now (the authorities) do things in hiding and no one knows about it."

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