Uzbekistan dismisses UN concern over Andijan trials

Agence France Presse December 27 Uzbekistan's prosecutor general said on Monday that UN concerns about the fairness of mass trials for those allegedly involved this May in a bloody uprising in the east of the Central Asian country were unfounded. "The apprehension of UN human rights chief Louise Arbour casts doubt on Uzbekistan's law-enforcement system without sufficient foundation," the prosecutor general's press service said in a statement. "We would like to bring to the world community's attention to the fact that preliminary and court investigations were conducted strictly in accordance with the requirements of procedural criminal laws," the statement said. Uzbek courts have so far convicted 151 men, mostly in closed-door trials, in connection with mass violence in the eastern Andijan province in mid-May. Arbour, the United Nation's High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Friday that she was concerned about the fairness of the latest trial, which saw 37 men convicted on Thursday. "If the latest proceedings were anything like the trial that resulted in the conviction of the first 15 defendants last month, there is very good reason to worry," Arbour said. "As conducted, these trials risk having produced unjust and unfounded convictions while the real perpetrators of atrocities remain unpunished." However, the Uzbek prosecutor general's office said that the trials were "adhering to the obligations to implement international standards." Uzbekistan has come under sustained criticism from western governments and UN officials in the wake of the Andijan violence. The government says 187 people died after Islamist insurgents launched an uprising. However, human right groups and witnesses say that at least 500 people died, most of them unarmed civilians killed by Uzbek security forces. On Monday, the Uzbek Interior Ministry also rejected accusations from a former UN special rapporteur on torture that the ex-Soviet republic had done nothing to improve its human rights record. Theo van Boven said last week that recommendations he had made after a 2002 fact-finding mission to Uzbekistan remained unfulfilled. "Torture in custody, both pre-trial and post-conviction, remains rampant, while its perpetrators continue to go unpunished," he said in a statement published by the US-based group Human Rights Watch. Two recommendations in particular - an official and public condemnation of torture and legislation providing for judicial overview of arrests - had not been met, he said. But a statement from the Interior Ministry described van Boven's criticism as "completely groundless." "Cardinal" changes have taken place since 2002, including the abolition by President Islam Karimov of the death penalty from January 2008, the ministry said.