veiled4allah: human rights situation in Uzbekistan

A number of blogs have been discussing Uzbekistan in the last few days and the terrible human rights situation there. See for example Kos of Daily Kos and Hesiod of Counterspin Central

Islamist groups are active in political opposition to the Karimov regime and hence Karimov has particularly targeted religious Muslims. As Human Rights Watch details in a 2002 report:

The government pressed forward with a campaign of unlawful arrest, torture, and imprisonment of Muslims who practiced their faith outside state controls, and took increasing numbers of pious women into custody. Police forcibly disbanded protests by relatives of religious prisoners, and placed several under administrative arrest for demonstrating... ...While authorities withheld comprehensive statistics on prisoners held on religious and political charges, conservative estimates put the total number at around 7,000. Local rights organizations estimated that in 2001 at least thirty people per week were convicted for alleged crimes related to their religious affiliation or beliefs. The majority of cases involved those accused of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), which espouses reestablishment of the Islamic Caliphate by peaceful means. The government of President Islam Karimov equated the group's beliefs and activities with attempted overthrow of the state, and authorities prosecuted any person in possession of the group's literature or in any way affiliated with it. They also prosecuted so-called Wahhabis, or Muslims who were not members of any organized group but who worshiped outside state controls and were subsequently branded "extremists" and "fundamentalists."

The report also mentions specific abuses:

On April 9, twelve men accused of taking Koran lessons and attending religious services at the mosque of Imam Abduvahid Yuldashev were sentenced to terms ranging from two-year suspended sentences to eighteen years of imprisonment. The men, who claimed that they had been engaged only in worship and study of Islamic texts, testified that police held them incommunicado and tortured them. A Tashkent court sentenced Imam Yuldashev himself to nineteen years in prison, ignoring his testimony that he was tortured and his family threatened... ...Prison guards systematically beat prisoners with wooden and rubber truncheons and exacted particularly harsh punishment on those convicted on religious charges, subjecting them to additional beatings, and forcing them to sing the national anthem and recite poems praising the president and the state. Those who attempted to observe the five daily Muslim prayers were beaten and sometimes locked in isolation cells for days on end

Another aspect of Karimov's campaign against religious Muslims is the expulsion of students from public schools at all levels for wearing hijab (headscarf) or a beard. A Human Rights Watch report from 1999 details this campaign.

So what do you think? Is Karimov just fighting the war on terrorism and "extremist Islam"? Or is he engaged in a systematic campaign to violate and deny the human rights of some of his citizens on account of their religion?