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Civil society in Uzbekistan continues to suffer from restrictions to freedom of speech and barriers to the legal registration of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Legislation that limits the right to peaceful assembly places excessive requirements on organisers of public meetings.
Yet while the Uzbekistani state stifles civic space, the government boasts of the number of non-governmental organisations in the country and insists that it is implementing measures to “radically increase the role of civil society institutions in the process of democratic renewal of the country”.
The reality is that many of these organisations are, in fact, in some sense controlled by the state.
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When 200 Indorama Agro workers banded together under the leadership of a local woman to form Uzbekistan’s newest independent union last month, it was a pivotal moment.
“For us, the union has become the only opportunity to improve our situation,” one worker told openDemocracy. “We are not against foreign companies or investors or government institutions, we just want the rights of workers to be guaranteed and protected, that is it!”
Though this moment passed all too quickly after the union’s independence was essentially quashed, this news brought international attention to the rot in this Central Asian state, now in its fifth year of post-Karimov rule. For local farmers and workers, the rot has grown deeper since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree to shift cotton production from state control to private clusters in March last year.