The following comes from David Walther, a resident of Tashkent and frequent commenter. It’s a little late as it came in while I was away, but it’s definitely worth reading as it indicates that deportations like Igor Rotar’s are now Uzbek policy. –Nathan
Uzbekistan Deports another Legal Visitor, Visa Regime Tightening
28 AUGUST, TASHKENT—“J,” A Canadian citizen with a valid visa to the Republic of Uzbekistan was detained this week after presenting his documents at the passport control point in the Tashkent airport. While his wife and family were allowed to enter, he was asked to wait in the transfer lounge for an unspecified amount of time and for no specified reason, only being informed that he was not allowed to enter the country at that time.
The unspecified amount of time lengthened to two days, during which, according to his wife, he was not provided with food or water, given a reason for his detention, or apparently allowed physical contact with his family. Despite the intervention of the U.S. Embassy on his behalf, after two days of being imprisoned without charges he was just as suddenly deported to Germany—also without charges.
The similarities between his case and Igor Rotar’s, who was deported less than two weeks ago after being detained without charges in the same transit lounge, are numerous on the surface, but not necessarily in detail. While Mr. Rotar was threatened and interrogated, “J,” according to his wife, was never threatened and generally given no indication about why he was being held. Apparently he was kept in isolation in the transport lounge with very little contact with police or customs guards before they came to escort him out of the country.
While no official reason was given or even hinted at, “J’s” wife indicated that her suspicion was that her husband was deported for religious activities (Protestant), which they took part in or initiated while living in Uzbekistan previously. She suspected that the government refused to give a reason for the deportation in order to prop up a façade of religious freedom. Whether this, combined with an arrest of a Western citizen for evangelical activities in Tashkent reported by Forum 18 in early August, indicates a distinct change in Uzbek government policy towards freedom of religious expression for foreign citizens remains to be seen.
On the whole, reports of visa difficulties and/or flat refusals are sounding now throughout the small community of Westerners living in Tashkent, though there seems to be no clear logic or pattern behind the MFA’s visa decisions—while obtaining even a long term Uzbek visa from the U.S., Canada, or the EU was just a formality a year or two ago, visa issuance and renewal has become completely unpredictable after the events in Andijon in May.
There are reports from the U.S. that the wife of Richard Penner, the U.S. citizen killed in the Uzbek Airways crash last January and buried here in Tashkent, was denied a visa to come visit her husband’s grave. This is a strange and surprising shift, since shortly after the crash President Karimov himself extended his personal condolences to the Penner family, the Uzbek government paid for Mrs. Penner and her children to fly to Tashkent for the funeral, and provided Mr. Penner with a special place of honor in the city’s main Christian cemetery (Botkina).
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