obama administration seeks to resume military aid to uzbekistan distator

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/obama-administration-seeks-resume-military-aid-uzbekistan-dictator-1321115392

The U.S. Sen­ate Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee, in a move ini­ti­ated by the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, has voted to waive Bush-era human rights re­stric­tions on mil­i­tary aid to the Islam Ka­ri­mov dic­ta­tor­ship in Uzbek­istan, one of the most bru­tal and re­pres­sive regimes on the planet. The lift­ing of the re­stric­tions, now part of the For­eign Op­er­a­tions bill, is be­fore the full Sen­ate and ap­pears to have bi­par­ti­san sup­port. The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has in­di­cated that it in­tends to pro­vide tax­payer-funded mil­i­tary as­sis­tance to Uzbek­istan once the leg­is­la­tion passes both houses of Con­gress.

Tor­ture is en­demic in Ka­ri­mov's Uzbek­istan, where his regime has banned all op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal par­ties, se­verely re­stricted free­dom of ex­pres­sion, forced in­ter­na­tional human rights and NGOs out of the coun­try, sup­pressed re­li­gious free­dom, and an­nu­ally taken as many as two mil­lion chil­dren out of school to en­gage in forced labor for the cot­ton har­vest. Thou­sands of dis­si­dents have been jailed and many hun­dreds have been killed, some of them lit­er­ally boiled alive.

In re­ac­tion to the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion's ef­forts, 20 human rights, labor, con­sumer, and other groups signed a let­ter to Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton, say­ing "We strongly urge you to op­pose pas­sage of the law and not to in­voke this waiver." The sign­ers en­cour­aged the ad­min­is­tra­tion "to stand be­hind your strong past state­ments re­gard­ing human rights abuses in Uzbek­istan" and not move to­ward "busi­ness as usual" with that regime.

Sig­na­to­ries in­cluded the AFL-CIO, Amnesty In­ter­na­tional USA, and Human Rights Watch, as well as or­ga­ni­za­tions with close ties to the for­eign pol­icy es­tab­lish­ment like Free­dom House and the In­ter­na­tional Cri­sis Group.​White House Claims

[madrchsod]

1. pipelines! uncle dickies pipelines!

who cares if the guy boils people alive! it`s all about the oil and gas pipelines!

USA! USA! the international police force for the oil and gas industry.

[Fumesucker]

2. +1

[xchrom]

3. yes. & india, pakistan & afghanistan just signed a treaty

agreeing to prices for that pipeline.

seems we've all forgotten about it.

[Obamanaut]

4. From time to time we have elections, and some of the names change, but it appears

the game will continue to remain the same.

Oh well, maybe next time.