NEW YORK — The governments of a number of countries, including China and Uzbekistan, are branding political opponents as Islamic terrorists and using the “war on terror” as a way to stifle dissent, Human Rights Watch said in its annual global survey of human rights conditions. The report by the New York-based human rights watchdog and advocacy group, covering the year 2005, was issued Jan. 18. It said that counterterrorism policies are having a harmful effect on the global defense of human rights. “Fighting terrorism is central to the human rights cause,” said Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director. “But using illegal tactics against alleged terrorists is both wrong and counterproductive.”
The report was particularly critical of Bush-administration policies it said had condoned torture and made it difficult for the United States to pressure other states to respect international law. It also noted that other countries are using the war on terror to crack down on opponents, with religious and cultural identity often a factor in stifling dissent. It noted that in 2005, the government of China continued to crack down on the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Some Uighurs are waging a separatist campaign, and the Chinese government has responded with measures that have included the destruction of mosques, Human Rights Watch said.
Campaigns against Uighurs have also included secret and summary trials, the survey said, as well as imposition of the death penalty.
China, also criticized in the report for its strict policies of trying to regulate religious practice within the country, has used the war on terrorism, the report said, “to justify its policies, making no distinction between the handful of separatists who condone violence and those who desire genuine autonomy or a separate state.”
The survey noted similar policies in the one-time Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where authorities reportedly killed hundreds of unarmed protesters during a May 13, 2005, demonstration in the eastern part of the country. Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government, the report said, continues a campaign against those whose religious practice falls outside strict government controls. “The government justifies this campaign by referring to the ‘war on terror,’ failing to distinguish between those who advocate violence and those who peacefully express their religious beliefs,” the survey said.
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