AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES, MUSLIMS’ RELIGIOUS RIGHTS IN CENTRAL ASIA, AND LACK OF FOREIGN PRESS COVERAGE OF RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Abstract
The five former Soviet republics of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—are predominantly Muslim in population and strongly authoritarian in governance. All are secular states with constitutions that promise freedom of religion and belief and prohibit discrimination based on religion.
Since independence in 1991, there have been frequent violations of religious rights of their citizens, including those of Muslims. Many such violations are grounded in assertions by repressive regimes that religious practitioners are involved with or sympathetic to what are labeled terrorist organizations, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Islamic Liberation) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and thus are regarded as threats to the continuing political power of those regimes.
This article examines violations of the religious rights of Muslims in Central Asia in the aftermath of the countries’ repudiation of MarxismLeninism. It opens with a description of the religious and media setting in the region and a review of prior research. The next section uses international human rights reports to present an overview of regulation of and restraints on the practice of Islam. Then through qualitative content analysis, the article examines press coverage of the issue by Western news organizations, primarily the Norwaybased Forum 18 News Service. Last, it discusses the implications of the failure of Western media to report adequately on such rights violations and suggests directions for future research.
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