Uzbekistan

How much do any of us know about Uzbekistan? Myself, not a lot.

Apparently, however, it's becoming important in the War On Islam Terror. As one of the many countries in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan and Iran, it's yet another place where Islamic Fundamentalism™ could spring up, giving us another Al-Qaeda base¹. Or so claims its dictatorial president, to justify his human rights abuses against the Muslim population. Bush seems to agree with him, as he's granted $140 million to the country, ignoring the protestations of human rights organisations.

Anyway. The former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, recently tried to get his book published; a book that details the widespread use of torture in Uzbekistan and, notably, reports that the UK both knows about this practice and accepts evidence from Uzbekistan obtained in this way. The Foreign Office demanded that the book be edited to remove confidential memos from it. (Memos which provide the evidence to back up his claims.) In response, he has released them on his blog. (As reported in this article by The Independent.)

He's straight out asking people to mirror his post on other blogs, so ( I shall oblige. (Warning: long!) )

[1] Full points if you spotted the redundancy there.

Edit: thanks to kropotkin29 for bringing this whole thing to my attention.