HRW: Uzbekistan Torturing Journalists, Rights Activists

The Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan is routinely torturing imprisoned journalists and rights activists, a global rights watchdog alleged Friday, urging Western sanctions on Tashkent and launching a Twitter campaign to highlight the issue.

Some 34 such prisoners locked up "on politically motivated charges suffer torture and abysmal prison conditions," Human Rights Watch said in a new 121-page report.

The group's researcher on Central Asia, Steve Swerdlow, told AFP on the margins of an annual international rights conference in Warsaw that the United States and Europe should flex their sanctions muscle to curb the problem.

"They can very quickly develop some targeted measures against Uzbek officials," he said.

"The U.N. with its Human Rights Council also has a lot of tools at its disposal," Swerdlow said, urging it to set up a special monitoring body for the country of 30 million.

HRW on Friday launched the #Free34 Twitter campaign, demanding the "immediate and unconditional release" of all Uzbek political prisoners.

President Islam Karimov, 75, is accused of flagrant abuses during his more than two decades of iron-fisted rule over Uzbekistan.

The regime notably crushed protests in 2005 in the eastern city of Andijan during which 187 people died according to the government and 700 according to rights groups.

The secular majority Muslim nation has never revealed the total number of its prisoners. It is unclear how many people pass through detention centers every year.

The U.S. government's Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Uzbekistan said last year that the Uzbek government "reported that there were approximately 46,200 prisoners, an increase of an estimated 4,000 prisoners since 2009".