It's been six months since Uzbek President Islam Karimov died and Shavkat Mirziyaev took over leadership of Uzbekistan.
Mirziyaev has made a lot or promises and raised hopes the country would start to implement some reforms and become a more active player in Central Asian affairs.
Six months is not a long time to change a system that Karimov spent 25 years creating but there have been some alterations since September, as well as some indications about facets of Karimov's policies that seem likely to be preserved in the Mirziyaev government.
One encouraging early sign is that Mirziyaev does not seem, so far, to want to be the sole focus of state media as Karimov did. State television for example, has for years shown sessions of government or parliament but the only voice people in Uzbekistan heard was that of Karimov. Newscasters usually summarized what ministers, members of parliament, or other officials said.
Since Mirziayev took over, broadcasts include officials speaking. It's a small thing but it could be interpreted as meaning Mirziyaev is not obsessed with being the one and only voice of government, as Karimov was, or as has been true in neighboring Turkmenistan, where only the presidents speak on television and radio.
The media itself is enjoying a very slight new ability to report critically on some issues. Self-censorship became the norm under Karimov but as Eurasianet noted in a recent article, at least one newspaper has been able to write about financial and trade matters in a way that would have been unthinkable under Karimov.
RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, confirms that some reporting since Mirziyaev assumed power has pushed ever so slightly against the previously established boundaries of journalism in Uzbekistan.
That certainly does not extend to criticism of the government or Mirziyaev himself. One example of an area that remains off-limits to the media is criticism of Mirziyaev's appointments to state posts, which have already included some people with controversial backgrounds.
The new Uzbek president also did away with snap audits of businesses by the financial police. Such inspections were often used to extort money from businessmen, seriously poisoning the entrepreneurial spirit in the country. Businessmen in Uzbekistan have told Ozodlik the change has been beneficial, inspiring new confidence and ambition.
Freeing Political Prisoners
Probably the most hopeful signs coming from the Mirziyaev administration have to do with political prisoners, though the Uzbek government still does not admit there is anyone fitting that description in Uzbekistan.
At the start of March there was news about the release of Jamshid Karimov from a psychiatric hospital. Karimov, who is a nephew of the late president, once wrote for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and was a member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan. He was first put in a psychiatric hospital in 2006 and had rarely been out since.
Others have been released from prison. Muhammad Bekjon, who Human Rights Watch said was one of the longest imprisoned journalists in the world, was freed on February 22. Bekjon, now 62 years old, had been imprisoned since 1999.
Rights activist Bobomurad Razzaqov, 63, who was convicted of human trafficking in 2013, was released in October; Samandar Kukanov, 72, a former member of parliament who criticized the government, was freed in November after more than 23 years in prison; and political activist Rustam Usmonov, 69, the founder of Uzbekistan's first private bank, was let of out of prison in February after being convicted of illegal hard-currency transactions and imprisoned in 1998.
While welcoming these releases, and pointing out that none of these men should ever have been confined to begin with, international rights organizations have called upon Mirziyaev to release hundreds, possibly thousands of others who remain wrongfully imprisoned in Uzbekistan.
Others have noted that the four men released from prison were elderly and some had simply served their sentences.
On March 1, a court upheld a five-year sentence against Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan member Agzam Farmonov. Farmonov, 39, was convicted of extortion in 2006 and on the eve of his release in 2015 the sentence was extended by the five years Farmonov was just seeking to have annulled.
And while Jamshid Karimov might have been released from a psychiatric hospital, on March 2 there was news that rights activist Elena Urlaeva had been forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Opening Up To The World?
Mirziyaev also promised, right after being elected president in early December, to waive, or ease visa requirements for citizens of 27 countries as of April 1, 2017, but on January 9 he announced that would be postponed until 2021.
He said at the end of November that the government would loosen its tight control over the rate of the national currency, the som, and work toward currency convertibility, but nothing has been said about this since then.
Mirziyaev's policy toward Uzbekistan's Central Asian neighbors has shown great promise. He said from the beginning that better ties with those countries would be a priority.
That was extremely good news for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, all of which had at one time or another, some nearly always, been at odds with Uzbekistan since they became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991.
Any attempts at Central Asian regional cooperation during the last 25 years have been doomed from the start, largely due to ex-President Karimov. Uzbekistan's policy toward its Central Asian neighbors seemed based on Karimov's personal relationship with the other countries' leaders, and he didn't like very many of them.
Some Signs Of Progress
Under Mirziyaev, more progress has been made in demarcating Uzbekistan's borders with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in six months than had been made in the previous 15 years. Mirziyaev awarded the head of Kazakhstan's delegation to the talks, First Deputy Prime Minister Askar Manin, Uzbekistan's "Dustlik" (Friendship) order on February 8.
Progress along the Kyrgyz frontier has been even more dramatic, with scores of previously disputed areas having been agreed upon recently. However, while it is clear pen is being put to paper on these agreements, it is less clear what that actually means along the border.
Uzbek-Tajik ties have also improved significantly since Mirziyaev came to power. Delegations from the two countries have been going back and forth and there has been talk of restoring severed communications links -- roads, railway, and air.
Attempts at resuming the latter, however, showed Uzbekistan is not willing to go too far, too quickly.
The two governments agreed to resume flights between their capitals -- Tashkent and Dushanbe -- that had been suspended since 1992. A test run was made without incident in early February but the official first flight on February 22 was suddenly canceled.
Uzbekistan claimed Tajikistan's Somoni Airlines had not filed all the necessary documents 30 days prior to the flight. The head of Somoni Airlines, Alisher Rustamov, was quickly fired but a second planned flight a few days later also did not happen. Uzbekistan announced at the end of February the flights would start in April, but Uzbekistan's national airline, Uzbekistan Havo Yollari, would run the flights, not Somoni Airlines.
Things are changing since Mirziyaev took over, without a doubt. Turkmenistan under current President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov looks a lot like Turkmenistan under first President Saparmurat Niyazov. But Uzbekistan under Mirziyaev already looks different than Uzbekistan under Karimov.
