TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Uzbekistan has failed to stop torture of detainees in its criminal justice system, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
A report issued by the non-profit group in Berlin said widely hailed safeguards that were supposed to halt the use of torture, including electric shocks and asphyxiation, have not been put into place.
Human Rights Watch accused the United States and European Union of ignoring the abuses because the central Asian country provides a convenient land route to run supplies to NATO forces fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.
"The West has to wake up to the fact that Uzbekistan is a pariah state with one of the worst human rights records," Steve Swerdlow, Uzbekistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a release. "Being located next to Afghanistan should not give Uzbekistan a pass on its horrendous record of torture and repression."
Human Rights Watch said it documented cases in which authorities poured boiling water on an activist during an interrogation, beat detainees with rubber truncheons and water-filled bottles, hung detainees by their wrists and ankles, subjected them to rape and sexual humiliation, and asphyxiated them with plastic bags and gas masks.
