Dadakhon Khasanov's crime was clear: he wrote a couple of songs referring to what happened on 13 May last year in Andijan, eastern Uzbekistan. On that day there was an armed uprising, followed by a demonstration involving thousands of unarmed people, hundreds of whom were then slaughtered in cold blood by Uzbek security forces.

In Uzbekistan, however, to tell the truth about these events is an offence, so Khasanov is [...]

Dictatorships should not be rewarded. A simple enough lesson, you might think. It is, however, a lesson that Britain and other European governments seem reluctant to take on board.

Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, is due to chair the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), to be held in the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan in May. Uzbekistan is distinguished by [...]

You can spend years refusing to face up to the obvious. You can find endless justifications and search for ifs and buts. Eventually, however, there comes a moment when the visitor to the Balkans must simply put his head in his hands and cry: "Enough!" One nagging question returns to haunt you: why have so many millions of Serbs become liars on a grand scale or gone mad, or both? [...]