Uzbekistan fires deputy PM

TASHKENT: Uzbekistan has sacked a deputy prime minister after he humiliated farmers and forced them to stand in a water ditch as the ex-Soviet country aims to improve its dismal rights record.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev convened a meeting late on Monday after reports emerged of a deputy prime minister and other officials addressing wheat farmers while they were standing in a ditch full of water, a government official told AFP on Tuesday.

The farmers had reportedly been forced to stand in the ditch as punishment for watering the fields insufficiently while Deputy Prime Minister Zoir Mirzayev criticised them. Mirzayev is the highest ranked official to be sacked in Uzbekistan for abusing workers’ rights.

A government official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that several provincial officials including the deputy governor of the Tashkent region where the incident took place were also fired.

Mirziyoyev’s office late on Monday published a decree increasing responsibility for ensuring the elimination of forced labour which flourished under his late predecessor Islam Karimov. The decree did not refer to the incident but said the deputy prime minister had been sacked "for serious deficiences" in the organisation of agricultural work for which his office was responsible. The decree also called "the protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens" as a priority without specifying what punishments would be meted out to officials found violating them.