A security checkpoint in the Fergana region.. Photo from Telegram channel @sofuzb
Security checkpoints have been reinstated on the Fergana-Vodil and Fergana-Avval roads in Uzbekistan’s Fergana region, reports the news website Sof.uz on its Telegram channel. These checkpoints were dismantled last year along with 74 others on the orders of the country’s president Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Citing a businessman involved in the passenger transportation business in Fergana, Radio Liberty’s Uzbek page (in Russian) reported that in Vodil alone several checkpoints have been erected. The informant added that a number of other checkpoints are in the process of being set up in the region. A spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs told the radio station’s correspondent that the new posts have been erected in order to prevent the entrance of contraband goods into the country from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.
According to Radio Liberty, previously dismantled checkpoints have also reappeared in other regions of the country: in the Andijan, Khorezm, Tashkent, Navoi, Bukhara and Surkhandarya regions. An official of the Road Traffic Safety Directorate in the Khorezm region stated that the checkpoints have been reopened temporarily in order to prevent the theft of this year’s cotton crop. A counterpart in Bukhara said that the highway patrol post in the Qiziltepa district is necessary on account of the nearby jail. Reasons for the reintroduction of checkpoints in the Tashkent region have not been given. But many taxi drivers complain that the checks at the newly opened posts on the main road into the capital are causing serious tailbacks.
The press office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan acknowledged that in some regions additional checkpoints have been temporarily erected. The measures in question were taken in the interest of guaranteeing security during upcoming political events and public festivities, explained the ministry.
Fergana General Director Daniil Kislov had the following to say about the reopening of checkpoints: “The claim that they are ‘to prevent smuggling’ does not stand up to the slightest criticism. Contraband should be checked for just once, at the border, rather than holding up lorries and milking their drivers at every checkpoint. Checkpoints themselves belong to wartime Syria or Chechnya. Any government should be ashamed to announce that it doesn’t trust its own citizens while at the same time creating the perfect conditions for police and other officials’ corruption. No doubt the cops themselves lobbied for the return of checkpoints on Uzbek roads. This is a clear step back in domestic politics, a serious piece of backsliding, Mr Mirziyoyev.”
Uzbekistan’s president spoke of the need to close checkpoints in December 2017. According to him, the distribution of the posts was outdated, and the system restricted people’s free movement and hindered the development of the economy and of domestic and international tourism. “Just think about it: if an ordinary citizen wants to travel from Khorezm to Tashkent by car, he has to pass through 17 checkpoints. 17! He goes through the first post, Samarkand, then Jizzakh, Sirdarya, and then another three posts on the way to Chinaz... People from the Fergana valley have to deal with eight such posts,” complained Mirziyoyev at the time. Within days of the head of state’s comments, interior affairs minister Pulat Bobojonov announced plans to reduce the number of security checkpoints.
