Eugenics in Uzbekistan courtesy of the U.N., U.S. and World Bank

Jurriaan Maessen

The British Independent featured an AP article last Saturday, detailing suspicions that health officials in the Republic of Uzbekistan are widely involved in involuntary sterilization-practices. At first glance, the story may seem wild and baseless. Nothing however is further from the truth.

The AP-reporter spoke with a 24-year old housewife named Saodat Rakhimbayeva, an extremely brave woman who tells a heart-wrenching tale of state-sponsored eugenics in her home country of Uzbekistan. After giving birth to a premature boy, she had to witness her son dying just three days later.

“Then”, states the article, “came a further devastating blow: She learned that the surgeon had removed part of her uterus during the operation, making her sterile.”

“According to rights groups, victims and health officials, Rakhimbayeva is one of hundreds of Uzbek women who have been surgically sterilized without their knowledge or consent in a program designed to prevent overpopulation from fueling unrest. (…). The order comes from the very top,” said Khaitboy Yakubov, head of the Najot human rights group in Uzbekistan.”

This statement by Yakubov has more significance that he himself probably realizes. By “the very top” he likely refers to the central Uzbek government. As it turns out, the order came from even higher up.

An official communiqué from the embassy of Uzbekistan in New Delhi gives us more insight in a remarkable initiative by the Uzbek state and the different partners with which it collaborates:

“The complex of measures for the “Mother’s and Child’s Screening”, directed to prevent the childbirth with the hereditary diseases, accompanying with intellectual backwardness as well as inspection of pregnant women is carried out in the Republic with the purpose of revealing anomalies of development of a child-bearing. (…). Within the framework of the State Programs the cooperation is continuing with the WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, USAID, JICA, KfW Bank, World Bank, Asian Development Bank (…).”

The United Nations Population Fund concurs. It admits helping Uzbek authorities screen its citizens:

“In Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, UNFPA worked to strengthen national capacities to collect, analyse and disseminate gender disaggregated data on population, development and reproductive health and to integrate population variables and gender concerns into development and environmental planning.”

Now what this really mean? A Japanese International Corporation Agency, profiling Uzbekistan’s disability policies, states the following in regards to the Uzbek national screening program (page 11):

“By 2001, 124.000 of new-borns had been examined, 2.800 children in at-risk groups had been identified; and 160 had been registered in health clinics. For genetic reasons, 1.381 pregnancies were terminated.”

Furthermore, an Uzbek government-website acknowledges receiving generous funding for its eugenic programs and restates the UN-funded mission:

“Up-to-date medical technologies help detect possible defects in the development of a fetus at an early stage of pregnancy. To preclude birth of children with genetic disease accompanied by mental abnormalities and to detect fetus abnormality (…).”

Another Uzbek government website gives a description of the ultimate goal of the “Mother and Child screening” program as follows:

“(…) reducing the birth of disabled children.”

In the same publication, the above-mentioned “screening” of possible “intellectual backwardness” serves to “prevent childbirth with hereditary diseases”. Needless to say, these practises constitute eugenics in its purest form. And transnational organizations like the UN, World Bank and the German KfW Bank are directly and fanatically involved in the funding of these “screening”-programs conducted by Uzbek health authorities.

The UN itself admits in its own publications to its “long-standing partnership and track-record working in Uzbekistan.”:

“The UN’s mandate in supporting the implementation and monitoring of the MDGs (UN Millennium Development Goals) at the country level is a substantial comparative advantage in assisting the Government (of Uzbekistan) to enhance living standards, and achieve higher levels of human development. As a credible and trusted partner of the Government, we provide policy advice, technical assistance and programmatic support, drawing on best global practices.”

An important item of the UN’s “programmatic support” is their ideas on population-screening and control, making sure that Uzbek women:

“… have access, as and when they require, to what we call reproductive health.- family planning, contraception, and medical care during pregnancy, at delivery and afterwards.”

In a publication by USAID, the largest US aid institution paid for by US tax dollars, reference was made to the contributions of the United Nations Population Fund:

“UNFPA provided IUD’s, injectables and pills. Health facilities hold at least 3 different methods, though their quantities are not sufficient.”

In regards to USAID’s own contributions, which include training local Uzbek health officials, the document lists a training-course:

“The two week-training included theory and extensive practise. Each participant passing the course received a set of instruments for minilaporotomy. During training courses 39 clients were sterilized. 88 clients have been sterilized by trained providers to date.”

Another USAID-document from 1993 recommends some actions to be taken in regards to Central European nations, such as Uzbekistan (page 10):

“New contraceptive technologies should be offered, with training in their application and in the counseling of clients on the choices available to them. Policy change will be required in some countries to permit sterilization to be included among available options for both women and men. To assure the commitment of health sector leadership, study tours in the united States would be useful, as would inclusion of the heads of medical training institutions in the redesign of medical and nursing curricula to integrate family planning into health care.”

Remember the reports from the Uzbek woman reporting involuntary sterilization practises by Uzbek doctors. It seems it is being done with your dollars, and with additional donations from the World Bank, German development bank, the United Nations Population Fund- and let’s not leave out another important contributor, the World Health Organisation. The WHO reports on their own website:

“Uzbekistan and WHO: A close relationship exists between WHO and the Ministry of Health (MOH).”

Listed under “Opportunities”, the WHO mentions that:

“Uzbekistan now receives substantial funding for health programmes with contributions from many key partners.”

As the money continues to flow into Uzbekistan, the eugenicists at the very top are going all-out . It’s high time they are stopped on their blood-stained path of destruction.