Nothing in this world can be said to be certain except death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin once observed. Islam Karimov appears to have challenged that rule. The death – or not – of Uzbekistan’s president remains as mysterious as it did several days ago, when first announced by a Russia-based news agency. His younger daughter declared that he had suffered a brain haemorrhage but was recovering. The government said he was receiving unspecified treatment, but has not elaborated or offered updates.
While the media abhor news vacuums, dictatorships adore them. When China’s tyrannical first emperor Qin Shi Huang died – reportedly having taken mercury, on the ill-advised presumption it would grant immortality – he was on a tour, two months away from his capital. His prime minister and chief eunuch are said to have had clothing and food delivered to his shaded carriage and dragged carts of rotting fish in the royal procession to disguise the stench, as they sought to stave off an uprising and plot the succession that suited them best.
Two millennia on, similar considerations may be in play. The dictator’s flamboyant elder daughter Gulnara Karimova was once cited as a possible heir, but she was placed under house arrest in 2014 and her son said he feared for her life; her fate remains unknown. The political elite are presumed to be jockeying for place.
Though the situation is farcical, there is nothing funny about it for the country’s 31 million citizens. Uzbekistan is a secretive and authoritarian state; parallels have been drawn with North Korea (the latter country announced the 2011 death of its leader Kim Jong-il two days after it happened, and may have veiled the true circumstances). When the Soviet Union collapsed, some thought Uzbekistan relatively well placed for development. But the only president it has known has presided over immense corruption, forced labour, mass political imprisonment and systematic torture. Hundreds of peaceful protesters, including children, died in 2005’s Andijan massacre. There is no sign that a transition of power will improve life for ordinary Uzbeks.
Democratically elected leaders have hushed up severe health problems in the past, as Soviet leaders did repeatedly: in the US, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; in the UK, Winston Churchill, whose stroke in his second term as prime minister was concealed not only from the public but from colleagues. Such evasions are probably impossible to pull off in an age of rolling news, social media and hacking. As Hillary Clinton could testify, even non-facts can trigger speculation about health issues. Being well is no longer enough.
In any case, blurring the truth is one thing; there are degrees of health and incapacity. Erasing the line between life and death is another, possible – and necessary – only in secretive authoritarian systems (the Taliban, too, kept back the news of their leader Mullah Omar’s death for two years). Everything must be settled before the public are allowed to glimpse it, in case they might be tempted to seek some say: who rules them is none of their business. Even death can be held back for official convenience; the truth does not exist until determined by the state. We cannot say with any certainty whether Mr Karimov is dead or alive. But we can be certain that his people have the right to know.
