Where Freedoms Are Expanding—Slowly
A little more than a year ago, I stood among a crush of reporters shouting questions at President Donald Trump and his Uzbek counterpart, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, in the Oval Office, and asked Mirziyoyev what his White House meeting would ultimately mean for the Uzbek people.
His reply was a standard one: The visit, he said, showed that Uzbekistan’s voice mattered in international affairs—but then, acknowledging my reporting as an Uzbek American journalist, he added wryly, “Come back to Uzbekistan.”
On the face of it, his offer was implausible. Mirziyoyev had ascended to power only two years prior, and under his predecessor, Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan had been one of the most repressive societies on earth. Karimov had ruled the country for more than a quarter century until his death, in 2016, and brooked no dissent: The country had not simply jailed reporters, but in fact had than any journalists had been imprisoned anywhere
