Two stories to link for you today.

The first comes from Foreign Policy.  It ran ten days ago, but forgive my lateness. The internet operates at a different velocity in Kazakhstan, Foreign Policy is not my favorite source of news, and I really need to target my internet usage to the least time consuming. “Surfing” is not the verb that goes with Internet usage, though perhaps “slogging” would be appropriate.

In any event, here’s the link. The story is a round-up of the world’s worst daughters, though there is another with the world’s worst sons. While this might not be intuitive, they don’t mean worst in the sense of familial respect or damage to the family reputation. Basically they listed five of the most universally-reviled dictator offspring, listing a couple of their proven exploits. And who came in first place?

Googoosha, of course. Naturally, it’s more of a fluff piece, so it doesn’t really go into detail on the life and times of any of the five lucky winners. Foreign Policy fails to mention the outstanding warrant, for example, and the published claims that Gulnora is at the head of a sex trafficking racket sending impoverished Uzbekistani citizens to Dubai and UAE in general.

As for the second story, it comes from Uznews.net [на русском языке] [comically google translated version], and mentions the first story in relation to a letter sent to Karimova. Abdajalil Boimatov,President of the HRSU, sent an open letter to Karimova asking for the release of Norboy Kholdzhigitov, Chairman of the Ishtikhan district branch (Samarkand region). Kholdzhigitov was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 following the government’s crackdown after Andijan. The rights activist suffers from diabetes, but is no longer receiving medication from the State and his condition is very serious, according to his family.

The story from Uznews.net goes on to suggest this would be an excellent chance for Karimova to improve her reputation.  While that is certainly true, I’m not convinced it will mean anything to her.  If politics in Uzbekistan were effected by reputations, or in other words, if Uzbekistan were an open and free democracy and not a police state run by a President with supra-presidential powers, Karimova might take this step towards atoning for some of the social injustices for which she is responsible.

Don’t hold your breath, though.