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| | Profile of President Islam Karimov (Human Rights Watch Press release, March 7, 2002) |
 | | (March 7, 2002) President Islam Abduganievich Karimov was born in 1938 in the silk-road city of Samarkand. |
 | | If necessary, I'll shoot them myself
!" - President Karimov, upon the 1998 adoption of a highly restrictive religion law, warning parliament not to be soft on "Islamic extremists." Many peaceful Muslims have also been rounded up in the sweeps of "fundamentalists." BBC Monitoring report of Uzbek Radio second program, May 1, 1998. |
 | | The government originally blamed the incidents, including a bus hijacking, on "criminals" and later on "Islamic extremists." Agence France-Presse, April 2, 1999. |
| www.hrw.org /press/2002/03/karimovprof.htm (420 words) |
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