His daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, earlier thanked well-wishers for their messages of support which she said were helping her father’s recovery – a move aimed at countering reports in some media this week that he had died.
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MOSCOW-The longtime leader of Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov, suffered a brain hemorrhage and is in intensive care, his daughter wrote on her Instagram account on Monday.
Karimov has been slow to implement market reforms and Uzbekistan’s economy is still dominated by the state.
The death of Karimov, if confirmed, will start a succession struggle that has no clear standout candidate. But after she was named in worldwide corruption probes and gained a wide following on social networks, she disappeared from public view and was reported to be under house arrest in 2014.
A statement published Sunday in Uzbekistan’s state newspaper did not specify a reason for Karimov’s hospitalization. Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, then deputy prime minister, took over.
In reality, a successor might be picked much more quickly by the elite, as was the case in Turkmenistan, another Central Asian nation, whose authoritarian leader Saparmurat Niyazov died in 2006.
He had been due to make a public appearance in Taknesh on 1 September, the 25th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence from the former Soviet bloc. He was born on January 30, 1938 in Samarkand.
It has become a tradition in Uzbekistan for the president to dance during major holiday festivities.
Some foreign experts named Azimov as one of the possible candidates for the post of Uzbek president.
In 1995, Karimov’s presidential term was extended again until 2000.
His mandate was extended for a further five years in 1995 by referendum, and he won re-election in 2000, 2007 and 2015. He was married, with two daughters, Gulnara and Lola.
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“We are really anxious since we had heard that our president has fallen ill”.
