Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva posted a message on social media thanking “everyone for your kind words of support and best wishes for the speedy recovery of our President”.
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Earlier in the day, some media outlets reported that Karimov died, just two days after he had been hospitalized following a stroke.
Long lambasted for brutally crushing dissent, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov has kept a stranglehold on power for over 25 years – even at the expense of his own daughter.
Mr Karimov was re-elected to a fifth term a year ago with more than 90% of the vote and there are concerns that he has no obvious successor in a country that has never held a fair and free election.
Uzbekistan’s Cabinet of Ministers announced on August 28 that the 78-year-old Karimov had been hospitalized with an undisclosed ailment and would require a certain amount of time for medical assessment and treatment.
But the veteran operator has managed to play Russian Federation, the West and China off against each other to keep his regime from total isolation.
At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Unio, n he had been nearly two years at the first secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, and moved smoothly into the role of the independent republic’s first president.
Karimov has no obvious successor, raising questions about the long-term stability of the landlocked country that has never held an election judged free and fair by global monitors. “I think generally they’re going to keep an eye on the ball”, he said.
Born on January 30, 1938, Karimov was raised in an orphanage in the ancient city of Samarkand.
While information is very tightly controlled in the ex-Soviet nation, reports have appeared in opposition media based overseas claiming that Karimov is dead.
He has always been lambasted by critics for brutally crushing dissent – most prominently the deadly 2005 response to protests in the city of Andijan death in which government forces are accused of killing hundreds of demonstrators.
Today, Uzbekistan is one of the most repressive states in the world, according to human rights organisations.
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Gulnara was “hyperactive, but her ambition was not shared within the family, by her mother and sister”, said analyst Rabbimov, while her sister Karimova-Tillyaeva has “no ambitions” for the presidential role.
