Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov was hospitalized with a cerebral hemorrhage, his daughter said Monday. His condition is considered stable. Doctors can not predict his health condition for the nearest future.
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“I would also like to use this opportunity and to thank all of you with all from the bottom of my heart for your kind, honest and encouraging words of support and wishes for our president’s speedy recovery!”
The government of Central Asia’s most populous country, with reserves of oil, gas and gold, said on Sunday Karimov was undergoing hospital treatment, but gave no details.
The former Soviet apparatchik, whose brutal crackdown on dissent has been widely criticized by rights groups, has been at the helm of the strategic country bordering Afghanistan from since before it gained independence from Moscow in 1991.
Karimov reportedly lost consciousness after consuming some alcohol at the banquet, the PMU said in a statement on its website.
The government on Tuesday released a statement saying that world leaders including US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Xinping had congratulated Karimov on Uzbekistan’s independence anniversary.
Karimov has ruled Uzbekistan for more than a quarter of a century. He is regarded as an iron-fisted leader, who has been elected three times in elections deemed neither free nor fair by election monitors. “They want to know what happens to Karimov next”. His elder daugher, Gulnara, has not appeared in public since several media reported in 2014 that she had been placed under house arrest.
Born on January 30, 1938, Karimov was raised in an orphanage in the ancient city of Samarkand.
His mandate was extended for a further five years in 1995 by referendum, and he won re-election in 2000, 2007 and 2015.
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Reporters Without Borders states that “Karimov subjects his country to the strictest censorship”.
