08 September 2016
The Week of the Living Dead
Reports of the undead in Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, North Korea and China.
by Neil Tidmarsh
Is he dead? Is he alive?
For almost a week, these were the questions everyone in the most populous country in Central Asia was asking about their leader.
Yes, we’re talking about President Karimov of Uzbekistan here, the ruthless dictator who maintained his iron grip on power for nearly thirty years through abduction, torture and execution (according to human rights groups). So it’s less a case of Arthur, the once and future king, still alive on the mystical Isle of Avalon and ready to come to the rescue of his people if they ever find themselves in dire need of a great hero; still less that of Spain’s El Cid, who (legend says) managed to lead a cavalry charge after death to defeat the Almoravids who were besieging Valencia. No, it’s more like the undead Count Dracula, the feared vampire who preyed on his terrified peasants, sucking the life-blood out of them and refusing to die.
On Monday 30 August, his daughter announced that he had had a brain haemorrhage the previous weekend (while drinking vodka at a banquet to honour his country’s Olympic medal winners, according to other sources). Hours later, his death was announced by Fergana, an independent and banned Uzbeck website based in Moscow, and was confirmed on Twitter by the head of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee. These reports were then denied by officials in Tashkent, who insisted that the president was still in intensive care but in a stable condition. Media outside the country, however, continued to quote reliable sources insisting that he was dead. Finally, the Uzbeck government announced his death on Friday 2nd September, saying that he had died that evening.
It’s thought that news of his death was suppressed (if that is indeed what happened) to give officials time to organise some sort of succession; his grip on power was such that there is no obvious successor. There is no opposition waiting to take over, either. Opposition wasn’t tolerated. Political activists and Islamist militants were imprisoned, tortured and executed by the thousand (some of them boiled alive; “an accident with a kettle”, according to the official records). Hundreds of peaceful protestors (including women and children) were shot dead by troops in one incident in 2005. Last week’s arrest of deputy prime minister Rustam Azimov, thought to be a contender to succeed the president, suggests that serious jockeying for position has in fact been going on behind the scenes.
The outcome of the power struggle is of vital interest to the wider world, as Uzbekistan has a majority Muslim population and Islamist militants have been vigorously repressed (a large number of Uzbeks are fighting for Isis). The country is of strategic importance, sharing a border with Afghanistan in this volatile region, and has been wooed by both Russia and the West in the fight against terrorism. (Coincidentally, the Taliban of Afghanistan has a similar story; their leader Mohammed Omar died in April 2013 but his death wasn’t announced until July 2015; many claim that the man who succeeded him, Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, kept it secret for two years until he was sure of the succession.)
The living dead have haunted the news this week beyond the borders of Uzbekistan. Rumours of the death of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe took wing after he mysteriously disappeared from public view for four days. Mugabe is 92 years old and is known to be in poor health. But his presidential aircraft landed in Harare on Saturday, after a trip to Dubai, and the president emerged to tell reporters “Yes, it’s true I was dead. I resurrected like I always do. I don’t know how many times I die. Jesus died once and was resurrected only once, and poor Mugabe several times.” But his bankrupt country and its ruined economy continue to inhabit the zombie zone, neither dead nor alive.
Even more disturbing is the story of David Sneddon, an American student who was reported dead in 2004, in an accident while hiking in China, drowned after falling into the Jinsha River at the Tiger Leaping Gorge. A report published in Japan this week, however, claimed that he is in fact alive and living in Pyongyang, North Korea, with a wife and two children, and working as an English teacher. It even claimed that Kim Jong Un had been one of his pupils. Before he disappeared, Mr Sneddon had been a Mormon missionary in South Korea and so spoke Korean, and the area in which he disappeared is known to be an illicit corridor in and out of North Korea. His parents have called on the US State Department to investigate the possibility that their son was kidnapped by North Korea.
Lastly, a bizarre tale of life after death emerged in a court in Shenzen, China, last week. The Emperor Qianlong died in 1799, but he was known to have been a seeker of the elixir of eternal life. A successful seeker at that, according to a billionaire banker who was advising a woman who was planning to set up a rural bank. He introduced her to the emperor himself, back from the dead thanks to that elixir, and successfully persuaded her to lend them over £5 million so they could launch a campaign to recover his imperial assets. Yes, they were both con-men; the banker was not a banker and the emperor was not an emperor; and they were somehow finally rumbled by the woman and her husband. I wonder what gave them away? What could possibly have made the victims suspicious of a two hundred year old emperor back from the dead?
One striking thing about these four stories is that they all come from countries which are not exactly heaven on earth as far as human rights are concerned. What are we to make of that? Where a regime wields the power of life and death, could it be that the distinction between the two can somehow get confused? Where people are kept in the dark, how are they to know who is alive and who is dead? Perhaps an all-powerful ruler will always be anxious to convince himself and his subjects that his power can never die. Perhaps a repressed and unhappy populace can never feel truly alive.
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