Uzbekistan sets Tourist Police to help visitors as tourist numbers soars

Monday, April 30, 2018

Ex-Soviet Uzbekistan has deployed Tourism Police as the international visitors arrived for Silk Road Tourism.

The user-friendly Tourist Police deployed in the famed Silk Road city of Samarkand and other hot-spots as a visitor boom sweeps the Central Asian country.

The force, established in January, is viewed as part of a broader opening initiated by Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government following a long period of self-enforced isolation.

There are more than 2.5 million tourists visited Uzbekistan last year. It is a rise 24 percent increase on the previous year.

Samarkand — a former power center positioned at the epicenter of millennia-old trade routes linking China and Europe — hosts symbols of authoritarian continuity as well as tentative reform.

A short walk from the ceramic and marble dazzle of the three madrasahs towering over the city’s old square is the statue of Islam Karimov, who ruled the country from before independence in 1991 until his death in 2016.

Laid to rest in a grand mausoleum in Samarkand’s historic center, Karimov is criticized by rights groups as the architect of one of the world’s most repressive and closed-off police states.

Far from being disavowed, his monument is now yet another photo opportunity for visitors and wedding parties in the city, where he was born in 1938 and remains widely revered.

The foreign tourism grew by around a quarter during Mirziyoyev’s first year in office emerged as a key battleground in a power struggle that pitted the new reform-touting president against regime hardliners.

In February for instance, Mirziyoyev ordered the introduction of a 30-day visa-free regime for citizens of seven countries — Israel, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and Japan — and relaxation of registration rules for citizens of 39 others.

In cities like Samarkand, the changes were cheered by a population that endured long stretches of economic stagnation under Karimov.

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