Uzbekistan president Islam Karimov rumoured to have died after stroke

Dictator Islam Karimov, who suffered a stroke last week, is thought to have died

President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, who is rumoured to have died following a stroke (Getty)

Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov is rumoured to have died after suffering a stroke - but the country's government is refusing to comment.

The authoritarian leader, who has been in office since Uzbekistan seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, was hospitalised last week, his daughter confirmed, and a Russian media outlet announced the dictator died on Monday.

Daniil Kislov, who runs the Russian Fergana news agency, told the Guardian on Tuesday he was “99 per cent sure” Karimov had died.

But despite the reports, Karimov’s youngest daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, posted a message on Wednesday thanking people for their support and saying it was helping her father’s recovery.

Karimov’s older daughter, Gulnara Karimova, who was once seen as his likely successor and enjoyed careers as a pop singer and the face of a jewellery line, has been held prisoner under surveillance and armed guards by her father’s regime since 2014.

Steve Swerdlow, a Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the Guardian: “We have no idea what day the initial incident actually happened. Some have said it was Thursday, some said it was Saturday. It’s just like the Karimov regime to be so cowardly and so opaque that they can’t even give us the concrete information. Even in death, Karimov is a wily fox.”

Karimov’s death will leave a power vacuum in a country that has had the same leader since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and where no opposition party has ever been allowed to challenge the president’s rule.

Uzbekistan was due to celebrate 25 years of independence from the USSR on Thursday, but according to local BBC reports the event has been cancelled.

Under Karimov’s regime, Uzbeks have endured appalling human rights abuses, and at Andijan in 2005, the country saw the largest state-led massacre of protestors since Tiananmen Square, which the authorities continue to deny occurred.

Human Rights Watch’s statement on the country says: “Uzbekistan’s human rights record is atrocious. Thousands are imprisoned on politically-motivated charges. Torture is endemic in the criminal justice system. Authorities continue to crackdown on civil society activists, opposition members, and journalists.”