Do we like them?

Do we like Shavkat Mirziyoyev?

Our score: 3 out of 10. Some real reforms and a rollback of forced labour, set against a law jailing gay men and prison terms for people who insulted him.

Mirziyoyev runs Uzbekistan, a country of tens of millions in Central Asia, and he has no real rivals. In July 2023 he won a third term with 87 per cent of the vote against three little-known challengers, after a referendum stretched presidential terms from five years to seven. The OSCE said the vote “lacked genuine political competition despite some efforts to reform”. I couldn't open a full biography page, so the early-career story is thin here.

On LGBTQ+ people, the picture is grim. Under Article 120, sex between men is punishable by up to three years in prison. When a new draft criminal code came out in 2021, ILGA-Europe said it did not remove that offence, only moved it to Article 154 under “crimes against family, children and morality”. The government told UN bodies the law reflects Uzbek traditions and religion. In 2024 a party leader, not the president, said a law banning “propaganda” on the topic was being worked on. I found no source showing Mirziyoyev backed that bill.

Dissent is where the 'New Uzbekistan' branding wears thin. RFE/RL reported in 2024 that a teenager got 2.5 years for an Instagram comment with a swear word aimed at the president, and another man got three years over Telegram posts calling for his removal. A YouTube critic was convicted of insulting the president and later sent to a psychiatric hospital, though his relatives say he has no mental disorder. Human Rights Watch had already said back in 2019 that the political system remained “largely authoritarian”.

The darkest chapter is Karakalpakstan in July 2022. Protests broke out over constitutional changes that would have weakened the region's status, and a state of emergency followed. Mirziyoyev admitted there were “fatalities among civilians and law enforcement officers”, then dropped the provisions after visiting. Kuwait Times later reported the crackdown left at least 21 people dead. Where you land depends on whether you see the U-turn as listening or as damage control after the deaths.

There is real good in the file. HRW noted “some signs of hope” under him, including the release of dozens of people held on politically motivated charges. At the UN in 2023 he said forced labour and child labour had been “completely abolished”, a claim I couldn't check against a current independent assessment. In January 2026 he also publicly leaned on law enforcement over organised crime and drug networks.

So the call is mixed on both tests. On the harm test, the law against gay sex survives on his watch, but I found no campaign of his own against LGBTQ+ people, so it's a close call. On the good-person test, the releases and reforms count, but so do the prison terms for insulting him and the Karakalpakstan deaths. For a family page that backs everyone, that adds up to a low score and a lot of caveats.