The EconomistAugust 8th 2020 Asia 191A
t a busyintersection in Bangkok 15-
year-old Benjamaporn Nivas sits in her
school uniform with her hands bound be-
hind her and her mouth taped shut. A sign
hanging from her neck reads “This pupil vi-
olates school rules by wearing her hair
long, past her ears and with a fringe. Please
punish her.” On Ms Benjamaporn’s lap lies
a large pair of scissors to help passers-by
fulfil the request by administering a more
suitable hair-do.
When Ms Benjamaporn (pictured) ap-
peared in this way in late June, she was not
actually being punished by her school, but
rather was trying to draw attention to the
humiliating hair-related discipline teach-
ers in Thailand often inflict on students.
She was, predictably, punished for doing
so, by the police, who forced her to aban-
don her protest within hours. A week later
she and other members of a campaign
group called “Bad Student” had submitted
more than 300 complaints to the ministry
of education on behalf of pupils who had
been given haircuts by their teachers over
the previous four months alone.
The enforcement of uniform hair-
styles—crew-cuts for boys and fringeless
bobs for girls—dates to a dress code intro-
duced in 1972 by Thanom Kittikachorn, a
military dictator who was later toppled in a
student-led uprising. The dress code was
subsequently relaxed, and as recently as
May the education ministry reiterated thatPupils fight for the right to be hirsutePersonal freedom in ThailandCold cuts
Hair-dos and don’tsW
hen a damburst in Uzbekistan in
May, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the presi-
dent, was quick to promise justice for the
victims. Those responsible for the disaster,
which killed six people and displaced over
100,000, would answer before the law “re-
gardless of who they are”, he pledged. On
social media, ordinary Uzbeks aired their
suspicions that negligence or corruption
must have contributed to the collapse,
since the Sardoba dam had only been com-
pleted three years before. The structure
should surely have been built to withstand
the storms that officials initially blamed
for the tragedy, they argued. Days after the
devastating flood—which washed away
crops as well as homes in both Uzbekistan
and neighbouring Kazakhstan, causing
over $1bn of damage—the president
formed a task force to investigate. He gave
it a month to report back.
Three months on, the report has still
not arrived—and the task force now says it
will take another five months to complete.
But its preliminary findings do seem to
bear out ordinary Uzbeks’ fears: nine peo-
ple, including government officials and
employees of firms that helped build the
dam, have been arrested and face charges
of embezzlement, fraud, negligence and vi-
olation of health-and-safety rules.
Just how far the rot goes is hard to say.
The authorities have released the name of
just one of the nine suspects, but no senior
bureaucrats or businessmen appear tohave been arrested. Journalists looking
into the dam’s collapse, meanwhile, have
been harassed and fired. And the composi-
tion of the task force has raised eyebrows: it
includes Abdugani Sanginov, a senator
who, as head of a government agency,
awarded contracts for the construction of
the dam. Media reports also claim that his
family has ties to some of the firms that
won the contracts. Mr Sanginov has
brushed aside suggestions of any conflict
of interest.
That an investigation is even being con-
ducted is testament to the spirit of reform
instituted by Mr Mirziyoyev after he came
to power in 2016. His late predecessor, the
dictatorial Islam Karimov, would have sim-
ply brushed the whole episode under the
carpet. But the disaster is especially awk-
ward for Mr Mirziyoyev, since he presided
over the dam’s construction as prime min-
ister and became president shortly before
it started operating.
Moreover, Mr Sanginov is not the only
member of Mr Mirziyoyev’s government to
have had to fend off accusations of a con-
flict of interest. Jakhongir Artikkhodjaev,
the mayor of the capital, Tashkent, has ac-
knowledged ties to firms building Tash-
kent City, a flagship office, housing and lei-
sure complex intended to signal that
Uzbekistan is open for business again after
decades as a largely closed dictatorship.
Municipal officials say the contracts were
awarded with appropriate oversight, and
Mr Artikkhodjaev insists the firms won
them fair and square. Indeed, he implies
they are participating in the project largely
out of a sense of civic duty.
Under Mr Karimov, Uzbekistan became
a byword for crony capitalism. An Ameri-
can diplomat described Gulnara Karimova,
the ex-president’s disgraced daughter, as a
“robber baron” in a cable that was later
leaked. Last year Ms Karimova was indicted
in America for allegedly soliciting $865m
in bribes from foreign firms hoping to do
business in Uzbekistan. She is now in jail
in Uzbekistan on corruption charges, al-
though the judicial proceedings against
her have been far from transparent.
The current authorities insist that Uz-
bekistan has changed beyond recognition
since Ms Karimova held sway. But many
close connections between business and
government remain. Most notably, Oybek
Tursunov, Mr Mirziyoyev’s son-in-law and
a senior member of his staff, owns stakes in
several financial firms, including a big
bank and a payments network. Mr Mirzi-
yoyev positions himself as a champion of
transparency and has pushed through an
impressive array of reforms to improve the
investment climate and reduce corruption.
But ordinary Uzbeks still need to be con-
vinced that it is the public good, not private
interests, that dictate how the government
spends its money. 7TASHKENT
The failure of a dam highlights a lack
of transparency in public spendingCorruption in UzbekistanWeirs and
recriminations