From Sunday’s Washington Post:

“Forget President Bush’s ‘axis of evil.’ Who are the overlooked autocrats we should be paying attention to but aren’t? Outlook asked people in the know for their nominations:”

Islam Karimov, President, Uzbekistan

Karimov’s acts of barbarism in the name of security are infamous. By some accounts, he has had his victims boiled alive and had others tortured with beatings, electric shock, asphyxiation, rape and burns. Having come to power as a Communist Party official in the former Soviet Union, he has ruled since the collapse of the USSR through a series of suspect elections. He won the presidency with 86 percent of the vote in 1991 and extended his mandate in 2000 with 91.9 percent of the vote.

– Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Saparmurad Niyazov, President, Turkmenistan

Also known as “Turkmenbashi,” Niyazov has been his country’s absolute ruler for the past 20 years. The worst features of the Soviet totalitarian system are preserved in Turkmenistan: a gulag of penal colonies; the confinement of dissenters in psychiatric hospitals; show trials; and refusal to permit dissenters to leave the country. Within the country, Niyazov is hailed as a national prophet, and his book, “The Ruhnama,” is treated as a sacred text. Though Turkmenistan derives vast revenue from its natural gas reserves, its population of 5 to 6 million is impoverished, education is severely restricted and even reports on infectious diseases are prohibited.

– Aryeh Neier, President, Open Society Institute

Also see the main article.