Shavkat Mirziyoyev

O‘rinbek Yoqubov, a cousin of Miromon, being a veteran of World War II, became a Hero of the Soviet Union in April 1944.

Shavkat's mother Marifat, died at a young age from tuberculosis, which she contracted in the Zaamin tuberculosis dispensary, where she worked as a nurse.

After the death of his wife, Miromon Mirziyoyev married a second time to a woman from Tatarstan.

Shavkat Miromonovich Mirziyoyev (born 24 July 1957) is an Uzbek politician who has served as President of Uzbekistan and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Uzbekistan since 14 December 2016.

Mirziyoyev was born on 24 July 1957 in the Jizzakh Region of the Uzbek SSR.

Some media outlets alleged that he was really born in the village of Yakhtan in the Leninabad Oblast (now the Sughd Region) of Tajikistan, and even unconfirmed claims that he was allegedly a Tajik.

After an investigation by several journalists, it was revealed that Yakhtan is the native home of Mirziyoyev's grandfather on his father's side, and that Mirziyoyev himself is an Uzbek, and not a Tajik.

His father, Miromon Mirziyoyevich Mirziyoyev, worked as a physician for most of his life until death.

He worked as the head physician of the tuberculosis dispensary in Zaamin.

Mirziyoyev's political career originally began after joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, where he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR in 1990.

He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

In 1981, Mirziyoyev graduated from the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Melioration.

He holds a Candidate (Ph.D.) degree in Technological Sciences.

From mid-1990s, he headed several regions of Jizzakh and Samarqand as a governor (hakim) before his appointment as the head of government by then-President Islam Karimov.

In early 1990, he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR's last legislative body before the independence of Uzbekistan in 1991.

The ceremony took place in the Senate and State Legislative Assembly Building in Tashkent.

He served as governor (Hakim) of Jizzakh Region from 1996 to September 2001, then as governor of Samarqand Region from September 2001 until his appointment as prime minister in 2003.

Previously, Mirziyoyev led the government as a Prime Minister of Uzbekistan from 2003 to 2016.

He was nominated as prime minister by President Islam Karimov on 12 December 2003, and approved by the Uzbek parliament.

He replaced Prime Minister Oʻtkir Sultonov.

His deputy was Ergash Shoismatov and his press secretary was Sherzodkhon Kudratkhuja.

Trade between South Korea and Uzbekistan increased by nearly 40% between 2005 and 2006, to $565 million.

Mirziyoyev and Han Myeong-sook, the Prime Minister of South Korea, met in Tashkent on 25 September 2006.

They signed several agreements, including one deal in which Uzbekistan was to send 300 tons of Uzbek uranium ore to South Korea every year from 2010 to 2014.

The deal bypasses U.S. companies that acted previously as middlemen for South Korean imports of Uzbek uranium ore.

Han also met with President Islam Karimov and parliament speaker Erkin Xalilov.

Han and Mirziyoyev boosted cooperation in the energy, agriculture, construction, architecture, and information technology sectors.

The report states that during a 2015 conference call with local authorities and farmers, Mirziyoyev said “Go to the homes of farmers in debt, who can't repay their credit, take their cars, livestock, and if there are none, take the slate from their roofs!”

On 24 October 2021, Uzbekistan's Central Election Commission announced that Mirziyoyev received 80.1 percent of the vote and will serve a second five-year term.

A member of the Samarkand clan, he was considered to be one of the leading potential successors to Islam Karimov as President of Uzbekistan.

Mirziyoyev was reported to have friendly relations with Karimov's wife, Tatyana Karimova, and National Security Council chairman Rustam Inoyatov.

Following the death of President Karimov, Mirziyoyev was appointed by the Oliy Majlis as acting president of Uzbekistan on 8 September 2016.

He was subsequently elected to a full five-year term as president in the 2016 election from the Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party (O'zLiDeP), winning 88.6% of the vote.

Mirziyoyev was re-elected for second five-year term with 80.3% of the vote in the 2021 presidential election, and then again for a renewed first seven-year term with 87.7% of the vote in a snap 2023 presidential election as an independent candidate with the O'zLiDeP backing, after a constitutional amendment had granted him to legally run for third time after resetting his presidential term of office.

After the death of Karimov was announced on 2 September 2016, Mirziyoyev was appointed as head of the committee organizing the funeral of the President.

That was taken as a sign that Mirziyoyev would succeed Karimov as president.

According to a 2017 report by Human Rights Watch on forced and child labour in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan, during his time as prime minister from 2003 to 2016 Mirziyoyev "oversaw the cotton production system, and as the previous governor of Jizzakh and Samarkand, he was in charge of two cotton-producing regions. The 2016 harvest, when Mirziyoyev was acting president and retained control over cotton production, continued to be defined by mass involuntary mobilization of workers under threat of penalty."

Under his presidency, Mirziyoyev implemented a range of liberal reforms in Uzbekistan’s political and economic system by attracting foreign investment, improving relations with neighboring Central Asian countries, as well as release of political prisoners that was notably accompanied by closure of the infamous Jaslyk Prison in 2019.

In late 2021, he announced a series of constitutional reforms which included an abolition of capital punishment and the protection of human rights, which were ratified following the 2023 constitutional referendum with an overwhelming 90.6% of support.

One of the proposed changes had initially included a removal of the semi-autonomous Karakalpakstan's right to secession, which led to deadly unrest in the region in July 2022 with the protests being brutally suppressed and resulting in the scrapping of the controversial proposal.