Tag Archives: rights and freedoms

Uzbek police detain opposition leader

FEB. 28 2021 (The Bulletin) — Police in Uzbekistan detained Khidirnazar Allakulov, one of the country’s only opposition leaders, on the day that he was due to hold a meeting with supporters in Tashkent, raising questions over the authorities’ attitude towards political plurality. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has spoken of his mission to uphold democratic principles in Uzbekistan.

ENDS

— This story was published in issue 474 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on March 5 2021

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Kazakh authorities clamp down on anti-China protests

Leave a Reply

ALMATY/FEB. 10 2021 (The Bulletin) — Apparently unconcerned by hardening language from the West towards Beijing and its treatment of ethnic Kazakhs and Uyghurs, the authorities in Kazakhstan jailed a man for protesting outside the Chinese consulate in Almaty.

Media reported that police detained Baibolat Kunbolatuly, who was part of a 10-person protest mainly of women holding photos of missing sons, brothers and husbands outside the consulate the day before, and that a court then efficiently sentenced him to 10 days in jail for breaking rules around mass gatherings. In Kazakhstan, protests require written permission from the authorities.

Mr Kunbolatuly had been protesting against the disappearance of his brother in China, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. He suspects that his brother is being held in one of China’s, by now notorious, re-education camps which have been built in Xinjiang province over the past four years to hold hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

China has said that the camps are education-focused and that they are designed to help ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs improve themselves. Human rights groups have called them prisons, a view Western governments are coming round to.

In Kazakhstan, reporting on the camps in Xinjiang has been minimal but protests against China and its actions in Xinjiang are becoming more widespread.

The issue of China’s treatment of its Muslim minorities in Xinjiang is a thorny issue for the Kazakh government.

It is reliant on Chinese cash to fund various infrastructure projects and China is also a major stakeholder in Kazakh industry. The flipside is that there are an estimated 200,000 ethnic Kazakhs living in Xinjiang and a large ethnic Uyghur population living in Kazakhstan.

And, embarrassingly for Kazakh officials, the major information leaks from Xinjiang over the past few years have also come from Kazakhs escaping over the border into Kazakhstan. They now want to prove to their Chinese counterparts that they are reliable partners.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Uzbekistan is making progress on eradicating forced labour, says ILO

Leave a Reply

FEB. 2 2021 (The Bulletin) — The International Labour Organisation (ILO), part of the UN, said that Uzbekistan was continuing to make good progress in eradicating forced labour in its cotton sector. The statement is important for Uzbekistan as its government has tried to persuade Western companies to lift a ban on products made using Uzbek cotton, a key export. The ban was imposed during Islam Karimov’s time as president. He died in 2016.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Armenia and Azerbaijan submit competing cases to human rights court

Leave a Reply

FEB. 2 2021 (The Bulletin) — Armenia and Azerbaijan have both submitted cases against the other with the European Court for Human Rights linked to their war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh last year. Azerbaijan won the war, humiliating Armenia and taking back control of the region. Armenia accused Azerbaijan of not treating POWs correctly and Azerbaijan accused Armenia of ignoring human rights during what it described as a 30-day occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 471 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

European Court for Human Rights says Russia mistreated Georgian civilians in 2008 war

Leave a Reply

TBILISI/JAN. 21 2021 (The Bulletin) — Nearly 13 years after the case was originally submitted, the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Russia was responsible for crimes committed against Georgian citizens during a five-day war for control of South Ossetia in 2008.

It said that towards the end of the war in August 2008, Russian forces had been in control of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, when Georgian citizens were rounded up from their homes and kept prisoners in inhumane conditions in the basements of official buildings.

“The conditions of detention of some 160 Georgian civilians and the humiliating acts to which they had been exposed had caused them undeniable suffering and had to be regarded as inhuman and degrading treatment, the court said.

The court did rule, though, that at the start of the war, which ran between Aug. 8 – 12, South Ossetian militia was in control of Tskhinvali and Russia could not be held responsible for alleged war crimes during the first three days of the conflict.

Georgia lost the war, which the Kremlin said was started by the then Georgian President Mikheil Saakahsvili, but has since worked to discredit Russia.

Georgian politicians said that the ECHR ruling was an important win. In a tweet, Georgian PM Giorgi Gakharia said that the ECHR’s ruling was “one of the most important days in the history of Georgia”. It was probably no coincidence, either, that as the verdict was announced Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili was touring Brussels in another drive to build support for Georgia’s entry to the EU and NATO.

Russia, which is a member of EHRC, has said that the findings were biased and that it does not recognise them.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Fiji beats Uzbekistan to UN human rights chair

Leave a Reply

JAN. 15 2021 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan was beaten to the chair of the UN’s Human Rights Council by Fiji, the favoured candidate of Western nations. It was the turn of the Asia-Pacific region to head the council but regional members couldn’t agree on which country to put forward, triggering a vote between Uzbekistan, Fiji and Bahrain. Analysts said that the Uzbek and Bahrain candidates had been encouraged by Russia and China.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 469 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Kyrgyz authorities interferring with labour unions, says HRW

Leave a Reply

DEC. 22 2020 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan are intimidating leaders of Kyrgyzstan’s worker unions and are trying to interfere with how they operate, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said. Unions in Kyrgyzstan are considered influential, with thousands of members. After three coups in 15 years, Kyrgyzstan has something of a reputation for indulging in street-level politics.

— ENDS

— This story was first published in issue 467 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021

Comment: Human rights in the region are worsening

Leave a Reply

JULY 31 (The Bulletin) — If there was doubt about the direction of travel for media and human rights in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, the past fortnight has dispelled it.

First Tajikistan and Azerbaijan teamed up to block a second term for two highly thought-of senior officials at the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Solrun Gisladottir, as head of its vote monitoring unit ODHIR, and Harlem Desir, the OSCE’s media representative. All 57 members of the OSCE have to agree on each of the key appointments and Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, with some support from Turkey, said that Desir and Gisladottir had been biased against them.

In truth, Desir and Gisladottir had just been clear on calling out Tajikistan and Azerbaijan for what they are. Serial abuses of democratic principles, media freedom and civil rights.

And then there is also the death in a Kyrgyz prison of Azimzhan Askarov. He was an ethnic Uzbek whose mistake was to irritate the Kyrgyz authorities in the south of the country in the years before inter-ethnic fighting broke out in 2010. The police in Kyrgyzstan are dominated by ethnic Kyrgyz and Askarov accused them of bias against Uzbeks, torture and abuse.

He was arrested in the aftermath of the fighting in 2010 and accused of murdering a policeman. Human rights groups and Western diplomats said that the charges were fabricated but their protests were ignored and Askarov was imprisoned for life.

Even when it was clear that Askarov was gravely ill, the authorities in Kyrgyzstan refused to grant him any clemency. Human Rights Watch accused the Kyrgyz authorities of wanting Askarov to die in prison.

So, there we have it. Tajikistan and Azerbaijan undermine one of the more effective on-the-ground peace-making organisations and Kyrgyzstan targets an annoying Uzbek human rights activist to die in one of its prisons.

Myopic, narcissistic and nihilist, their true colours have been visible for all to see over the past fortnight.

The region is less stable without an effective OSCE and less equitable without Askarov.

ENDS

— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Kyrgyz film showing corruption aired on Youtube

Leave a Reply

JULY 28 (The Bulletin) — The producers of a film showing corruption by Kyrgyz officials said that the authorities tried to block the film’s release. Meken shows a stand-off between a Chinese mining company and Kyrgyz villagers. It also shows bribes being paid by Chinese workers to Kyrgyz government officials for breaking various environmental rules. Although the film is fiction, it is rooted in real life events. The director of Meken, Medetbek Jailov, said that the film was supposed to be aired earlier in the year but was blocked because the security service had demanded that corruption scenes were removed. Instead, the producers will release the film, for free, on Youtube.

ENDS

— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2020

Azerbaijani authorities arrest opposition leaders

Leave a Reply

JULY 28 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Azerbaijan sent opposition leader Mammad Ibrahim to pretrial detention ahead of his trial for organising an illegal rally. Police detained Mr Ibrahim and around 30 other opposition activists linked to the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party at a protest on July 14/15 that called for intensified military action against Armenia around the disputed region Nagorno-Karabakh. Opposition groups have accused the government of using the protests and anti-coronavirus lockdowns to target opposition activists.

ENDS

— This story was published in issue 455 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 31 2020.