CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ANKARA, 16 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Efforts to secure the release of 15 Uzbek nationals in a detention centre in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh continued this week, with the successful evacuation of 11 of them - UNHCR-mandated refugees - for third-country resettlement on Friday.

Part of an initial group of hundreds of Uzbeks who registered with the Kyrgyz authorities after fleeing violence in their homeland, their status has proven a source of contention between Tashkent and Biskek.

Upwards of 1,000 people may have been killed in the southern Uzbek city of Andijan on 13 May, according to some rights groups, when Uzbek forces attempted to quell demonstrations against the government of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, prompting the exodus to Kyrgyzstan.

Likened to China's 1989 Tiananamen Square massacre, the bloodshed has galvinised human rights groups the world over, but has failed to result in any tangible action against the regime.

But Tashkent, which maintains a death toll of 187, refers to those killed as 'terrorists' bent on staging a revolution.

On Thursday, Uzbek Deputy Prosecutor General Anvar Nabiyev accused Bishkek of being involved in the turbulence, saying "terrorists" who had taken part in the Andijan violence had been trained in Kyrgyzstan.

"These facts prove Kyrgyzstan's law enforcement bodies and representatives of state power turned a blind eye to the real threat of religious extremism," a Reuters report quoted him as saying.

"Doesn't this testify to the fact that the Kyrgyz authorities knew about the planned attack?" Nabiyev asked.

His comments came ahead of the trial of the first 15 men from Andijan accused of trying to overthrow the governmen, set to begin on 20 September.

Criminal proceedings have also been launched against 25 Uzbek officials in connection with events in Andijan for alleged negligence in protecting government property and failure to resist the attack, the Interfax-AVN military news agency reported.

While in a BBC report on Thursday, Nabiyev also accused the Western and international media, including the BBC, of knowing about the supposed uprising beforehand in order to publicise it and to spread disinformation about the Uzbek government.

Meanwhile in Bishkek, major bilateral and multilateral agencies providing assistance to Kyrgyzstan met on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of pursuing a joint country support strategy. The purpose of the two-day meeting was to test interest in developing a joint strategy amongst key development partners - the UK's Department for International Development (DfID), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Germany, the European Commission and the United Nations.

In a separate announcement this week, Tajiks hoped donors would double aid to their impoverished country, the poorest in the region.

"Tajikistan is among the countries in which social and economic development at this stage depends on external assistance," the Asia-Plus news agency quoted Tajik President Emomali Rahmonov as saying at this week's Summit 2005 at UN headquarters, marking the UN body's 60th anniversary.

The Tajik president proposed an innovative system of resolving the debt issue, assuring creditor countries, including G8 countries, that money raised would be channeled into fighting poverty and resolving a range of problems related to the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

On Monday, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev warned NGOs in that country to work within the framework of legislation.

"Our parliament and the government will closely follow both foreign and domestic NGOs on the issue of the implementation of our laws and the constitution of the country," Nazarbayev reportedly said in his address to the second civic forum in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

"I have warned and I warn again: we are for free work of the NGOs, but within the framework of the constitution and the laws of our country," he emphasised.

Over 5,000 NGOs are registered in Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest state and home to 15 million inhabitants, the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency reported.

Such warnings have become increasingly common in the region, where authoritarian leaders, suspicious of the activities of local and international NGOs alike, remain determined to maintain their grips on power following recent pro-democracy leadership changes in Ukraine and Georgia, and most recently in Kyrgyzstan earlier this year.

In neighbouring Uzbekistan, the NGO community in that country is still reeling from last week's court ruling calling for the immediate closure of the Uzbek branch of Internews Network, an international US-based NGO working to foster independent media worldwide.

Meanwhile in Turkmenistan, Jehovah's Witness Konstantin Vlaskin, beaten by police and imprisoned for 15 days in July on charges of hooliganism, is reportedly challenging the basis of his conviction. "The police claim I caused a disturbance, but this is untrue," he told Forum 18 News Service from the eastern city of Turkmenabad. "They wanted to cover up the fact they were punishing me for my religious activity." After the prosecutor's office upheld the charge on 31 August, Vlaskin pledged to take his case higher.

According to Forum 18, which monitors religious freedom in the former Soviet Union, Turkmenistan's Jehovah's Witnesses have not applied for official registration, saying they are still not clear whether it would be any help in being able to practice their faith freely. Registered faiths had regularly suffered raids on religious services, the news agency claimed.

[ENDS]