CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

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

ANKARA, 23 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - This week in Central Asia, 15 men accused of plotting to overthrow the Uzbek government in the eastern city of Andijan went on trial in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, in what rights groups are describing as a farcical attempt to conceal the truth.

Upwards of 1,000 civilians may have been killed in Andijan on 13 May, according to some rights groups, when security forces opened fired on protesters demonstrating against the authoritarian regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Central Asia's most populous state since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991.

Likened to China's Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Tashkent has rejected all requests for an independent international inquiry, placing the official death toll at 187.

On Tuesday, the 15 defendants appearing before the Supreme Court were the first of more than 100 people facing charges that included murder, fomenting mass unrest and an attempted coup, Reuters reported.

But human rights group maintain the well orchestrated trial, in which all of the accused have pleaded guilty, was merely an attempt to mask the reality of what really transpired.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called upon Washington and the European Union (EU) to impose sanctions - including an arms embargo, a visa ban on senior Uzbek officials and the suspension of EU trade privileges, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday.

Yet in what appears to be rehearsed statements, defendants in the case have accused foreign journalists and other intermediaries of involvement in the uprising.

On Wednesday, Muidin Sobirov, one of the accused, testified that he planned with his comrades to create an Islamic state in Uzbekistan and received training in camps in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan.

Following instructions from foreign journalists, the protesters tried to pose as secular people, he said, wearing normal civilian clothes and shunning religious garb, and had given food to people on the square.

"Foreign journalists advised us to do that following the example of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan," he professed, referring to the protests that had ousted long-time presidents in other former Soviet republics - and worried regional leaders like Karimov.

"When foreign journalists started helping us, we realised that we would get even bigger help if we posed as secular people," Sobirov said, claiming that they had also received advice from the US Embassy in Tashkent, the AP reported.

Human rights groups, however, say that the Uzbek authorities routinely force people to make false confessions and statements.

Moving to Kyrgyzstan, controversial businessman and member of parliament Bayaman Erkinbayev was gunned down outside his home in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on Thursday, the BBC reported. One of the driving forces behind the protests in March which led to the overthrow of former Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, Erkinbayev hailed from the country's south where the protests first began.

He is the second parliamentary deputy to be killed since the popular uprising, the BBC said, adding, the country had continued to see continuing political instability since.

In Tajikistan, a health official claimed convicts made up the majority of people living with HIV. "The majority of HIV sufferers are drug users and addicts and many of them are serving prison terms for various crimes or awaiting a decision on their fate in remand centres," Abdullo Shermadov, head of the Regional Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention No. 2 in the southern city of Kulob, the Asia Plus news agency reported him as saying on Saturday.

"The 44 HIV sufferers in the Kulob area as of today are also in detention," Shermadov said. A total of 57 HIV sufferers are officially registered in the entire Khatlon region, the report added.

On Thursday, Abdussadam Yuldashev, an officer in Tajikistan's anti-drugs department, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for smuggling heroin, the capital, Dushanbe's, municipal court said.

According to the AFP, this year the former Soviet republic had seen a score of police, troops or border guards arrested for drug-smuggling and more than two metric tones of drugs, including 800 kilos of heroin, seized.

The impoverished Central Asian state lies on a major route for drug trafficking from neighbouring Afghanistan to Russia and Western Europe.

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, the opposition block "For Fair Kazakhstan" has proposed that the pro-presidential political parties jointly invite observers from the US-based Carter Centre to monitor December's forthcoming presidential elections, the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency said on Monday

Shortly afterwards, the Kazakh Prosecutor-General Rashid Tusupbekov and the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan, John Ordway, discussed the involvement of international NGOs in the presidential election campaign, Interfax-Kazakhstan reported separately on Wednesday.

"During the meeting, the sides discussed some aspects of the activities of international NGOs and ensuring the legality of their activities" in the 4 December polls, a press release by Tusupbekov's office said.

According to the statement, the US diplomat had told the country's prosecutor-general that "the embassy intends to carry out a number of measures to support the election process in Kazakhstan".

"An accord was reached at the meeting that there will be preliminary discussions with the Prosecutor-General's office as to whether these measures comply with the country's legislation," it said.

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