Authorities in Kazakhstan plan to extradite 30 Uzbek refugees charged with "extremism" back to Uzbekistan, Association Droit de l’Homme en Asie Centrale (Association for Human Rights in Central Asia), a human rights group founded by Uzbek exiles in Paris, reports in a press release today.
Human rights groups are concerned that the Uzbeks may face torture if returned to their homeland. The refugees have been in prison since their arrest June 9. The accusations against most of the prisoners are based on torture of the suspects, says the Association.
While 17 of the refugees arrested have certificates from the UNHCR that they are seeking asylum, Kazakhstan apparently does not recognize them. Under Kazakhstan's 2009 refugee law, a central commission should determine the asylum applicants' status, and is empowered to give them a one-year permission to remain in the country. The commission has already overruled decisions by the UNHCR in other cases. In the past, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that extradition to Uzbekistan would violate the right of refugees not to be subject to inhumane treatment and to receive a fair trial.
UNHCR has told human rights activists that they are unable to influence Kazakhstan's decision on the cases, but can only inform Astana of its violation of international law. Officials from UNHCR have met with the Uzbek refugees but evidently are unable to do anything more for them, the Association reports.
In the last year, there have been numerous cases in Uzbekistan of large groups of persons tried for extremism or terrorism behind closed doors, with no defense and little known about their cases; each year a number of prisoners die in custody as well.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in Paris has joined the Association's call to stop the extradition of the Uzbek refugees to Uzbekistan.
When the refugees were arrested in June, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees contacted the government of Kazakhstan to remind them of their obligations to those seeking asylum, and had received assurances that those with proper registration documents issued by the Department of Migration would be released, EurasiaNet reported in June.
The refugees may have been rounded up as a security measure prior to a high-profile meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in June.
As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, Kazakhstan is committed to the principle of "non-refoulement," which prohibit states from deporting individuals to countries where they may face torture or threat to life or freedom. But human rights groups have noted that Kazakhstan may believe that regional agreements take precedence over the UN, says EurasiaNet. The CIS Minsk Convention obliges states to extradite individuals wanted by other CIS members and the SCO's Astana Declaration commits members to extradite terrorism and extremism suspects.
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