Kyrgyzstan to Pay Osh Victims’ Families: Can It Be Done Fairly?

Two months after passing a deficit-plagued budget, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament has amended it, reallocating about $12.9 million to compensate those who lost relatives in last June’s ethnic violence in Osh and Jalal-Abad. While the effort seems commendable on its face, the political pressure surrounding it and the implementation process to come both raise doubts about how fair and transparent the payouts will be.

Under a decree signed by Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev, made public May 10, families of Kyrgyzstani citizens killed in the clashes will receive a one-time payment of 1 million soms (about $21,500); families of the missing will also collect a million soms; those who sustained serious bodily injuries -- as determined by experts in forensic medicine -- will get 100,000 soms; and those who received “less grievous bodily harm” -- ditto the official diagnosis -- will get 50,000 soms. 

Here are two of the biggest challenges to an equitable compensation process:

• Official record keeping and forensic expertise are notoriously weak. After the street riots of April 2010, the death toll was about one-fifth the number killed in June and still one person registered as dead -- by the state’s forensic experts -- turned out to be alive and well and driving a cab in Russia. The man’s family received 1 million soms in compensation, which, by the time he was found, had already been spent. Who lies buried under his name remains unknown. As for those killed in June, a few dozen bodies haven’t been identified conclusively. Moreover, discrepancies in body counts persist. While the latest reported government estimate put the death toll at 427, an international study released May 3 put it at 470.
  
• 
  
• Will ethnic Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks get equal access to compensation? Atambayev’s initial agreement to the payouts came after a small but vociferous protest by ethnic Kyrgyz families brandishing anti-Uzbek slogans. The group got high-profile support from his potential political rival, Ata-Jurt party leader Kamchybek Tashiev, a parliament deputy known for his Kyrgyz-centric rhetoric and considerable clout in the country’s ethnically divided south. With presidential elections just months away, currying favor among southerners is key to Atambayev’s political ambitions. More importantly, relations between ethnic Uzbeks and local officials in the south remain toxic. Various rights groups have said that, since June’s violence, Uzbeks have had limited access to social services and have been chronically mistreated by the justice system. A stark, recent example is cited in the international study mentioned above, known as the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (KIC) report: It found that Uzbeks made up 74 percent of those killed in June but 79 percent of those charged with crimes related to the violence. Will the same officials party to the miscarriage of justice be in charge of handing out the paperwork needed for compensation? 
  

Ensuring the compensation process is fair and impartial will be tough. And considering that the government pushed through the bill to make payments in time for June’s one-year anniversary, there’s reason to worry that this thorny problem got short shrift.