The contentious redevelopment plan for the city of Osh has once again reared its head.
Yesterday, Kadanbay Baktygulov, second-in-command of the national agency in charge of rebuilding the southern regions of Kyrgyzstan after June’s deadly clashes, said that Osh’s so-called Master Plan has already been “approved by the city authorities and discussed by the public, [and] now it will be considered by the government.”
Rights advocates have been worried about the plan -- which envisions building high-rises in downtown Osh -- since summer, saying it could lead to forced evictions from a few of the neighborhoods burned down in June. The now-homeless people in these areas, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, have begun rebuilding on the sites of their old homes with the help of international aid groups, but city authorities haven’t always been supportive. The mayor’s office, for example, didn’t give full permission for construction until August 28, contributing to delays in the shelter project. The city also balked at its obligation to clear away rubble, so building supplies had trouble reaching construction sites.
In mid-September, First Deputy Mayor Taalai Sabirov told EurasiaNet that the plan “exists” and would eventually become reality.
“If we don’t do it, maybe our children will,” he said. “The plan will go ahead anyway, though maybe not on the exact same blocks that were hurt.”
A court in southern Kyrgyzstan has sentenced two ethnic Uzbeks to three years in prison for writing “SOS” on the gate of a private home during June’s deadly clashes between the region’s Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, AKIpress reported Friday. The Kara-Suu District Court ruled that Uktomjan Ahmatjanov and Islamjan Husanov had incited interethnic conflict by spreading rumors that troops from neighboring Uzbekistan would come to the aid of local Uzbeks and by painting the SOS sign to help these forces – actions the court deemed to have turned Uzbeks against Kyrgyz. The men were accused of committing their crime on June 12, when many Uzbek neighborhoods had already barricaded themselves against armed mobs.
The conviction adds to a growing list of guilty verdicts against ethnic Uzbeks, who, rights advocates fear, may be getting a disproportionate share of the punishment for June’s clashes, which killed hundreds and displaced thousands. While both ethnic groups unquestionably took part in and suffered from the violence, a recent report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty noted that all 24 defendants in three major June-related trials (not including the SOS case) were ethnic Uzbeks, and many of them received exceptionally harsh sentences.
This, from a leader who stubbornly resisted any investigation into the massacre in his own country by Uzbek troops of hundreds of people in Andijan in 2005, and who in fact was still persecuting the relatives of the victims five years later. Various bodies of the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as well as Western governments and international human rights groups have repeatedly called for an impartial and credible international investigation of the Andijan events, and have been repeatedly rebuffed and told the matter was an internal affair and the police response appropriate to the security threat.
Calls for the independent investigation of Andijan was a staple of U.S. foreign policy in Uzbekistan, but in the last year, as relations have warmed due to strategic energy and security interests, the explicit call has been retired, replaced with occasional expressions of concern.
A Kyrgyz woman compares the photo of a corpse with that of a missing loved one displayed outside the Osh mayor's office. Portraits of missing Uzbeks are hidden away in an office in an Uzbek neighborhood.
The summer camp looked deserted. Just inside the high metal fence, a plump woman in slippers and a purple kerchief squatted outside a two-room shack, washing dishes with a plastic tub and two dented kettles.
Uzbek human rights activist Azimjon Askarov has been sentenced to life imprisonment and confiscation of all his property at a court in the Nooken district of Jalal-Abad province in Kyrgyzstan today, the independent Central Asian news site ferghana.ru reported.
Commenting on the microblog site Twitter about Askarov's life sentence, Sardar Bagishbekov, a human rights activist and head of the Voice of Freedom website in Kyrgyzstan said, "the judge in the case of Askarov and 7 others was simply morally unprepared to objectively review the case, I saw this in everything about the trial in Nooken."
Judge Nurgazy Alimbayev pronounced Askarov guilty on charges of complicity to commit homicide and murder of a police officer (two separate counts related to the same incident), possession of ammunition and extremist literature, and attempted kidnapping, reported ferghana.ru. Local and international human rights activists denied the charges, saying Askarov had been singled out for retaliation.
Research by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) indicates the charges are unfounded and that Askarov may have been targeted for revenge by Jalal-Abad law enforcement because of his documentation of human rights violations, including by local police, in southern Kyrgyzstan . Authorities incriminated him for incidents in the region during unrest in May, when in fact he had documented proof he was in Bishkek, notes CPJ. Prosecutors also failed to prove Askarov was on the scene in Bazar-Korgon at the time the police office was killed.
“We are outraged by the sentence delivered today in Jalal-Abad to Azimjon Askarov, and call on Kyrgyzstan’s higher courts to overturn his verdict,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia program coordinator Nina Ognianova in a press release today.
A nail-packed explosive device blew up on the grounds of a synagogue in central Bishkek about an hour before the start of Rosh Hashanah services Thursday evening, according to local press reports. No one was hurt and physical damage was minimal as the bomb, lobbed over a fence into the synagogue’s courtyard on the first night of the Jewish New Year, landed in a small pool of water, news agency Regnum.ru reported. Police and security services kept onlookers at bay after the incident and have opened an investigation. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency said that someone working at the synagogue, reached by telephone, said, “We will not comment. […] There was no explosion.”
Though the sequence of events is unclear, a recent border scandal has opened a new chapter in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan’s fraught relations. In late August, border and customs officials from both countries took a few of their counterparts hostage. The standoff ended peacefully, for now, in a prisoner exchange late on September 5.
The press-uz.info news agency is the only major outlet in Uzbekistan’s tightly controlled online media bubble that has dared to cover the recent border disputes in detail. But their take is predictable.
The news agency, believed by Tashkent insiders to be controlled by President Islam Karimov’s Security Council, has made the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border a priority since it first reported on a plundering raid by Kyrgyz border guards on the night of August 28, and the valiant efforts of Uzbek officials to defend their countrymen.
“Having seized 22 head of sheep belonging to Uzbek farmer Abdumalik Khoshimov, Kyrgyz border guards retreated to their territory. After holding talks, Ferghana District law-enforcement bodies managed to retrieve the stolen livestock,” press-uz.info reported.
But with each new development, the news agency hardened its tone. In an August 30 report, the news agency said Kyrgyz border guards were extorting money from Uzbek citizens in border villages and suggested that “brazen, unscrupulous, and predatory” abuses by the Kyrgyz military in border areas might cause a “new outburst of resentment” among Uzbeks.
Since their home was torched in June during the ethnic clashes in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, 30-year-old Dilbar Kasimova and her four children live in an UNHCR-provided tent on a street in Cheremushki District, Osh. At least 390 people died and thousands more were injured during the violence. Most of the victims, like Kasimova, were Uzbeks.
A mob killed the children's father, aunt and grandmother. The family keeps fragments of the grandmother's bones in a plastic shopping bag beneath a pile of scrap metal in the back yard, unsure where her final resting place shall be.
David Trilling is the Central Asia news editor for EurasiaNet.
Bishkek's investigation into June’s ethnic violence seems more about fingering easy blame - and buttressing nationalist fantasy - than uncovering truth. Members had previously agreed to release their findings on September 10, but it looks like they couldn't wait.
Provisional President Roza Otunbayeva established the National Investigative Commission on July 15 to research the June ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan that left at least 370 dead and more than 2,000 wounded.
Zhypar Zheksheev, a member of the commission, suggested we foreign journalists have blood on our hands because we were poking around in the South before most of the violence started. Our presence in May, for example, demonstrates we knew the ethnic violence would occur.
“We have instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to review the date of publication [of these foreshadowing articles] and to evaluate their content. In addition, we intend to find out who accredited and invited these media outlets and how they learned in advance about how and what will happen in reality,” he said on August 17.
With all due respect, Mr. Zheksheev, it didn’t take a genius to see the place was imploding. In fact, here’s a story from May 19 about ethnic violence in Jalalabad.
Zheksheev is continuing a tired narrative blaming the foreign press for being, we hear ad nauseam, “anti-Kyrgyz.”
The Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization is set to discuss options for providing military and technical assistance to member state Kyrgyzstan at a two-day informal summit opening in Yerevan on August 20.
As a military source told Russian news agency Interfax:
"Issues related to the possible delivery to Kyrgyzstan of armored vehicles, helicopters, special weapons, uniforms and other materiel are being considered. There are many subtleties here related, for instance, to the capabilities of CSTO countries and to the development of a mechanism of deliveries."
The CSTO has been distinctive for its passive response to unrest in Kyrgyzstan over recent months, so the prospect of yet more jibber-jabber is unlikely to set hearts fluttering in Bishkek.
Utter failure to take a decisive line of action over the June violence should prompt existential questions over the bloc’s very existence and modus operandi. Its regularly vaunted military exercises have tended to focus on nebulous and indistinct trans-national threats (i.e. terrorists) to be scotched by means of loud bombs and implausibly well-coordinated storm attacks on strategically high-value buildings.
Without underestimating the danger that terrorists may pose to Central Asia, the primary hazard to stability is the region’s poverty-stricken population itself.
