Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia started with a heavy snowfall which hit the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on Saturday. The Tadzhikgidromet, or Tajik meteorological service, said that almost the monthly norm of precipitation had fallen on Dushanbe and its surrounding areas in just one day. The city's power lines have suffered the most damage, caused by trees falling on them after being overwhelmed by the weight of the snow. The emergency ministry said there had been no casualties, but Tadzhikgidromet has forecast more heavy snowfall and further falls in temperature. On Wednesday, the Tajik health ministry denied that there was a typhoid epidemic in the country, describing some reports indicating the existence of a serious epidemiological situation in Dushanbe and areas adjacent to Kyrgyzstan as unfair and provocative. Nusratullo Fayzulloyev, the health minister, said 288 confirmed cases of typhus had been registered in Dushanbe hospitals and some 12 patients hospitalised over the past two weeks, stressing that the epidemiological situation was under control. Human rights have also been at the centre of mass media attention this week. Amnesty International (AI) urged Uzbekistan on Tuesday to abolish capital punishment and accused it of executing dozens of people annually without proper recourse to justice. "In circumstances where torture is systematic, corruption is unchecked at every stage, and where courts apply the death penalty without the guidance of objective and publicly accessible sentencing criteria, the retention of the death penalty is particularly irresponsible," AI said in a statement. In July, the United Nations Human Rights Committee strongly criticised Uzbekistan's execution of six people whose cases had been awaiting the committee's consideration. Visiting Uzbekistan in December, the UN's rapporteur on torture, Theo van Boven, said torture by the Uzbek security forces appeared to be "systematic". Activists put the number of political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan as high as 6,500. On Wednesday, Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was urgently flown to London by air ambulance, according to embassy officials, less than a week after he had returned. Murray, a vocal critic of the country's human rights record, was evacuated after a sudden deterioration of his health, an embassy spokesman, Leonid Kudryavtsev, said, adding that Murray was expected to return when his condition improved. In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, human rights activists on Monday called on the government to comply with its international commitment to eliminate torture. "The Kyrgyz government does not meet its obligations on torture and has been ignoring them," Tolekan Ismailova, the leader of the Civil Society Against Corruption group, said. Representatives of other human rights groups said the authorities usually did not investigate allegations of torture. Kyrgyzstan, once praised as the most democratic nation in former Soviet Central Asia, has come under increasing criticism for crackdowns on journalists and opposition and human rights activists. Staying in that country, the Supreme Court had banned four groups branded as terrorist and extremist, some of them connected to Al-Qaeda and its allies, officials said on Thursday. The banned groups are the Organisation for the Liberation of Turkestan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and the Islamic Party of Turkestan, all linked to China's Muslim Uighur minority. The fourth group was the Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Liberation Party, described by the court as an extremist movement. In Kazakhstan, Ermurat Bapi, the former editor of SolDat, an opposition newspaper, was on Tueday convicted of tax evasion and fraud in a case he branded as politically motivated persecution. A court in the commercial capital, Almaty, gave Bapi a one-year suspended sentence, banned him from involvement in publishing for five years and fined him some US $60,000, according to court officials. Bapi, who resigned in May in an attempt to save the media outlet, maintained his innocence during the trial, saying he was being persecuted for publications critical of the government. Two confirmed cases of haemorrhagic fever had been registered in western Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Emergency Situations Agency's press service said on Tuesday. A 38-year old man and his eight-year-old son were taken to hospital on suspicion of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome earlier last week. Following a laboratory analysis, the diagnosis was confirmed, the local media reported. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said on Monday that the Central Asian states would have to tear down trade barriers against each other and the outside world if their economies were to become less dependent on oil and gas. The EBRD said in its annual economic report the states were likely to grow by 6.2 percent this year, but this would largely be by virtue of high oil prices. The EBRD noted that Turkmenistan had made almost no progress except in price liberalisation since the collapse of the Soviet command economy. Also in Turkmenistan, thousands of convicts were to be released under an amnesty granted by President Saparmurat Niyazov, official newspapers said Tuesday. According to the local press, the more than 7,000 convicts being released on Friday and Saturday must swear on the Koran and Niyazov's book, the "Rukhnama", that they will not commit any more crimes. However, some international rights groups have criticised the amnesty, noting that it was not extended to political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. Meanwhile, Niyazov reportedly said on Thursday that the government was ready for dialogue with international bodies about the human rights situation in the country. He said his government was preparing a national report on human rights, and extended an invitation to experts from the UN Commission on Human Rights to visit the country. The presidential office said the leadership had these announcements in a letter to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, and to EC President Romano Prodi. The letter coincides with a resolution before the EC accusing Turkmenistan of violating human rights.