Weekly news wrap

Five Tajik workers were killed after the walls of a well collapsed around them in the Moscow region, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said on Wednesday. The AP reported that the accident occurred on Tuesday as the men were repairing a well in the village of Lugovaya, just outside the Russian capital. According to a preliminary investigation, the workers may have succumbed to methane that flooded the well. The Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported that more than 120 bodies of labour migrants were returned to Tajikistan by Russian authorities over the first five months of the year. Jurakhon Zoirov, head of the Tajik Transport Police Administration, claimed that 40 of the 120 dead had been murdered. In 2003, Zoirov added, 420 bodies of Tajik labour migrants were returned to their homeland, of which 73 had allegedly been murdered. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are around 600,000 Tajik labour migrants in Russia, however, some experts estimate their actual seasonal numbers to be closer to one million. The majority are working illegally and prone to abuse from employers and police. A recent study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) found out that illegal labour migrants from Central Asia, particularly from Tajikistan, in Russia were subjected to various forms of forced labour, sometimes equal to slavery. Three border units on the Gorno Badakhshan sector of the Tajik-Afghan border - Ishkashim, Kalai Khumb and Khorog - would be handed over to Tajik border troops before September 2004, chairman of the Tajik Border Protection Committee (BPC), Abdurrahmon Azimov said on Thursday. The Asia-Plus news agency reported that the transfer of the Gorno Badakhshan section from Russian to Tajik control was the subject of two-day talks with a visiting Russian delegation led by Deputy Chief of Russian Border Troops, Aleksandr Manilov. The Moskovsky Border Unit patrolling the Tajik-Afghan border in Shurobod and Hamadoni (formerly Moskva) districts would be handed over to the Tajik side in 2005, while the Panj Border Unit would handed over to Dushanbe in 2006, the BPC chairman added. In Kazakhstan, authorities announced on Wednesday the withdrawal from sale of nearly 14,000 mt of rice contaminated with harmful metals. Laboratory tests showed that the rice, imported from China, contained excessive amounts of cadmium and lead, the AP reported, citing Seitkarim Tastambekov from the state sanitary and epidemiological agency. He said the amount of lead exceeded the maximum permissible limit by up to 12 times. High concentrations of lead can damage the nervous system of humans. Despite Kazakhstan's self-sufficiency in rice, Chinese rice accounts for about 30 percent of the domestic rice market - mostly smuggled illegally, according to the head of the Union of Kazakh Rice Producers, Marat Dadikbayev. A resident of the Koksu village in the eastern Kazakh Aktobe province was hospitalised under a suspicion of contracting anthrax on Wednesday, the Kazakh emergency ministry reported on Friday, adding that as of Thursday, another six people with suspected anthrax symptoms had been detected by an epidemiological surveillance team on the ground. All seven patients have been hospitalised in the district hospital in Emba town. Furthermore, 78 people who had contacted hospitalised patients were registered, with epidemiological control measures now underway. The US Embassy in Turkmenistan on Tuesday welcomed the release earlier this month of six jailed Jehovah's Witnesses. The embassy said the early release by the Turkmen government of the prisoners was a positive step. In a report by the US State Department on religious freedom in December, Turkmen citizens practicing any faith other than Sunni Islam or Russian Orthodoxy risked detention and the confiscation of religious materials. Following strong international pressure in recent months, President Saparmurat Niyazov scrapped the law that authorised criminal prosecution of groups engaged in illicit religious activities, easing registration rules for religious groups. Meanwhile, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it had demanded an explanation from Ashgabat over the recent killing of an Uzbek citizen by Turkmen border guards. Aidogdy Mukhanov, 46, from the western Karakalpakistan region, was reportedly beaten to death on 4 June by Turkmen border guards after allegedly crossing illegally into Turkmenistan. If confirmed the death would be the second this year along the two former Soviet republics' remote semi-desert border. Borders in Central Asia have not been properly demarcated since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Talks on delineating and demarcating the borders have so far produced limited results. Incidents involving residents of border areas have become frequent in recent years as governments have attempted to tighten control on borders, which often divides villages, communities and even houses. Also on Wednesday, Germany closed its office for economic ties with Tashkent, said Jorg Hetsch, head of the representative office of the association of the German industry and trade chambers. The office was closing after 10 years in the country, the AP reported. The Uzbek economy has remained largely unreformed since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, aggravating foreign investors and lenders. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) withdrew its representative from Uzbekistan in 2001 due to a lack of economic reforms, while the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) minimised its activities in the country after Tashkent failed to meet the benchmarks set by the bank last year. An Uzbek court on Thursday handed six-year jail terms to three alleged leaders of an Islamic extremist group, even though the only witness testified that he had concocted his earlier accusations against the men, the AFP reported. Another nine group members were given suspended sentences. However, Bakhtiyor Ishmatov, one of the convicted, said that there was no proof that they belonged to Hizb ut-Tahrir - a radical though non-violent Islamic organisation banned in Uzbekistan.