Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia began with more reports of torture and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, with two local rights groups on Monday saying that an Uzbek man had been tortured to death. The independent rights group, Ezgulik, and the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) claimed that Samandar Umarov, 35, who had been serving a 17-year prison sentence for belonging to the outlawed Islamic group, Hizbut Tahrir, had been tortured to death in a prison in the eastern Navoiy province on Sunday. Umarov's sister, Yashnar Umarova, told the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) that her brother's body had been brought to her in a condition that left her in no doubt that he had been tortured. "There was blood everywhere, his jaw was broken and his face damaged severely," she said. "The sides of his body were bruised." The Navoiy regional forensic department reportedly said Umarov died of a brain haemorrhage. According to news reports, Svetlana Artikova, a spokeswoman for Uzbekistan's prosecutor-general's office, said that a preliminary autopsy suggested that he died from a stroke. Artikova also said that prosecutors had opened an additional investigation into his death, but gave no further details. On Wednesday, the New York-based international rights watchdog, Freedom House, urged Tashkent to ensure an immediate, open and transparent investigation into the suspicious death. Also on Wednesday, representatives from Afghanistan, Iran, and Uzbekistan signed a tripartite agreement in Tashkent on transportation cooperation which would provide the Central Asian region with access to international waters. The presidents of the three countries signed an initial tripartite agreement for transportation cooperation in Tehran in 2004. On the same day in eastern Uzbekistan, around 60 traders, mostly women, staged a spontaneous protest outside the district administration's offices in the town of Shahrihon. Their discontent was triggered by the fact that district tax officers had expelled entrepreneurs who were trading in the streets in the district centre to a market which far from the centre, local media reported. The protest was dispersed by the police, the report said. In Kazakhstan, an earthquake measuring three points on the Richer scale took place in the Zailiyskiy Alatau mountains in the villages of Zhalanash and Saty, 108 km from Kazakhstan's largest city of Almaty, early on Monday, the Russian Interfax news agency reported, citing the country's emergency agency. No casualties or damage was reported. On Thursday, a Kazakh court ordered the dissolution of one of the country's main opposition parties, the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK), for breaching state security, Reuters reported. The DCK had accused President Nursultan Nazarbayev of stealing September's parliamentary elections in which the party had not received a single seat. "The court decided to wind up the party in line with the prosecutor's request," Vladimir Kozlov, DCK spokesman, said, noting the party would appeal. Prosecutors maintained the party fell foul of state security laws by calling on its supporters to protest against the results of the parliamentary election. In Kyrgyzstan, the country's government signed a credit agreement with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Kyrgyz media reported on Tuesday, adding that the country was expected to receive US $2 million for a project to provide people with vaccines for 2005-2007. Under the credit agreement, the country is set to be supplied with TB, polio, bronchitis, tetanus, paratyphoid fever and a number of other vaccines. The main aim of this campaign is to reduce the prevalence rate of these diseases among children and the infant mortality rate. In Tajikistan, law-enforcement agencies seized some 2.8 mt of drugs, including 2 mt of heroin, throughout the country in 2004, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Wednesday. Tajikistan is the first country on the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan, the world's top opium producer, to Russia and western Europe. More than 200 people have been killed by landmines in Tajikistan over the past decade, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Thursday. Since 1992, 416 people, 221 of whom died, have fallen victim to mine explosions, Parviz Mavlonqulov, deputy head of the Tajik Mine Action Centre, said. Seven people were killed by mine explosions and another eight became disabled in 2004. They were mainly residents of districts bordering Uzbekistan - Isfara, Asht and Panjakent. The issue of demining the Tajik-Uzbek border is still pending, despite the fact that a general assessment of the landmine danger had already been conducted in the area, the report suggested. It is believed that an agreement on delimitation and demarcation of the Uzbek-Tajik border, the signing of which has been postponed for four years, would help to resolve the issue.