Weekly news wrap

Almost a month after Uzbek security forces violently suppressed public protests in the eastern province of Andijan killing up to 1,000 unarmed civilians, according to local rights groups, hundreds of farmers demonstrated in the central province of Samarkand on Wednesday, angered by the arrest of a local farmer's rights activist, AFP reported. The farmers gathered at a collective farm in Samarkand's Ishtikhan district, some 300 km southwest of the capital, Tashkent, Nigara Khidoyatova, leader of the opposition Ozod Dekhon (Free Peasants) party. said. They were demanding freedom for Norboy Kholjigitov, a local farmers' leader arrested on Sunday on suspicion of bribe taking, she added. "We believe Kholjigitov didn't take any bribes and this case was fabricated against him. We still don't know where he was taken," said Khidoyatova. The unrest comes amid rising discontent in rural communities in the cotton-growing former Soviet republic. Uzbek President Islam Karimov has come in for intense international criticism over a military crackdown in the eastern city of Andijan on 13 May, in which journalists and witnesses said troops opened fire indiscriminately on thousands of protesters. In response to the last week's US State Department warning of potential terror attacks in Uzbekistan, the World Bank suspended missions to the country, the organisation's office in Tashkent said on Tuesday. The office said World Bank delegations that had been scheduled to arrive this week had been postponed. Also, on Tuesday the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that Tashkent was denying it access to people injured or arrested during last month's unrest in the east of the country. The agency has also been unable to establish contact with regional authorities in Andijan, the ICRC said in a statement. "We now feel that a clear response from Tashkent has become urgent," said Reto Meister, ICRC chief for Asia and the Pacific. "Our aim is not to conduct an investigation into the events but to assess and respond to needs and to monitor the conditions and treatment of those arrested," Meister added. ICRC delegates have been able to travel without restriction to Andijan and other places in the vicinity but have been unable to gain access to the injured and detained or to any regional authorities. Restoring family links is a priority, as many Uzbeks still do not know the fate of missing relatives, the ICRC said. Some local rights activists claimed that up to 3,000 people were missing in and around Andijan. In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, the authorities had sent four asylum seekers from Andijan back to Uzbekistan, BBC reported on Friday, sourcing the comment to the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UNHCR in Geneva UNHCR reportedly said that they were part of a group of 16 refugees detained by Kyrgyz special forces on Thursday. He said that sending the four back may have been a breach of international law. There are fears that any refugees sent back may face punishment from the Uzbek authorities. Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva had previously pledged that no refugees would be forcibly deported. The 16 taken away on Thursday were among 470 refugees based in a camp, which had been relocated further away from the Uzbek border last weekend in an effort to provide greater security, Colville explained. In Kazakhstan, the daughter of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said in a televised speech on Wednesday that outside attempts to force the pace of democratisation could lead to a revolution similar to that seen in Kyrgyzstan earlier this year, AFP reported. "Could the same thing that happened in Kyrgyzstan happen here? Yes, it's possible because a new form of expansionism has appeared in the world - the export of democracy," Dariga Nazarbayeva claimed. The Nazarbayevs have dominated Kazakhstan since the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse, despite corruption allegations that have long swirled around the family in relation to contracts awarded to Western oil companies. Nazarbayev was Kazakhstan's last Soviet-era leader and has clung to power through a series of elections and referenda criticised by the West as flawed. In Turkmenistan, a high-level US diplomat urged the Turkmen government on Wednesday to improve its human rights and religious freedom record, according to the US Embassy in the natural gas-rich Central Asian nation. John Fox, director of the State Department's office of Caucasus and Central Asian Affairs, made the remarks at a meeting with Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov and two deputy Cabinet ministers, the embassy said in a statement. Last month, Amnesty International (AI) expressed concern over what it described as the widespread abuse of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights in the former Soviet republic, where Niyazov exercises absolute power. AI said civil society activists, political dissidents, members of religious minority groups and their families have been subjected to rights violations including harassment, arbitrary detention, torture, ill treatment and imprisonment after unfair trials. In another development, President Niyazov amended the civil law of Turkmenistan by introducing mandatory contracts for marriages to foreigners, AP reported on Thursday. The measure follows other recent changes making it easier for foreigners to marry citizens of this, the most reclusive of Central Asian nations. Under an order signed on Wednesday by the authoritarian president, citizens of Turkmenistan and their prospective foreign spouses must now sign a contract determining how their property will divided in case of divorce. The move comes two months after the government scrapped a rule forcing foreigners to pay an insurance deposit of at least US $50,000 before marrying a citizen of the ex-Soviet republic. Also abandoned was a requirement that the foreign spouse own a home in Turkmenistan. Now, a foreigner wishing to marry a Turkmen citizen must sign a contract and must live in Turkmenistan for at least a year before the wedding. There is also a mandatory three-month engagement period following the submission of a marriage application. In mountainous northern Tajikistan, heavy rains caused flooding that killed two small children and destroyed a bridge, the officials from the country's emergency ministry said on Thursday. The children, aged three and five, were swept away by high waters in a rain-swollen mountain stream near the village of Shing in the Pyanjekent district, the Tajik ministry spokesman said. Tajikistan is prone to a variety of natural disasters and drought. In 2003, 120 incidents of flooding, avalanches and landslides were recorded in the country as well as 12 significant earthquakes, according to the European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO). Natural disasters have killed about 2,500 people and affected some 5.5 million (almost 10 percent of the total population) in Central Asia over the past decade, ECHO reported.