Weekly news wrap

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) generally praised the outcome to Sunday's election in Kyrgyzstan, while at the same time calling on the fledgling Central Asian democracy to take further steps to improve voting procedures. Acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a former opposition leader who led a March revolt that ousted his predecessor, won with 89 percent of the vote in a field of six candidates, the Central Election Commission said. Kimmo Kiljunen, head of a 340-member OSCE delegation of observers, cited a thriving media that allowed candidates to present their views and said respect for civil rights such as free expression and assembly marked Kyrgyzstan's "tangible progress" toward meeting international democratic standards, a Los Angeles Times report said. Adding to the words of support, the United Nations said on Monday that preliminary reports indicated that the presidential elections were held in a "credible manner" and offered to cooperate with the new government in Bishkek. Bakiyev reportedly pledged to relaunch democratic reforms in the mountainous state, whose image as an island of freedom in the region had been eroded under former president Askar Akayev. But Sunday's election result in the mountainous state of five million could also well be a warning to its neighbours long known for authoritarian regimes. The presidents of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and, until recently, Kyrgyzstan, have all held on to power since gaining their independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. [Power changed hands in Tajikistan during a bloody civil war in the mid 1990s]. Aware of the implications of Kyrgyzstan's revolt, these countries have redoubled their efforts to quash internal descent, an AFP report said on Monday. Most recently, Uzbekistan bloodily suppressed unrest in the eastern province of Andijan on 13 May, when police opened fire on protestors, resulting in up to 1,000 deaths, according to human rights groups and witnesses. Tashkent upped its original death toll from 176 to 187 on Monday, blaming armed Islamists for taking over the town following a series of demonstrations against the government. Exact details of what actually transpired in Andijan remain unknown, however. "Uzbek authorities are engaged in a campaign against human rights defenders that is unprecedented even in the context of their own appalling record," Dr Aaron Rhodes, Executive Director of the International Helsinki Federation (IHF) told IRIN. "Central Asian neighbors should realise that such policies retard the economic and political development of their societies, in addition to being morally wrong." But the push for an international inquiry continued this week. "Grave human rights violations, mostly of the right to life, were committed by Uzbek military and security forces," the UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a 25-page report on Tuesday, which was compiled after a mission last month to neigbouring Kyrgyzstan, where hundreds of Uzbek asylum seekers from Andijan remain. "It is not excluded - as it was described by eyewitnesses interviewed that the incidents amounted to a mass killing," the UN report said. A comprehensive international investigation, including forensic and ballistic experts as well as crime scene investigators, needs to be set up "promptly" to determine if serious rights violations were committed and who was responsible, it added. In Washington, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the UN report added weight to other credible eyewitness accounts of the shootings. "Certainly the Uzbekistan government owes its citizens and owes the international community a serious, credible and independent investigation of these events," the Associated Press (AP) reported him as saying. Meanwhile, Russia on Wednesday completed the withdrawal of its troops from Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan, lowering a flag in a ceremony marking the handover to Tajik border guards. The 230-km section is one of the last along the rugged, porous border being returned to Dushanbe's control under a deal reached with Moscow in 2004. Thousands of Russian guards have helped police the vulnerable Tajik-Afghan border since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 in an effort to stem the flow of illegal drugs from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe, another AP report said. On Monday evening, an additional 300 families in the Hamadoni District of Khatlon Region in southern Tajikistan, which were in danger of being flooded were evacuated to safer ground. A rise in water levels along the Panj River, triggered by the thawing of glaciers in the Pamir mountains had resulted in new flooding in the area, the Asia Plus news agency said. Flood damage to the two southern Tajik districts of Hamadoni and Farkhor has resulted in US $50 million in damage, the Avesta news agency reported, citing Tajik Deputy Prime Minister Asadullo Ghulomov. Staying in Tajikistan, the Tajik Embassy in Turkmenistan has sent the Tajik Ministry of Foreign Affairs a draft agreement, for consideration, between the governments of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan on giving Tajik citizens living in Turkmenistan the right to renounce their Tajik citizenship through a simplified procedure, the Asia Plus news agency reported. Citing an embassy letter, the report said the draft agreement concerned the interests of over 15,000 ethnic Turkmens who left Tajikistan for Turkmenistan during Tajikistan's five-year long civil war from 1992-1997. While in Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev this week signed another decree on granting citizenship to returning ethnic Kazakhs, otherwise known as Oralmans. Coming from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia (to Kazakhstan as ethnic Kazakh migrants under the state quota), over 15,000 received citizenship, the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency said.