Weekly news wrap

A resident of Saghirdasht village in Tajikistan's eastern Badakhshon region was badly injured after stepping on a land mine, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Monday. Rustam Muhammadaliyev, sustained serious shrapnel wounds to his feet in the incident, Mansur Donayorshoyev, an officer at the regional interior directorate, said. The 18-year-old was admitted to hospital, where his left foot was amputated. Officials said the mine may have been planted in the area during that country's bloody civil war from 1992 to 1997. A new road link between Tajikistan and China has opened, the Tajik media reported on Monday. Buses carrying people and goods began to operate between the eastern Tajik city of Khorug and the western Chinese city of Kashgar. The Tajik Transport Ministry said the new route had been launched in line with an agreement between the transport ministries of both countries. Tajikistan is a landlocked Central Asian country. Before opening the link, goods from China were usually shipped via neighbouring Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan, resulting in higher transportation costs. On Wednesday, the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported that Russian border guards and the staff of local Tajik law-enforcement agencies had seized over 2.5 mt of drugs, including 1.5 mt of heroin in Tajikistan over the past six months. Tajikistan is on the frontline in the battle to stem the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan, the world top opium producer, to Russia and western Europe. The upper house of the Tajik parliament, the National Assembly, approved a law on the death penalty moratorium, local media sources reported on Thursday. Tajik President Emomali Rahmonov announced the introduction of a moratorium on the death penalty in his annual address to the country's parliament on 30 April 2004, and the lower house of the Tajik parliament approved the draft law on the death penalty moratorium earlier in June. The same day, the National Assembly approved a controversial election bill which has been criticised by opposition parties for failing to ensure free elections. Last month, four opposition parties urged President Emomali Rahmonov to reject the bill and threatened to boycott upcoming polls if he didn't. The opposition parties said the bill didn't guarantee independent observers' access to polling stations and vote-counting, restricting the participation of political parties in local election committees. The country will hold its next parliamentary elections in February and presidential polls in 2006. Going to Kazakhstan, Kazakh environmental groups said on Monday that a waste disposal technique used by an international oil consortium at an oil field would endanger the Caspian Sea, the AP reported. The consortium, led by an Italian firm, announced at public hearings in the Kazakh oil capital of Atyrau last month that it was planning to inject waste from its drilling operations at the Kashagan oil field back into the Caspian seabed. The head of the Caspian Nature Environmental Group, Mokhambet Khakimov, said the high pressure at which the waste would be pumped into the seabed would risk contaminating the sea with poisonous chemicals. Shinar Istleuova, another environmental activist, said Kazakhstan's environmental groups were planning to seek international support for their campaign to prevent the consortium from using the technique without first testing it inland and providing substantial information to prove its safety. Kazakhstan achieved the first ever migration surplus in the first six months of 2004, the chairwoman of the Kazakh State Agency for Migration and Demography, Altynshash Dzhaganova, said on Wednesday. "We can say that Kazakhstan has overcome migration losses. Now we can say that more people are moving to Kazakhstan than leaving it," the Kazakh Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency quoted her as saying. This was the first such migration surplus in the past 12 years due to an increase of quotas for returning ethnic Kazakhs (10,000), as well as an increase of other immigrants. Over 322,000 ethnic Kazakhs arrived in the country from 1991 to 1 April 2004, while the number of those who left the country in the past and have now returned exceeded 500,000. About 2.5 million people, mainly ethnic Russians, have left Central Asia's largest state since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Slightly smaller than India, Kazakhstan with a population of 15 million, is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. The International Helsinki Federation (IHF) said on Wednesday it was concerned about the recent attacks on family members of human rights activists and dissenting voices in Kyrgyzstan. The most recent attack took place on 3 July when Ainura Aitbaeva, the daughter of well-know human rights activist Ramazan Dyryldaev, head of the Kyrgyz Committee for Human Rights (KCHR), was beaten by unidentified individuals in front of her home. It is believed that she was assaulted for the activities of her father, who is a strong critic of the Kyrgyz government, the IHF said, calling for Bishkek to carry out a prompt and thorough investigation. Meanwhile, Turkmen authorities said on Monday that no dangerous diseases have been registered in Central Asia's most reclusive state in a response to recent media reports of a plague outbreak in the northern Turkmen province of Dashoguz. "The epidemiological situation in Turkmenistan is favourable. No cases of any dangerous diseases have been registered," the Anti-Epidemics Commission said in a statement. Earlier last month, the opposition Gundogar web site, reported that Dashoguz province was hit by a plague outbreak a month earlier.