Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia saw signs that some countries are cracking down on human trafficking in the region. In Tajikistan, a city court in the capital, Dushanbe, sentenced a group of people involved in human trafficking, the Iranian media reported on Monday. Three women were sentenced to up to 14 years in prison. On Wednesday, the Kazakh Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency reported that the police prevented trafficking of eight former female inmates of an orphanage in the south, of whom six were under 16. The local police said two female traffickers were allegedly planning to send the young girls to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to force them into sexual slavery. Also this week in Central Asia, a mission from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) is touring all countries in the region, with the exception of Turkmenistan. The mission is headed by Anders Pederson, a coordinator for Europe, North America and Central Asia. According to the United Nations Tajikistan Office of Peace-building (UNTOP), the purpose of the mission is to review and coordinate a regional project on human rights, taking into account new requirements, as well as to coordinate the actions of government and NGOs. Staying in Tajikistan, 20 members of the banned Hizbut Tahrir Islamic party, accused of advocating the removal of the Tajik government, have been sentenced to between three and eight years' prison in the northern Sogd province, the AFP reported on Wednesday. The trial followed that of another 20 Hizbut Tahrir members in September in southwestern Tajikistan also for campaigning for the overthrow of the government. However, relatives of the accused said that the arrested men had been beaten until they admitted their membership of the radical Muslim organisation. Over the past four years, more than 400 members of the banned party have been arrested in Tajikistan, of which 140 have been condemned to sentences ranging from three to 18 years in prison. In Uzbekistan, a court convicted five people to up to 16 years in jail in connection with a string of terror attacks that left dozens dead in Uzbekistan earlier this year, amid allegations that they had been tortured to confess, an international rights group said on Thursday. The AP reported that more than 100 people have been jailed to date in connection with the bombings and attacks that rocked the capital, Tashkent and central Bukhara province in March and April, killing at least 47. On Wednesday, a court in Tashkent sentenced five people to up to 16 years in jail for their alleged role in the attacks, said Allison Gill, Human Rights Watch researcher in Uzbekistan. Gill said the trial fell far short of international standards and that at least two of the defendants claimed in court that they had been tortured. The board of directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has approved a strategy of partnership with Kazakhstan between 2004 and 2006, the Kazakh media reported on Wednesday. Andre Kuusvek, director of the EBRD office in Kazakhstan, said that the bank was still interested in helping with the improvement of the country's investment climate, the development of its private sector, the boosting of financial transparency and the corporate management of companies in the private and state sectors. The total sum provided by the EBRD to Kazakhstan, including co-financing from the third side, exceeded 2 billion euros (almost US $2.6 billion). About 58 percent of the EBRD funds go to the private sector and 42 percent to the country's state sector, but the bank would try and change the proportion to make sure that the private sector received more than 70 percent of its funds, the report said.