Rights activists welcome reappearance of missing colleague

Civic activists in Kyrgyzstan are upbeat about the return of Tursunbek Akunov, a prominent human rights activist who went missing earlier this month, but are urging the authorities to thoroughly investigate the case. "We are very happy that our colleague is alive but his health still worries us," Edil Baisalov, head of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, a local NGO, told IRIN from the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on Thursday. "It is very good that he is safe and alive," Emil Aliev, deputy head of the opposition Ar Namys Party, said, echoing that view. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a US-based international rights watchdog, Akunov went missing on 16 November. His wife Gulia said that he had left home to go to a meeting with an officer from the National Security Service (NSS), but failed to return home that evening. Local rights activists told IRIN earlier that Akunov's disappearance could be related to his human rights work. Late Wednesday, the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported the activist was at a city hospital in Bishkek, brought there by unidentified people. "Law-enforcement officials kept me for 15 days in a basement but I don't know where it was. Probably, it was in a rural area as I heard cows mooing. They took me having sprayed gas at me," Akunov was quoted as saying by RFE/RL. Aliev said that if what Akunov said was true that wouldn't surprise them. "Such arrests happened to us in the past as well, many of our party members have been detained, interrogated and taken to court. It's not news that they [law-enforcement officials] detain and keep people against their will," he said. However, the Kyrgyz security agencies denied the allegations and Tokon Mamytov, deputy head of the NSS, said that Akunov's case was a political show, adding that neither the NSS nor the interior ministry were involved in the incident. But rights activists criticised the NSS's stance on the issue. "This is completely unacceptable for the NSS to make such statements without having conducted an investigation. We demand that they do a thorough investigation as Akunov says that he can identify one of those people who were keeping him for 15 days - a staff member of the city police department," Baisalov said.