Weekly news wrap

On the eve of Uzbekistan's parliamentary elections on Sunday, politics featured high on the agenda throughout much of Central Asia this week, a region notorious for its lack democratic reform. On Monday, Washington delivered a sharp rebuke to the Kazakh government of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, calling for banished opposition leader Galymzhan Zhakiyanov to be allowed back into politics. "Clearly, the conditions under which he (Zhakiyanov) is currently being held are not good and we would like to see this end as soon as possible," Reuters reported US Ambassador to Kazakhstan, John Ordway, as saying. Although Astana had pursued radical market forms, that combined with high oil prices, had ensured rapid economic growth, the 15-year rule of Nazarbayev had been marred by clampdowns on dissent and the media, Reuters reported. Zhakiyanov had been exiled to a remote part of Central Asia's largest nation after serving two years in jail, the report said. Also on Monday, Kyrgyzstan's opposition threatened massive Ukraine-type protests in the event authorities moved to rig next February's parliamentary elections, dismissing warnings by Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev that radical groups might try to forcibly seize power. According to the Associated Press, Murat Imanaliyev, leader of the opposition Jany-Bagyt, or New Direction, movement said his group would back protests if election fraud was discovered. On Tuesday, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kyrgyzstan announced the country would receive foreign aid to democratise its election system after multiple offences were recorded in recent local elections. UNDP had signed an agreement with Bishkek to launch a project worth more than US $1 million to improve the organisation of elections, Jerzy Skurtatowicz, UNDP resident representative in Kyrgyzstan reportedly told the Russian Interfax news agency. Staying in Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek on Tuesday was reportedly embroiled in a fresh spat with that country's Uighur Muslims, who trace their roots to neighbouring western China, after ordering the cancellation of a Uighur congress at a state opera theatre. The move coincides with the former Soviet republic finalising a controversial extradition agreement with Beijing. Rights campaigners have long accused China of a campaign of persecution and colonisation in their efforts to quash the Uighur Muslim minority in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang. Campaigners have also accused both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan of culpability in the execution of a number of Uighur asylum-seekers they had handed over to Beijing, AFP reported. In neighbouring Tajikistan, February's forthcoming parliamentary elections would be observed by 50 representatives from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and 22 representatives from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Asia-Plus news agency reported. On Monday, Turkmenistan defended its own parliamentary elections one day earlier, stating it had met all democratic norms. The 19 December election to the 50-seat rubber stamp parliament, or mejilis, "occurred on a wholly democratic basis with equal opportunities for all candidates (and) in accordance with the country's legislation and international norms," the election commission said in a written statement, AFP reported. The statement followed reports of more or less blatant pressure on residents in order to increase turnout at the election, at which hard-line President Saparmurat Niyazov's Democratic Party was the only registered party. Also this week, the Tajik government announced it was drawing up a new law to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country. "This issue of adopting a new law was discussed in the government and parliament. The first law was passed in 1993. The spread of HIV/AIDS has been taking on a difficult nature," Jumaboy Sanginov, a member of the social, family, health and environmental issues committee of the Tajik parliament's lower house, reportedly said. According to the Asia-Plus report, all legislative acts to prevent HIV/AIDS are standardised within the Council of Heads of CIS governments. Staying with the issue of AIDS, the Kazakh newspaper Vremya reported incidents of people who were humiliated while undergoing HIV tests. Individuals wishing to undergo anonymous testing at clinics were reportedly immediately placed in a risk group, which consisted of drug addicts and prostitutes. The report added that people were also forced to pay money for the tests which otherwise were supposed to be free. Meanwhile in Kyrgyzstan, several dozen residents in the country's southern Osh region were evacuated due to a threat of a possible landslide, a spokesman for the country's Ministry of Ecology and Emergency Situations said on Monday. Latest reports indicate the earth mass of about 1 million cm had stopped moving towards the settlement of Chary-Aigyra, but 10 families were nevertheless evacuated for safety reasons, the Russian Tass news agency reported. And lastly, citing a New York Times report, international charities were reportedly scrambling at news that the Bush administration couldn't honour all of its food aid commitments. Affecting countries in Africa, Asia and Central America, Ina Schonberg, director of food security programmes for Save the Children said in addition to Nicaragua, the cutbacks would have a big impact on their activities in Tajikistan, the United Press International news agency reported. Tajikistan remains the poorest country in Central Asia today.