Weekly news wrap

This week was marked by a further clamp down on independent media and opposition groups throughout the region. A district court in the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty granted a libel suit, filed by the National Security Committee (NSC) against the opposition newspaper Soz (Speech), obliging the paper to pay almost US $40,000 in damages to the NSC, the Kazakh media reported on Sunday. The court ruled that reports alleging that the NSC was 'shadowing' leaders of the Ak Zhol opposition party, published in the paper on 23 September 2004, were untrue. On Wednesday, the country's parliament approved a controversial anti-extremism law criticised by human rights groups, the AFP reported. The law allows for a list of extremist groups to be drawn up by the prosecutor general's office for approval by the high court. Human rights groups and Western diplomats criticised the law for its vagueness. The law "seems to have the potential to become an instrument to use against everyone, including opposition politicians," a Western diplomat told AFP earlier. On Wednesday, a Kazakh main opposition party lost its legal fight against a court-ordered ban it said was evidence that officials wanted to stop any Ukraine-style change of power in Central Asia's largest state, Reuters reported. The court upheld an earlier ruling that the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK) party must be dissolved and close its offices for 'undermining state security' and 'fomenting social hatred.' "All of these actions, this fierce clampdown on dissent, is a direct consequence of the orange revolution in Kiev," DCK lawyer Yevgeny Zhovtis said. DCK has more than 100,000 registered members in the country of 15 million. Central Asian leaders, known for their authoritarian styles, have stepped up pressure on dissent after popular movements in Ukraine and Georgia brought pro-Western liberals to power over the past two years. In Uzbekistan, an Uzbek opposition party said on Monday that authorities in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic had again rejected their request to be registered - fearing a Ukrainian-style 'revolution', the AP reported. Uzbekistan has been without legal opposition parties since they were outlawed in the early 1990s by autocratic President Islam Karimov. Birlik, or Unity, had its application rejected by the Justice Ministry last week for allegedly forging 4,500 signatures on its membership list, said party leader Vasilya Inoyatova. She denied any names were forged. Birlik has attempted to get formal recognition four times in the past two years. Inoyatova said the Justice Ministry gave the party a month to correct its papers, but said further attempts to register could also be blocked. Tashkent has long been criticised for widespread human rights abuses, including the use of torture in prisons. The rejection was followed by a report of 23 people, most of them entrepreneurs, going on trial in eastern Uzbekistan on Thursday, accused of forming a clandestine Islamic organisation and threatening the constitutional order, the AFP reported. The defendants in the case in the eastern border town of Andijan face six charges including anti-constitutional activity and organising a banned religious extremist organisation in the former Soviet republic. They are charged with membership of Akromiya, an Islamic movement that broke from the better-known Hizbut Tahrir radical organisation in the early 1990s. In Turkmenistan, a senior US diplomat on Wednesday called for progress on democracy and human rights in the energy-rich nation, the AP reported. "We hope to see progress in the field of democratic reforms, human rights, development of civil society and free operation of non-governmental organisations," said Laura Kennedy, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, after talks with Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov. Kennedy described as areas "of particular concern" the use of child labour in Turkmenistan, the lack of media freedom and access to prisoners by international organisations. Although Ashgabat recently banned child labour, it is commonly used in the reclusive state in picking cotton, the country's main agricultural crop. Turkmenistan has no independent media and Niyazov, who has been in power since 1985, has built a vast personality cult around himself, resisting democratic reforms and isolating his country further. The Russian ITAR-Tass news agency reported that Niyazov and Kennedy also discussed the resumption of the Russian-language broadcasts of the Mayak radio station in Turkmenistan, one of the only sources of impartial information in the country. Tajikistan, one of the poorest former Soviet republics, received over $65 million aid in 2004, the Tajik Avesta news agency reported on Sunday, citing the country's state statistics agency. The US accounts for most of the aid provided by donor countries -55.5 percent; followed by Latvia (10.9 percent), Russia (8.7 percent) and Kazakhstan (8.6 percent). Tajikistan is still reeling from the consequences of a civil war that ravaged the country in the 1990s and cost up to 100,000 lives. The average monthly salary in the mountainous state is no more than $20 and more than 60 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line.