Weekly news wrap

Human rights dominated the news in Central Asia this week when a coalition of rights groups in Europe and Central Asia called for a regional death penalty-free zone on Wednesday. In an open letter, the coalition urged all regional countries retaining the death penalty to follow the recommendations of a resolution by the United Nations Commission on Human Right (UNHRC) calling for a moratorium on executions and the observance of international safeguards in death penalty cases. "In particular, we are calling on the authorities in Belarus and Uzbekistan, whose countries are the last executioners in Europe and Central Asia, to move swiftly towards abolition by introducing a moratorium on death sentences and executions as a first step with a view to complete abolition of the death penalty in due course," the group said in a statement. Around 150 prisoners have "accumulated" on death row since Kyrgyzstan introduced a moratorium on executions in December 1998, while Kazakhstan has continued to pass death sentences, the group said. Tajikistan also has a moratorium on death sentences and executions in place, while capital punishment was abolished in Turkmenistan in the late 1990s. On Monday in Uzbekistan, 20 men appeared in court to face Islamic extremism charges, AFP reported. The men went on trial in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, charged with extremism. One was charged with involvement in a series of blasts and shootouts in the spring of 2004 that left at least 47 people dead, the Initiative Group of Human Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan, a local rights group, said in a statement. The case follows a string of violence that continued in July with attacks on the US and Israeli embassies in Tashkent. Human rights groups accuse Uzbek President Islam Karimov's hardline authorities of waging an arbitrary war on dissidents that involves systematic torture. In Tajikistan, US assistance to the former Soviet republic for border reinforcement and counter narcotics had reached US $13 million since 2002, the Russian Interfax news agency reported on Saturday, citing a US embassy official in the country. "Due to the withdrawal of the Russian border troops, the US and the international community have made joint efforts to provide Tajikistan with the necessary means to protect the country's borders with Kyrgyzstan, China, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. This is very important in maintaining security in the area and combating drug trafficking," the official said. On Thursday, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) said it wanted to encourage Central Asian countries to strengthen peace in the region. In a message to the fourth Eurasia Media Forum, an annual meeting aimed at promoting east-west cooperation and international understanding of Eurasian issues in the Kazakh commercial capital, Almaty, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop said that the alliance was keen to engage Central Asian countries in an effort to help build peace in the region. More than 300 political thinkers, academics and journalists had gathered for the three-day meeting. Also in Kazakhstan, a new regional HIV/AIDS project was launched in Almaty on Tuesday. The US-funded Capacity Project is a Central Asian programme to fight HIV/AIDS in the region. Washington intends to provide $13 million for the project over the next five years. Estimates suggest that there were at least 90,000 HIV-infected people living in the region, Lev Khodakevich, regional coordinator of the Capacity Programme, said. "Most of them are intravenous drug addicts and the epidemic is mostly spreading among young people," he said at the programme's launch ceremony in Almaty. The number of officially registered cases of HIV in Central Asia had grown over the past four years from 500 in 2000 to 12,000 in 2004, he said. Khodakevich maintained that from 2000 to 2003, the disease's incidence rate had grown by 200 percent in Kazakhstan, 800 percent in Kyrgyzstan, 1,600 percent in Tajikistan and 1,500 percent in Uzbekistan. On Wednesday, a dissident faction in Kazakhstan's main opposition party announced that they were forming a new party that would join other groups in backing a single candidate in the country's upcoming elections. Three leaders who broke away from the Ak Zhol party in February are forming a new group called Nagyzgy Ak Zhol or the 'True Ak Zhol'. "We want to create a truly democratic, truly opposition and truly constructive party," Bolat Abilov, one of the new party's leaders, said. Turkmenistan's longtime authoritarian leader said that he would retire in 2009, the AP reported on Wednesday. Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov assured Dmitrij Rupel, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), that he would not seek another term as president of the largely desert, but energy-rich state, despite being named president-for-life by that country's lawmakers in 1999. Niyazov, 65, who has ruled the reclusive Central Asian state since 1985 and has created a vast personality cult around himself, tolerates no dissent, outside observers and rights groups maintain.