Weekly news wrap

With just a couple of days before presidential elections in Kazakhstan, the authorities in that country have beefed up border security and deported dozens of Kyrgyz labour migrants this week. Astana said that those deported were illegal migrants, while Kazakh border guards were not allowing Kyrgyz nationals to cross into Kazakhstan until after Sunday’s poll, AP reported. Some analysts suggest that the move was aimed at preventing the kind of public protests that resulted in the overthrow of the former regime in Kyrgyzstan in March - charges flatly denied by Astana. Incumbent Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the oil-rich former Soviet republic since before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is seen as sure of an easy win in the poll, AFP reported. In Kyrgyzstan, a new strategy to fight human trafficking is being developed with the help of international organisations, the head of the parliamentary commission on labour migration, Kubanychbek Isabekov, said on Wednesday. Some estimates suggest that upwards of 4,000 Kyrgyz nationals may be trafficked to Russia, the Gulf States, Turkey and Kazakhstan every year. In Uzbekistan, the government has barred Human Rights Watch (HRW) from observing trials associated with a May uprising that was bloodily suppressed by Uzbek security forces, the US-based rights watchdog said on Wednesday. Rights groups say more than 700 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the government crackdown on the uprising in the eastern city of Andijan in May. Tashkent said 187 people died, mostly militants. "The Uzbek government's attempt to cover up the truth about Andijan now extends into the courtroom itself," Holly Cartner, HRW’s Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement. "The government says it is conducting fair and open trials, but in fact is withholding all information about the proceedings and denying access to observers." In Tajikistan, a local court has sentenced a drug ringleader to 20 years of jail, AP reported on Monday. Saidkobir Sharipov was accused of controlling the flow of drugs from Afghanistan in the Farkhor and Shuroabad sections of the border and smuggling them to other former Soviet republics, Tajikistan's security ministry said. Tajikistan lies on a major transit route used to smuggle illegal Afghan opium and heroin to Russia and on to Europe. In Turkmenistan, the US government donated more than a dozen special all-terrain vehicles and communications equipment to the Turkmen border service in a move to help Ashgabat police its Afghan border more efficiently. Sharing a 700 km common border with Afghanistan, the world's top illicit opium producer, Turkmenistan, along with Tajikistan in Central Asia, needs to improve its border service to stave off the flow of drugs trafficked through its territory, analysts say. Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann reportedly said on Monday that construction work on a key bridge linking the landlocked country with Central Asia across the Amudarya River would start in earnest next year, according to the Pajhwok Afghan News website. The completion of the US-funded bridge is to take three years. The bridge is expected to serve as a key link between Central and South Asia. The 630 m-long transit route between Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbours, will be built with a US $30 million grant from Washington. Also in Tajikistan, US envoy to that country, Richard Hoagland, said on Wednesday his country's efforts to promote democracy in the former Soviet republic were not aimed at fomenting a democratic revolution. Governments in ex-Soviet republics have become suspicious of Western support of civil society and pro-democracy groups, following colour-coded revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and neighbouring Kyrgyzstan that brought opposition leaders to power. "We honestly seek democratic evolution, not colour revolution," Hoagland reportedly said.