Weekly news wrap

Uzbek authorities this week dismissed as unfounded criticism by a top UN official of the recent trials of alleged participants in a revolt brutally put down by government troops in the southern Uzbek city of Andijan in May. In a statement on Monday, the prosecutor general's office in Tashkent insisted that the trials were fair and in compliance with international standards, the Associated Press (AP) said. The rebuttal follows a statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, who earlier had expressed concern over trial irregularities, inadequate defence for the accused and a lack of evidence in the convictions. "Arbour's statements cast a shadow on the Uzbek judicial system without any adequate reasons," the statement from Tashkent reportedly said. "The defendants repented for what they have done, and gave detailed evidence describing their terrorist attacks," it explained. Over the past two months, Uzbek courts have convicted 151 people in closed-door trials described by human rights groups as a government-orchestrated show, with evidence allegedly coerced by torture, the AP report said. According to rights activists, up to 1,000 people may have been killed in Andijan on 13 May after security forces opened fire on protestors demonstrating against the authoritarian government of President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Central Asia’s most populous state since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Tashkent has repeatedly refused all calls for an international inquiry into what actually transpired in Andijan and places the death toll at 187. In Kyrgyzstan, the government has granted the Kazakh Prosecutor-General's Office request to extradite one of the leaders of the Kazakh youth opposition, Makhambet Abzhan, Kyrgyz prosecutor general Kambaraly Kongantiyev told a news conference on Tuesday. Kongantiyev said that Astana had provided the Kyrgyz side with repeated assurances that Abzhan was being prosecuted for general crime and that he would not be subject to discrimination on the grounds of his origin and his social, official and property status, the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency reported. Abzhan had been detained in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek on 13 December at the request of the Kazakh authorities and had been kept in a remand centre in the city until 23 December. Staying in Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek on Friday effectively ended the use of the death penalty when president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, elected in July, announced he was extending a moratorium on capital punishment until its planned abolition. Bakiyev signed the decree on Thursday aiming "to humanise and liberalise" the criminal code and urged parliament to support plans to do away with the death penalty as part of proposed constitutional reforms, the AP said. Kyrygzstan first imposed the moratorium in 1998 and has since repeatedly extended it. In neighbouring Tajikistan, deputy health minister Ziyovuddin Afghonov on Thursday called on the international community for greater assistance in that country's battle against HIV/AIDS. According to the independent Asia-Plus news agency, there are 506 people living with HIV in the impoverished Central Asian state, the vast majority being intravenous drug users. The report added that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria had given the former Soviet republic aid worth over US $10 million to mitigate the pandemic's spread. Nevertheless, the deputy minister said that additional help was needed to combat the disease more effectively. "We need more support and resources to be able to at least suspend the growth of HIV/AIDS in the country by 2015," Afghonov was quoted as saying. One day earlier, Tajik health minister Nusratullo Fayzulloyev and Lev Khodakevich, regional director of the Potential project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) signed a memorandum of understanding for another project on HIV/AIDS. The main purpose of the five-year Potential project is to provide methodological assistance to Central Asian countries in boosting their potential to implement large-scale measures to tackle HIV/AIDS. "The signing of the memorandum will contribute greatly to the prevention and combating of HIV/AIDS", Afghonov was quoted as saying Asia-Plus reported. Meanwhile, the same agency reported that there had been a decline in the number of Tajiks officially travelling abroad in search of job opportunities. As of 1 December, some 412,00 Tajik nationals filled in migration cards and left the country in search of work, the head of the State Migration Service of the Tajik Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS), Anvar Boboyev told journalists on Monday. “However, this might change constantly because about 70 percent of our compatriots return to Tajikistan during the autumn and winter, and they might leave again at the beginning of a new season,” Boboyev was quoted as saying. In 2004, 436,000 people went abroad for work, the report explained. Boboyev cited new jobs at home, such as the construction of new hydroelectric powers stations, an aluminum plant and other facilities, as a possible reason for the decline.