Weekly news wrap

A Kazakh opposition youth leader in police custody on embezzlement charges claimed that he was beaten and abused by investigators, rights groups reported on Thursday. Makhambet Abzhan, leader of the Union of Patriotic Youth of Kazakhstan (UPYK), complained in a letter to prosecutors that he had also been threatened with torture and subjected to verbal abuse, the Kazakh-based International Bureau for Human Rights (IBHR) said. Abzhan was handed over to Kazakh authorities after being arrested in December in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. He had fled there fearing persecution for his political activity ahead of the 4 December presidential election. Authorities have denied political motives behind Abzhan's case. President Nursultan Nazarbayev won an easy re-election in the vote, which was criticised by Western observers as flawed. Nazarbayev has drawn criticism for holding back democratic reforms in the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic. Kazakhstan continues to boost its efforts to prevent the return of bird flu, Reuters reported on Thursday. Hit by an outbreak of the virus last year, the Central Asian state is beefing up measures to prevent the deadly disease from surfacing again in coming months when wild birds migrate through the country. Talgat Abulgazin, a senior agriculture ministry official, said veterinary officials were stocking up on preventive vaccines for domestic birds, especially in areas bordering Russia where the disease was registered last year. "Kazakhstan is a hub for (migratory) birds... The threat of bird flu virus being brought here is very high," Abulgazin said. Many scientists believe that wild birds - who migrate across Kazakhstan and other areas of Central Asia every year - are to blame for spreading the deadly virus. Last year the H5N1 strain, which is potentially dangerous to humans, hit some rural settlements mainly in the north of the country, which also shares a long border with China. Tens of thousands of domestic birds were slaughtered to prevent the disease from spreading further. No humans in Kazakhstan have caught the virus, which has killed at least 85 people worldwide since 2003. In Kyrgyzstan, a wave of threats and intimidation has been unleashed against independent media in the country over the past few months, an international media freedom watchdog said on Tuesday. The Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) said disturbing incidents occurring in the past few weeks included raids on media premises by criminal groups, an arson attempt against the editorial office of a major daily, buyout bids by fictitious private companies and sudden management changes. In Uzbekistan, the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) criticised Tashkent over a recent clampdown on civil society in the former Soviet republic. In December, President Islam Karimov signed new legislation designed to restrict the activities of NGOs. During the past year, the Uzbek government suspended the activities of numerous civic groups, including in the past two months Freedom House and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), both US-funded, the mission said in a statement. "The US calls upon the government of Uzbekistan to comply with its OSCE commitments by enacting legislation that facilitates, rather than hinders, the vital work of non-governmental organisations. We urge Uzbek authorities to stop their crackdown on their country's civil society and, in particular, authorise Freedom House and IREX to continue carrying out their activities," the statement read. Also on Thursday, director of US National Intelligence John Negroponte warned that central authority in one or more Central Asian states "could evaporate" as rival clans or regions compete for power, AP reported. Negroponte, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Commission, described such a turn of events a "worst but not implausible case" for the five-nation region. The collapse of central authority could lead to increased terrorist and criminal activities. The situation for the affected state or states in the region could resemble failed states like Somalia and, when it was under Taliban rule, Afghanistan, Negroponte maintained. He described Central Asia - consisting of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan - as a region "plagued by political stagnation and repression, rampant corruption, widespread poverty and widening socio-economic inequalities, and other problems that nurture nascent radical sentiment and terrorism". In Tajikistan, police stepped up their fight against human trafficking in the north, the Tajik Asia-Plus news agency reported on Monday. According to regional police, some 100 women in northern Sogd province had been registered as victim of trafficking gangs over the past few months. Around 35 criminal cases were filed against 50 suspected traffickers in the area, the report added. Some observers say that every year up to 10,000 people, mainly young women destined for the sex trade, are taken from Central Asia against their will, or under false pretences. Research on human trafficking is also thin on the ground, making assessments of the extent of the problem difficult. Every year, more than 4 million people globally become victims of human trafficking in what has become a business generating between US $8 billion and $10 billion for criminal syndicates.