Weekly news wrap

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) high commissioner on national minorities, Rolf Ekeus, visited Turkmenistan for three days this week. He was there to encourage improved treatment of the country’s minorities while. International rights groups have long complained about discrimination by Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov’s administration. Ekeus raised complaints about development of the official language and the protection of minority languages. Critics said that Turkmen authorities prevented Ekeus from seeing the real situation of ethnic minorities through selective access to those groups and their representatives, RFE/RL reported. Critics cite a list of examples of discrimination against minorities by Turkmenistan’s authorities, including being forced to study in the Turkmen language, being forced to adopt Turkmen national clothing and essentially forsake their own ethnic roots. Such groups make up an estimated 15 percent of the country’s five million people. Ethnic Russians have complained of their official treatment, as well. The Turkmen government’s decision to cancel a dual-citizenship agreement with Russia in 2003 led many ethnic Russians to leave Turkmenistan. A court in Tajikistan sentenced six suspected rebels to jail terms on Tuesday. They were accused of supporting former rebel colonel Mahmud Khudoiberdyev and of trying to take power by force nearly eight years ago, AFP reported. They were arrested in Sogd in northern Tajikistan, where the court is located, their jail terms ranges from 15 to 18 years, according to AFP. Khudoiberdyev and his rebel army launched an attack in the Sogd region in 1998, but were overwhelmed by government forces. More than 150 of Khudoiberdyev’s followers were arrested; seven were sentenced to death in 2000. The Central Asian country was embroiled in a civil war between 1992 and 1997, and security forces continue to capture and arrest rebels on the run, AFP reported. Conditions are getting tougher for Muslims in northern Tajikistan, Forum 18 News Service, an agency monitoring religious freedom in former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe, reported. Female students who disobey Tajik law and refuse to go to class without hijabs (Islamic headscarves) now risk being denied school-leavers’ certificates. Tajikistan is constitutionally a secular state. Last year’s decree from the education ministry bans hijabs in secular schools and universities, and introduced school uniform regulations. However, the ban of hijabs was already imposed before the decree was issued, Forum 18 reported. Islom Pokosov, a human rights activist in Tajikistan, reported that religious intolerance has increased towards Muslims over the past six months. Four imams have been removed from their mosques for preaching without a licence, Forum 18 reported. Turkmenistan’s president, Saparmurat Niyazov, said bird flu is under control in the country and the government has taken measures to prevent the disease, BBC reported on Saturday. Niyazov has demanded information on avian influenza and discussed measures to prevent the flu in the country, where it has not yet been detected, although the virus is present in nearby Turkey. Turkmenistan’s bird flu surveillance is under the head of state’s personal control and a ban has been imposed on the import of live poultry and poultry products. Restrictions on people from countries where bird flu has been detected have been imposed, according to the BBC. Further preventative measures such as disinfection facilities at border checkpoints, creation of stocks of the Tamiflu medicine (treatment for people with bird flu symptoms) and strict control of poultry farms, have also been taken. In Kyrgyzstan, no bird flu cases have been reported, and the country remains unaffected, authorities said on Thursday. However, massive numbers of dead birds in the south of the country have been attributed to low temperatures rather than bird flu, explained the director of State Veterinary Department Talant Uzakbayev, Interfax.