Weekly news wrap

This week in Central Asia started with some 2,000 Kyrgyz demonstrators protesting on Saturday in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, demanding constitutional and judicial reforms, and protesting against a court decision to allow Rysbek Akmatbaev, an alleged criminal boss, to run in one of the parliamentary by-elections, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. Kyrgyz NGO-leader Edil Baisalov, one of the organisers of the demonstration, was reportedly attacked on Wednesday and later hospitalised. US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Kyrgyzstan on Friday to hold a thorough inquiry into the attack, Reuters reported the same day. Since former president Askar Akayev’s ouster in March 2005, the ex-Soviet republic has seen innumerable protests and demonstrations demanding that the government fulfils the reforms it promised earlier, according to AFP. On Tuesday, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, denied claims, that Washington had financed Kyrgyzstan’s so called Tulip revolution. The US diplomat also commented on the country’s rampant corruption and said that the incumbent leaders were under the observation of their population, AP reported. The Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) Committee for Statistics announced this week that last year’s GDP growth averaged seven percent in the CIS, excluding Turkmenistan, a Ukrainian newspaper reported on Tuesday. Kazakhstan, the economic powerhouse of Central Asia, was in the third place with a GDP growth of 9.2 percent. Kyrgyzstan’s GDP fell by 0.6 percent from January through September 2005, compared with the same period of 2004. The CIS records came one week after an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report on the region’s growth statistics, including Turkmenistan, forecasting that the economies would grow by five to seven percent in 2006-2007. The countries would benefit from economic reforms, but those with rich oil resources would have stronger growth rates than the rest in the region, the report said. In Tashkent, a closed court sentenced two followers of a well-known dissident imam to six years in prison on Tuesday for alleged religious extremism, AP reported on Wednesday. They were arrested in November in Kazakhstan and were extradited to Uzbekistan. Russia fully supports the Uzbek regime’s suppressing an uprising in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan last May, the Russian Federation Council chairman Sergey Mironov said on Monday, the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency reported the same day. Uzbek security forces, according to rights groups, killed up to 1,000 civilians, while the Uzbek government says 187 people died, comprised mainly of Islamic insurgents and security forces. Tashkent has denied an Amnesty International (AI) report released on 5 April saying CIA planes made 15 stopovers in the country while transporting terror suspects to secret prisons following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, AP reported on Tuesday. The former Soviet republic worked closely with Washington after the attacks, providing them with an air base in the Qashqadaryo Province near the border with Afghanistan. US troops were later evicted after Washington criticised Tashkent over events in Andijan. The CIA has not commented on AI’s report. Meanwhile, in Turkmenistan on Tuesday, AI welcomed the release of Gurbandurdy Durdykuliev, a Turkmen dissident, after he was confined to more than two years in a psychiatric hospital. He was institutionalised after writing to President of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, requesting to hold a peaceful demonstration against government policies, ITAR-TASS reported. Such incidents are not unusual in Central Asia and there are increased calls for greater international attention to the region. According to a report on Monday by the international think tank, International Crisis Group (ICG), the European Union (EU) was not fully playing its potential role as a geopolitical actor in Central Asia. The report suggested that EU’s interest had been low and that the union needed to raise the level of representation in the region where human rights progress and good governance had been slow.