Rights groups fear refugees will be tortured

Human rights groups have expressed serious concerns about the safety of five men recently extradited by Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan for their alleged involvement in last year’s anti-government protests in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan. Bahtiyor Khamroev, an activist with the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, said on Monday that the men's "lives and well-being" were under real threat in Uzbek prisons. “We are very concerned about their fate as the systemic usage of torture is still very much a reality here,” Khamroev said. Vasila Inoyatova, head of Ezgulik, a rights watchdog group, said from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, that in the majority of cases since 2000 defendants accused of religious extremism or crimes against the state had confessed. “Their confessions will be forced through intimidation, false promises of shorter terms or amnesty, and torture,” Inoyatova said. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) delivered a sharp rebuke to the Kyrgyz government for extraditing the men on Wednesday, four of whom been given refugee status by the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). “I deeply deplore Kyrgyzstan’s decision to deport the four refugees and the asylum-seeker to Uzbekistan and I am very concerned about their welfare and safety. Kyrygzstan’s failure to live up to its international obligations is a serious concern,” the Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, OSCE's chairman-in-office, said on Friday. OSCE said that Kyrgyzstan, as a signatory to the 1951 United Nations (UN) Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture, had committed itself to protect the rights of refugees and to uphold the principle of non-refoulement. Several hundred Uzbeks fled to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan last year after Uzbek security forces killed up to 1,000 - mainly unarmed - civilians while trying to quell anti-government protests in Andijan on 13 May 2005. Tashkent maintains the death toll was 187. Despite an international outcry over the violence, the government of Uzbek President Islam Karimov has refused to allow an independent inquiry into the incident. More than 400 Uzbeks who fled to Kyrgyzstan were granted the status of UNHCR-mandated refugees and airlifted to Romania in July 2005. Tashkent tried to exert pressure on the Kyrgyz government to extradite them for alleged terrorist activities. The UN refugee agency in Tashkent was closed in April after it was told by the government to leave the country. The relationship between the government and UNHCR has been strained since the Uzbek refugees were evacuated to Romania. Earlier this month at least 14 Uzbek nationals applied for refugee status in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh, according to UNHCR and Kyrgyz migration officials.