WELCOME TO IWPR'S REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA, No. 489, April 17, 2007 TAJIK MOSQUE CLAMPDOWN COULD BACKFIRE The authorities in the capital are trying to stop the preaching of radical Islam, but intrusive action against mosques may anger a wider constituency of Muslims. By Nafisa Pisarejeva in Tajikistan
ILLEGAL BABY TRADE SUSPECTED IN KYRGYZ HOSPITALS Two arrests have heightened concern that corruption and poor record-keeping may allow babies to be spirited out of hospitals for illegal adoption. By Aziza Turdueva, IWPR contributor in Bishkek RUSSIAN SCHOOLING STILL PRIZED IN KYRGYZ SOUTH Russian is still an essential lingua franca at home and abroad, but Kyrgyz and Uzbek parents often opt for Russian schooling because the teaching is better. By Kamil Satkanbaev in Osh **** NEW AT IWPR ****************************************************************** NEW PODCAST: THIS WEEK ON IWPR A regular audio programme produced by IWPR US, highlighting IWPR news and analysis on issues of conflict, human rights and international justice, written by our contributors around the world. 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For more information about how you can support IWPR go to: http://www.iwpr.net/donate.html **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** TAJIK MOSQUE CLAMPDOWN COULD BACKFIRE The authorities in the capital are trying to stop the preaching of radical Islam, but intrusive action against mosques may anger a wider constituency of Muslims. By Nafisa Pisarejeva in Tajikistan A clampdown on unofficial mosques in the Tajik capital is aimed at weeding out extremist preachers, but critics warn that heavy-handed tactics risk alienating moderate Muslims. Like the rest of this predominantly Muslim country, Dushanbe has witnessed a boom in mosque construction in recent years. Mosques sprang up all over, the place, often built on charitable donations or growing out of local community centres. Islamic institutions such as mosques and madrassahs or religious schools formally come under an official directorate with close links to the state. The Tajik authorities keep a close eye on Muslim groups outside that structure, and have for example arrested many members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, an outlawed group with extremist views. At the same time, Tajikistan is the only Central Asian state to have a legal and mainstream Islamic political party, the Islamic Rebirth Party, IRP. Two years ago, the city authorities in Dushanbe decided to take a closer look at the situation for fear that the unsanctioned prayer houses might be being used to preach radical messages. A specially created commission ran checks on the citys mosques both for their legal status and to see whether the buildings met planning and public health requirements. When that investigation concluded at the end of 2006, the prosecution service stepped in. Three months on, prosecutors have recommended that 13 mosques should be demolished, and that another 28 should be allowed to stay open as long as they formally register with the authorities. They also found that 29 of the unofficial mosques should be reclassified as legal. An official from the Dushanbe prosecutors office told IWPR that it was a question of ensuring that everyone complied with the law. We are all Muslims and we observe the precepts of Islam. But at the same time, we must obey the law. Any organisation has to operate within the law, said the official, who did not want to be named. One imam in Dushanbe told IWPR that the reason many mosques remain outside the law is that the bureaucracy involved in winning registration is daunting. Sometimes they dont register us, or they delay granting legal status to mosques, he explained. So its simpler for us to operate illegally. Said Ahmedov, a senior office-holder at a business institute in Dushanbe who formerly served as advisor to President Imomali Rahmon on religious affairs, believes that the authorities are right to clamp down on unregistered mosques because of concerns that some might have been used by extremist preachers. Ahmedov said there was a danger that more radical forms of Sunni Islam the main faith in Tajikistan were being imported by clerics who had spent time abroad. If there are no controls, theres a risk that other strands [of Sunni Islam] will be propagated and gain influence. Some imams [prayer leaders] have studied abroad, a number of them in Saudi Arabia, where they fall under the sway of Wahhabism, which is alien to Tajikistan. That poses some risk, he said. Religious figures must work alongside the state to monitor the situation and ensure that these teachings are not purveyed in the mosques and madrassahs. Ahmedov concluded that while the kind of people who veer towards extremist views tend to be uninformed about Islam and poorly educated, the government should take care to ensure that supervision of religious affairs takes place within the law, so that the rights of [other] believers are not abused. But critics of the mosque clampdown say it is part of a long-running and heavy-handed government campaign to contain and control the practice of Islam, and as such risks alienating devout Muslims and making them more receptive to extremist views. The head of the IRP, Muhiddin Kabiri, accused the government of trying to make Islam the bogeyman because its own social and economic policies were bankrupt. When the authorities realise theyre running short of the trust people have invested in them, they resort to the tried-and-tested method of looking for the source of evil, he said. In recent times, religion has been this source of evil. Attitudes in Tajikistan are still imprinted with the experience of the 1992-97 civil war, in which the IRP led an armed insurgency against a government that is still largely in power. That conflict, which ended in a peace deal that gave the IRP legal status and some posts in the administration, has been widely if inaccurately depicted as a war between Islamic guerrillas and a secular government. Kabiri argued that the attitudes of some senior officials are still coloured by this view. Even though public attitudes to religion and faith-based organisations have changed for the better, and people no longer see these things as a threat, there are certain groups which would like to revive this [anti-Islamic] sentiment and create the impression that it is specifically religious organisations that flout the law and other standards, he said. He accepted that many mosques fail to comply with planning and other legislation, but he said this was due merely to ignorance of the law. Kabiris views were reinforced by another senior IRP figure, Hikmatullo Saifullozoda, who said, There are people in the higher echelons of power who regard Islam - and religion in general as their enemy. The authorities argue that they are simply upholding the law, but they may not have helped to win this argument when they decided to send police into a number of Dushanbe mosques in mid-March to catch children who should have been at school. One such police raid, at Dushanbes main mosque on March 16, ended in scuffles as angry members of the congregation tried to stop police taking away children who had come to attend the midday Friday prayers. Eyewitnesses said the confrontation began to turn nasty as police brought in reinforcements and the crowd swelled to 1,000 to defy them. In the chaos, the children managed to break free and the crowd turned into an impromptu demonstration. Dushanbes chief prosecutor Qurbonali Muhabbatov insisted the police had acted according to the letter of the law. Current legislation on religion states that children under 18 cannot attend the mosque for Friday prayers. They must be at school at this time, he said. But Saifullozoda said this kind of incident creates bad feeling among observant Muslims, and warned that this in turn could be exploited by extremist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir which are looking for new recruits. It suits certain groups if the authorities move against religion, as they can turn this [resulting hostile] sentiment to their own advantage, he said. Nafisa Pisarejeva is an IWPR correspondent in Tajikistan. ILLEGAL BABY TRADE SUSPECTED IN KYRGYZ HOSPITALS Two arrests have heightened concern that corruption and poor record-keeping may allow babies to be spirited out of hospitals for illegal adoption. By Aziza Turdueva, IWPR contributor in Bishkek. A Kyrgyz health ministry investigation into maternity hospitals around the capital has revealed holes in the system that may have been exploited to sell babies for adoption. The health ministry set up a commission to investigate hospitals in Bishkek and the neighbouring Chu region after two staff members were arrested on suspicion of trying to sell a newborn baby. The two, a hospital departmental head and a midwife, were arrested after an investigation conducted by the Kyrgyz polices organised crime squad. They have since been released on bail. Kasymbek Mambetov, state secretary at the health ministry, said the case involved a baby that was taken from its mother in the maternity ward of the National Hospital. According to Melis Turganbaev, the head of the organised crime department, said the mother was later told by medical staff that the baby was dead. The arrests led to Turganbaevs unit receiving a number of calls from people who had been told that their newborn children had died, and who now wanted their cases to be investigated by the police. In March, a commission set up by the health ministry seized medical documentation going back three years from all the maternity and special care units in Bishkek as well as the regional hospital in the Chu region. The ministry announced the findings of its investigation at a press conference on March 28. Deputy health minister Madamin Karataev said there did not appear to be an organised racket selling babies, but irregularities had been uncovered in the paperwork for registering births and recording transfers of babies to orphanages. Cases cited at the press conference included birth certificates issued for stillborn babies, and death certificates for newborns that did not record the cause of death. Some paper trails showed babies being transferred to childrens homes in Bishkek, with no record that they actually arrived. In other cases, individuals claiming to be guardians or relatives arrived at hospitals to claim children, but medical staff failed to check their identities. As a result of the investigation, the heads of the hospitals where malpractice was identified were issued with official reprimands, and instructed to take disciplinary action against staff members found to be involved in abuses. The ministry also decided to set up special adoption units within all maternity units, so that babies do not have to go to childrens homes before they can be legally adopted. Turganbaev said he had been urging the health ministry to investigate its staff for some months. His officers launched their own investigation after receiving tip-offs that babies were being sold by maternity hospital staff. Some hospital staff say the pitifully low wages paid in the public healthcare sector may tempt some to consider arranging an illegal sale. The average monthly wage for a doctor is 1,200 soms [35 US dollars]. Of course thats no excuse for committing a crime, but its a factor one needs to bear in mind, said Talant Mamytov, a surgeon at a Bishkek hospital. Medics say the social stigma of having a child outside marriage in Kyrgyzstan means that if a woman plans to give up her baby for adoption, she may be happy not to register the birth with the authorities. With no formal paperwork, the child is more vulnerable to abduction. If a [familys] daughter gives birth without a husband, it carries a life-long stigma, and not just the woman, but also for her parents and all of her relatives, said Maria Asanova, an obstetrician at a Bishkek maternity hospital. Asanova noted that this happened in well-off as well as poor families she knows of a number of cases where women from well-to-do homes have absconded from hospital after giving birth. Gulnara Juraeva, an 18-year-old resident of the Nooken region of the Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan, is facing this kind of social pressure she is eight months pregnant and is planning to give up the child because the father has refused to acknowledge it. Its seen as a disgrace for a husbandless woman to have a baby Now I am forced to give my child up to someone else. I am very worried about who my child will end up with. But I have no other choice, she said. She said her mother is scared of rumours and is ashamed in front of the relatives. Jamila Kubatova, a staff member at an orphanage in Bishkek, said many of the babies which come up for adoption have mothers with a background of prostitution or drug and alcohol abuse, and this can leave the children with congenital health problems. Prospective parents tend to want to adopt a healthy child, so many of the babies at Kubatovas orphanage will never find a home. The shortage of healthy babies available for legal adoption could tempt prospective parents to consider trying to buy a baby. Even if they do find a child they want to adopt, going through the proper channels is a lengthy and complicated process. Naykei Osmonova, head of the adoption department in Bishkeks Sverdlovsk district, reeled off a list of 17 documents that prospective parents must produce in order to proceed with an adoption. Once this is in place, a special commission checks that the paperwork is in order before deciding whether to let the adoption go ahead. Kubanychbek Aidarov and Atyrkul Imasheva encountered this bureaucracy when they tried to become the legal guardians of a newborn child they found abandoned on their doorstep early one morning. The couple had been together for nine years and were unable to have children of their own, so they were delighted at this chance to adopt a child. But we ran into a huge amount of problems collecting the documents together, said Aidarov. Osmonova insists that cutting corners on the paperwork could undermine childrens safety. We need to be certain that the adopted child is going to reliable people, she said. Aziza Turdueva is an IWPR contributor in Bishkek. RUSSIAN SCHOOLING STILL PRIZED IN KYRGYZ SOUTH Russian is still an essential lingua franca at home and abroad, but Kyrgyz and Uzbek parents often opt for Russian schooling because the teaching is better. By Kamil Satkanbaev in Osh Increasing numbers of parents in southern Kyrgyzstan are sending their children to Russian-language schools instead of those where the teaching medium is Kyrgyz or Uzbek. Some observers attribute the soaring popularity of Russian-language schools to the constant flow of labour migrants both to Russia itself and to Kazakstan where the language is vital for jobseekers. Teachers in the south of Kyrgyzstan say classes taught in Russian is also due to the inferior standard of education on offer at Kyrgyz and Uzbek schools. Russian remains an important language in Kyrgyzstan a decade and a half after the end of Soviet rule. As well as the Slav minority, who mainly live in the north of the country, many Kyrgyz and other ethnic groups are fluent in Russian. In the south of the country, Uzbek, related to Kyrgyz, is another important language. Since independence in 1991, the authorities have made efforts to promote the use of Kyrgyz as the national language, especially for official purposes, although they have been careful not to marginalise Russian. But in spite of these attempts to foster pride in Kyrgyz, many parents in the south of the country are opting for schools and kindergartens where some or all classes are taught in Russian. In the city of Osh, for example, most children go to Uzbek schools, followed by Russian and then Kyrgyz. But in the last year alone, demand for classes conducted in Russian has led to these being introduced at three more schools which previously were monolingual in Kyrgyz or Uzbek. Of the citys 54 schools, nine are Russian-only, 12 teach classes in both Kyrgyz and Russian, and another 12 use Uzbek and Russian. The city also has 28 Russian kindergartens. Asan Artykbaev, the head of school and pre-school education at the Osh city education department, attributes the change to the increasing numbers of people leaving for Russia and Kazakstan to take advantage of the better employment prospects there. When whole families are planning to go instead of just the male householder, they want their children to have a head start in Russian. Zair Turtumamatov, a former maths teacher who now owns a mini-market in the Russian city of Samara, left to find work with his wife and children seven years ago. Our children dont have a future in Kyrgyzstan, he said. Now two of my daughters go to school in Samara, and two years ago they received Russian citizenship. Turtumamatov said fluency in Russian makes it much quicker to find a job there. His wife, for example, now earns 250 US dollars a month as a housekeeper and nanny ten times the amount she used to make as a primary school teacher in Kyrgyzstan. Myrzabek Toichuev, another migrant, said a knowledge of Russian opens up more job options and offers higher earnings. Those who know Russian can work as waiters, as superintendents on building sites, or as bus and taxi drivers. Those who dont and there are many of them go to work as builders, but not everyone is up to that kind of job, he said. In Kazakstan, too, Russian is the key to success, according to Kalicha Hamidova from Osh. Many Kazaks, particularly those living in the capital and regional centres, dont speak their mother tongue, and prefer Russian, she said. Gulchehra Ziyoeva, who works as a seamstress in the Kazak city of Almaty, said she was planning to move her children there from Kyrgyzstan, where they are currently at school. It would be difficult for them to find a job after school there [in Kyrgyzstan]. In Kazakstan, they will be able to earn a living when they grow up, she explained. Jenish Toichuev was a teacher for 12 years after graduating as a Russian linguist. Even though he is now a market trader in Osh, he does not regret having specialised in Russian at a time when it was falling out of favour. When Soviet rule was drawing to a close and Russian stopped being popular, I nevertheless went to study at the philology faculty. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, he recalled. But I was convinced that Russian would continue to play an important role for a long time to come. And I wasnt wrong. Toichuev has sent his children to a school that offers classes taught through Russian. This is partly because the outlook for Russian is good as it is still so widely used in literature, on street signs, and in government and parliament; but also because the teaching is of a higher standard. Azam Abdurazakov, the headmaster at an Uzbek-language secondary school in Osh, regrets that he did not do the same. I admit that the quality of teaching at Russian schools is much higher than it is here. This [also] applies to all the Kyrgyz schools in our city, he said. I regret not sending my own children to a Russian school. Theyve forgotten the grounding in the language that they received at kindergarten. According to Abdurazakov, the difference in the quality of education becomes apparent when inter-school competitions are held the children from Kyrgyz-language schools invariably come last. Part of the problem, he said, is that the Kyrgyz schools are so poorly equipped. They dont even have laboratory classes for chemistry, physics and other subjects, he said. The children only receive theoretical knowledge. And thats true of all the natural sciences. If there are no lab classes, how will the poor children know what chemistry is? The Uzbek schools are especially under-resourced when it comes to teaching materials, according Abdurazakov. They are short of textbooks printed in Uzbek even though school headmasters have repeatedly asked parliamentary deputies to provide more. For every ten books published for the Russian schools, there is one for Uzbek schools, he said. One member of parliament, Kamchibek Tashiev, said that the failure to produce Uzbek-language books in Kyrgyzstan has meant teaching materials are imported from neighbouring Uzbekistan. The danger there, he said, is that the textbooks come with all the ideological baggage of a foreign country. We must not allow the ideology of another state to be disseminated in the schools. We must publish books containing the history and ideology of our own country, he told journalists. Paizylat Ikramova, a teacher at a school in the Naukat district of Osh region, said many parents were unhappy with the quality of the books that are published in Kyrgyzstan. They see them as inferior to the material used in Russian-language schools, which is imported. They leave a lot to be desired and contain numerous errors. Parents see this, and so many of them prefer to send their children to Russian schools, she said. Another factor that hampers Kyrgyz-language schools is the shortage of qualified staff, especially in rural areas. Artykbaev said many of the students attending teacher-training college go off to work abroad once they graduate. Many will take blue-collar jobs rather than work as teachers in Russia, but they can still earn six times as much as a teacher in Kyrgyzstan. Abdulhak Abdumalikov, a lecturer at the Batyrov University in Jalalabad, said that as a result, many schoolteachers were forced to give classes in subjects for which they never trained, simply because there is no one else to do it. This doesnt happen at the Russian-language schools, and thats perhaps why everyone aspires to send their children there. They offer a high standard of education, he said. At the same time, Abdumalikov is concerned about the cultural values children from the Kyrgzy and Uzbek communities are exposed to when they attend Russian schools. They may end up with views and values that are not seen as appropriate in their own communitys culture, and Abdumalikov believes there is a risk of confused identities. After graduating from a Russian school, Kyrgyz and Uzbek boys end up as neither one thing nor the other, he said. Their level of knowledge may be much higher, but its hard to tell whether they are Russian, Kyrgyz or Uzbek. Kamil Satkanbaev is an IWPR contributor in Kyrgyzstan. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA provides the international community with a unique insiders' perspective on the region. Using our network of local journalists, the service publishes news and analysis from across Central Asia on a weekly basis. The service forms part of IWPR's Central Asia Project based in Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent and London, which supports media development and encourages better local and international understanding of the region. IWPR's Reporting Central Asia is supported by the UK Community Fund. The service is published online in English and Russian. The opinions expressed in Reporting Central Asia are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA: Editor-in-Chief: Anthony Borden; Managing Editor: Yigal Chazan; Senior Editor: John MacLeod; Central Asia Programme Manager: Saule Mukhametrakhimova; Editor in Bishkek: Kumar Bekbolotov. IWPR Project Development and Support: Executive Director: Anthony Borden; Strategy & Assessment Director: Alan Davis; Managing Director: Tim Williams. **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** IWPR builds democracy at the frontlines of conflict and change through the power of professional journalism. IWPR programs provide intensive hands-on training, extensive reporting and publishing, and ambitious initiatives to build the capacity of local media. Supporting peace-building, development and the rule of law, IWPR gives responsible local media a voice. Institute for War & Peace Reporting 48 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7831 1030 Fax: +44 (0)20 7831 1050 For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, go to: www.iwpr.net ISSN: 1477-7924 Copyright © 2007 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting **** www.iwpr.net ******************************************************************** If you wish to change your subscription details or unsubscribe please go to: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=s&m=p
