WELCOME TO IWPR'S REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA, No. 463, September 12, 2006 Correction: Kazakstan: NGOs Fear Losing Independence (RCA No. 460, 11-Aug-06) http://www.iwpr.net/?p=rca&s=f&o=322916&apc_state=henprca
A reference to NGO legislation recently approved by President Nazarbaev may have given the impression that it had been drafted this year. In fact, it was formulated in 2005 but only signed off by the president in July 2006. And references to law enforcement legislation and amendments to national security legislation lacked a clear indication of when the president approved them. He did so last year. We apologise for any confusion these errors - which have now been corrected online - may have caused our readers. KYRGYZSTAN ROCKED BY SMEAR SCANDAL The president sacks his brother after allegations he was involved in planting heroin to compromise a prominent politician. By Taalaibek Amanov in Bishkek KAZAKSTAN: SARSENBAEV MURDER TRIAL A "FARCE" There were so many apparent irregularities in the case that few have any confidence in the conviction. By Gaziza Baituova in Taraz KYRGYZSTAN: RURAL COMMUNITIES SEEK SHARE IN PROSPERITY Industry asked to put some of its profits back into local development. By Aziza Turdueva in Bishkek TURKMENISTAN: PRESSED INTO SERVICE Recruiters will take anyone, no matter how unfit, to fill the ranks of an army whose main job is to provide a free labour force. By IWPR staff in London UZBEK BORDER TOWN RESIDENTS EVICTED Residents say they are losing their homes to a scheme to create a security zone separating Uzbek territory from Kyrgyzstan. By IWPR staff in London ****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net *************** RSS: http://www.iwpr.net/en/rca/rss.xml FREE SUBSCRIPTION. Readers are urged to subscribe to IWPR's full range of electronic publications at: http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=henh&s=s&m=p ****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net *************** KYRGYZSTAN ROCKED BY SMEAR SCANDAL The president sacks his brother after allegations he was involved in planting heroin to compromise a prominent politician. By Taalaibek Amanov in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan's political establishment has been shaken by more allegations in the case of Omurbek Tekebaev, a leading opposition politician believed to have been targeted in a dirty tricks campaign. President Kurmanbek Bakiev has sacked his brother Janysh as deputy head of the secret police or National Security Service, SNB, after parliament got hold of a document alleging he had ordered drugs to be planted in Tekebaev's luggage as he left on a trip abroad. The Kyrgyz parliament drafted a resolution on September 12 calling for the resignations of Bakiev, Prime Minister Felix Kulov, and other government ministers. Tekebaev, who resigned as speaker of parliament earlier this year, was arrested by Polish border guards on September 6 after they found 595 grams of heroin in his suitcase on arrival in Warsaw. The drugs were stuffed inside a "matrioshka" - the familiar Russian wooden toy which usually has smaller dolls nesting inside it. With such strong material evidence, the Poles placed Tekebaev in custody and charged him with smuggling narcotics. But the authorities in Poland - like Kyrgyzstan, a country with a recent communist past - took a closer look at the matter, and on September 8, a district court in Warsaw dropped all charges and released Tekebaev. He was, the court said, "an active opposition figure in a country where the struggle for democracy has not ended", and as such, there was reason to believe the drugs had been planted on him to discredit him. Tekebaev stepped down as speaker of parliament in February 2006 and has since become an increasingly vocal critic of President Kurmanbek Bakiev's administration. He remains a member of parliament. Central Asian parliaments are generally the tame instruments of the ruling elite, but Kyrgyzstan's legislature has broken the mould by seizing the initiative and driving forward the process of disclosure, however uncomfortable the results may prove for senior officials. On September 8, the assembled members of parliament were treated to a showing of footage from the closed-circuit cameras installed at Manas, Bishkek's international airport. In the film, Tekebaev's luggage is separated from that of two other members of his delegation after they check in together on September 5. For no obvious reason, his bag is taken off somewhere out of sight of the cameras for 14 minutes, and is then brought back to rejoin the others. A uniformed airport security service officer is seen carrying the bag when it disappears and reappears, and the same man is present as it passes through a security X-ray machine. Parliament immediately set up a 10-member commission to look into the case. Beyond the issues of what had happened and which airport personnel were involved, the unspoken question was whether some more senior figure had ordered drugs to be planted on Tekebaev. As if the CCTV film was not enough, there was more to come when the parliamentary commission convened on September 11. The investigating commission produced a written statement from Nadyr Mamyrov, the deputy director of Manas airport, alleging that Janysh Bakiev personally instructed him to arrange a smear operation against Tekebaev. The commission said it also had a video recording in which Mamyrov gave the same testimony. Mamyrov told commission members that he wrote his statement in the presence of both President Bakiev and SNB chief Busurmankul Tabaldiev. This explosive testimony was not made public the day Mamyrov wrote it - September 8 - when Tabaldiev told reporters merely that his agency had nothing to do with the case, and wanted to investigate it urgently. Tabaldiev appeared in parliament on September 12 to announce that he was stepping down, and that his deputy Janysh Bakiev had been dismissed by presidential decree. Parliament went on to draft a strongly-worded resolution which will be put the vote on September 14, calling for the resignations of the president, the prime minister and the rest of the government including the interior minister and the remaining deputy heads of the SNB. In addition, it demands the recall of two other Bakiev brothers - Marat, who is currently Kyrgyz ambassador to Germany, and Adyl, a counsellor at the country's Beijing embassy. If the government does not comply with the resolution, parliament is warning that it will declare September 15 a day of civil disobedience. President Bakiev has ordered a new government commission - separate from the parliamentary body - to be set up to look into the case. The scandal is clearly a huge embarrassment for President Bakiev, who confirmed his brother's appointment as deputy head of the SNB in March this year. Bakiev presides over a political environment that remains unsettled a year and a half after the March 2005 revolution that ousted his predecessor Askar Akaev. He has lost some support among the core constituency of former opposition figures - Tekebaev among them - who were his allies in the revolution. Many of them now accuse his administration of achieving little in the way of democratic and economic progress. To win election in July 2005, Bakiev forged an alliance with another opposition politician, Felix Kulov, even though the two were not seen as natural allies. After the election, they continued working together, one as president and the other as prime minister. That relationship - known as the "tandem" in Kyrgyzstan - may now be under strain. Kulov, who last week said he was "100 per cent convinced" that Tekebaev was the innocent victim of a dirty trick, appeared in parliament on September 12, where he said, "Janysh Bakiev has let down not just the president but the whole country." Parliamentarians wanted to summon President Bakiev himself, but he declined, saying he had other commitments for the day. Tekebaev had earlier arrived in parliament after flying into Bishkek overnight. The applause that greeted him reflected the sympathy he has been shown during this scandal. From the outset, there has been a rare degree of unanimity among politicians that he was no drug smuggler. Among the opposition, there was always a suspicion that someone in a position of authority was behind the incident, and that Tekebaev was targeted as he is a particularly high-profile government critic. As well as being ex-chairman of parliament, he heads the Ata-Meken Socialist Party and is co-chairman of an opposition umbrella group, the Movement for Reform. In a letter to the European Parliament late last week, the Movement for Reform said, "We are certain that this drug was planted by Kyrgyz security services with the sole aim of discrediting an opposition leader and removing him from the political scene." Bolot Baikojoev, a former member of parliament who like Tekebaev, has become disillusioned with the Bakiev-led government, also blamed the security services and said, "Tekebaev is a possible presidential candidate and a leader of the opposition, so the present regime decided to neutralise him - and it did so in a dirty, primitive manner." Opposition politicians pointed to the timing of the incident, just as political activity was about to be stepped up after a quiet summer. On September 17, opposition groups will gather in the southern town of Aksy for a "kurultai" or assembly at which the Movement for Reforms will play a prominent role. Taalaibek Amanov is the pseudonym of an independent journalist in Bishkek. Aziza Turdueva, a correspondent for Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz service of RFE/RL, provided additional reporting. KAZAKSTAN: SARSENBAEV MURDER TRIAL A "FARCE" There were so many apparent irregularities in the case that few have any confidence in the conviction. By Gaziza Baituova in Taraz The trial and conviction last week of ten people for the murder of a prominent opposition leader, Altynbek Sarsenbaev, has been dismissed by many here as a judicial farce. The high-profile trial delivered its verdict on August 31, with the alleged ringleaders of the group Rustam Ibragimov, a former security officer, and the ex-head of the parliamentary administration, Erjan Utembaev, sentenced to death and jailed for 20 years respectively. One other defendant received a 20-year prison term, while the remainder are to serve between three and 11 years. Ibragimov is likely to face life imprisonment, as there is a moratorium on capital punishment. Sarsenbaev, a former information minister and ex-ambassador to Russia, was found dead on the outskirts of Almaty on February 12. The bodies of his driver and bodyguard were discovered nearby. Many saw Sarsenbaev, one of the co-leaders of the Naghyz Ak Jol party, as a uniquely influential figure who provided intellectual and strategic direction for the opposition. He also spoke out stridently against government corruption, naming many important names - and no doubt making a few enemies along the way. In the days after his death, the Kazak leadership reacted swiftly arresting several senior government and security figures, in an apparent attempt to counter opposition claims that it was behind the murder. But the speed with which the case has proceeded has fueled fears amongst the Kazak public and western diplomats that it has been heavily subject to political bias and is flawed as a result. "There is more than enough evidence to consider this trial a judicial farce and a political order," said one of the leaders of the Kazak opposition Tulegen Jukeev, reflecting a broadly held view. The defendants have long maintained that they were "set up" by powerful figures within the government. Throughout the trial, the lawyers representing the defendants repeatedly complained to the press about alleged falsification of evidence and other violations of judicial process. All the accused dismissed testimony they had provided in the investigation stage as having been elicited under pressure. Adil Jalilov, director of the international journalism centre MediaNet, believes the case follows an established pattern of politically-motivated trials. "Other cases also lacked evidence, but experience shows that this has no serious consequences for the Kazak leadership," he said. Leading Kazak human rights campaigner Evgeny Jovtis believes that ordinary people suspect that the defendants, whether guilty or not, were not the principal culprits. "I assume that the public will feel that the accused have some connection with the crime one way or another, but I think society understands that they are not the main figures in the case and Mr Utembaev is not the one who ordered the murder. The trial has not been objective [or] complete," he said. Analysts believe the trial was rushed so that it would not drag on into the next parliamentary session. Eduard Polotaev, the editor-in-chief of the international journal The World of Eurasia, said the authorities are hoping the matter is now closed. "The trial has provoked a lot of debates in society..[but now] a line has been drawn [under the matter]," he said. The prominent politician and editor-in-chief of the national newspaper The Freedom of Speech, Guljan Ergalieva, believes the case has underlined the view held by many here that trying to obtain justice for the victims of political crimes is virtually impossible. Although the political analyst Andrey Chebotarev does not discount the possibility of the convicted men revealing the names of those who bear most responsibility for the killing. "Maybe some of the accused who were silent during the trial will find the courage in future or will take revenge by naming the people who are really guilty of the murder," he said. Ergalieva believes the international community must take account of this trial and other miscarriages of justice before making overtures towards Kazakstan, such as recent German remarks about Astana's bid for the chairmanship of the OSCE. Germany released an official letter stating that denying Kazakstan the chairmanship on the grounds that it does not match up to democratic ideals could have serious political consequences, possibly alienating energy-rich nations of the former Soviet Union. "It is necessary of the world community to apply to Kazakstan the same political, economic and other pressure mechanisms that are applied to dictatorships such as Belarus and Uzbekistan," said Ergalieva. Gaziza Baituova is an IWPR reporter in Taraz. KYRGYZSTAN: RURAL COMMUNITIES SEEK SHARE IN PROSPERITY Industry asked to put some of its profits back into local development. By Aziza Turdueva in Bishkek The "people power" that drove last year's revolution in Kyrgyzstan is still there - only now it is focused on local concerns. Across the country, impoverished communities are trying to secure a stake in local industries, or at least some of the income they generate. In the latest action, people in the Toktogul district of central Kyrgyzstan have asked the government to give them a ten per cent share in two hydroelectric stations currently under construction. The Kambarata-1 and -2 plants, both incomplete, sit further up the river Naryn from the giant Toktogul dam, a Soviet-era plant whose turbines generate most of the country's electricity. Local people argue that having a share of the two new plants' assets would offset the damage they envisage the construction work will do to the environment and the local economy. Hydroelectric power is a key resource in this mountainous country, and offers the prospect of significant revenues if exports of electricity to neighbouring countries can be increased. Their demands have been backed by the district council, an elected local government body, which had put forward some demands of its own: it wants an assessment of ecological and other damage done by the older Toktogul power station and reservoir over the years. The costs would then be paid out to residents by the country's major power station operator. The groundswell at Toktogul and other places where communities are demanding a share in industry seems driven by endemic rural poverty - sharpened by a sense that local residents do not benefit from profitable enterprises, yet are vulnerable to environmental problems. Previous successes may have given heart to Toktogul's residents. After a cyanide spill eight years ago, inhabitants of the village of Barskoon near Lake Issykkul mounted protests and eventually won compensation from the Kumtor gold mining company. At Karakeche, where the country's biggest coalfields are situated, a local leader, Nurlan Motuev, seized control of mines last year and provided nearby villages with free coal. Motuev was ousted earlier this year, but residents of Jumgal district are still demanding that they should pay discount prices for their coal. Rural areas of Kyrgyzstan are desperately under-funded, with poor roads, and shortages of schools, clinics, and clean drinking water. Local government can barely sustain itself financially, let alone undertake infrastructure projects So targeting major enterprises, especially those with foreign investors, offers communities a rare opportunity for fundraising. For example, Chinese investors are prospecting for gold at the Togolok pass in Issykkul region, close to the border with China, and their proposals to build two plants in the area have led to demands for money to build a hospital and school and lay on running water in the village of Uchkoshkon. Kurmanbek Dyikanbaev, who heads Kyrgyzstan's Association of Rural Communities and Villages, believes the government should introduce new rules according to which mining contracts would stipulate that a proportion of revenues are spent on local development. "The draft contract would set out money for the region or district where a mining and processing plant was to be built. Then the government would guarantee that the arrangements were carried out," he explained. At the same time, Dyikanbaev accepts that sometimes people make demands that go beyond what is reasonable. Kubanychbek Isabekov, a member of the Kyrgyz parliament, believes taxation laws could be changed to allow some tax revenues from industrial plants to be spent on social, ecological and infrastructure development in the areas where they are located. Isabekov too favours direct payments by investors into the local economy. "Foreign investors need to be on good terms with residents of the area. They need to make concessions to the proposals or demands made by local people," he said. One example - even before any legislation has been enacted - shows how this might be done. The British-based Oxus Gold, developing the Jeruy gold seam, has agreed with the regional government in Talas province that three million US dollars should be earmarked for local development projects. At the same time, a lower tier of local government in Bekmoldo, the actual site of the gold refining plant, is still demanding compensation for environmental damage. Aziza Turdueva is a correspondent for Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz service of RFE/RL in Bishkek. TURKMENISTAN: PRESSED INTO SERVICE Recruiters will take anyone, no matter how unfit, to fill the ranks of an army whose main job is to provide a free labour force. By IWPR staff in London Army conscription officers in Turkmenistan are casting their net ever wider. However, the expanded recruitment drive is not to build a huge fighting machine, but to provide an army of free labour for a struggling economy. IWPR has learned that the military is even calling up people with disabilities in its desperate attempt to meet manpower quotas. When 18-year-old wheelchair user Andrei Alekseyev in the eastern city of Turkmenabat, received call-up papers in May this year, his grandmother Maria Alekseyeva phoned the authorities to explain that his congenital spinal defect meant he would never be combat-fit. The military officials who visited Andrei still insisted he had to submit a medical certificate declaring him unfit for service. He was only able to get the document in August, from a special medical commission that convenes once a year. Dursun Orazova recalled how her son Sapar was called up last year and served in military unit in the capital Ashgabat. He has extremely poor vision, but was only discharged from the army after his family obtained a certificate showing his progressive myopic condition from the institute of ophthalmology. Although Turkmenistan sits in a volatile region, with Iran, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan as unstable neighbours, these young men are in demand not to fight but to plug gaps in the public sector. Turkmen president Saparmurat Niazov has sacked thousands of workers in recent years, apparently to save on government expenditure, even though the country should be earning a healthy income from gas and cotton sales abroad. Within the last two years, around 15,000 healthcare workers have been dismissed from hospitals across the country and replaced by army conscripts. The traffic police became part of the defence ministry a couple of years ago, so untrained recruits now do the job. There are also truck drivers, railwaymen and street-sweepers drafted in from the military, under an organised system where government ministries are allotted a quota of soldiers to be used as free labour. According to one army recruitment officer, "Today soldiers [work as] nurses in the hospitals, they are sent to guard industrial plants and office buildings, they work as firemen and traffic policemen. The list of duties is a long one. "That's why we have to call up everyone, to fulfil the conscription quota." In a report earlier this year, the Turkmenistan Initiative for Human Rights, a group based abroad, said an estimated 75 per cent of men of conscription age were now being called up. This represents a huge increase on the 35 to 45 per cent call-up rate in the Soviet Union. The difference clearly includes disabled people like Sapar Dursunov and Andrei Alexeev. It also includes men who would previously have been exempted because of family circumstances. A law introduced in 2002 abolished the traditional justifications for not joining up, for example for the son of a single mother, or the father of two children. It is not clear exactly how big the armed forces of Turkmenistan are - the number was thought to stand at around 30,000 in the Nineties but is believed to have increased since then, by some estimates up to 100,0000. In 2002, the armed forces chief of staff promised to deploy up to 25,000 men in the public sector, a figure which may have increased considerably since the recent dismissals of hospital staff. Despite the recruitment officers' best efforts, it seems that they are failing to keep pace with the need. One regimental-strength unit guarding bridges across the river Amu Darya in the east of the country now has just 300 conscripts men instead of 2,000 it used to have. A company used for construction work in Ashgabat has only half of its complement of 120 men. Perhaps it is just as well that the thousands of workmen in uniform are generally unarmed. In the Soviet military, basic literacy was requirement for army service, but the Turkmen army no longer sets this standard. "There are soldiers who can't read well and aren't able to write a letter to their parents," said senior lieutenant Altybay Kakabaev. "Anyone who is literate gets sent to the command headquarters where they have to handle documents." Rahmatulla Usmanov, a resident of Lebap region, recalled what happened when he was pulled over by one of the new breed of traffic policemen - in reality an army conscript. "I knew I hadn't broken any traffic regulations so I asked him to fill in a report saying what he believed the violation was," he said. Twenty minutes, the soldier emerged from the police checkpoint building and handed Usmanov a form which had a few boxes ticked but was otherwise blank. "When I asked why the form wasn't filled in, he said he'd finish it later. But I realised he was unable to write," he said. (The names of people speaking in this article have been changed out of concern for their security.) UZBEK BORDER TOWN RESIDENTS EVICTED Residents say they are losing their homes to a scheme to create a security zone separating Uzbek territory from Kyrgyzstan. By IWPR staff in London The Uzbek authorities are tearing a swathe through the eastern town of Qorasuv to create a security zone on the border with Kyrgyzstan, and residents say they are not being offered adequate compensation. The border runs along the river Shahrikhansay, which cuts straight through the town. The opposite bank is Kyrgyzstan, and the town there is known as Karasuu. The house clearance programme is designed to leave an uninhabited zone where Uzbek border guards will have a clear view of anyone trying to cross illegally. Qorasuv/Karasuu is an important crossing point because the Kyrgyz part of town is home to Central Asia's largest wholesale market, where tens of thousands of people from the region, and many from western China, come to trade clothes and household items. The market has provided jobs in both parts of town, but its presence has also created problems for residents over the years. In 2003, the Uzbek government - on a drive to restrict imports and stop money flowing out of the country to buy them - sealed the border and demolished part of the road bridge spanning the river. In May 2005, following the violent quelling of a demonstration in nearby city of Andijan, Qorasuv residents took matters into their own hands and reopened the bridge. Although police crushed the revolt and imposed stringent security at the crossing. There are two streets where homes are subject to demolition: Dustlik Street, which is being widened to 60 metres to improve access to the road bridge; and Shahrikhansay Street parallel to the river, where a 50-metre frontier strip is to be cleared. Both the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments are concerned about Islamic militancy, and observers say the measures are an attempt to monitor the flow of people more carefully. "The Uzbek authorities are insuring themselves against any of their enemies crossing the border, from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to other religious groups," said a human rights activist did not want to be named. "Qorasuv is the most dangerous zone, because an extremist can bribe border guards here and enter Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan. The Karasuu market has always been a place of refuge not just for smugglers, but for anyone who crossing the border without the proper documents." Residents on the Uzbek side who depend on cross-border trade for their living fear that the measures could be a first step to sealing the frontier again. Nor are they happy with the replacement homes they have been offered as compensation. Each household will get a two-room house on a small plot of land in. The authorities promised that the all-new housing development in Qorasuv will have every amenity, but the problem is that evictions have begun before all 175 homes have been built. "A lot of people are unhappy about this, mainly because they started demolishing the old houses before construction of the new ones was completed." said Qorasuv resident Rahim Ahmedov. "Why do they need to do it in such a hurry?" Many say the housing the town authorities are offering is nothing like the value of the homes they have lost. One man complained that he was having to swap a 14-room home on Shahrikhansay Street for a miserly two rooms. Another man complained about the compensation being offered. "They're saying here's 3.5 million sums [about 3,250 US dollars], take this 0.6 hectare plot of land and build a house yourself," he said. "A few women got angry about this - and ended up in jail for 15 days, with 50,000 som fines." "If the state gave us housing worth the same as our homes, or fully covered the amount we spent on construction, there wouldn't be so much anger," said a woman who works in a local shop. "We saved up for so many years and built such beautiful houses. And now we have to start from scratch again. Isn't that a shame?" (The names of interviewees have been changed or omitted out of concern for their security.) ****************** VISIT IWPR ON-LINE: www.iwpr.net *************** IWPR's 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. All our reporting services are also available via e-mail subscription. For further details on this project and other information services and media programmes, visit IWPR's website: www.iwpr.net 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. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting is a London-based independent non-profit organisation supporting regional media and democratic change. 48 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8LT, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7831 1030 Fax: +44 (0)20 7831 1050 The opinions expressed in IWPR's Reporting Central Asia are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the publication or of IWPR. ISSN: 1477-7924 Copyright © 2006 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting REPORTING CENTRAL ASIA No. 463
