Hizb-ut-Tahrir Suspects Rounded Up Before Summit

Human rights activists in Kyrgyzstan have expressed concern at a wave of arrests and house searches targeting the banned Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir. It seems likely these actions are a security measure ahead of next week’s summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which will tale place in Bishkek.



An August 7 statement from the Moscow-based human rights organisation Memorial cited a Kyrgyz group called Vozdukh as saying the security service had been rounding up individuals suspected to have ties with Hizb-ut-Tahrir. The detentions took place in the southern city of Jalalabad in early August. Kyrgyzstan’s National Security Service searched four houses in the city and allegedly used violence against the suspects. Some of the latter’s relatives accused the security service of planting ammunition in their homes.



The authorities detain suspected members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir – a movement seeking the creation of a “caliphate” or Islamic state – on a regular basis, but local human rights activists say the upsurge in arrests is an attempt to tighten security before the SCO summit.



Interior Ministry spokesman Bakyt Seitov confirmed that the law enforcement agencies have been instructed to get tough on organised crime, drug trafficking and religious extremism ahead of the meeting.



“Our lads certainly have been checking out information in Jalalabad,” said Seitov. Lately there’s been a lot of evidence that extremist religious organisations have been becoming more active,” he said.



At the same time, Seitov pointed out that the police identified and detained Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists and carried out preventive operations on an ongoing basis, and there was no specific threat from the banned group at this particular time.



Kadyr Malikov, an expert on religious affairs, thinks officials have instructed the police to be on high alert ahead of the summit and to detain suspects from Hizb-ut-Tahrir and other Islamic groups merely in order to show their superiors that they are doing something.



However, Kanat Tukeev, the deputy director of the Peaceful Asia research centre does not believe the police actions against Hizb-ut-Tahrir have anything to do with the SCO summit, and says they are long-planned operations.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)