Kyrgyzstan Divided Over Foreign Police Presence
Opponents of OSCE police deployment include politicians and others with their own agendas.
Kyrgyzstan Divided Over Foreign Police Presence
Opponents of OSCE police deployment include politicians and others with their own agendas.
Plans to deploy an international police force in southern Kyrgyzstan in the wake of June’s ethnic violence has caused an outcry from those who see the move as a green light for foreign interference. Many analysts believe the furore is more a reflection of political strife.
Member states of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, voted unanimously on July 22 to send a 52-strong Police Advisory Group, PAG, to Kyrgyzstan. Actual deployment requires a final decision from the Kyrgyz government, expected by the end of August, after which the that PAG will set up headquarters in Osh. The deployment will last four months and can be extended only if Kyrgyzstan’s leaders ask for this.
The OSCE decision followed a request for assistance from the authorities in Kyrgyzstan, following days of clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in and around the southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad in June. The latest official figures indicated that 355 people died in the violence. Numerous homes, shops and official buildings were wrecked in looting and arson attacks.
The PAG will monitor operations by Kyrgyzstan’s police and advise them on ways to restore order and reduce ethnic tensions. Six teams of seven police officers, a local community mediator and interpreters will accompany local police on patrol. The force will be drawn from police in Russia, the United States, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lithuania and Finland.
“As a neutral party on the ground, the Police Advisory Group will play a important role in restoring trust between people and law-enforcement agencies,” the deputy head of the OSCE Centre in Bishkek, Lilian Darii, told IWPR.
Officials in Kyrgyzstan say the OSCE unit will play a mediating role between the mainly ethnic Kyrgyz police and the local population, especially the Uzbeks.
Farid Niazov, spokesman for interim president Roza Otunbaeva, told IWPR there was a real need for this role as the local authorities in southern Kyrgyzstan had failed to build bridges between the two communities.
“The president has long noted... that local officials and police need to establish contact between citizens and the law-enforcement agencies and build a high level of trust between them,” he said. “Unfortunately, this has not been achieved.”.
Opponents of the deployment include local officials in the south, as well as a group called People of Kyrgyzstan Against the Deployment of Foreign Forces, which has staged a series of demonstrations in the capital Bishkek and other cities since mid-July.
They warn that a foreign presence could make the situation worse, undermining the authority of local police, and that the deployment might be open-ended.
Aibek Saipov, one of the organisers of the People of Kyrgyzstan protest group, said there was no need for the OSCE mission.
“The situation is becoming more or less stable. The people [including] the young people are preparing to go and assist the police,” he said.
Saipov denied that his movement was a front for any political grouping in Kyrgyzstan.
During the demonstrations, protesters could be seen holding placards proclaiming, “We Won’t Let This Country be Turned into Kosovo”, reflecting the view that the Uzbeks of southern Kyrgyzstan might exploit the international presence to press demands for autonomy. They see similarities with the situation in Kosovo, which has shifted from being a province of Serbia to an Albanian-run independent state.
Political analyst Mars Sariev agrees with these concerns, suggesting that the OSCE police would favour the Uzbek minority and report that its rights were being violated. “The Uzbek [community] will use this and increase tensions. Then the police can report to their superiors that the Uzbeks need some kind of autonomy.”
IWPR put these concerns to OSCE headquarters in Vienna, which replied that the deployment was at the Kyrgyz government’s request and the PAG’s task was to “assist efforts to create the stability and trust that is needed to rebuild community ties and to look forward to the future. How the country shapes its future is up to its leaders and its citizens.”
Other analysts say that aside from genuine concerns about sovereignty, some of the opposition is being driven by groups with a range of agendas and vested interests of their own.
Some of them, like officials and police in southern Kyrgyzstan, perceive the OSCE mission as a direct challenge to their authority. Certain political parties, meanwhile, have seized on the issue as a way of promoting themselves ahead of the October parliamentary election.
“The issue… is extremely politicised,” Pavel Dyatlenko of the Asia-Polis think-tank said. “Many political forces are trying to score points by artificially playing up the issue. For some politicians, it may be a very convenient way of getting themselves into the public arena.”
A leading human rights activist, Aziza Abdirasulova of the Kylym Shamy group, said opponents of the OSCE force included “the misinformed, who think that if police come here, they might take over the country; a second group who were implicated in this situation [violence] and fear that their crimes and illegal actions will be exposed; and a third group comprising police who are benefiting by extorting money from detainees, taking bribes and fabricating criminal cases”.
Kyrgyzstan’s interior minister, Kubatbek Baibolov, said the heated debate had little to do with the facts.
“It’s no more than political infighting; it’s an instrument [being used] ahead of the parliamentary election,” Baibolov said in remarks quoted by the KyrTAG news agency.
At a local level, two journalists reporting from southern Kyrgyzstan told IWPR that anti-OSCE feeling did not seem to be running high. Neither wanted to be named as the situation there remains volatile.
One Osh-based reporter said Uzbeks in the city were supportive of the plan, as they remained mistrustful of sections of the local police force. The other journalist witnessed one of the protests against the deployment, and said it was only attended by about 700 people.
“I’m inclined to think these are staged actions, artificially set up by opponents of the OSCE police deployment,” he said. “In my opinion, people are definitely not preoccupied with the OSCE. They worry about the problems of daily life – how to rebuild what’s been destroyed, and ethnic relations.”
Security expert Leonid Bondarets is concerned that the OSCE team will be too small and its mandate too restricted to make a difference.
“This group of 52 people can only gather information, nothing more,” Bondarets said, suggesting that by collecting mutual recriminations made by the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities, it might inflame rather than reduce tensions.
Abdirasulova, however, said the OSCE force could make a real contribution to rebuilding confidence in an environment in which police were viewed by some residents as heavy-handed and not to be trusted.
“If the OSCE police force comes, there is hope that the [local] police will do their job according to the law and that violations will be prevented– ensuring that detainees are not beaten, that they have access to lawyers, that they get medical help when necessary, and that their relatives are notified,” she said.
Timur Toktonaliev is an IWPR-trained journalist in Bishkek.
This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.
The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either the European Union or the Foreign Ministry of Norway.
