Uncertain Future for Uzbeks Freed in Russia

A Russian court has ordered the release of 12 people whom Tashkent wanted to extradite, but they may find it hard to seek refuge in a third country if the Uzbek government tries to block their travel.



On March 2, a court in the Russian town of Ivanovo ordered the release of 12 Uzbek nationals who had been detained since June 2005 at the request of Uzbekistan’s government, which accused them of involvement in the Andijan uprising a month earlier.



Two more ethnic Uzbeks, who are citizens of Kyrgyzstan and Russia respectively, arrested at the same time. The Russian national has been granted asylum in Norway, and the other is likely to be sent back to Kyrgyzstan.



Last summer, the Russian prosecutor general’s office ordered the 12 Uzbekistan nationals to be extradited to that country, ignoring the fact that the United Nations had granted them refugee status. The extradition order was subsequently suspended when the European Court of Human Rights reviewed the case.



The 12 Uzbeks have undertaken to leave Russia within one month, but it is unclear what will happen to them now. Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the Russian human rights group Civic Assistance, says, “They cannot simply leave Russia, since there is an unofficial agreement with Uzbekistan not to let its nationals travel out [of Russia] unless this is sanctioned by the Uzbek authorities.”



Uzbek nationals do not need an exit visa from their own country’s authorities when they go to Russia, but do if they want to go to any other country. While the “Ivanovo 12” have international refugee status and the exit visa issue should thus be irrelevant, their status has already been ignored once and observers fear this may be a problem when they try to leave Russia.



Some Russian observers believe Uzbekistan might try to obstruct the group’s departure. They have been portrayed as enemies of the state, and if they arrive in third countries they could contribute to undermining Tashkent’s official version of what happened in Andijan on May, 13 2005, when security forces opened fire on a rally in Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan.



The Uzbek authorities insist that most of the protesters were members of Islamic terrorist groups who were a threat to the system, but other sources insist that local residents were protesting peacefully to demand a fair trial for several local businessmen, and that a hundreds of innocent people died in the ensuing brutal crackdown.



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