Uzbek Refugees Report Forced Return to Kyrgyzstan

People who fled ethnic clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan over the last ten days say the authorities in Uzbekistan are forcing them to leave one of the  refugee camps which last week housed some 80,000. 

The head of Kyrgyzstan’s border guards, Cholponbek Turusbekov, said 4,419 people had returned from camps over the border in Uzbekistan since June 21, bringing the total who had come back to their own country to about 35,000. Turusbekov predicted that the estimated 40,000 refugees still in Uzbekistan would return by June 25.

The process is supposed to be voluntary, but NBCentralAsia has heard from refugees who say it is too early to go back to their homes in Jalalabad region of southern Kyrgyzstan, yet they are being forced to go by the authorities in Uzbekistan.

Speaking by phone on June 23, Botir Qoraboev, an informal leader of ethnic Uzbek refugees from Jalalabad’s Bazar Korgon district, said there had been cases where women and children had been sent back against there will.

“Last night, camp officials and members of Uzbekistan’s police forcibly put refugees onto buses against their will,” said Qoraboev, who is currently in a refugee camp in the Pakhtaabad district of eastern Uzbekistan. “They argued that local leaders had reached agreement with Jalalabad’s governor that they should go home, as everything had calmed down.

“We don’t believe that’s true – there are still armed thugs there [in Jalalabad region].”

Qoraboev said approximately 600 women and children were removed from the camp within the space of a day.

A woman from Bazar Korgon who gave her first name as Gulchehra said she was now hiding in the refugee camp to avoid forcible repatriation.

“Uzbekistan officials forced them to write statements saying they were going home of their own free will,” she said. “I’m afraid of going back – we won’t be left in peace there.”

The provincial government in Jalalabad denies that refugees are returning there because they were ejected from Uzbekistan, and says they are coming voluntarily because Kyrgyz officials are facilitating the resettlement process.

When Jalalabad governor Bektur Asanov met his opposite number in Uzbekistan’s Andijan province on June 22, he urged refugees to leave the camps and come home. He assured them they would be provided with temporary accommodation and would get help to build new homes, to replace the many that were torched during the clashes.

Asanov’s spokesperson Klara Tapkeeva said that when the governor crossed back into Kyrgyzstan, he was accompanied by 2,269 people from the Suzak and Bazar Korgon districts.

“No one was forced to return,” she said. “Would people really come back against their will?”

Tapkeeva added that the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in Bazar Korgon took part in a formal ceremony of reconciliation on June 23.

Officials in Jalalabad say about 40,000 refugees from that province crossed into Andijan region during the conflict which began on June 10-11.

People at the refugee camp where people claimed forcible repatriation was taking place said there were still around 16,000 people there. Another 8,000 were still trying to cross over from the Kyrgyz side into Uzbekistan, but were not being allowed through the border.

“If everything is fine, people wouldn’t be trying to get into the safe zone [inside Uzbekistan],” said Qoraboev.

(See our earlier story Desperate Refugees Wait on Kyrgyz-Uzbek Border.)

 This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

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