Cold Welcome for Asylum-Seekers in Kazakstan

Kazakstan’s extradition of an asylum seeker to Uzbekistan has raised serious concerns about the fate of other refugees at risk of being returned to the country despite fears that they will face mistreatment there. 

In early November, NBCentralAsia learned that the Kazakh authorities had sent Umarali Abdurahmonov, to Uzbekistan, even though he is a national of Tajikistan.

Abdurahmonov, 35, was detained on Kazakstan’s southern border with Uzbekistan in May and held in custody until he was sent back to the latter country. The Uzbek authorities put him on their wanted list, accusing him of involvement in terror attacks in Tashkent in 2004; the specific offences were membership of a banned religious organisations and failure to disclose a crime.

Ruslan Khalidov, a lawyer with the Jambyl branch of the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, said the state commission that reviews asylum cases turned Abdurahmonov down, and then "gave us no reason why he was extradited".

It was the second extradition of its kind in recent months. In September, Khurshid Komilov, a Kyrgyzstan national, was handed over to Uzbekistan, which had sent an extradition request to the Kazak authorities.

The same fate awaits 29 nationals of Uzbekistan detained in Kazakstan in June. Although 17 of them had been recognised as refugees by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, they were refused this status by a national agency created this year and whose decisions appear to be taking precedence. All 29 have lodged appeals against the refusal of refugee status; if they are unsuccessful, extradition proceedings are likely to follow swiftly.

Abdurahmonov’s cases has alarmed human rights defenders and Uzbek asylum-seekers in Kazakstan. Many say they are under constant pressure from the security service.

"The landlady of an apartment rented by one refugee asked him to move out immediately, saying that she had been put under pressure from some plain-clothes [officers] who asked her to provide information about the refugees, give them a key to the apartment, or evict them," Khadijah, a refugee in Almaty, told NBCentralAsia.

Other refugees tell similar stories. "Our landlords say we are terrorists and Wahhabis [Islamic fundamentalists], and they don’t want any problems with the police or the National Security Committee," an asylum-seeker said.

Denis Jivaga of the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, said the atmosphere of mistrust now meant that all Uzbek refugees would be treated as if they were suspects.

The Kazak authorities insist they are treating all cases separately.

"We are not labelling Uzbek refugees," Gulsara Altynbekova, head of the Migration Committee’s Almaty branch, said. "Everyone’s story is unique."

Altynbekova said two Uzbek asylum-seekers had won refugee status within the last month.

However, Vitaly Ponomarev of the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Moscow, remains sceptical, saying, "Under no circumstances go to Kazakstan to seek asylum. Only international pressure can save those who are already there."

Ponomarev said extraditing people to Uzbekistan went against all the international obligations that Kazakstan had undertaken.

"The courts in Uzbekistan are not independent, and there is no history of acquittals,” he said.

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