Kazakstan Urged to Accept Uzbek Asylum Claims

As attention focuses on ethnic Uzbeks fleeing violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, rights activists have issued a reminder of the challenges facing asylum-seekers from Uzbekistan.

Reports from June 24 indicate that officials in Kazakstan carried out the latest in a series of detentions of Uzbek nationals. Despite holding asylum-seeker papers issued by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, the man was taken into custody by the Kazak immigration service and the police.

The country’s prosecution service reported earlier that 29 foreign nationals seeking asylum had been arrested between June 9 and 11. They were wanted in their own country on charges including terrorism and extremism.

A court in Kazakstan heard the extradition request, and the 29 are being held in Almaty pending a final decision by another court which will decide whether they are sent back to Uzbekistan.

Interviewed by NBCentralAsia, relatives said the detentions were carried out by officers who treated the Uzbek refugees “like animals”.

“Early in the morning, they burst into the houses – 20 men per home”, said one eyewitness, Alisher, originally from Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan. “They frightened the women and children and rummaged through their homes. They said there might be be terrorists among them. The men were forced outside and driven away in cars.”

A member of a refugee support group in Almaty, the 29 detainees deny any links with extremist groups.

Human rights activists fear that if the asylum-seekers are sent back to Tashkent, they will face imprisonment and torture.

There is strong evidence of the use of torture in pre-trial detention and prisons in Uzbekistan, cited in reports by the United Nations Committee against Torture and in reports which Uzbek activists submitted to the UN in March.

Officials in Kazakstan appear uninterested in allegations of mistreatment in Uzbekistan.

“When one Uzbek refugee referred to torture, officials at the [Kazak] migration committee told him to bring them a document confirming he really had been tortured and containing the names of those responsible,” said Denis Jivaga from the Kazakstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law. “They often say these refugees are criminals, so why should they remain in Kazakstan?”

Nadezhda Ataeva, who heads the Human Rights in Central Asia Association based in France, says immigration officials in Kazakstan should treat Uzbek asylum-seekers with greater care and humanity.

“It seems that the migration service is reluctant to acknowledge the reasons why these people have left their own country,” she said.

Under the UN Convention on Refugees, Kazakstan is required to protect the rights of asylum-seekers.

Rights activists say asylum applications are not given fair consideration in Kazakstan, in part because of a lack of clarity around asylum claim procedures.

“There is a real prospect they will be extradited,” said Yelena Ryabinina, head of the Moscow-based Right to Asylum Programme which assists refugees from Central Asia. “For example, Kazakstan is not a party to the European convention which prevents extradition to their home country because torture exists there”.

However, Victoria Tyuleneva from the International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law disagrees, saying Kazakstan is bound by other international commitments that prohibit the extradition of refugees.

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