The Askarov Case: Human Rights and Ethnic Tensions in Kyrgyzstan

In early December, as the European Union engaged in discussions to enhance its relations with Kyrgyzstan, Human Rights Watch urged Brussels to push for the release of Azimjan Askarov, an ethnic Uzbek human rights activist jailed for the murder of a policeman during the 2010 unrest in Kyrgyzstan.

Askarov’s case has long been a sore spot for Bishkek. It has been a key trigger for criticism of Kyrgyzstan’s human rights record and serves as reminder of the inter-ethnic violence that ravaged southern Kyrgyzstan in the wake of the country’s second revolution in 2010. Kyrgyzstan would much rather set the issue of inter-ethnic tensions firmly behind it, but every time Askarov’s case is mentioned, it resurfaces. Kyrgyzstan has avoided dealing directly with the difficult issue of discussing ethnic tensions in the country, all the while suffering the consequences of burying the unsavory past.

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When the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor honored Askarov with its annual Human Rights Defender award in 2015, Kyrgyz authorities quickly made their frustration known by scrapping a 1993 cooperation treaty with the United States.

In 2016, the United Nation Human Rights Committee weighed in on Askarov’s case and called on Kyrgyzstan to release him immediately, having found that “he had been arbitrarily detained, held in inhumane conditions, tortured and mistreated, and prevented from adequately preparing his trial defense.”

Askarov was given a new trial – not exactly what the UN Human Rights Committee had asked for – and in January 2017 was again found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

As Human Rights Watch noted in a recent letter to the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, the EU has in the past pressed Kyrgyzstan on Askarov’s case:

In April 2016, the EU called upon the Kyrgyz authorities to “fully implement the recommendations of the Human Rights Committee” and during a visit to Bishkek in November 2017, immediately after Jeenbekov was elected Kyrgyzstan’s president, you stressed the significant advantages of close cooperation with international bodies, including the UN Human Rights Committee. Now, one year later, the EU should step up its engagement and stress to Kyrgyzstan’s top officials, including President Jeenbekov, that Azimjon Askarov’s release is critical to strengthening EU-Kyrgyzstan relations.

Askarov’s case, by its very nature, also resurrects the issue of inter-ethnic tension in Kyrgyzstan. A 2012 report by Freedom House, Memorial Human Rights Center, and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, attempted to lay out the facts surrounding the violence in May-June 2010 around Osh, the largest city in Kyrgyzstan’s south. According to state statistics, more than 400 people were killed, most of which were ethnic Uzbeks. Meanwhile, most of those arrested – like Askarov – were also ethnic Uzbek.

The Freedom House report was listed by the Kyrgyz Ministry of Justice as a banned piece of extremist literature as recently as this summer. These issues remain sensitive, and discussing them difficult.

When asked in a recent interview with Eurasianet what the proudest accomplishment of her presidency was, former interim President Roza Otunbayeva said, “I think first of all that we fixed the problem of 2010, that the conflict between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek ethnic groups in 2010, in June 2010, was fixed in a couple of days.”

It’s quite a claim to make that the “conflict between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek ethnic groups in 2010… was fixed in a couple of days.”

On the issue of Askarov, Otunbayeva seemed to lament that politics stayed her hand in the Askarov case. Pardoning him would have “again [have broken] the country,” she said.

Of Askarov’s case, Human Rights Watch comments that, “Kyrgyzstan turning a blind eye to his suffering will not make his case go away.”

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The fact that Askarov remains in prison, as do other ethnic Uzbeks – which Otunbayeva lamented in her interview but brushed aside by pointing to the judicial system’s processes – underscores the inequality baked into the Kyrgyz system. Researchers say many ethnic Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan feel as if their grievances regarding the 2010 events have not been addressed.

An unfortunate point to add to this discussion is the claim made by Kyrgyz authorities back in 2015 – when the Islamic State was in an incredible growth phase, drawing fighters from around the world – that the majority of the Kyrgyz citizens who had gone to Syria and Iraq were ethnic Uzbeks.

Recent research conducted by Noah Tucker, an associate at George Washington University’s Central Asia Program and a senior editor for RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, focused on a small city in southern Kyrgyzstan, with an ethnic Uzbek majority, which supplied a third of all Kyrgyzstani ISIS fighters. In the course of research, Tucker identified Kyrgyzstan’s efforts to counter violent extremism as focusing on “ideology and an ethnic national identity.”

Through the beginning of 2018, the response of Kyrgyzstani authorities to the threat of faroff Islamist militant groups recruiting its citizens has been to argue, in one way or another, that citizens should not believe the messages of these groups because they are not Kyrgyz and conflict with ethnic Kyrgyz values, which are not clearly defined and are a topic of considerable debate.

For ethnic Uzbeks, already alienated by the state, such efforts failed to resonate. Islamic State recruiters knew ethnic Uzbeks from Kyrgyzstan were vulnerable, and created considerable propaganda in the Uzbek language (Uzbeks are also by far the most populous ethnic group across Central Asia, with Uzbekistan’s population surpassing 33 million plus ethnic Uzbeks living in the other Central Asian states).

Tucker’s report concludes, in part:

The stark lack of trust ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan display for local and national government—especially on matters related to religion—and their fear of abuse at the hands of law enforcement is grounded in bitter experience, especially of the 2010 ethnic conflict and the policing that followed. This is currently a serious obstacle to cooperation. Other analyses have frequently suggested that state weakness or a failure to deliver public goods are drivers of both religiosity and extremist recruiting in southern Kyrgyzstan in particular.

Kyrgyzstan’s inability to confront the issue of ethnic tension in a comprehensive fashion continues to sow trouble for the state. Every time Askarov’s case is raised, the specter of 2010 rises too.