Mixed year for Central Asian human rights

A report by the New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, has painted a mixed picture of the human rights situation in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It says the past year has seen the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus violate human rights to varying degrees - through torture, strict control of the mass media, police brutality, and what it describes as pervasive disregard for due process. Our regional reporter, Caroline Hawley, has been reading the report.

According to Human Rights Watch, torture remained commonplace in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, and journalists were harassed and ill-treated in both Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The group says cases of prison officers using excessive force were reported in Azerbaijan, Tajikstan and Uzbekistan.

Tajikistan

Human Rights Watch cites what it says was one of the worst such cases in 1997, when Tajik security forces killed at least 24 prisoners and wounded 35 others while putting down a prison riot in the Northern city of Khojand. It says that in Tajikistan in 1997, chaos prevailed over law enforcement - although the peace accord signed in June between the government and the United Tajik Opposition had held out hopes of an improvement. But the groups says that, as further fighting broke out in August, September and October, human rights suffered a serious set-back with paramilitary groups and independent warlords continuing to loot, threaten, and harass civilians. On a positive note, Human Rights Watch says that although the government still controlled most of the country's media, several new newspapers went to print in 1997.

Kyrgyzstan

Treatment of the media emerges as a major theme in the report's section on Kyrgyzstan. Human Rights Watch says that during the course of the year the Kyrgyz government put what it calls unrelenting pressure on independent journalists and opposition figures. One improvement it notes is that the Uighur organization, Ittipak, was allowed to function unhindered. But the report details what it describes as a disturbing trend of the government levelling criminal charges of questionable validity against its opponents.

Among them, it names Topchubek Turgunaliev - a leader of an opposition party sentenced to 10 years' jail for embezzlement. And it says several journalists accused of libel were also inappropriately charged with criminal offenses. The report says freedom of information in Kyrgyzstan was dealt a serious blow when the government issued a resolution, in September, limiting the import of all forms of information deemed damaging to national security or to the political and economic interests of the country.

Azerbaijan

Human Rights Watch says media censorship continued in Azerbaijan - whose human rights record it describes as dismal. The group says Azeri police prevented opposition parties holding meetings, and it speaks of credible reports of torture against some of the 56 people convicted of being implicated in an uprising in March 1995. Human Rights Watch mentions one positive development: the release from prison of the former Prime Minister, Panah Huseinov. But it accuses the international community - and the United States, in particular - of glossing over Azerbaijan's poor human rights record, in favour of its own economic interests, as it invests feverishly in the country's oil industry.

Uzbekistan

By contrast, Human Rights Watch says the United States has been a major source of pressure on Uzbekistan, although it says the Uzbek government has not fulfilled promises it made in 1996 to improve its human rights performance.

Human Rights Watch says liberal legislation passed in April - enshrining the public's right to access information, and securing journalists' rights - looks, in its words, suspiciously like window-dressing. The group says the Uzbek media remained suffocated by state controls, and the government continued to violate most civil and political rights, and actively harassed or prosecuted human rights activists and Islamic figures. It says a lull in the arbitrary arrest of political opponents on charges of possessing arms and drugs - which began in 1995 - was broken in 1997 with two new arrests, both of Islamic teachers - Rahim Otoqulov and Olimjon Ghofurov.

In what it calls restrictive moves against the Muslim community as a whole, Human Rights Watch says the Uzbek authorities curbed the use of loudspeakers for the call to prayer, took steps to prevent female students wearing Islamic headscarves, and closed some Islamic teaching establishments. At the same time, it reports that 25,000 copies of the New Testament in Uzbek translation were confiscated to stop proselytising by predominantly Christian groups. And it says a Baptist teacher was charged with conducting illegal church services.

Turkmenistan

Human Rights Watch attributes international silence on what it describes as the total repression in Turkmenistan, in part, to lack of information. It says that Turkmenistan's rigidly authoritarian government - with its omnipresent security services - continued to prevent the exercise of virtually all political and civil rights.

It says the co-chairman of the outlawed Party of Democratic Development of Turkmenistan, Durdymurad Khojamuhhamedov, has reportedly been kept in mental hospitals for almost two years in what it describes as an abuse of the psychiatric system reminiscent of the Soviet era. His case, it says, is one of the few documentable cases of abuse in the country.

Human Rights Watch says that with no opposition in Turkmenistan, no freedom of assembly, and no foreseeable movement towards democratisation, there had - ironically - been a sense of public calm.

Kazakhstan

The Central Asian country that emerges best from this year's Human Rights Watch report is Kazakhstan. The group says that the Kazakh authorities continued to observe the rule of law, and most civil and political rights. But it lists several areas about which it still has concerns. These include poor prison conditions, the continued use of the death penalty, and diminishing possibilities of free assembly.

The group says criminal charges laid against a prominent opposition figure, Petr Svoik, appear to be an attempt to discredit and isolate him. Human Rights Watch says Kazakhstan's new criminal code - adopted in July - had reduced the application of the death penalty but had also criminalized the organization of unsanctioned public meetings and demonstrations. It also expressed concern about what it calls reduced media choice in Kazakshtan.