Friday press releases from Memorial

- Kazakhstan: Dozens of Uzbek Refugees Arrested in Almaty

Vitalii Ponomarev - Director of the Monitoring Programme of Human Rights in Central Asia

9 June 2010- On the eve of the of the Shanghai Organization for Cooperation summit opening in Tashkent, Kazakh special forces undertook a mass operation in Almaty and have arrested religious refugees from Uzbekistan. A representative from the Almaty Ministry of Interior Affairs press-service stated that the situation involves normal actions taking place during the police operation “Migrant” which is targeting the influence of illegal aliens in Kazakhstan. However, witness’s testimonies raise questions as to the truth of the authorities’ version.

The Human Rights Center Memorial has been able to reach two of the refugee-petitioners who describe yesterday’s events in further detail by phone.

According to them, around 6 in the morning, Kazakh security service agents and migration police broke into houses where refugees from Uzbekistan were staying.

A witness related the following: “Two officers in civilian clothes and two officers in police uniforms came to our place and performed a search, after which they arrested me without any explanation and took me away to the Almaty police station. They wrote in their report that I was arrested during the operation “Migrant”, carried out jointly by the Kazakh security service and migration police. I counted 42 refugees in the police station. They only took the heads of families. Many of the refugees live in groups and their addresses are well known to the authorities. A few more people were arrested later by the police around the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees building where they were hoping to appeal for help. At approximately 14:00, after taking our personal information, they took us to the office of the migration police DVD Almaty.

In a publication of the Kazakh Radio station “Svoboda” it is confirmed that 45 men and one woman was arrested. Upon their arrest, a few of the refugees were kicked, beaten, and verbally abused: http://rus.azattyq.org/content/Uzbek_refugees_in_kazakhstan_/2067591.html

Another eyewitness recalls that “they took everyone’s documents and detained them on the 4th floor of the migration police station, not giving them anything to eat and not letting them go to the bathroom. They interrogated some. They threatened one refugee, saying that if he didn’t leave Kazakhstan in the next couple of days he would ‘disappear’. Agents of the KNB took S.B. (the name remains confidential) away and perhaps a few others somewhere separated from the other. Approximately 23-25 people were taken to the DVD where their cell phones were confiscated. All contact with them was lost after this. I was let go around 14:00. A few were released at 17:30. I, along with other refugees, went to the UN building where we waited at the door. We have been shadowed yesterday and today and unidentified people have filmed us on video-cameras.

Sometime around evening, security service agents and detectives performed searches of multiple houses where refugee families were staying. They confiscated their cell phones, laptops, and books . . . During the searches, members of the refugee families were terrorized. The wives of a few of the arrested, fearing an entrapment, refused to open the door and demanded that the officers show a search warrant (which they lacked).

On the morning of 10 June, approximately 15 women with young children gathered on the grounds of the DVD attempting to ascertain the fate of the arrested individuals and to give them food. Their packages were, however, not accepted and the official information they received was limited to a short statement by the acting deputy prosecutor of the Almaty region, Gulnara Akhmedieva: “Yesterday, all of your husbands were arrested due to an official claim made by Uzbekistan that they are part of an international indictment. This is why they were arrested. Extraditions and deportations back to Uzbekistan are possibilities.”

During the day of 10 April 2010, 50 Uzbekistani refugees and members of their families gathered at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and called on international organizations to protect them from the arbitrary rule of the ‘special services’.

There is still no specific list of the arrested Uzbek. However, according to a representative of a initiative group formed today for Uzbeki Refugees in Kazakhstan, among the approximately 25 people detained under guard in Almaty, there are those with official refugee status granted by the UN’s HCOR and those whose petitions are still being reviewed. The initiative group’s representative noted, that all of the arrested had officially registered with the migration police and that the special operation affected only those refugees whom the authorities of Uzbekistan persecuted for religious reasons.

It is still not clear what motivated such a massive operation by Kazakhstan’s special agencies. The conclusion proffered by the prosecutor’s office that the reason for the arrests was an international indictment initiated by Uzbekistan is not sufficient considering that the given information was known to the Kazakhstan authorities much earlier. The authorities of Kazakhstan cannot fail to understand that extraditing individuals to Uzbekistan who are fleeing their country because of religious persecution violates the international norms resulting from the Convention on the status of refugees and the Convention against torture. It is clear that in the current case, the situation is as much about a political decision as a legal one.

In the opinion of the HRC Memorial, the events of 9 June 2010 in Almaty testify to the worsening condition of Uzbek refugees in Kazakhstan, the chairmanship country of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

As is well known, on 1 January 2010, the law “On Refugees” took effect in Kazakhstan, after which claims from citizens of Uzbekistan seeking asylum began to be reviewed by the authorities of Kazakhstan. However, the new system created intractable problems for Uzbeki religious refugees, which are described, partly, in their joint letter sent 11 May 2010 to various international and human rights organizations.

It is altogether disconcerting to observe the position of the Kazakh authorities in relations to the situation of a citizen of Tajikistan, Umarala Abdurakhmanov, also wanted in Uzbekistan for false accusations of a religious nature. Abdurakhmanov was arrested on 21 May 2010 upon his arrival in the Merken region of the Zhambyl province, Kazakhstan. On 25 May, a representative of the committee for migration together with a lawyer from the Kazakhstan international office for human rights and the preservation of rule of law visited the detainee, accepted his petition for refugee status, and conducted the necessary interviewing. However, on 2 June 2010, information was received that Abdurakhmanov had been subjected to interrogations and brutal torture, including beatings and electric shocks, over the course of three days in Merk. During these interrogations conducted without the presence of a lawyer, the refugee candidate was required, in part, to implicate other refugees in Almaty in extremist activity. At the same time, they made threats to return him shortly to Uzbekistan. The torture stopped only when news of the incident reached the international level. It is possible that these interrogations and torture were a part of the preparation for the Almaty special operations.

In the past, human rights organizations have evaluated the position of Uzbek refugees’ safety in Kazakhstan as relatively favorable (in comparison, for example, to that of Russia or Kyrgystan). However, the recent actions of the Kazakhstan authorities witness, perhaps, to reexamination of previous evaluations.

- A Lawyer, Sapiyat Magomedova, brutally beat by Police Officers in Dagestan. The Lawyer has been Hospitalized in the Khasavyurt City Hospital

On 17 June 2010, a lawyer, Sapiyat Magomedova (D.O.B. 1979), was brutally beat at the Khasavyurt GOVD of Dagestan. The Human Rights Center Memorial has earlier reported about how detectives of the investigative committee under the prosecutor’s office of Khasavyurt threatened Magomedova and have tried to fabricate a criminal case against her (http://www.memo.ru/hr/hotpoints/caucas1/index.htm).

According to Adilgerey Omarov, the chairman of the law firm “Omarov and Partners” (of which Sapiyat is also a member) Magomedova passed the security checkpoint of the police station around 16:00 having shown the proper authorization. She went up to the detective Zakir Stamulov’s office and requested to see her client Malika Evtomirova who was arrested that day. Evtomirova was scheduled to be questioned and the lawyer wanted to meet with her alone.

Magomedova had a special authorization, because she had already worked with this client. In spite of this, the detective refused Sapiyat access to her client and summoned a police squad with the order to “Remove her from here”. After this, four police officers from a special purpose unit of the Khasavyurt GOVD began to viciously punch and kick the lawyer. The chief of police, Shamil Kerimovich Temigereev ran out of his office at the disturbance and shouted: “Get that little bitch out of here”. The lawyer was dragged to the security checkpoint while unconscious and thrown out there. The special purpose officers stole a gold bracelet and smashed Sapiyat’s mobile phone.

An ambulance was allowed to come to the security checkpoint (it was not allowed to go to the GOVD). Sapiyat was taken to the Kasavyurt city hospital where she remained unconscious until the evening. A court medical expert refused to make a report.

The law firm “Omarov and Partners” is known for its tough human rights stance. Its lawyers take on the most complex cases relating to abductions, torture, and extrajudicial executions of the republic’s citizens. Magomedova has sent four applications to the European Court in which her clients complain about the violation of their rights by detectives of the Khasavyurt prosecutor’s office.

The prosecutor Stambulov had threatened Magomedova earlier several times.

We remind that on 9 April 2010, in the center of Makhachkala, the lawyer Sergei Kvasov was brutally beat. Kvasov was taken to the republic’s central hospital with a broken collarbone, leg, a fractured skull, open head and brain trauma, brain damage and bruises.

The HRC Memorial expresses extreme concern about the brutal beating of the lawyer S. Magomedova in the Khasavyurt GOVD and calls upon the prosecutor’s office and the President of Dagestan to assume control of the investigation of the beating of the young lady-lawyer.

We ask human rights organizations and the media to direct their queries concerning this case to the Prosecutor of the Republic of Dagestan:

Nazarov Andrei Ivanovich +7 (8722) 679555

to the President of Dagestan Magomedov Magomedsalam Magomedalievich 7 (8722) 673061

For further information: Memorial