Legal options are running out for a group of Uzbek asylum seekers who are in detention in Kazakhstan, facing deportation to Uzbekistan. The case threatens to form an uncomfortable backdrop as Astana prepares to host a December summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

As President Nursultan Nazarbayev toured Europe in October, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) wrote to him expressing “deep concern” about the fate of the Uzbek asylum seekers, urging him to ensure that Kazakhstan respects international commitments.

“These persons risk being subjected to torture and ill treatment in Uzbekistan and their return would be in grave violation of international law,” the October 26 letter stated, adding that Astana is signatory to international conventions prohibiting refoulement – extradition to a country where a deportee may face torture. FIDH urged Nazarbayev “to ensure that Kazakhstan respects its international obligations and does not forcibly return refugees or asylum-seekers to Uzbekistan.”

Astana insists that its policies and legislation covering refugees and asylum seekers conform to international standards. “As a member of the international community, Kazakhstan takes an active part in resolving the problems of refugees,” Migration Committee Chairman Khabylsayat Abishev told the 2010 OSCE Review Conference in Warsaw on October 5. He said Kazakhstan had 618 registered refugees, including 15 from Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan holds the OSCE chair this year.

The Uzbek asylum seekers’ troubles began when they were rounded up in Almaty in June in sweeps that officials later acknowledged were made at the request of the Uzbek Prosecutor-General’s Office. Some detainees were released, but 30 Uzbeks remaining in custody found themselves on the wrong side of a new refugee law that came into force on January 1.

Under the law, Kazakhstan stopped recognizing refugee certificates granted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and required holders, and new applicants, to apply to Kazakhstani migration authorities for refugee status. Most of those in custody had their applications examined during their detention. Just one application was accepted; that detainee was released. One detainee who did not apply for refugee status was deported to Uzbekistan, and the other 28 face extradition. The 28 facing deportation are preparing appeals.

Abishev, the migration official, told the OSCE Review Conference that during examinations of refugee status applications, “28 people turned out to be members of the Islamic Jihad Union [IJU] and were refused refugee status.” Abishev did not specify if these are the same 28 Uzbeks facing extradition, nor offer evidence to substantiate the claims of affiliation with the IJU, a shadowy organization that has been linked to terror plots in Germany – but whose actual existence some observers doubt.

An official at the Migration Committee in Astana reached by telephone told EurasiaNet.org that the committee was being reorganized and no one was available for comment. In a statement on October 22, the Almaty Migration Department defended the perusal of the Uzbeks’ asylum bids as “transparent and impartial” and consistent with the refugee law.

Advocacy groups are concerned that vague wording in refugee legislation leaves many asylum seekers from neighboring states vulnerable to politically expedient decisions, not justice. Activists point to a provision that allows Kazakhstani authorities to reject applications, if the applicant is suspected of belonging to extremist or terrorist organizations, or religious groups banned in their home countries. Given the severe restrictions on non-state-sanctioned religion in many of Kazakhstan’s neighbors, the legislative provision gives Kazakhstani officials leeway to match decisions with diplomatic desires – despite Astana’s commitment to non-refoulement.  Gulsara Altynbekova, the director of the Almaty Migration Department, in comments published by the Vremya newspaper on October 30, said that the law’s provision on terrorist, extremist and religious groups was among the grounds for rejecting applications from the Uzbeks in custody.

Altynbekova went on to challenge the notion that there might be religious persecution in Uzbekistan. “[The detainees] asserted that they were persecuted for praying and wearing the hijab, but that was plainly false testimony,” she said. “In Uzbekistan Islam is practiced, and these people could hardly have been persecuted for praying.”

The Almaty Migration Committee is no longer dealing with the case, an official in Altynbekova’s office told EurasiaNet.org on November 4. The office representative referred queries to the Migration Police. That state agency, in turn, referred queries on to the Almaty city police. The city police’s press service said no one was immediately available for comment.

Altynbekova’s remark has far-reaching implications, given that authoritative rights advocacy groups, as well as the US government, have long documented infringements of religious freedoms in Uzbekistan.

“The Government continued to commit serious abuses of religious freedom in its campaign against extremist or independent Islamic organizations,” the US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report 2009 found.

Human Rights Watch has similar findings. In a statement on August 13, the rights group noted that the “Uzbek authorities have for years ruthlessly targeted Muslims whose faith and practices fall outside of strict government control, and routinely bring religious extremism charges against them.”

Uzbekistan denies infringing on religious freedoms and casts itself as a frontline state in a fight against extremism in a volatile region. Uzbek officials also deny practicing torture, though in June 2010 the European Court of Human Rights prevented the extradition from Azerbaijan of an Uzbek citizen since “it appears that any criminal suspect held in custody faces a serious risk of being subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.”

On October 21, activists staged a picket outside OSCE offices in Vienna about the case of the Uzbeks in custody, waving placards with slogans such as: “OSCE, stop Kazakhstan sending refugees to death!”

“Naturally, Kazakhstan has an obligation not to deport people to countries where they are threatened with torture,” Denis Jivaga, a lawyer from the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, told EurasiaNet.org. He alleged that, in practice, Astana appeared to consider interstate and regional agreements, such as those signed with other CIS states, as taking precedence over international conventions, even though “international agreements have higher force and should prevail.”

If the asylum seekers’ appeals fail, the case could prove embarrassing to Kazakhstan as OSCE leaders gather in Astana on December 1-2, in what Nazarbayev hopes will be a grand finale to Kazakhstan’s OSCE chairmanship.

Organizers of the October 21 protest sought to focus international attention on the issue in advance of the OSCE summit. “We wanted to get OSCE member states to pay attention to the problem of Uzbek refugees in Kazakhstan, and for these countries’ representatives to remind Kazakhstan, which is chairing the OSCE, about observing previously assumed international obligations,” Ahmad Iyso of the Initiative Group of Refugees in Sweden told EurasiaNet.org by e-mail.

Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer specializing in Central Asia

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62332