Kyrgyzstan: the disappearance of Uzbek asylum seekers

According to some sources in Kyrgyzstan, on July 30, 2009 in Bishkek an asylum seeker from Uzbekistan, Sanjar Hudaiberganov, and his 11-year-old son Sarvarbek Erkinzoda disappeared. Local human rights activists express their concern over the situation: Hudaiberganovs who had visited office of migration service to extend registration documents that day could have been abducted and forcedly returned to their native land.

Sanjar Hudaiberganov is the brother of Iskandar Hudaiberganov, who was extradited from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan in 2002, tortured severely and the same year sentenced to death penalty after the framed-up accusation of terrorism and encroachment on constitutional regime.

In February of 1999, Sanjar was detained in Tashkent (Uzbekistan); after a week of detention, he was hospitalized with injures from torture, to which he was subjected by officers of Uzbek special forces. They tried to get information where his brother was (this case is mentioned in the special United Nations report on tortures published in 2003).  

On July 19, 2008 5 members of the family of Hudaibeganovs applied to the UNHCR in Kyrgyzstan for refugee status.

Until last year, the cases of forced return of refugees to Uzbekistan were registered only in South Kyrgyzstan. But in September 2008, the asylum seeker Haetjon Jurabayev was abducted in Bishkek.

Later he was sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment in Uzbekistan. If the information about the extradition of Hudaiberganov to Uzbekistan is confirmed, it will indicate that Kyrgyz authorities have changed "the rules of the game" having also sanctioned "hunt" on Uzbek emigrees in the north part of the country.

Vitaly Ponomarev, head of Central-Asian program

August 5, 2009