Following the most potent criticism to date over the treatment of jailed activist Azimjan Askarov, Kyrgyzstan’s highest court said on April 25 that the case may be reviewed after all.
Whether that means Askarov could be released is not yet certain, but it suggests the authorities may be changing tack from their usual indignant combativeness over the issue.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee on April 21 urged Kyrgyzstan to immediately free the rights activist, who it said had been subjected to torture and denied a fair trial. In September 2010, Askarov, who is an ethnic Uzbek, was sentenced to life imprisonment for what Kyrgyz authorities say was his role in inciting the mob killing of a police officer amid ethnic unrest in southern Kyrgyzstan in June of that year. Many suspect he had been singled out for prosecution because of this prior activism highlight the routine abuses of police officers.
A day after the UN issued its statement, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) doubled down on the calls for Kyrgyzstan to overturn Askarov’s sentence.
“Kyrgyzstan now has an opportunity to correct this injustice, restoring both Mr. Askarov’s rights and its national human rights record in this regard,” ODIHR director Michael Georg Link said in a statement. “Freeing him will also send a strong signal to law enforcement and judicial actors in Kyrgyzstan that the rule of law must be upheld equally for all citizens.”
The Supreme Court said in a statement that the UN Human Rights Committee’s complaint created grounds, under Article 41 of the constitution, for Askarov to lodge a fresh appeal.
“In accordance with criminal procedure legislation, the decision by the UN Human Rights Committee is basis for renewed consideration of the criminal case under new circumstances,” Supreme Court chief Ainash Tokbayeva told reporters, according to a statement from her office.
This is a radical change of tone, and given the questionable independence of the courts in Kyrgyzstan, it is probably safe to assume this is a largely political position.
President Almazbek Atambayev and his Foreign Ministry have reacted with ferocious hostility to all international allusions to Askarov thus far.
When US State Department alluded to the case in their recently issued 2015 country report on human rights practices in Kyrgyzstan, it elicited an inflammatory reaction.
“We regard the US State Department report, as far as it applies to Kyrgyzstan, to be politically motivated and an unjustified and inappropriate attempt to apply pressure on the existing political system of Kyrgyzstan,” the Foreign Ministry in Bishkek said in its statement.
Atambayev’s own views about the Askarov question appear in part qualified by the problematic public perception of his actions during the ethnic unrest that served as backdrop to the right activist’s purported crimes.
In April 2015, the General Prosecutor’s Office adopted the extraordinary measure of filing a defamation lawsuit against journalist Dayirbek Orunbekov for alleging in an article that Atambayev was somehow implicated in the ethnic unrest. Similar lurid accusations are common currency in chattering circles, particularly in southern Kyrgyzstan, but their appearance in the printed media was evidently a step too far.
For fear of appearing in any way less than wholly sympathetic to his ethnic kinfolk, Atambayev has traditionally adopted a markedly nationalistic stance. Askarov’s case has served as an easy way to burnish those credentials, albeit at a high cost to his international reputation.
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