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Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 129
13 - 19 September 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: WHO confirms cholera and whooping cough outbreaks
AFGHANISTAN: Rights violations on the rise, says commission
PAKISTAN: Repatriations to Afghanistan this year top 300,000
PAKISTAN: Focus on the dams dispute in Pakistan
PAKISTAN: New definition of literacy needed, argues UNESCO
KAZAKHSTAN: Shift in mode of HIV transmission indicated
TAJIKISTAN: MSF report describes desperate condition of psychiatric care
KYRGYZSTAN: UNIFEM tackling higher HIV/AIDS rates among women
TURKMENISTAN: Amnesty calls for stronger international pressure on Ashgabat
UZBEKISTAN: Interview with former political prisoner Jora Murodov
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap



AFGHANISTAN: WHO confirms cholera and whooping cough outbreaks

Following a week of unconfirmed reports of a cholera outbreak in the
border district of Spin Boldak in the southern province of Kandahar, the
World Health Organisation (WHO) said it had recorded 35 cases with seven
fatalities. "We collected six cases for laboratory testing here in Kabul,
four of which proved positive for cholera," Dr Assadullah Taqdeer a
National Emergency Health Assistant (EHA) officer told IRIN on Thursday in
the Afghan capital. According to the world health body, the outbreak
occurred on 28 August but had now been contained. "WHO and other relevant
health orgnisations in the area established emergency Cholera Treatment
Centres (CTCs) which could bring the outbreak under control," Taqdeer
notified, adding that no new deaths had been reported.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36680&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: Rights violations on the rise, says commission

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has confirmed that
human rights violations are on the rise throughout the country.
"Unfortunately forsix months the graph of human rights violation is
increasing day by day," Nadir Nadiri, a spokesperson for AIHRC, told IRIN
in the capital Kabul on Monday. Although more instances of human rights
abuses are currently reported due to more effective monitoring, Nadiri
said continued extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detention and the
presence of unofficial prisons run by warlords were the major concerns of
AIHRC. "There is no rule of law, the police that are responsible for the
rule of law, they themselves are violators and are acting against the
law," the spokesperson claimed.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36623&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN: Repatriations to Afghanistan this year top 300,000

The repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, assisted by the Office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), passed the
300,000 mark on Wednesday, when a further 1,963 Afghans left the
validation centres on the Pakistani side of the border for their homeland.
"We are very happy with this figure, 300,000 is a remarkable number,"
Babar Baloch, a spokesman for UNHCR, told IRIN from Quetta, the provincial
capital of Baluchistan in southwestern Pakistan. However, with winter fast
approaching, it is predicted that the number of those wishing to return
will soon decline, according to UNHCR. Last week, 8,838 refugees returned
to Afghanistan, which is only a small decline from the first week of
September when UNHCR assisted 8,962 people to return home to their
country. The highest number of people to be repatriated in a single week
was 18,000, which occurred at the end of June.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36643&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Focus on the dams dispute in Pakistan

A simmering dispute over the construction of hotly disputed dams slated to
be built to cater to Pakistan's burgeoning water needs became public over
the weekend, following President Pervez Musharraf's 50 minute speech on
television and radio in which he urged the building of a national
consensus on the issue so that the country's water requirements could be
met for the next 50 years. "By 2050, we will have to have three to four
large water reservoirs. If we do not act now, there will be a shortage of
drinking water, agricultural growth will suffer, the economy will be
affected and poverty will deepen further," Musharraf said in his speech on
Saturday night, appealing to the people and political leadership of the
southern province of Sindh and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) -
both of which are deeply opposed to the building of the Kalabagh Dam: one
of the dams slated to be built on the River Indus - to support the
construction of the water reservoirs.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36592&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: New definition of literacy needed, argues UNESCO

The definition of literacy needs to be modified in Pakistan to align it
with international standards, according to a recommendation by the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) made in
its guidelines, 'Strategic Framework of Action (SFA) for the United
Nations Literacy Decade'. "We need to make the definition of literacy more
aligned with international standards. There is currently no inclusion of
numeracy and comprehension in the definition," UNESCO Director, Ingeborg
Breines, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad on Monday.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36597&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

KAZAKHSTAN: Shift in mode of HIV transmission indicated

Recent figures provided by the official Kazakh Republican AIDS Centre
reveal an increase in the number of HIV infections through sexual
transmission, an important development in Kazakhstan's efforts to mitigate
the disease's spread. "There are indications of a shift in the mode of
transmission from intravenous drug usage to sexual contact," Nina Wessel
of the joint United Nations Programme for HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) told IRIN on
Wednesday from the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty. Since the disease
first appeared in 1987, the vast majority of infections in Central Asia's
largest nation had been, and continues to be, amongst intravenous drug
users (IDUs). However, government statistics now indicate a gradual
decline in the number of new cases among IDUs.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36646&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KAZAKHSTAN

TAJIKISTAN: MSF report describes desperate condition of psychiatric care

Psychiatric care in Tajikistan is in a desperate condition, and the need
for long-term reform is imperative, says a new report by the international
health NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). "This report is the first of
its kind, and this research was part of a wider campaign to raise
awareness on this issue in Tajikistan," Paul McPhun, an MSF spokesman,
told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on Tuesday. Tajikistan
currently has 16 psychiatric institutions for people with mental
disorders, which can hold a total of just 1,000 patients, while the
Ministry of Health believes that Tajikistan has 40,000 people who are in
need of psychiatric care. Some of these who are not living in institutions
receive care from outpatient clinics, whilst the majority are receiving no
care at all.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36622&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN: UNIFEM tackling higher HIV/AIDS rates among women

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) is to implement a
project on gender and HIV/AIDS in Kyrgyzstan - the first such project for
the Central Asia region. Of those that contract HIV/AIDS every year in the
Kyrgz republic, 55 percent are thought to be female. But the majority of
those officially registered with the disease are males. "But it doesn't
mean that the Kyrgyz women are less exposed to HIV/AIDS. On the contrary,
due to their physiological peculiarities women are more exposed to the
risk of contracting the disease," Nurgul Jamankulova, a consultant on
gender issues at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) told IRIN
in the capital, Bishkek.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36624&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN

TURKMENISTAN: Amnesty calls for stronger international pressure on
Ashgabat

Amnesty International (AI) has called for stronger international pressure
on Turkmenistan to improve what it describes as an appalling human rights
record. "The international community must take a greater role," Sergei
Nikitin, the head of Amnesty's Moscow branch told IRIN on Tuesday from the
Russian capital. "People must remember what the situation is and not
forget." His comments came just days after activists from the watchdog
group gathered outside the Turkmen embassy in Moscow on Friday, marking
the second anniversary of the publication of Turkmen President Sapurmurat
Niyazov's "Rukhnama". Amnesty sees the book as a core element of the
President's personality cult.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36625&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN: Interview with former political prisoner Jora Murodov

In a rare insight into prison conditions in Uzbekistan, Jora Murodov, a
member of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) spoke to IRIN
about his recent detention. He noted conditions for those identified as
political prisoners in Uzbek jails were worse than for normal inmates and
that torture was common place. Muradov, living in the Nishan District of
the Kashkadarya province, added that he and two other human rights
activists had been jailed for robbery and public order offences, but the
sentence was to stop them fighting bribery and corruption among local
authorities, he maintained.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36627&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

Human rights and civil liberties were the dominant issues impacting
Central Asia this week, a five-nation region of some 60 million
inhabitants. In Uzbekistan, the area's most populous nation, the appeal
case of journalist and human rights activist, Ruslan Sharipov, sentenced
to five-and-a half years in prison on alleged sodomy charges, was
postponed until 23 September on Tuesday after protests by activists
outside the court in the capital Tashkent, prompted authorities to delay
the hearing. Human Rights Watch (HRW) among others has been closely
monitoring the case, which Sharipov claims was fabricated given his
investigative work on human rights and corruption in the country.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36701&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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