Weekly Round-Up - IRINCAS-187: 29-Oct-04
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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Central Asia
IRIN-CAS Weekly Round-Up 187
23 - 29 October 2004
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with UK minister on Afghan opium poppy campaign
CENTRAL ASIA: Press freedom remains poor in region
CENTRAL ASIA: ADB head to tour region
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
KYRGYZSTAN: Rural self-government programme brings hope to poor
communities
PAKISTAN: New "honour killing" law does not go far enough - rights groups
TAJIKISTAN: Controversy over suspension of death penalty
TURKMENISTAN: Prison amnesty viewed as routine
UZBEKISTAN: Latest terror trials raise serious concerns - rights groups
UZBEKISTAN: Little progress in the position of women - OSCE
UZBEKISTAN: World Vision HIV/AIDS website launched
UZBEKISTAN: Opposition calls to boycott elections dismissed
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with UK minister on Afghan opium poppy campaign
Despite intense international efforts to tackle opium proliferation in
Afghanistan, more than 100,000 hectares are now being used for opium
cultivation inside the country - higher than the peak figure of 91,000
hectares in 1999, according to UNODC figures. The UK is feeling the impact
of the increase, with 95 percent of heroin available in British cities
coming from Afghanistan. In an interview with IRIN, Bill Rammell MP, UK
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs, said London was aware of the need to reduce demand for the drug
at home, as well as tackling production at source in Afghanistan.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43822&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
CENTRAL ASIA: Press freedom remains poor in region
Freedom of the press remains poor amongst the Central Asian countries of
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, says a
new report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). "The situation is very bad.
We simply don't know a lot about what is happening there," Soria Blatmann,
head of the watchdog group's European desk, told IRIN from Paris, calling
for a more comprehensive assessment of the region.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43869&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
CENTRAL ASIA: ADB head to tour region
The president of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Tadao Chino, will begin
a nine-day mission to Central Asia on 31 October in Kazakhstan, where he
will attend the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Central Asia Regional
Economic Cooperation (CAREC). The ADB president is expected to urge
leaders to foster regional cooperation to reduce poverty in the former
Soviet republics.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43897&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
Tajikistan remains the poorest of the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) countries, said Michael Mills, a leading economist of the World
Bank's human development sector for Europe and Central Asia regions. His
comments came at the presentation of the World Bank's recent poverty
assessment update for the former Soviet republic in the Tajik capital,
Dushanbe, on Thursday. Mills said an update for 2003 had revealed that
about two-thirds, or 64 percent, of the population of the Central Asian
republic lived on just over US $2 a day, giving it the highest level of
poverty in the Eastern European and Central Asian regions, even though it
had decreased by 17 percent from 81 percent in 1999.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43910&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
KYRGYZSTAN: Rural self-government programme brings hope to poor
communities
We are happy because we have a new school, we have two computers and a TV
and we have many new books," Nargiza and Nigora, two schoolgirls dressed
in crisp school uniforms, told IRIN in the village of Alimtepe in the
southern province of Osh. Nowadays such optimism is not unusual in
villages where the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) local
self-government programme is operating.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43874&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN
PAKISTAN: New "honour killing" law does not go far enough - rights groups
Pakistan's lower house of parliament strengthened a law against honour
killings on Tuesday, but opposition parties and human rights activists say
it lacks bite and sincerity. The UN Children's Agency UNICEF defines
honour killing as an ancient practice in which men kill female relatives
in the name of family "honour" for forced or suspected sexual activity
outside marriage or even when they have been victims of rape.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43885&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN: Controversy over suspension of death penalty
"A man raped his own mother, and then killed her. To hide the traces, he
decided to burn the corpse," Sharifmat Rajapov, a judge from Tajikistan's
southern Khatlon province, told IRIN, recalling a case he had recently
presided over. The judge recounted the story to support his argument that
the country should scrap a controversial moratorium on the death penalty
that came into force in July this year. "Now people are not afraid of
anything. Earlier, fear of the death penalty constrained them somehow. Now
that the moratorium on capital punishment has been declared, this will
untie the hands of criminals."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43833&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
TURKMENISTAN: Prison amnesty viewed as routine
Activists have largely dismissed a proposed amnesty for thousands of
prisoners incarcerated in Turkmenistan's overcrowded jails, describing the
annual event as mere window dressing to disguise an otherwise abysmal
human rights record. "These amnesties occur every year," Tajigul
Begmedova, head of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation, told IRIN from the
Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna on Tuesday, noting, while such events
were important, they did little to help those incarcerated for their
political views or opposition to the government.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43856&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN
UZBEKISTAN: Latest terror trials raise serious concerns - rights groups
International and local human rights groups expressed serious concerns as
an Uzbek court last week sentenced 23 more defendants to long prison terms
in connection with a series of blasts and shoot-outs this spring that
killed more than 40 people. A wave of arrests and trials of suspects after
the March-April attacks were viewed by human rights watchdogs as a
clampdown on Muslims who worship outside state sanctioned Islam in this
former Soviet republic of 26 million.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43830&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN
UZBEKISTAN: Little progress in the position of women - OSCE
There has been little progress on women's rights over the past two years
in Uzbekistan, according to an official with the Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). "There have been no changes over the
past couple of years," Per Normark, human dimension officer with OSCE,
told IRIN from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, on Thursday, calling for
further protection for women. "They [the authorities] have been drafting a
law on equal opportunities for a long time but it hasn't been adopted
yet."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43894&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN
UZBEKISTAN: World Vision HIV/AIDS website launched
A project on HIV/AIDS prevention among high-risk groups and youth in the
Uzbek capital Tashkent, implemented jointly by the Japanese International
Cooperation Agency (JICA) and World Vision Japan/Uzbekistan, has recently
launched its web site. The two-year "SOS" project, which kicked off at the
beginning of the year, continues the work of the former project by the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Uzbek government on promoting a
multi-sectoral effective response to drug abuse, HIV/AIDS and sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs) in the country, which ended on 31 December
2003.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=43891&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN
UZBEKISTAN: Opposition calls to boycott elections dismissed
The Uzbek authorities have dismissed opposition calls for a boycott of
parliamentary elections due in December over alleged violations of
electoral laws and the creation of obstacles in the way of opposition
candidates, describing such claims as groundless. The Uzbek Central
Election Commission (CEC) has also disagreed with the Organisation for
Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Needs Assessment Mission
Report which raised similar concerns.
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