Ethnicity

DUSHANBE, August 3, 2016, Asia-Plus – Radio Liberty reports police in the South Kazakhstan region have detained more than 30 local residents to prevent possible ethnic clashes amid ongoing tension between local Tajiks and Kazakhs over an unconfirmed rape case.

The South Kazakhstan regional authorities say 34 people were detained on August 2 after unknown assailants burned the door of a local shop in the village of Ghani Muratbaev and set two houses and several cars on fire in the nearby village of Dikhan.

On 20 and 21 December, the Equal Rights Trust launched three new comprehensive reports examining discrimination and inequality in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Published as these three countries mark the 25th year of their independence, the reports provide unprecedented insights into discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, political opinion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other grounds in states where little has previously been reported on such issues.

Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is visiting Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan this week – three countries plagued by serious human rights abuses.Uzbekistan has one of the world’s worst human rights records; Tajikistan is in the midst of its most severe crackdown on the political opposition since the end of the country’s bloody civil war in 1997; and abuses persist

8 February 2016

By Felix Corley, Forum 18