“Some government forces acted, knowingly or unwittingly, to facilitate attacks on ethnic Uzbek neighborhoods in the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. “Local law enforcement agencies also failed to provide appropriate protection to the Uzbek community,” Human Rights Watch said.
This was one of the major findings in a report released by the international human rights organization in its 91-page report “‘Where is the Justice?’: Interethnic Violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan and its Aftermath,”
“It’s clear that the massive ethnic violence posed colossal challenges for Kyrgyz security forces,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report. “Yet we found that some of the security forces became part of the problem rather than the solution.”
The report documents large-scale “sweep” operations in Uzbek neighborhoods, during which law enforcement officers beat and insulted residents and looted their homes. During one operation, in the village of Nariman, security forces injured 39 residents, two of whom subsequently died.
The report also documents abusive search and seizure operations that security forces have conducted daily in Osh’s predominantly Uzbek neighborhoods. Dozens of witnesses provided consistent accounts of how security forces searched homes without identifying themselves, presenting a warrant, or explaining the reasons; detained people without warrants; refused to tell the families where detainees were being taken; and, in some cases, beat detainees and planted evidence, such as spent cartridges.
On July 22, the member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) agreed to deploy a small advisory police group to southern Kyrgyzstan to assist the Kyrgyz authorities in reducing ethnic tensions. Human Rights Watch called on the OSCE to ensure that the force arrives quickly and works effectively. Human Rights Watch also called on all interested governments and the United Nations to support an international inquiry into the violence and its aftermath.
