State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - Kyrgyzstan

Events of 2015

According to the 2009 census, almost 71 per cent of Kyrgyzstan's population identify as ethnically Kyrgyz, while the remainder belong to minority groups. Ethnic Uzbeks, who are concentrated in the Ferghana Valley region in the country's south-west, made up 14.3 per cent of the population, while another 7.8 per cent of Kyrgyzstanis, mostly residents of northern urban areas, identify as ethnic Russians. Ethnic Tajiks, Uyghurs and Dungans each make up about 1 per cent of the population, while Turk, Tatar, Kazakh, Azeri, Korean, Ukrainian and German communities are present in smaller numbers.

One key event of 2015 was October's parliamentary elections. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted in one of its reports that 'most parties refrained from nationalist rhetoric, and neither anti-minority campaigning nor intimidation of minorities was reported in the course of the campaign'. Nevertheless, national minorities were under-represented on electoral commissions, and, in violation of OSCE commitments, no official election material was available in minority languages – that is, languages other than the state language, Kyrgyz, and Russian, the second official language. Key minority groups were also under-represented among the winners of the election: while ethnic Russians are nearly proportionally represented, ethnic Uzbeks occupy only 2.5 per cent of the seats in the new parliament.

The conduct and outcome of the election is arguably reflective of Kyrgyzstan's gradual and at times uncertain recovery from inter-ethnic violence in the Ferghana Valley region in 2010. In June that year, around 470 people were reportedly killed in attacks lasting several days, almost three-quarters of whom were ethnic Uzbeks. Following the violence, the government promoted a narrative according to which Uzbek community leaders with a separatist agenda had organized the attacks while ethnic Kyrgyz had fought back spontaneously. In keeping with this narrative, about three-quarters of those tried for crimes connected to the violence have been ethnic Uzbeks, and the government has at times taken steps to put a more ethnically Kyrgyz stamp on the country's institutions and public spaces.

In June 2015, on the fifth anniversary of the 2010 violence, OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Astrid Thors said that 'the authorities should be given credit' for some of their efforts to rehabilitate areas affected by the violence, stating that 'destroyed property has largely been repaired and compensation has been paid to most of the victims'. She went on to say, however, that 'a sense of insecurity is still prevalent among the ethnic Uzbek community', and called on authorities to ensure 'equal access to effective and impartial justice'. The cornerstone of official efforts to prevent further intercommunal violence is the 2013 Concept of Development and National Unity of the Kyrgyz Republic, which some experts consider vaguely termed and open to subjective interpretation – although the tone of the final draft is considerably more ethnically inclusive than that of previous drafts.

Prior to June 2010, the languages, dress styles and artistic traditions of both ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were key parts of the urban landscape in Osh, in the Ferghana Valley region in which the bulk of the violence took place. In the years following the violence, the role of ethnic Uzbeks and their culture in Osh's public life diminished sharply. Six days after the attacks began, the regional government voted to rename what had been called the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University 'Osh Public University'. The Uzbek Music and Drama Theatre, a mainstay of the local arts scene and the country's oldest theatre, was burned during the riots and did not reopen until late 2012. Centrally located cafes and restaurants that had previously been owned by ethnic Uzbeks were taken over in the year following the violence by members of other ethnicities. Uzbek-language pop songs were not performed at a concert again until 2013. Arguably, however, there has recently have seen something of a resurgence of ethnic Uzbek culture, with the Uzbek Music and Drama Theatre and its staff receiving awards from Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Culture in 2014 and 2015. At the same time, Osh's Uzbeks are increasingly embracing Kyrgyz majority markers in an attempt to avoid prejudice and expand their professional opportunities. For example, majority ethnic Uzbek schools are largely switching their language of instruction to Kyrgyz and Russian, and in 2014 the education ministry did away with the Uzbek-language university entrance exam, citing insufficient interest.

Meanwhile, Kyrgyzstan, like its neighbours, is continuing to crack down on suspected Islamic extremists. Like the authorities in neighbouring states, Kyrgyzstan's government has been accused of using the threat of terrorism to target vulnerable and politically inconvenient constituencies. An oft-cited case is the arrest and conviction of Rashod Kamalov, an ethnic Uzbek imam in Osh province known for his sermons denouncing the spread of western culture and what he regarded as the decline of traditional morality. In December 2014, Kamolov publicly criticized the country's security services for what he said was their heavy-handed treatment of devout Muslims, and suggested a number of Muslims were fleeing to Syria to escape torture at the hands of law enforcement. In February 2015, he was arrested for allegedly preaching calls to jihad. In October he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for inciting religious hatred and for using his position to collect and distribute extremist literature, a sentence that was extended to 10 years the following month.

Kamalov's trial can be viewed as a debate about the nature of tradition and who has the right to claim to defend it. The prosecution's case hinged on the fact that Kamolov had devoted a chunk of one recent sermon to the concept of the caliphate, which they equated to an endorsement of violent jihad that contradicted the country's Islamic traditions. The defence, however, claimed that the prosecution's key expert witness, like many state officials who were educated in the Soviet period, was poorly versed in theology, which led him to miss the fact that Kamalov's discussion actually revolved around the distinction between the canonical caliphate and the false caliphate that ISIS wished to create. Furthermore, the defence noted, the expert did not speak Uzbek and was forced to rely on a partial translation of the sermon.

While Kyrgyzstan has strengthened laws against gender-based violence considerably since independence, enforcement of these laws is often lax. In an October report on domestic violence, Human Rights Watch (HRW) documents numerous cases of victims finding themselves rebuffed by law enforcement, and cites a representative of the General Prosecutor's office stating that preserving the traditional family unit should take precedence over prosecuting perpetrators or compensating victims. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)'s 2015 report for Kyrgyzstan notes that many women 'lack the information necessary to claim their rights', and for women belonging to minorities, among whom knowledge of state languages is less prevalent – for example, ethnic Tajik and Uzbek women – language barriers may pose an additional obstacle to obtaining the requisite information. Other factors can also conspire to prevent minority women from claiming their rights. Women from minorities may be wary of dealing with a predominantly Kyrgyz law-enforcement system. As in neighbouring states, individuals with no family connections among law-enforcement officials often struggle to access justice regardless of their ethnicity: minority women are less likely to have such contacts. Finally, women belonging to minorities may be faced with added pressure to keep gender-based violence a private matter, so as not to shame or make waves in communities that already feel threatened by the state. All of these factors played a role in the virtual absence of any trials connected with sexual violence during the 2010 violence in Osh, in which numerous Kyrgyz and Uzbek women – but more of the latter – are thought to have been raped.