KAZAKHSTAN: Fears over latest Uzbek extradition case
ICC Note:
A pastor who fled from Uzbekistan to evade arrest for the “crime” of holding “illegal” religious meetings in his home has been arrested in Kazakhstan where he and his family were living as refugees. The police actually held his sister-in-law for two weeks in attempts to use her to lure him out of hiding so he could be arrested. In June the United Nations Committee Against Torture condemned Kazakhstan for sending refugees and asylum seekers back to Uzbekistan to face torture and long prison terms. The worry now is that this pastor will face that same fate if sent back to his home country.
By Felix Corley
09/10/2012 Kazakhstan (Forum 18)- …
Friends of Uzbek religious refugee Makset Djabbarbergenov – who has lived with his family in Kazakhstan since 2007 – fear that the Kazakh authorities are about to return him to his homeland. The Uzbek authorities have been hunting him since 2007 for criminal trial to punish him for his religious activity. Police in Kazakhstan’s commercial capital Almaty detained Djabbarbergenov on 5 September and two days later a court ordered him held in detention in the run-up to an extradition hearing. He was transferred on 8 September to Almaty’s Investigation Prison, Forum 18 News Service has learnt.
Djabbarbergenov, who is now 32, is married with four boys, one of whom was born since the family’s arrival in Kazakhstan. His wife Aigul is expecting their fifth child next April.
Almaty’s Bostandyk District Prosecutor Gani Seisembiev – who presented the detention suit to court – refused to discuss it. “I can’t give any information by telephone,” he told Forum 18 from Almaty on 10 September. He then put the phone down.
His assistant Daniyar Zharykbasov, who prepared the documentation in the case, told Forum 18 the Uzbek authorities put Djabbarbergenov on a wanted list for the Commonwealth of Independent States on 29 February 2012 for a “crime” he committed in 2007. “We have to respond to this request,” he told Forum 18 on 10 September.
Askhat Primbetov, head of the Extradition Division of the International Co-operation Department at the General Prosecutor’s Office, declined to comment on Djabbarbergenov’s case. “When the documents arrive we will examine them and take a position,” he told Forum 18 from the capital Astana on 10 September. “Until then we can’t give any comment.”
Asked about the United Nations Committee Against Torture’s 1 June finding in a similar case that Kazakhstan had violated human rights obligations by extraditing to Uzbekistan a group of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers in 2011, Primbetov insisted that his government is preparing an official response to the Committee. “The Committee decision reached us officially only in August, and we have up to 90 days to respond. We are committed to responding.” He declined to discuss the Committee’s criticisms of those extraditions.
Wanted
Zharykbasov of Bostandyk District Prosecutor’s Office told Forum 18 that the Uzbek authorities said Djabbarbergenov was wanted under Article 229-2 of the Uzbek Criminal Code, which punishes “violation of the procedure for teaching religion” and carries a maximum term of three years’ imprisonment. He is also wanted under Article 244-3, which punishes “illegal production, storage, import or distribution of religious literature” and also carries a maximum term of three years’ imprisonment.
Zharykbasov initially told Forum 18 the extradition case was not about religious activity. But told that the Uzbek authorities are seeking to imprison Djabbarbergenov because he led an unregistered Protestant church in his home town of Nukus in Karakalpakstan, Zharykbasov then expressed some sympathy for him. “As a person I can say this is not right,” he told Forum 18. “But we have to follow the rules. We just collect the documentation, and Kazakhstan’s General Prosecutor’s Office will take the decision whether to extradite him or not.”
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Sister-in-law detained
As they did not know where to find him, in late August police seized Djabbarbergenov’s sister-in-law and held her for two weeks, family members complained to Forum 18. She was held first of all at the police before being transferred to a centre for the homeless. Eventually police found the telephone number of his wife, Aigul, in her mobile phone. Police seized her, and then came to the family home in Almaty on 5 September and arrested Djabbarbergenov. Only on 8 September was his sister-in-law released.
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Detention
The detention request for Djabbarbergenov was prepared by Bostandyk District Prosecutor Seisembiev. It was approved by Bostandyk District Court No. 2 on 7 September, the court chancellery told Forum 18 on 10 September.
“They didn’t tell us or the UNHCR office about the hearing,” Aigul Djabbarbergenova complained to Forum 18. “They gave Makset a state lawyer rather than allowing him to find his own. They claimed to me later that they had informed us about the hearing, but they didn’t.”
Zharykbasov of Bostandyk District Prosecutor’s Office denied her claims to Forum 18. “The police told her about the hearing, and he had a state lawyer because he had no money to hire his own.”
The UNHCR office in Almaty declined to comment to Forum 18 on Djabbarbergenov’s case, citing individuals’ confidentiality.
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Refugee Law
Kazakhstan acceded to the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention in January 1999. Article 33, Part 1 of the Convention declares: “No Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
Kazakhstan adopted its Refugee Law in December 2009 (it came into force on 1 January 2010). It defined in Article 1, Part 1 as: “a foreigner who because of well-grounded fears what an individual could become a victim of persecution on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious faith, citizenship, membership of a certain social group or for political convictions finds themselves outside the country of their citizenship and cannot avail themselves of their country’s protection or does not wish to avail themselves of such protection as a result of such fears, or is a person without citizenship finding themselves outside the country of their permanent residence or citizenship who cannot or do not wish to return as a result of these fears”.
Just before the adoption of the Refugee Law, the procedure for recognising refugees and asylum seekers was transferred from the UNHCR to the Kazakh government’s Migration Committee, part of the Labour and Social Protection Ministry.
The Kazakh government refused to recognise decisions taken by the UNHCR and began a review of all cases. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) notes, in a 3 September 2012 report on the impact on human rights of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), that of 120 UNHCR-recognised refugees whose cases were re-examined between June and October 2010, all but five were rejected.
“In examining cases with a particular connection to religious or political activity,” FIDH noted, “members of Kazakhstan’s government commission stated that the Kazakh authorities had no right to comment on the situation within Uzbekistan and China, which constituted part of the internal affairs of those states. Their position was that if Kazakhstan granted refugee status to Uzbeks or Chinese Uyghurs, its relationship with its SCO neighbours would suffer.”
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