VIENNA/ALMATY – Europe’s main security body yesterday backed plans to send 52 unarmed police officers to help restore peace in southern Kyrgyzstan, a month after the worst bloodshed in the Central Asian state’s modern history.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said its 56-nation permanent council had voted to deploy the mission in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic that hosts US and Russian military air bases.
The officers should start arriving around mid-August and will advise and monitor local Kyrgyz police, the OSCE said.
We know from many sources that the trust has been destroyed and lost – the trust between the law enforcement forces and major parts of the population,” Herbert Salber, head of the OSCE’s Conflict Prevention Centre, told reporters.
“So there is something to be restored and repaired. That is one major task of this police advisory group,” he said in Vienna, where the OSCE is based.
At least 300 people, and possibly hundreds more, were killed in several days of clashes in June between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Thousands of homes were torched in the cities of Osh and Jalalabad, and 400,000 people fled at the height of the violence.
Many homes are in ruins and human rights groups say that residents, particularly ethnic Uzbeks, continue to face violence and interrogation as the customary 40-day mourning period ends.
Voters approved constitutional changes in a referendum on June 27th that will make Kyrgyzstan the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, a region otherwise run by presidential strongmen.
Elections are scheduled for October.
The interim government, which assumed power after a revolt in April, said it had detained a brother of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev on suspicion of involvement in the violence.
It said in a statement that Akhmat Bakiyev was detained in Jalalabad late on Wednesday after a special operation by its forces, and that he would be flown to the capital Bishkek.
“During the first interrogation, A Bakiyev began to confess his involvement in the recent mass disorder in the south of the republic,” the interim government said in the statement. This statement could not immediately be verified independently.
The interim government has repeatedly accused supporters of Kurmanbek Bakiyev of stoking violence in the south. Mr Bakiyev, now exiled in Belarus, has denied involvement. – (Reuters)