Are the
Kyrgyz and Uzbek secret services involved in his disappearance?
On 18 February
2013, an Uzbek citizen Shukhrat Musin went missing in Bishkek. Shortly before
noon, someone called on his mobile, and he went out, telling that he will be
back soon. His two underage children and his colleague were in the house he
rented in the Alamedin residential area of the Sverdlovsk district of Bishkek. His
wife, at this time, was on her way from Jalal-Abad to Bishkek. The colleague could
not wait any longer, to see him come back, and left when Musin’s wife returned.
It has
been 8 days, since Musin was last in contact, he is not picking up the calls.
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| Shukhrat Musin |
Shukhrat Sharipovich Musin was born on 30 September 1984 in the town of Jalal-Abad in
Southern Kyrgyzstan. He grew up in the town of Khanabad of the Andijan region
of Uzbekistan.
In 2007, after he and his
friends watched the video of the events in Andijan in May 2005, he attracted
the attention of the Uzbek National Security Service (SNB). In April 2008,
several of them were arrested, accused of involvement in the so-called wahabbism
and sentenced to imprisonment. The house where the Musins lived was searched
several times, during which religious literature was planted. Later, it turned
out that the planted literature was banned, by the State Committee for
Communication, Informatisation and Telecommunication Technologies of the
Republic of Uzbekistan, under the law of censorship.
Shukhrat’s
father, Sharip Musin was already on the list of Uzbek law enforcement agencies
for his compliance with Islamic rites. In 2008, law enforcement authorities were
actively collecting material of accusatory nature against him, and he left for
work in Russia. Soon after that Shukhrat Mussin’s mother began to fear arrest.
It irritated
the authorities that she was wearing hijab.
In 2008,
the local policeman, later the agents of law enforcement bodies and the
National Security Service often paid visits to Shukhrat Mussin. Musin decided to leave
Uzbekistan.
Together
with his wife and mother, Shukhrat moved to Kyrgyzstan; his father came from
Russia to join them. Together they approached the UNHCR office in Bishkek.
In 2009, Shukhrat Musin was recognised as a refugee
under the UN mandate and lived in Kyrgyzstan, awaiting resettlement in a third
country. By that time, Uzbek authorities proclaimed him wanted. His parents were
soon resettled to the United States through the UNHCR.
In
October 2010 Shukhrat Musin was detained in Bishkek by the agents of the State
Committee of the Kyrgyz National Security (SCNS), on the basis of a request for
his extradition to Uzbekistan. At home Mussin was declared wanted under the
Article 159 (encroachment on the constitutional order of Uzbekistan) of the
Criminal Code of Uzbekistan, on charges of belonging to the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan (IMU). Musin denied allegations of the crimes and involvement in
extremist organisations. In the detention centre of the SNSC, Shukhrat Mussin was
forced, under torture, to incriminate himself and tacit cooperation. Musin
stubbornly refused all this, and torturers struck heavy blows on his head. As a
result, Shukhrat Musin incurred impaired hearing. He was threatened that if he
did not accept the conditions of the National Security Committee of Kyrgyzstan,
the UNHCR would deprive him of the status of refugee, and he would be
extradited to Uzbekistan. Musin personally informed the Association “Human
Rights in Central Asia” of the incident; the same was said by his father Sharip
Musin.
In
February 2011, following the intervention of the UNHCR office in Bishkek,
Shukhrat Musin was released. In December 2012 he was again arrested by the
National Security Committee of Kyrgyzstan for 4 hours.
Soon after
that, pseudonym articles with charges against him began to appear on the
Internet, without Mussin’s consent, a certificate of the High Commissioner for
Refugees, issued to him in January 2010, was made public. According to Musin,
as soon as he discovered these publications, he reported them to the UNHCR
staff in Bishkek (in July, September and November 2012). He also reported that
he noticed the interest to him and his place of residence by law enforcement
agencies of Kyrgyzstan. He did not receive any protection, in response to his
reports to the UNHCR office and was forced to move from place to place about
every three months.
In
November 2012, the representative of the UNHCR office in Bishkek met with
refugees, among whom was Shukhrat Musin. In the presence of more than 10
refugees, Musin said that once the officers of the SNSC of Kyrgyzstan learn his
address, they tell the landlords that he is a terrorist and encourage the
landlord to evict Mussin. The situation did not improve even after his meeting
with the UNHCR representative. By this time, the U.S. had twice refused to
resettle Musin, the validity of his Uzbek passport expired in September 2009.
Musin was forced to hide his place of residence from all, especially from the
National Security Committee of Kyrgyzstan.
The
UNHCR office learned of Shukhrat Mussin’s disappearance by noon of 19 February
2013. On the same day, his wife applied
for legal aid in the Public Foundation “Adilet Legal Clinic”, and now Mussin
has a lawyer. However,
Musin’s whereabouts is not known so far.
The case
of Shukhrat Musin is not the only one that took place in the last eight years. Human
rights defenders registered more than 20 known examples of forced return of
Uzbeks from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan with the involvement of the special services
of the two countries. There is reason to believe that the number of such cases
is much greater, the names of many of the victims of forced displacement are
unknown, as they were not registered with the UNHCR office and did not approach
the human rights defenders.
The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia –
AHRCA regularly receives complaints about the office of the
UNHCR in Geneva which granted the applicants a UN recognised refugee status. He
began to consider cases of refugees from Uzbekistan very slowly and in increasingly
formal manner. This is true even of torture victims and former prisoners of
civil society. When reviewing the applications of Uzbek refugees, the UNHCR
rarely takes into account that torture and fabrication of criminal charges are systematically
practiced in Uzbekistan, for over 10 years, the government did not allow the 10
thematic UN Special Rapporteurs to visit the country, and international organisations,
including HRW, are driven out from Uzbekistan, more than 200 human rights activists
and independent journalists are subjected to harassment. The fates of refugees who
are forcibly returned to Uzbekistan are usually shrouded in mystery.
The past
three years of experience shows:
- Giving in to the political pressure from the countries of Central Asia
and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the UNHCR is departing
from its constitutional principles;
- The governments of the EU countries, USA and Canada increasingly
refuse to grant asylum to the UN recognised refugees who are wanted in their
country of origin on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations of serious
crimes. In taking such decisions, the governments are relying on information
received from the Uzbek authorities, although Uzbekistan is notorious for malicious
violation of human rights and lack of rule of law;
- Refugees have to wait for the decision of the UNHCR in countries where
the law enforcement authorities take arbitrary decisions; the number of cases
of kidnapping of refugees by the Uzbek secret services is increasing;
- Persons persecuted for their religious beliefs are not protected and
are increasingly losing the prospects of resettlement to a third country, if
applied to the UNHCR offices in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia –
AHRCA calls the:
- UN High Commissioner for Refugees;
- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights;
- UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment;
- UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
in the Fight against Terrorism -
to enforce the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and other international human rights treaties in the context of protecting the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, to pay serious attention to the plight of refugees from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan and other countries of the CIS and the SCO.
to enforce the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and other international human rights treaties in the context of protecting the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, to pay serious attention to the plight of refugees from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan and other countries of the CIS and the SCO.
