 RFE/RL Central Asia Report 6/7/2010 A review of RFE/RL reporting and analysis about the five countries of Central Asia. For more stories on Central Asia, please visit and bookmark our Central Asia page . |
 Suspected Kyrgyz Snipers Detained Kyrgyz authorities have detained 15 people suspected of being snipers who opened fire at antigovernment demonstrators in Bishkek on April 7. More  Kyrgyz Interim Gov't Sees Senior Defection The Kyrgyz interim government's chief of staf says he has resigned from his post in order to establish a new political party ahead of parliamentary elections this fall. More  Organizer Of S. Kyrgyzstan Unrest Killed Kyrgyz police say a man they described as a leading criminal allegedly linked to recent unrest in the south has been killed in a shootout between rival gangs. More  Interim Leader Otunbaeva Vows Kyrgyz Elections Will Be Fair, Transparent Roza Otunbaeva, the acting president of Kyrgyzstan and chair of the interim government, was interviewed by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service in Bishkek on June 4. The interview was conducted by Burulkan Sarygulova, acting Bishkek bureau chief. More  Bakiev, Rahmon, And 'The Sun' It's a striking example of a world news story worthy of one of Britain's finest tabloids. But "The Sun" missed the mark on one key point. The "Pres" pictured in the breakout is not from Kyrgyzstan, whose leader Kurmanbek Bakiev was ousted in early April, but of Emomali Rahmon, president of neighboring Tajikistan. More  Belarus Sends Tajikistan Flood Aid Belarus has dispatched 32 tons of humanitarian aid to Tajikistan by air. More  Self-Mutilations In Kazakh Prison Protest Several inmates of Dolinka prison in Kazakhstan's central Qaraghandy Oblast have deliberately injured themselves. More  Uzbek, Kyrgyz, And Tajik Lives Collide In An Enclave Recent tensions have put the spotlight on a little-known Central Asian enclave in the Ferghana Valley that has proven to be one of the strangest creations of Soviet-era leaders. Sokh District is an Uzbek enclave located inside Kyrgyzstan inhabited mainly by ethnic Tajiks. Recent tensions between Sokh residents and local Kyrgyz over pasture rights have further complicated an already-tangled cultural and political situation. More  The Worst Of The Worst Repressive Countries Freedom House, an international independent organization monitoring democracy and human rights, today released its report titled "Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies." More  Turkmenistan's Flaming Sinkhole To Hell Fascination with the sinkhole led me to a cool website called Crookedbrains and a fascinating post from March 14, 2009, titled "12 Amazing Holes In The Earth" (how can you not read that?) -- the first one of which is in the village of Darvaza (or Derweze) in the Karakum desert of Turkmenistan. More Uzbekistan began withdrawing armored vehicles from an Uzbek exclave on Kyrgyz territory today. More  Cargo Trains Line Up In Latest Uzbek-Tajik Row Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, two Central Asian neighbors with long-standing disagreements over a variety of issues, are now engaged in a new row over Tashkent's stoppage of Tajik railway cars. More  Kyrgyz Regimes Share Same Bloody Entrances, But Profoundly Different Inheritances In early April, when the people of Kyrgyzstan chased their president from power for the second time in five years, it appeared spasmodic regime change was becoming a permanent fixture of Kyrgyz politics. But while there are similarities in the root causes of the March 2005 Tulip Revolution that ushered in Kurmanbek Bakiev's presidency, and the bloody unrest that led to his ouster, there are also stark differences in the way things are playing out. More  EU Plans To Scrap South Caucasus, Moldova Envoys EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has reportedly proposed abolishing the positions of EU special representatives for the South Caucasus and Moldova. If approved by the EU's member states, the move would signal a drastic downgrading of the EU's involvement in its eastern neighborhood. More |
