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In Kyrgyzstan, a Woman Kept Foreigners in Slave Labor

The State Committee for National Security of Kyrgyzstan (SCNS) has revealed gross violations in a sewing shop near Kyrgyzstan's capital, wherein its owners employed South Asians without providing them with proper working conditions. On the night of June 19-20th, 2024, operatives searched the sewing shop where 30 South Asians worked; the GKNB said that a Kyrgyz citizen fraudulently attracted foreigners to work. Violating her obligations, the boss did not pay the promised wages, and exploited the workers' labor to make the greatest profit. "She, having entered into a criminal conspiracy with a district police officer, confiscated passports from foreigners and intimidated them regularly, threatening to imprison them for an illegal stay on the territory of the Kyrgyz Republic," law enforcers said. The foreigners were kept in conditions that did not meet basic sanitary requirements, and they were barely fed. The owner of the sewing shop and a district police officer were detained and placed in a temporary detention center. Due to the increasing demand for garment products, many workshop owners bring workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other South Asian countries for cheap labor.

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Tajikistan’s Former Foreign Minister Hamrokhon Zarifi Detained in Dushanbe

Several informed sources have confirmed that Tajikistan's former foreign minister Hamrokhon Zarifi had been detained in Dushanbe. It is reported that law enforcement agencies detained Zarifi on June 12th. Until June 16th he was held in Dushanbe's temporary Ministry of Internal Affairs detention center. Still, the source has no information about where he was transferred for further detention. There were also reports that he was released after interrogation. A source in Tajikistan's law enforcement agencies said that "the detention and interrogation are related to an economic crime that was committed during the construction of the Foreign Ministry building during Zarifi's time as head of the ministry." Hamrokhon Zarifi was arrested on the same day as Saidjafar Usmonzoda, a member of the Tajik parliament who was detained on charges of "attempting to seize state power." The Tajik opposition links Zarifi's detention to the Usmonzoda case. The authorities have not commented.

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Kazakh MP Accuses Nazarbayev’s Relatives of Raiding

MP Yerlan Sairov believes that relatives of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Rakhat Aliyev and Kairat Satybaldy are involved in a business seizure. The parliamentarian demanded that the General Prosecutor's Office return the property to the affected businessmen, Kursiv has reported. During a meeting of the Mazhilis, the deputy stated that representatives of the Old Kazakhstan, taking advantage of their impunity, had initiated a series of business takeovers. "Such a system was formed by Rakhat Aliyev (Nazarbayev's former son-in-law) and his supporters," Sairov stated. Now, the victims have begun demanding the return of seized property. According to him, Nurlan Bimurzin and Megdat Kaliyev lost their oil business worth 170 million tenge ($369,000) in 2003. Zharkyn Kurentayev and Sholpan Karaneeva also "fell victim to the greed of the above-mentioned persons. The same group selected several vacation spots in the town of Konaev and the Altyn Bulak sanatorium in the Turkestan region," Sairov specified. Referring to the victims' posts on social networks, Sairov said that a group linked to Nazarbayev's nephew, Kairat Satybaldy, and his former sister-in-law, Gulmira, allegedly annexed the Hilton Hotel in Almaty and German citizen Robert Schumacher's construction company. The latter is now considered bankrupt. "The Prosecutor General's Office needs to take steps to protect the economic interests of the victims from representatives of the Old Kazakhstan and return the property," added Sairov. Rakhat Aliyev, the husband of Dariga Nazarbayeva from 1983 to 2007, was one of the most influential people in Kazakhstan in the early 2000s. In 2007, he was charged with kidnapping and preparation for a coup d'état and sentenced in absentia to 40 years; Aliyev fled to Austria, where he was arrested in 2014, and found hanged in a cell in Vienna in 2015. The official cause of death was suicide. In late February 2024, businessmen Bimurzin and Kaliyev announced that they had applied with the Prosecutor General's Office to reclaim assets they claimed to have transferred under duress to the former president's daughter, Aliya Nazarbayeva, in 2003. Nazarbayeva sued them for libel and lost Furthermore, earlier this year, businesswoman Sholpan Karaneeva reported that the Hilton Hotel was taken by Kairat Satybaldy and his supporters in 2021. After the nephew of the former president was behind bars, the transfer of his assets to the state, among them the hotel, was initiated. Kairat Satybaldy and his former wife, Gulmira Satybaldy, have been sentenced under articles on laundering money and the embezzlement of others property.

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Tajikistan Killings Happened in Isolated Area with Volatile History

A part of northern Tajikistan where a series of mysterious killings has happened in the last few months lies in the Ferghana Valley, a fertile, ethnically mixed region that is shared with neighboring Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and has been prone to border tensions and periodic concerns over religious extremism.Police investigators and journalists have gathered accounts from terrified residents of a man or men dressed in black and trying to break into homes at night. So far, there are no suggestions that the 13 murders reported in and around the Ferghana town of Konibodom since late March are connected to wider social or political fault lines in one of Central Asia’s poorest countries. Still, the killings evoke the volatile history of an isolated area of Tajikistan, separated from the rest of the country by mountains and the sliver-like shape of the northern part of the country, jammed between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The biggest portion of the Ferghana Valley lies to the east in Uzbekistan; Tajikistan received its section of it a century ago when rulers in Moscow were divvying up territory among the new Soviet republics. People used to move with relative ease around the valley but the borders hardened over the years, especially after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. There were numerous border clashes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in the Ferghana Valley in recent years, though the two sides are now negotiating. Tajikistan’s part of the Ferghana Valley is in the country’s Sughd region and the main city is Khujand, a transit point on the ancient “Silk Road” trading network that was conquered by Alexander the Great. Konibodom is an agricultural center, known for almonds, cotton and other products – as well as, according to authorities, a rise in the recruitment of young people into extremist groups. “It was noted that terrorist and extremist crimes have increased by 17.5% in the Sughd region, and the majority of such undesirable incidents, including the involvement of young people in extremist parties and movements, have been registered in the cities of Konibodom and Isfara compared to other cities and districts of the country,” the office of Tajik Prosecutor-General Yusuf Rahmon said after he visited Konibodom in April 2023. Concerns that Tajikistan is vulnerable to terrorist recruiters are longstanding. They appear to have been validated by the alleged involvement of several Tajik citizens in a March 22 attack on a Moscow venue that killed about 145 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the mass killings in Russia. This month, U.S. media reported the arrests in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles of eight Tajik nationals with possible terror links.The Tajik government has downplayed questions about whether some of its severe internal restrictions, including on expressions of Islamic piethy, might be contributing to radicalization. In 2021, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon made the trip to Konibodom to preside over 21st anniversary commemorations of the accord that ended Tajikistan’s civil war after the Soviet disintegration. He denounced political Islam and recalled the cost...

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Controversial Kazakh Opposition Figure Aidos Sadykov Shot in Kyiv

An unknown man in Kyiv fired several shots at Kazakh activist and oppositionist Aidos Sadykov, who has been granted official refugee status in Ukraine. It is reported that the incident occurred in the Shevchenkivskiy district of the Ukrainian capital when Sadykov was approaching his car with his wife, Natalia, who previously worked for Mukhtar Ablyazov’s opposition paper, Respublika. The gunman used a silencer on the firearm. Sadykov's condition is currently assessed as serious; his wife was not injured. As this is a case involving a high-profile individual, the head of the regional police, Andriy Nebytov, was called to the crime scene. Sadykov is the author of the Telegram channel 'Base', which has 59,000 subscribers, and has been permanently residing in Kyiv since 2014. Over the years, he has criticized the current Kazakh authorities, including the current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. In 2020 Base, together with the initiative to create the opposition Democratic Party, became the co-organizers of a rally in Almaty demanding a boycott of the upcoming parliamentary election. The Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, an unregistered political party, was founded and led by Zhanbolat Mamai, a former journalist who was convicted for receiving funds from Ablyazov in 2017. Sadykov and Mamai both actively supported the protests in January 2022 in Kazakhstan, widely seen as an attempted coup. He is wanted in Kazakhstan under the articles on the incitement of discord.

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Men in Black Blamed for Series of Murders in Northern Tajikistan

People in the Konibodom area of northern Tajikistan are locking themselves in their homes when darkness falls. Some are arming themselves. Others have left altogether out of fear. There appears to be a serial killer or killers on the loose. At least 13 people have been murdered in their homes in or near Konibodom since late March, and local police seem baffled as to who is doing this or why. It started with the killing of five members of the Sharipov family in late March. Initially investigators believed the 65-year-old head of the house had killed his wife, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, then hanged himself, but they later determined someone broke into the home and the killer hanged the man to make it look like a domestic dispute and suicide. On the night of April 16-17, someone broke into a home in the Gafurjon Ortikov neighborhood of Konibodom and killed the husband and wife who lived there. Police said the bodies of the victims, whom police did not identify, bore the signs of a violent death. The most recent killings happened on the night of May 28-29 in the village of Sanjidzor, outside Konibodom. Mahbuba Ahmedova and her two children were killed in their home and that same night, at a different house, the deputy director of a local school, Zulho Ibragimova, her brother and brother’s wife were killed. Local law enforcement said preliminary evidence showed all six people were strangled. Locals speak about men in black who break into people’s homes at night and kill them. A video was posted, purportedly from a surveillance camera in Konibodom, that shows a person with black clothing and a black hood or mask trying to break into a home. Konibodom resident Mahsuda Kodirova said she and her daughter were sitting in the courtyard of their home a little after 10 in the evening on June 11, when a man in black clothing with a black mask suddenly appeared and approached them. Kadirova said she and her daughter screamed and ran out into the street. When the police arrived, they told Kadirova they had received many similar calls from terrified residents during the previous 48 hours. Understandably, there is panic in Konibodom. Many of the men, especially the young men of Konibodom, are currently migrant laborers in Russia who are supporting their elderly parents, wives, and children back home. The bodies of Mahbuba Ahmendova and her two children were found by neighbors after Ahmedova’s husband had been calling her from Russia and finally called a neighbor to go and check on his family. Konibodom is near the border with Kyrgyzstan and the population of the city is mixed, mostly Tajiks, but many Kyrgyz as well. Most of the victims have been ethnic Tajiks, but Ibragimova, her brother, and her brother’s wife were Kyrgyz. The seeming randomness of the victims puts everyone on edge, at least everyone still there. The Tajik news outlet Asia-Plus sent its reporters to Sanjidzor after the killings in late...