The waiting, worrying, and wondering are finally over for four Karakalpak activists who were detained in Kazakhstan some two years ago, and faced possible extradition back to Uzbekistan.
Zhangeldi Zhaksimbetov, Tleubike Yuldasheva, Raisa Khudaybergenova, and Ziuar Mirmanbetova received word on October 15 that they had been granted asylum in the United States.
It ended more than two years of uncertainty that started with the unrest in Karakalpakstan on July 1, 2022.
Karakalpakstan is part of Uzbekistan, but has a special status as a sovereign republic with its own parliament and constitution that allows the region to hold a referendum on seceding from Uzbekistan. Those unique privileges are also enshrined in Uzbekistan’s constitution, but in spring 2022 parliament proposed making amendments to the constitution.
The main reason for the amendments was to change the presidential term from five to seven years so that incumbent President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who was serving his second and constitutionally last term at the time, could extend his stay in power.
However, the commission drafting the constitutional changes also dropped the articles referring to Karakalpakstan’s sovereign status and right to secede.
Those rights were nominal as there was no chance Uzbek authorities would allow Karakalpakstan to fully govern itself or secede.
Karakalpakstan accounts for some 37% of Uzbekistan’s territory, and also has large oil and natural gas reserves that have just started being developed in the past ten years.
The special rights Karakalpakstan had might have been nominal, particularly since ethnic Karakalpaks make up only about one-third of Karakalpakstan’s two million inhabitants. But these distinctions, albeit it only on paper, were important to the Karakalpaks, and when the proposed amendments were published at the end of June 2022, tensions started rising immediately in Karakalpakstan.
On July 1, Karakalpak community leaders went to apply for permission to hold a public meeting against the planned changes affecting Karakalpakstan. The group’s leader, activist and lawyer Dauletmurat Tazhimuratov, was detained.
Word spread and a large group numbering at least several thousand gathered, protesting peacefully outside the administration building in the Karakalpakstan capital, Nukus.
When police and security forces attempted to disperse the crowd, violence broke out, and when it was over and order finally restored, at least 21 people were dead and 243 injured.
Nearly all the casualties were Karakalpaks, and police and security forces were accused of using unnecessary and indiscriminate force against the protesters.
News of the proposed amendments, and the ensuing violence spread to the Karakalpak communities in other countries, notably to neighboring Kazakhstan, where, according to various estimates, anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 Karakalpaks live.
Most have Kazakh citizenship, but some simply work in Kazakhstan and remain citizens of Uzbekistan.
Karakalpak activists in Kazakhstan followed events in Karakalpakstan in late June and early July 2022 and posted about it on social networks, sometimes with words of support for the protesters.
After Uzbek authorities had restored order in Kazakhstan and arrested more than 500 people, Uzbek officials requested the Kazakh government detain Karakalpaks in Kazakhstan who had been posting statements and information on social networks before, during, and after the violence.
Based on a warrant from Uzbekistan, Zhaksimbetov and Koshkarbai Toremuratov were detained in Almaty on September 13, 2022. Uzbek law enforcement accused them of encroaching on the constitutional order of Uzbekistan and disseminating material that threatened public safety and order in Uzbekistan.
On September 16, Karakalpak activist Khudaybergenova was detained in an Almaty suburb on the same charges from Uzbekistan, and at the start of October, Almaty police detained Mirmanbetova.
On October 14, 2022, Human Rights Watch released a statement calling on the Kazakh authorities not to extradite the Karakalpak activists to Uzbekistan, but Kazakhstan’s then-Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi said his country’s position was that the four were citizens of Uzbekistan.
On November 13, Kazakh border guards apprehended Yuldasheva as she was trying to cross the border into Russia.
In all five cases, the Kazakh authorities initially ordered the Karakalpaks be held for 40 days, then extended their terms of detention to approximately one year.
All were released after that time, but they remained in legal limbo, trying to find political asylum in a third country while always fearing they could be detained again in Kazakhstan at any moment and sent back to Uzbekistan, where they would almost surely be imprisoned.
Toremuratov left for Poland, where his request for asylum is still under review.
Zhaksimbetov, Yuldasheva, and Khudaybergenova and her family left for the United States on October 15. Mirmanbetova is reportedly waiting for paperwork for a member of her family to be cleared, then they will both also depart for the United States.
Several Karakalpak activists are still being held in Karakalpakstan, notably Aqylbek Muratbai, who became the Karakalpaks’ main spokesman on what has been happening in Karakalpakstan since the July 2022 unrest.
For these Karakalpak activists remaining in custody in Kazakhstan, the fortuitous turn of events for Zhaksimbetov, Yuldasheva, Khudaybergenova, and Mirmanbetova is a good sign they too might be released from detention and find asylum in the United States.
