Uzbekistan orders UN agency to leave
The UN refugee agency, which has sought to block the return of refugees to Uzbekistan, said today that the Uzbek government had ordered it to leave the country in one month.
Uzbek authorities, who have accused the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) of protecting criminals and terrorists by opposing deportations of Uzbek asylum seekers from Kyrgyzstan, told UNHCR on Friday that it would have to end its presence in the country, an agency statement said.
UNHCR said it regretted the decision, but would comply with the order.
Erika Feller, the agency’s assistant high commissioner for protection, said the Foreign Ministry said in a note that “UNHCR has fully implemented its tasks and there are no evident reasons for its further presence in Uzbekistan. With this regard, the ministry requests UNHCR to close its office in Tashkent within one month.”
Feller said UNHCR would try to find other ways of aiding refugees and asylum seekers in Uzbekistan.
“We are fully satisfied that our work in Uzbekistan has been performed in accordance with the mandate given to us by the UN General Assembly to protect and find solutions for refugees,” she said.
“The basic principles of refugee protection will continue to guide all of our activities on behalf of refugees wherever we operate, even when this might have negative consequences on our relations with a state,” Feller said.
At the centre of tensions between the government and the agency have been hundreds of refugees from Uzbekistan who fled to Kyrgyzstan last May following the bloody suppression of an uprising in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan.
UNHCR recognised most as refugees and evacuated 439 of the Uzbeks from Kyrgyzstan to Romania.
More than 200 of the refugees have since been resettled from Romania in other countries; 228 are still awaiting departure from Romania.
In recent weeks, the dispute has come down to four Uzbek refugees, two of whom were denied asylum by the Kyrgyz Supreme Court in February despite their being granted refugee status by the United Nations.
UNHCR has urged the Kyrgyz government to refrain from any action aimed at forcibly returning the four refugees to Uzbekistan, where Western nations and rights groups say they might be tortured.
Last year, Uzbek courts convicted more than 150 people in connection with the Andijan uprising in closed-door trials criticised by human rights groups as a government-orchestrated show with evidence allegedly coerced by torture.
“UNHCR remains concerned about the fate of (the) four detained Uzbek refugees in Kyrgyzstan,” the agency statement said.
It said it also was “concerned about the fate of an increasing number of Uzbek asylum seekers who have been detained” in other former Soviet republics and forcibly returned to Uzbekistan.
UNHCR said it opened its office in Uzbekistan in 1993 to support operations during the 1992-93 civil war in Tajikistan and in northern Afghanistan.
It said its work in Uzbekistan, headed up by two international staff members, currently focuses on the voluntary repatriation and resettlement of some 2,000 refugees, mainly from Afghanistan.
