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September 5, 2006

Kazakhstan: Organizer of Muslim & Non-Muslim Conference Jailed For Murder

Today's Interfax-Religion reports that a man who was given a 20-year sentence last week for ordering the murdering a prominent Kazakhstan dissident was also one of the main organisers of the Congress of World and Traditional Religions in Astana.

Yerjan Utembaev, or Erjhan Utambayev may or may not be guilty. The trial in which he was convicted by the Kazakh authorities seems flawed, and mounted more as a politically expedient measure than as an exercise in justice. Utembaev had organised the first triennial Congress of World and Traditional Religions in Astana meeting in the fall of 2003, which had been generally regarded as successful. He was also heavily involved with organising this year's second congress.

It is not known how the imprisonment of Mr Utembayev will affect the upcoming interfaith event. The 2003 Congress involved speakers and delegates from Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Taoist, Christian Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican, and other faiths. A statement was made at the end of the event, calling for more inter-religious harmony. More details on the conference, held at Astana in Kazakhstan, can be found here and here.

The predominantly Muslim Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan is regarded as politically stable, and has good relations with the West and the US, but under its president Nursultan Nazarbayev it appears to be slipping into totalitarianism. Like the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan, it appears to be allying itself with Uzbekistan, an increasingly hardline and intolerant nation, under the virtual dictatorship of President Karimov, who engineered the massacre of protesting civilians in Andijan in May 2005. Recently, several individuals have been sent from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan for trial of incitement or terrorism, even though the chances of a fair trial under Karimov's regime is impossible.

Dick Cheney visited Khazakstan and heaped praise upon president Nazarbayev, but did not draw him over the strange deaths of two political opposition leaders.

The first bizarre death occurred on the evening of Saturday 12 November. 61-year old Zamanbek Nurkadilov had been a member of the cabinet under President Nazarbayev. He had been sacked for asking the president to resign. It appears Nurkadilov's mistake had been to call for citizens to vote for a rival to the president at the December 4 elections. With his outspoken critic "removed" Nazarbayev went on to win a 7-year mandate to rule, in elections which are generally regarded as rigged. He had already been in power continuously since 1991.

Nurkadilov had been found in his home in Almaty, the former capital. Later, his widow claimed the house had been "bugged", after she and her lawyer found a listening device on 23 November.

It was later officially claimed that Nurkadilov's death was "suicide", as a revolver was found lying beside him. But Nurkadilov had been shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the back of the skull, making suicide highly unlikely. It is now almost certain that Nurkadilov was assassinated by Kazakh security agents, in the same manner as was practiced when the nation was under Soviet influence.

The current situation regarding Erzhan Utembayev seems to be of a similar nature. Originally Zamanbek Nurkadilov's widow, Makpal Zhunusova, feared that she would be made the scapegoat for her husband's killing. Utambayev's conviction is highly suspicious. He was jailed for 20 years on Thursday August 31 for ordering the killing of Altynbek Sarsenbayev (pictured, right), leader of the Naghyz Ak Zhol ("True Bright Road") Party, the main opposition against President Nazarbayev.

On February 11, 43-year old Sarsenbayev was abducted with his bodyguard and his driver. Their bodies were discovered on February 13, dumped in a gully near Almaty. Each had his hands tied, and each had a bullet in the back and one in the skull.

Yerzhan Utembayev was accused of the murder by the Kazakh authorities, who claimed that the reason he had ordered the slayings was on account of a comment that Altynbek Sarsenbayev had made against him three years' earlier. If such a flimsy excuse should be classed as a "motivation", it should be mentioned that last summer Sarsenbayev had also made accusations against the President's daughter Darigha, who owns a media empire called Khabar, saying she had violated the law. Sarsenbayev was subsequently fined for slandering the media group.

A former minister in charge of the senate, Utembayev had apparently made a confession to the killing of Sarsenbayev, in a letter sent to President Nazarbayev, it was alleged in court. There is an element of politics n this case which is highly suspicious. The President is due to visit the United States this month, and the US is supportive of Kazakhstan on account of its oil reserves. Within a decade, the nation is set to be among the world's top 10 oil producers, and its supplies do not have to go through either Russia or Iran.

The trial of Utambayev, held at Alma-Ata Regional Court, also saw nine other people convicted. A police officer and former secret services agent, Rustam Ibragimov, was given the death sentence for conducting the killing, commuted to a life term. But the trial was speeded up, and only some of the evidence was heard. None of Ibragimov's lawyers turned up at the sentencing, and one of the defendant's lawyers arrived inebriated. There were rumours that two Russians had been involved in the killing, but these were never summoned to appear.

As Ferghana.ru states: "Washington has been keeping an eye on the investigation. It even offered Kazakh law enforcement agencies its help. Now that the case is officially closed, Nazarbayev's interlocutors in Washington are unlikely to bother him with questions concerning the death of the influential opposition leader."

Why is this issue so important to Western Resistance, when our remit is to describe abuses of Islam against the West? It is important that we report accurately on events in the Islamic world, and in Central Asia there has been increasing activity against radical Islamic groups.

We are ideologically and morally opposed to Hizb ut-Tahrir, but the authorities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Tatarstan and Uzbekistan are also opposed to them politically. In Kyrgyzstan the group is being accused by the authorities of becoming more violent, and crackdowns against Islamic radicals are becoming more frequent in all former Soviet states with high Muslim populations.

When these states, some of which are regarded as "political allies" by Western leaders, engage in campaigns against groups, we need to know if those they pursue are genuine Islamic terrorists or political Islamists. If these regimes do not make that differentiation, as seems to be the case in Kyrgyzstan, and can slaughter opponents and later blame them as "terrorists" we would be colluding with tyranny.

We rely upon the news sources that are available, and in issues from these former Soviet enclaves, news is so often contradictory.

Merely because Western governments see fit to make alliances with despots is no excuse for us to ignore their abuses of power. Uzbekistan is a state which still runs on the Soviet model of oppression, yet recently it arranged for Kazakhstan's security forces to kidnap a Muslim cleric and bring him back in a process of "extraordinary rendition". I gathered information on the case, but found it impossible to report upon objectively, as the governments involved seemed more devious than the imam they were trying to bring to trial.

The imam from the Khuja Nuriddin mosque in Tashkent was Rukhiddin Fakhrutdinov, accused of religious extremism and terrorism. He and another cleric, imam Obidhon qori Nazarov were wanted by the Uzbek authorities, but Nazarov, with the help of UNHCR, managed to seek asylum in the European Union. Fakhrutdinov was arrested in Shymkent city in south of Kazakhstan on November 21, 2003, and beaten while in custody. He was handed over to Uzbekistan on November 24, 2003. His trial was due to start in June this year in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Following the detention of Fakhrutdinov, members of the clerics' families were subjected to persecution, and according to a 2004 report by Human Rights Watch, several associated Muslims in Tashkent were subjected to arrest and torture by Uzbek authorities. The trial of Fakhrutdinov highlighted concerns of other Muslims who had fled from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan as refugees from persecution. 17 other Uzbeks who had fled to Kazakhstan had been abducted and forcibly returned to Uzbekistan.

According to Turkish Weekly, Fakhrutdinov was to stand trial with four others who had been abducted and returned from Kazakhstan, charged under article 244-2 "Creation, management, participation in religious extremist, separatist, fundamentalist, or any other banned organisations". The group members were said to be part of the "Wahhabist" movement, but though tried under terrorism offences, their main crime appears to be political, that of belonging to a religious group not approved by the Uzbek state.

A report from Forum 18 details the background to religious persecution in Uzbekistan. The collusion of Kazakhstan with this nation to persecute its citizens makes it hard to report objectively on issues of "trials of Islamists".

It has been argued that in Kyrgyzstan, where similar crackdowns are currently taking place, the persecution of political Muslims will only create genuine Muslim terrorists.

Fakhrutdinov's trial was adjourned to the end of July, but it appears that the case has been adjourned again.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 5, 2006 1:29 AM

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