Kyr­gyzs­tan: Delay in the Kem­pir-Abad Case

Dur­ing the vis­it of Shavkat Mirziy­oyev to Bishkek, Kyr­gyzs­tan and Uzbek­istan put an end to the bor­der delim­i­ta­tion issue. How­ev­er, the release of detainees in the Kem­pir-Abad case may not be prompt, accord­ing to experts.

“We want you to know that in order to resolve this prob­lem, the fates of inno­cent peo­ple were sac­ri­ficed, result­ing in tears and suf­fer­ings of their fam­i­lies, espe­cial­ly those of lit­tle chil­dren and elder­ly par­ents. Our moth­ers and fathers, wives and hus­bands, daugh­ters and sons, 24 per­sons in all, have been detained only because they dared to dis­agree with the trans­fer of the Kem­pir-Abad reser­voir to your coun­try,” said rel­a­tives of the detainees in Kyr­gyzs­tan under the so-called ‘Kem­pir-Abad case’ to Shavkat Mirziy­oyev on Jan­u­ary 27.

On the same day, the lead­ers of Kyr­gyzs­tan and Uzbek­istan exchanged rat­i­fi­ca­tion instru­ments and signed the agree­ment on the Kyr­gyzs­tan-Uzbek­istan bor­der in Bishkek, accord­ing to which the area of the Kem­pir-Abad reser­voir has offi­cial­ly become part of the ter­ri­to­ry of Uzbek­istan. Both pres­i­dents, Sadyr Zha­parov and Shavkat Mirziy­oyev, called the process of bor­der delim­i­ta­tion a “his­tor­i­cal event.”

And short­ly before that, on Jan­u­ary 18th, the Min­istry of Inte­ri­or Affairs of Kyr­gyzs­tan clas­si­fied the mate­ri­als of the crim­i­nal case regard­ing over 20 politi­cians and activists. They were detained at the end of Octo­ber 2022 after try­ing to estab­lish a com­mit­tee to pro­tect Kem­pir-Abad and were accused of attempt­ing to orga­nize mass dis­or­ders. This step was the last argu­ment of the author­i­ties after sev­er­al unsuc­cess­ful attempts to con­vince the pub­lic of the ben­e­fits of the agree­ment, which trans­fers the Kem­pir-Abad reser­voir to Uzbek­istan in exchange for pre­vi­ous­ly dis­put­ed sec­tions of the Kyr­gyzs­tan-Uzbek­istan border.

A pub­lic meet­ing regard­ing the ille­gal clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the crim­i­nal case was held on Jan­u­ary 31st by can­dle­light. Although the entire build­ing had elec­tric­i­ty, the con­fer­ence hall did not. The lawyers invit­ed to the event called the “clas­si­fi­ca­tion” a prece­dent of law­less­ness and indi­cat­ed vio­la­tions com­mit­ted dur­ing the process of delim­i­ta­tion and demar­ca­tion of bor­ders between Kyr­gyzs­tan and Uzbek­istan and the ille­gal ini­ti­a­tion of crim­i­nal proceedings.

Water resources

The delim­i­ta­tion of dis­put­ed sec­tions of the Kyr­gyzs­tan-Uzbek­istan bor­der has been an issue since both states gained sov­er­eign­ty. The com­mon bor­der is 1,472 kilo­me­ters long. In 2017, both coun­tries signed and rat­i­fied an agree­ment on delim­i­ta­tion of 1,170 kilo­me­ters of the bor­der. In autumn 2022, gov­ern­ment del­e­ga­tions start­ed nego­ti­a­tions on the remain­ing 302 kilo­me­ters. The details of the nego­ti­a­tions were kept secret until the very last moment.

Accord­ing to the final agree­ment, Kyr­gyzs­tan received over 19 hectares of dis­put­ed areas, while Uzbek­istan received the Kem­pir-Abad or Andizhan, as it is called in Uzbek­istan, reser­voir. This became the sub­ject of crit­i­cism by Kyrgyzstanis.

Accord­ing to experts, 14% of the water from Kem­pir-Abad is used to irri­gate land in Suzak and Kara-Suu dis­tricts of Kyr­gyzs­tan. The reser­voir is of strate­gic impor­tance to Uzbek­istan as it irri­gates over 2 mil­lion hectares of agri­cul­tur­al land. Despite the agree­ment on joint man­age­ment of water resources, local res­i­dents fear that Uzbek­istan would restrict Kyr­gyzs­ta­nis’ access to water.

The admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Sadyr Zha­parov has used non-trans­par­ent meth­ods with lim­it­ed dis­cus­sions to push for the bor­der agree­ment, accord­ing to Kyr­gyzs­tan-based polit­i­cal ana­lyst Emil Zhu­raev.

“To over­come the bit­ter­ness felt about the Kem­pir-Abad reser­voir, con­sis­tent mea­sures must be used to strength­en trust,” the expert said.

Unsub­stan­ti­at­ed case

Medet Tyulegen­ov, anoth­er polit­i­cal ana­lyst, believes that the under­ly­ing rea­son behind the trans­fer of the Kem­pir-Abad reser­voir and the arrest of civ­il activists is much broad­er than just the direct con­nec­tion between the two. The Kem­pir-Abad sit­u­a­tion pro­vides the oppo­si­tion with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to unite and devel­op a sys­tem to counter the exist­ing pow­er, which is per­ceived as a threat to the regime.

“As errors accu­mu­late, it becomes hard­er to show any vis­i­ble results or achieve­ments, and this can lead to dis­sat­is­fac­tion among the peo­ple. When there are many dis­sat­is­fied indi­vid­u­als, there will always be some­one to lead them. Hence, the cur­rent gov­ern­ment is sup­press­ing dis­sent­ing voic­es, reduc­ing the chances of them being led,” Tyulegen­ov explained.

In the long term, polit­i­cal and civic activism con­tin­ues to pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat to Zhaparov’s pow­er, accord­ing to Chi­nara Esen­gul, a polit­i­cal sci­ence candidate.

She believes that even after the recent vis­it of Pres­i­dent Shavkat Mirziy­oyev of Uzbek­istan to Bishkek and the sign­ing of all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments, some detained indi­vid­u­als may be released, but they will remain under close monitoring.

“They will be released after seri­ous instruc­tions that they should not be so active, but I think it will not have a strate­gic impact on the out­come because the polit­i­cal cul­ture of the Kyr­gyzs­ta­nis will not change. I think they would be asked to write or state some­how that they have been wrong. As far as I know, Tashiev has sug­gest­ed the same a long time ago. But the detained are stub­born peo­ple and believe in what they do, that is why they have not done this so far,” the expert said.

How­ev­er, Tyulegen­ov believes that the release of the detainees is unlike­ly in the near future, as the pow­er has no valid argu­ments or evi­dence to sup­port their case. Tyulegen­ov thinks the case may be post­poned as long as possible.

A way out?

Iskhak Masaliev, a mem­ber of par­lia­ment, recent­ly estab­lished a deputy com­mis­sion to study the legal­i­ty of law enforce­ment actions towards the detainees, from deten­tion to inves­tiga­tive activ­i­ties and arrests.

“They pose a threat to cer­tain polit­i­cal fig­ures, not to the state. Being the per­son who has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the meet­ing of activists, I say pub­licly that they have not posed any threat,” the par­lia­men­tar­i­an said. “And now, when they exchanged the instru­ments of rat­i­fi­ca­tion, the only way out is to can­cel this deci­sion. They should be imme­di­ate­ly released, pros­e­cu­tion must be stopped, and com­mon ground should be sought.”

The deputy com­mis­sion, accord­ing to Masaliev, can play a cer­tain pos­i­tive role, but the mat­ter would hard­ly be resolved promptly.

“Those who organ­ised the case would prob­a­bly try to deliv­er the first ver­dict under any pre­text in order to jus­ti­fy them­selves, their actions. They might even release them, but after one or two years of lit­i­ga­tions. This is the tech­nique when one seems to be guilty yet he is not. And then they will say, ok, we for­give you,” Masaliev said.

Chy­nara Temiro­va, an expert in nation­al pol­i­cy issues, believes that bor­der issues must be resolved, but the process of deci­sion-mak­ing is just as impor­tant as the outcome.

“The pow­er that is not able to con­duct a con­struc­tive dia­logue and prove it is right by deeds and results will always take the pub­lic as the ene­my, not the help­ing hand. […] Deci­sions made in a demo­c­ra­t­ic man­ner are made in trans­paren­cy and nec­es­sar­i­ly con­tain com­pen­sa­tions to the groups of peo­ple who lose the deal. But this very process leads to the deci­sion that does not cause much of a con­flict in the soci­ety. There­fore, this deci­sion of the bor­der issue will always cause dis­con­tent of the peo­ple regard­less of whether the activists are behind the bars or not,” Temiro­va said.

Accord­ing to Temiro­va, the detainees in the Kem­pir-Abad case are a clear indi­ca­tion of the state’s weak­ness, and the pow­er will like­ly use this method to resolve future issues, lead­ing the coun­try down an increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an path.

https://​cabar​.asia/​e​n​/​k​y​r​g​y​z​s​t​a​n​-​d​e​l​a​y​-​i​n​-​t​h​e​-​k​e​m​p​i​r​-​a​b​a​d​-​c​ase