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Rights Group: Uzbeks Tortured By Kyrgyz Police

   VOA News 14 July 2010
   Uzbek  people  talk  in  front  of their burned houses in the southern
   Kyrgyz city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan, 28 Jun 2010

Photo: AP

   Ethnic  Uzbeks  talk  in  front of their burned houses in the southern
   Kyrgyz city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan, June 2010

   An  international  human rights group is calling on Kyrgyz authorities
   to  stop  what  it  describes  as  widespread  torture  and  arbitrary
   detention  of  ethnic Uzbeks. Human Rights Watch says Uzbeks are being
   disproportionately   arrested   as  part  of  a  government  drive  to
   investigate  and  punish  those responsible for deadly ethnic riots in
   the south of Kyrgyzstan last month.
   Kyrgystan-based  Human  Rights  Watch  researcher  Anna  Neistat  said
   coercing  confessions through torture discredits the investigation and
   fans  the  flames of ethnic conflict. The group says it has documented
   dozens  of  cases  of people in detention being burned with cigarettes
   and, in other cases, being choked.
   An  estimated  2,000  people were killed during ethnic clashes between
   Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that began June 10 in the southern cities of Osh and
   Jalalabad.

   Some information for this report was provided by AP.

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