It has been four years since Azimjon Askarov, a human rights defender from southern Kyrgyzstan, died in custody. When he died on July 25, 2020, he had been in jail for ten years, subjected to torture and neglect. Towards the end, with his health deteriorating, he was denied release on humanitarian grounds.
An accomplished painter, journalist, and human rights defender, who worked on documenting prison conditions and police mistreatment of detainees, he would have turned 73 this year. He was widely respected internationally as a quietly determined political prisoner. His death shocked his many supporters.
Askarov, an ethnic Uzbek, had been serving a life sentence following an unfair trial related to the June 2010 interethnic conflict in southern Kyrgyzstan. He was found guilty on several trumped-up charges, including inciting ethnic hatred and complicity in the murder of a policeman by a group. In March 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that Askarov had been arbitrarily detained and called for his immediate release, to no avail.
Kyrgyzstan’s prison service said Askarov died of complications from Covid-19. An initial inquiry led by the same prison service was shut down in June 2021 due to what they claimed was a lack of evidence.
Following an international outcry, the investigation was reopened in September 2021 and assigned to the State Committee on National Security. However, despite repeated requests from Bir Duino, a human rights organization legally representing Askarov’s widow, Khadicha Askarova, this investigation has ignored requests for updates. That is despite a more recent court order requesting additional witness interviews.
In December 2023, Edil Baisalov, deputy chairman of the cabinet of ministers of the Kyrgyz government, said it an interview that he did not believe Askarov was guilty of the charges against him. “I have repeatedly expressed the sense that the plot of Askarov’s case does not correspond to the accusation that he in any way took part in any murders. It’s simply impossible to believe it, and there is not a single fact in his case that would indicate this.” Askarov was a “victim of these bloody events,” he said.
Askarov’s death is a shameful stain on Kyrgyzstan’s human rights record that can only be addressed by the Kyrgyz government respecting the UN Human Rights Committee’s decision, quashing Askarov’s conviction, completing an impartial investigation, and providing his family appropriate compensation and redress.
