STATEMENT OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY OF THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC

To the Pres­id­ent of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic S.N. Jap­arov, Tor­aga of the Jogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic T.M. Mamytov, Prime Min­is­ter of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic U.A. Maripov

STATEMENT

•  We, cit­izens of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic and rep­res­ent­at­ives of  non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­iz­a­tions,  in con­nec­tion with the mil­it­ary actions unleashed by the mil­it­ary of the Repub­lic of Tajikistan in the Batken region, as a res­ult of which a sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tion of the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion,    women,  chil­dren, eld­erly people became refugees and intern­ally dis­placed per­sons, remain­ing in hard-to-reach moun­tain­ous areas, appeal to you with a demand to take urgent meas­ures, as the war killed  34  Kyrgyz. More than 170  people were injured,  Kyrgyz homes were  burned and des­troyed,  as well as gro­cery stores and oth­er private,  and gov­ern­ment facil­it­ies, more than 20,000  cit­izens were evac­u­ated from the con­flict zone, the head of the Inter­na­tion­al vil­lage Myrza­bek Jumabayev and  9  oth­er Kyrgyz cit­izens were held host­age by Tajik forces until May   1,   2021. Accord­ing to media reports, after the agree­ment on a cease­fire was reached and the with­draw­al of troops to the places of per­man­ent deploy­ment of the two coun­tries was agreed upon, on the day of nation­al mourn­ing for those killed dur­ing the hos­til­it­ies, the situ­ation became more tense, and the bor­der ser­vice repor­ted shelling of res­id­en­tial areas in the town of Arka, Leilek region, where the Tajik mil­it­ary opened fire on homes of Kyrgyz civil­ians. The non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­iz­a­tions have mobil­ized resources to provide urgent emer­gency assist­ance and ser­vices needed by vari­ous groups of vic­tims. Civil soci­ety and NGOs, and oth­er struc­tures provide human­it­ari­an assist­ance, includ­ing food, basic neces­sit­ies and medi­cine, psy­cho­lo­gic­al assist­ance to tem­por­ary dis­placed people from the zones. con­flict, trans­fer of funds. The NGO sec­tor is also doc­u­ment­ing evid­ence of armed attack and viol­ence. The NGO sec­tor is col­lect­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the evid­ence and chro­no­logy of events, pre­par­ing a request to the Pro­sec­utor of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­in­al Court. Civil soci­ety donates blood at Blood Trans­fu­sion Cen­ters, etc., NGOs of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic recommend:
• Clearly express the pos­i­tion on the state­ment of Mari­pov U.A. on the own­er­ship of the Golovnoy water well;
• Urgently con­vene a meet­ing of the Secur­ity Coun­cil and con­sider the situ­ation on the Kyrgyz-Tajik bor­der, cre­ate a pub­lic com­mis­sion under the Akyikatchy (Ombuds­man) of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic to doc­u­ment the facts, con­duct explan­at­ory activ­it­ies for young people about the harm­ful­ness of unor­gan­ized travel to the war zone, doc­u­ment everything in accord­ance with the legis­la­tion of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic the cir­cum­stances of the death of cit­izens, includ­ing the pro­vi­sion of an appro­pri­ate exam­in­a­tion of fire­arms and explos­ive injuries;
• Call on the UN, peace­keep­ing forces and the world com­munity to assess what is hap­pen­ing on the Kyrgyz-Tajik bor­der and take urgent meas­ures to resolve the con­flict, assess the actions of the gov­ern­ment of Tajikistan in accord­ance with inter­na­tion­al law, determ­ine the inter­na­tion­al leg­al respons­ib­il­ity of the gov­ern­ment of the Repub­lic of Tajikistan and crim­in­al respons­ib­il­ity for viol­ence and armed attacks on civil­ians, estab­lish a Bound­ary Demarc­a­tion Com­mis­sion in cooper­a­tion with the Depart­ment of Polit­ic­al Affairs, Peace­keep­ing, Office of Leg­al Affairs and the UN Car­to­graph­ic Sec­tion, request a leg­al assess­ment and an inde­pend­ent invest­ig­a­tion from the Pro­sec­utor of the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­in­al Court to identi­fy and pro­sec­ute those respons­ible, UNHCR — to pro­mote the adop­tion of urgent meas­ures to cre­ate human­it­ari­an cor­ridors and the pro­vi­sion of urgent measures;
• Cre­ate a spe­cial depart­ment of the Min­istry of Intern­al Affairs for inform­a­tion, to sup­press attempts to incite intereth­nic hatred by individuals;

NGOs of Kyrgyz­stan express grat­it­ude to indi­vidu­al coun­tries and inter­na­tion­al organ­iz­a­tions for con­firm­ing the aggres­sion by Tajik secur­ity forces against the peace­ful civil­ian, unarmed pop­u­la­tion of Kyrgyz­stan, for provid­ing human­it­ari­an assist­ance to the vic­tims. It is import­ant to pre­serve the ter­rit­ori­al integ­rity and ensure the safety of our cit­izens! We grieve and express our con­dol­ences to the fam­il­ies and loved ones of the victims. 

Civil Soci­ety Organ­iz­a­tions of the Kyrgyz Repub­lic
05/01/2021