Five years ago this month I was in Osh documenting cases of arbitrary arrest, ill treatment and torture in the aftermath of the ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan. The deep bruises on the body of one man I spoke with are still imprinted on my mind. He had been released from custody a day before I visited his neighborhood.
Given the calm that has returned to southern Kyrgyzstan since the June 2010 violence, and the Kyrgyz government’s desire to move definitively past those violent days, the lack of accountability for the arbitrary arrests, ill treatment, and torture during the investigations and trials following the violence may no longer seem pressing.
But the case of an elderly human rights defender who is spending the rest of his life in prison is one reason not to let sleeping dogs lie. We documented ill treatment and torture in dozens of cases related to the June 2010 investigations. But for all of us who responded to the crisis in southern Kyrgyzstan at that time, the case of Azimjon Askarov stands out as a particularly egregious miscarriage of justice, and for him, an injustice he continues to live with every day.
