From the New York Times, Dec. 12 (and apparently little-reported elsewhere):

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Dec. 11 - In the remote hamlet of Tamga, residents frustrated by corruption and the sorry legacy of a chemical spill did something that would have been unthinkable in Kyrygzstan not long ago: they rose up.

The current (Dec. 1) issue of The Economist includes a profile of "China's far west"—a region variously known as Xinjiang (to the Chinese), or East Turkestan or Uighurstan to its indigenous inhabitants, the Turkic and Muslim Uighurs. After providing some background on the separatist strife in the Autonomous Region (which readers of WW4 Report will already be familiar with), it notes the recent development of gasfields there and the construction, now underway, of a pipeline to Kazakhstan. We recently noted that Kazakhstan is to be connected with the new trans-Caucasian Baku-Ceyhan pipeline with a link across the Caspian Sea, at the other end of the country. Now, Kazakhstan is a vast place, but it is nearly inevitable the global planners already foresee linking these pipelines. The question, ultimately, is whose control all this infrastructure will fall under. With all eyes on the Baku-Ceyhan route, Japan is seeking a Pacific route for Siberian and (eventually) Central Asian oil and gas—which would, as we have noted, strategically by-pass longtime rival China.

Similar dynamics on both sides of the Caspian Sea. We recently noted unrest over contested elections in Azerbaijan, where the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline has just opened. Now Kazakhstan—slated to be connected to the new pipeline by a link across the Caspian—seems headed down the same path.

Human rights groups have strongly condemned the ruling by Uzbekistan's supreme court finding 15 defendants guilty of terrorism and sentencing them up to 20 years for their role in the May violence in Andijan. "It was expected and some could even have been given the death penalty, but as the case had received such wide international publicity the authorities did not dare to give capital sentences," said Tolib Yakubov, head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU). "The trial was orchestrated."

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev defends his use of force to put down unrest in the country's prisons, which cost four lives on Nov. 1. "Police did the right thing when they demanded that suspects and other inmates leave the prison for interrogations," said Bakiev. "[The inmates] refused to come out. [Law-enforcement officers] approached them to meet and they [the convicts] started shooting. Should they have been presented bagels in response?" (BBC, Nov. 2)

The BBC is suspending its operations in Uzbekistan due to security concerns. All local staff are being withdrawn and the office in the capital Tashkent will close for at least six months pending a decision on its future. Regional BBC head Behrouz Afagh said the staff had been harassed and intimidated in recent months. "Over the past four months since the unrest in Andijan, BBC staff in Uzbekistan have been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation which has made it very difficult for them to report on events in the country."

Sanjar Umarov, a prominent opposition leader in Uzbekistan, was arrested Oct. 22 on embezzlement charges, and is being held incommunicado. Members of his group, Sunshine Uzbekistan say they still do not know the exact whereabouts of their leader. The group, which is calling for free market reforms in the authoritarian Central Asian republic, says the charges are fabricated. The offices of the opposition group were searched by dozens of plainclothes police the same day as the arrest, and a large number of documents were taken away. Two other members of the group have also been arrested.

Authorities in Uzbekistan are threatening to force dissident Elena Urlaeva to submit to immediate treatment with powerful psychotropic drugs—even though an initial psychiatric commission had declared her sane. The case against Urlaeva is the latest in the Uzbek government's deepening repression of human rights defenders and independent political activists in the aftermath of the May 13 massacre at Andijan.