| Kyrgyz authorities restore order in the colonies Yesterday, special forces of the Ministry of Justice of Kyrgyzstan and internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs carried out an operation to restore order in the correctional labor institutions of the republic. The events took their most violent turn in colony No. 31 in the village of Moldavanovka near Bishkek.
One of the goals of the operations was to transport crime boss Aziz Batukaev from the colony, who, being healthy, lived in a hospital area in a well-equipped two-story room with air conditioning. According to the Main Directorate of Execution of Punishments (GUIN), the prisoner kept three mares, fifteen goats and several fighting dogs in the colony.
During the assault, prisoners blocked the gates of the colony with a fire truck, which special forces were forced to shoot from an armored personnel carrier. During subsequent clashes, according to the official version, two prisoners were killed and one was wounded. Relatives of prisoners say 20 died. The head of the GUIN, Kapar Mukeev, who participated in the operation, was wounded in the arm. The day before, the President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiev summoned him and demanded that order be restored in places of detention.
This requirement primarily concerned ITC No. 31. Its staff left the territory of the colony on October 20 after the prisoners killed the deputy of the Kyrgyz parliament Tynychbek Akmatbaev, who appeared there for an inspection, two of his assistants and the former head of the GUIN Ikmatullo Polotov. Since then, the colony was guarded only along the perimeter, and on its territory the prisoners created a real arsenal, including automatic weapons, grenades and rifles.
In addition, after the assault, significant sums in national and foreign currency, a Chechen flag and portraits of Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov were found in penitentiary colony No. 31. Yesterday, the authorities also took full control of the situation in a number of other colonies in the vicinity of Bishkek, as well as in the Jalal-Abad region in the south of the republic. In total, according to official data, as a result of special operations in Kyrgyz correctional labor colonies, four prisoners were killed and two were injured.
The head of the department of Central Asia and Kazakhstan at the Institute of CIS Countries, Andrei Grozin, in a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, noted that “it is impossible to consider a normal situation when prisoners run a colony, own entire arsenals of weapons, and law enforcement agencies only exercise control along the perimeter.” According to the expert, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Prime Minister Felix Kulov, who have a difficult relationship, as well as the influential groups behind them, must understand that “the longer the situation in the country persists when organized crime tries to dictate its will to the authorities, the more difficult it will be for them themselves to claim an independent political role." After all, “both in the ranks of the participants in the March “Tulip Revolution” and among the activists of the October rallies demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Kulov, the same faces familiar to the residents of Kyrgyzstan flashed,” our interlocutor emphasized.
It is likely that, in parallel with establishing order in the colonies, the authorities will sacrifice some of the criminal authorities in order to thereby strengthen their positions. The figure of Aziz Batukaev is almost ideal for this purpose. Not being a Kyrgyz by nationality (various sources speak of his either Chechen or Ingush origins), despite all his influence, he has no roots in any of the traditional Kyrgyz communities. Therefore, his neutralization can become a demonstrative action that will be positively received by ordinary residents, the international community, and even local leaders of the criminal world, who will only rejoice at the elimination of a competitor.
As for the republic’s leadership’s readiness to take more ambitious measures in the fight against organized crime, Vremya Novostei’s interlocutor is more restrained in this regard. According to Mr. Grozin, the situation in the criminal world of Kyrgyzstan has its own specifics, which significantly distinguishes it from what happened, for example, in the first half of the 1990s in Russia. The leaders of the republic's underworld made fortunes through both drug trafficking and racketeering. However, all of them (with the exception of Aziz Batukaev) “are built into the traditional system of Kyrgyz society, strictly divided into regional communities.” Within these communities, they have authority, influence and support from both the people and politicians, who themselves may not be involved in the criminal business. Andrei Grozin believes that the authorities have “neither the strength, nor the means, nor the desire to break the historically established structure of Kyrgyz society.” Petr ISKENDEROV |
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