Painting a very grim picture of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, including torture, harassment and a lack of access and independent investigation into the killings in Andijan in 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today warned there has been no progress over the past year and urged the Government to improve things.

The United Nations refugee agency today warmly welcomed a decision by Kazakhstan’s authorities not to extradite an Uzbek refugee, despite a request from Uzbekistan, but instead to hand him over to the UN for immediate permanent resettlement with his family.

Expressing shock at Kyrgyzstan’s extradition of four Uzbek refugees and one asylum seeker back to Uzbekistan, the United Nations refugee agency said today it feared for their safety, stressed that the forced return violated the 1951 Refugee Convention and called on the Uzbek authorities to grant humanitarian access to the deportees.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said today it was “extremely concerned” about the fate of four Uzbek refugees in detention in Kyrgyzstan, who fled their country after last year’s killings in the city of Andijan, following a decision on Tuesday by the country’s Supreme Court which means that all four have now been denied refugee status.