Watchdog

BISHKEK -- A former adviser to ex-President Almazbek Atambaev is being held on suspicion of financial fraud after being detained in Russia and brought back to Kyrgyzstan by law enforcement authorities.

Ikramjan Ilmiyanov is one of several associates of Atambaev, who has been at odds with his handpicked successor, to be arrested or dismissed in recent months and accused of corruption.

Media reports said Ikramjan Ilmiyanov was detained in Russia on October 20 in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, and the Kyrgyz State Committee for National Security (UKMK) then brought him to Bishkek.

The Birinchi Mai District court in the Kyrgyz capital ruled the same day that Ilmiyanov must be kept in pretrial detention until November 28.

The UKMK had announced on October 19 that Ilmiyanov, who served as an adviser and deputy chief of staff under Atambaev, was placed on a wanted list.

Facing the constitutional limit of a single term, Atambaev stepped down in November 2017 after backing then-Prime Minister Sooronbai Jeenbekov in the Central Asian country's October presidential election.

Following his election as head of the ruling Social Democratic Party on March 31, Atambaev began publicly criticizing Jeenbekov.

Two Atambaev allies who also served as prime minister when he was president, Sapar Isakov and Jantoro Satybaldiev, were arrested in June on corruption charges.

In April, Jeenbekov fired several other Atambaev allies, including Prosecutor-General Indira Joldubaeva and UKMK chief Abdil Segizbaev, who had been criticized for a crackdown on opposition politicians and independent journalists.

Some politicians and lawmakers have called in recent months for an investigation into some of Atambaev's decisions while in office.

In early October, the Supreme Court ruled that the immunity enjoyed by the country's former presidents was unconstitutional.

ALMATY -- An ethnic Kazakh man from China, Omirbek Bekaly, says his 80-year-old father died in a so-called "reeducation camp" in China's northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Bekaly told RFE/RL on October 22 that his father, Ibrahim, died a month ago but that he had only learned about it this weekend.

UN human rights officials said in August that an estimated 1 million Muslims were being held at "counterextremism centers" in China and that millions more have been forced into reeducation camps.

The UN agency said the northwestern Xinjiang Province had been turned into "something that resembles a massive internment camp."

Bekaly is one of several whistle-blowers in Kazakhstan who have raised the issue of the camps in Xinjiang.

He says he spent more than seven months in such a camp himself in 2017 after Chinese authorities arrested him when he visited relatives in Xinjiang.

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Kazakh Families Desperate For News About Detained Relatives In China

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In August, a court in Almaty refused to extradite Sairagul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh Chinese citizen who was wanted in China for illegal border crossing.

Sauytbay fled China in April and testified at her trial in Almaty that thousands of ethnic Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslims in Xinjiang are undergoing "political indoctrination" at a network of "reeducation camps."

She testified that Chinese authorities had forced her to train "political ideology" instructors for reeducation camps, giving her access to secret documents about what she called a state program to "reeducate" Muslims from indigenous ethnic communities.

Uyghurs are the largest indigenous community in Xinjiang, followed by Kazakhs, and the region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz and Hui, also known as Dungans. Han, China's largest ethnicity, are the second largest community in Xinjiang.

On October 19, the state-run China Daily newspaper said in an editorial that Muslims in Xinjiang were vulnerable to foreign extremist propaganda and needed education and vocational skills.

The editorial accused the Western media of "double standards" when it comes to reporting on Xinjiang, adding that the "false picture" of the province in the foreign media was "aimed at smearing the Chinese government".

With reporting by Reuters