BISHKEK -- The Bishkek City Court has moved hunger-striking activist Nurlan Asanbekov to house arrest.
Asanbekov has been on a hunger strike since he was detained last month along with more than 20 Kyrgyz politicians and activists after a protest against the government’s border demarcation agreement with neighboring Uzbekistan.
The court announced the decision on November 11 after Asanbekov felt unwell in the courtroom and an ambulance was called to assist him. Asanbekov has insisted that he had nothing to do with the October 23 protests against the border deal and was arrested while working as a repairman at the home of an opposition politician.
Asanbekov is the first person from the group that was detained whose pretrial detention was changed to a more lenient pretrial restriction.
Since November 9, the court has rejected all other appeals filed by the detained men and women against their two-month pretrial detention on charges of planning mass disorder after they protested against the deal, which would see Kyrgyzstan hand over the territory of the Kempir-Abad water reservoir covering 4,485 hectares to Uzbekistan in exchange for over 19,000 hectares elsewhere.
In a statement on October 25, Human Rights Watch urged the government of the Central Asian nation to immediately release the politicians and activists and publish all of the details of the deal on the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border demarcation.
The Kempir-Abad reservoir, which was built in 1983, is located in the fertile Ferghana Valley and represents a vital regional water source. Uzbekistan, whose population of 35 million is five times larger than that of Kyrgyzstan, uses the majority of the water.
Many Kyrgyz civil activists, opposition politicians, and residents living close to the dam that created the reservoir are against the deal. They say Uzbekistan could continue using the water, but the reservoir's land should remain within Kyrgyzstan's border.
Japarov and his allies claim the deal benefits Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyz farmers will still have access to the water.
Last week, Uzbek Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Jeenbek Kulubaev, signed a number of documents on border delimitation in Bishkek, including the agreement on jointly managing the Kempir-Abad water reservoir.