DUSHANBE, February 9, 2016, Asia-Plus –
Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service
reports Kyrgyz border guards installed their national flag on a Tajik-owned private house in the village of Ovchi-Qalacha in the Tajik district of Bobojonghafourov on February 6, claiming that the building was on Kyrgyz territory.
According to
RFE/RL’s Tajik Service
, its reporter Masum Muhammadrajab was detained by Kyrgyz border guards at a disputed segment of the border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan on February 8.
Muhammadrajab was reportedly detained in the Bobojonghafourov district, where he had been sent to cover a dispute that emerged after Kyrgyz border guards installed their national flag on a Tajik-owned private house.
He was released in the evening of February 8, after eight hours in detention.
Earlier, Kyrgyz border guard spokeswoman Gulmira Borubayeva told
RFE/RL
that Muhammadrajab was detained on February 8 for failing to cross the border through a Kyrgyz checkpoint.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have been unable to agree on the location of the border they inherited when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. They have delimited only about half of the 971 kilometers. As the population in the dense Ferghana Valley grows, it has become increasingly difficult to demarcate the contested sections, where valuable agricultural land often lies.
In recent years, the tension along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek and Kyrgyz-Tajik borders have intensified after outbreaks of violence involving residents and border guards from all sides.
The latest skirmishes sparked by a territorial dispute between residents along the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border escalated on August 4, leaving several people injured and damaging multiple homes.
The area at the focus of this and much previous unrest lies on the jagged frontier where the east of Tajikistan’s Sughd province and Kyrgyzstan’s Batken province meet.
