Ferghana news agency reported on September 28 that Kyrgyzstan is seeking to downgrade OSCE representation status
The scandalous speech of one of the former leaders of the Uzbek community Kadyrzhan Batyrov in Warsaw at the annual meeting of the OSCE / ODIHR was the reason for decision by the Kyrgyz authorities to change the status of country's presence in the organization. Fergana news agency reported.
On September 28, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kyrgyzstan requested the OSCE that the mandate of the OSCE Center in Bishkek be reviewed and its status changed to the Software Office beginning on January 1, 2017, according to Ferghana.
Recall that the presence of Kyrgyz activist at an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) conference on human rights in Warsaw has sparked an official protest from Kyrgyzstan.
The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said on September 23 that Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldaev had expressed his concerns to OSCE Secretary-General Lamberto Zannier regarding the presence of Kyrgyz citizen Kadyrzhan Batyrov at the conference.
Batyrov, an ethnic Uzbek who received political asylum in Sweden in 2011, addressed the OSCE conference on September 21. He criticized Bishkek's plans to amend the Kyrgyz constitution and the government's latest efforts to probe his escape from Kyrgyzstan in 2010.
In 2011, Batyrov received a life sentence in absentia on charges of inciting ethnic hatred and organizing deadly clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010. He denies the charges.
