LONDON (AlertNet) - A month after the worst ethnic clashes in Kyrgyzstan's modern history, the most urgent needs for tens of thousands of people made homeless are personal protection and decent shelter to see them through the winter, aid workers say.
At least 300 people were killed in June in violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, and thousands of homes were burned down in the main southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad.
The United Nations says reports of ill-treatment and torture by officials, mainly directed at ethnic Uzbeks, are worrying.
"People are still very scared. There is a big problem between the Uzbeks and the Kyrgyz communities. They do not trust each other, they do not speak to each other and they are scared of each other," said Tatiana Kotova, who works for DenmarkÂ?s DanChurchAid.
"There's a huge problem of psychological trauma. It's still very, very fresh for them, for those who lost their relatives. It is very difficult for them to forgive and forget and lead a normal life," Kotova told AlertNet after a field trip to Osh.
Matthew Serventy of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Osh told AlertNet: "The key needs now are protection-related. The assessments are coming in and there's still quite a lot of arbitrary detention."
In its latest situation report, UN OCHA said there was still concern about reports of abuse of power, arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force, ill-treatment, torture and extortion by law enforcement officials, mainly directed at ethnic Uzbeks.
It was issued as the United Nations cited reports of security forces rounding up ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan and torturing some of them by pulling out their finger nails and burning them with cigarettes.
More than 1,000 people have been detained in Osh and Jalalabad since the violence, according to a statement from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.
Separately, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has voiced concern about access to health care due to the presence of armed personnel in and around some medical facilities in Osh.
In a move to bolster the fragile peace, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced last week it would send a police force to the Central Asian state Â? but a small one.
"Local people think that thousands of foreign police are arriving and they'll all protect them but this is not the case, it's 52 police monitoring, training and playing an advisory role," OCHA's Serventy said.
Meanwhile, some aid workers said they expected more turbulence around parliamentary and presidential elections which had been due in September or October.
TOO AFRAID TO GO HOME
A lack of documentation has contributed to a general sense of insecurity in the former Soviet republic with birth and marriage certificates, papers proving ownership of property and passports burned or destroyed during the clashes.
"This exposes people to a greater risk of detention, checks on the road. Even to rebuild your house, it's not just about putting down the bricks and the roof but you should be able to prove this is your property," said Natalia Prokopchuk, spokeswoman of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
"Documentation is one of the most serious issues because it presents an obstacle to other rights. People cannot enjoy other rights because they do not have the documentation," she told AlertNet by phone from Osh.
UNHCR has set up a 24-hour hotline in both Jalalabad and Osh for people to raise their concerns and seek help. According to the OCHA situation report the most frequently raised issues were detention, how to seek asylum abroad and property.
Last month's bloodshed created a wave of 400,000 mostly ethnic Uzbek refugees, about a quarter of whom crossed the border into Uzbekistan. Most have since returned.
However, UNHCR said 75,000 people remain uprooted in southern Kyrgyzstan either because their houses were destroyed or they are still too afraid to go home.
Many families are split with the men, for example, camping in tents outside their ruined houses to protect their property in the absence of any paperwork proving ownership, while the women and children live with relatives, aid workers say.
"The most urgent needs are shelter and protection," UNHCR's Prokopchuk said. "Shelter because within 12 weeks, winter will start here. Winter here is very, very harsh. The temperature goes down to minus 20, minus 25 degrees (Celsius). We have a very limited time."
She said UNHCR had an agreement with the local authorities in Jalalabad to build 500 new houses, and that work had already started, but the agency had yet to receive the green light to start reconstruction in Osh.
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