At the beginning of his tour of Central Asia, Patten urged regional governments to tackle the issue of human rights

At the beginning of his tour of Central Asia, the European Union (EU) external relations commissione Chris Patten urged regional governments to tackle the issue of human rights. "Torture and other human rights violations, the restriction of fundamental freedoms do not and cannot help eradicate terrorism...they're precisely the conditions that breed and nurture the hate and grievance that underlie terrorism," he said. He also pledged EU support to alleviate poverty in the region, some of it akin to parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and assistance to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in fighting drug trafficking. In Uzbekistan, Patten said that he was pleased that Tashkent had presented its plan against torture following a report last year by the UN special envoy on torture. His comments, however, came a day after a prisoner, protesting against poor prison conditions, had died after guards force-fed him in an attempt to break his hunger strike. Abdurrahman Narzullayev's death resulted from food getting into his lungs after he was forced fed in an attempt to break his fast at the Karshi prison, said Vasilya Inoyatova, leader of the local Ezgulik human rights group. Narzullayev, 44, was serving a 16-year jail term after his 1999 conviction for religious extremism. Meanwhile, this week in Turkmenistan soldiers demolished Ashgabat's last Russian theatre, the AP reported. "Everything's broken, being sold off - it was all decided in a day," a staff member of Turkmenistan's Pushkin Drama Theatre said. The 400-seat theatre founded in 1926 and rebuilt after a massive earthquake in 1948 was virtually the last Russian cultural institution in the capital of Turkmenistan. Niyazov, who has consolidated his iron grip with an ever-intensifying personality cult, reportedly said that the theatre needed to go because of its poor physical condition. But the recent incident is in line with Niyazov's closure of other Russian cultural bastions such as Ashgabat's drama and ballet theatre and its circus.