stated that they believed the charges against him and his co-defendants to be politically motivated, and Amnesty International designated Askarov a prisoner of conscience. On 29 March 2012, the International Crisis Group (ICG) published a report which stated that ethnic tensions between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz continue to grow since June 2010 in southern Kyrgyzstan, "largely because of the state's neglect and southern leaders' anti-Uzbek policies." The report noted that the current superficial silence in the south was not a sign of success. According to the ICG, unless systematic measures are taken, further violence may erupt and even the most determined ethnic nationalist like Melis Myrzakmatov is unlikely to keep the Uzbek minority silenced forever. The Crisis Group reported that, contrary to common belief, the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan was not a fringe phenomenon perpetrated by ruthless, uneducated, and unemployed youth and corrupt politicians only. In reality even the more or less educated middle-class Kyrgyz do not have a conciliatory attitude. Few people in southern Kyrgyzstan have had access to any analysis of the riots that challenge the versions that blame Uzbeks as dangerous outsiders. Educated activist and professionals in southern Kyrgyzstan believe that the Uzbeks brought ruin upon themselves. Few Kyrgyz admit that discrimination and humiliation of ethnic Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan has long been unbearable. They dismiss the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry which documents how weapons, mostly automatic rifles, were distributed to Kyrgyz crowds and that armoured personnel carriers had been surrendered without resistance and subsequently used in attacks on Uzbek communities. Following the June events ethnic Uzbeks have been subjected to arbitrary detentions, extortion and torture. Juan Méndez, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, issued a report in December 2011 in which he wrote: "serious human rights violations committed in the context of ongoing investigations into the events of June 2010 and after have continued unabated in recent months." Melis Myrzakmatov's emergence as a nationalist leader Following the violence a new leadership surfaced in southern Kyrgyzstan. Openly nationalist Osh mayor Melis Myrzakmatov, a Bakiyev appointee, emerged as the preeminent political figure in the south. Myrzakmatov and other southern nationalists formed the party Ata-Zhurt which won 28 seats out of 120 in the 2010 Kyrgyzstani parliamentary election. The party initially campaigned to roll back the new constitution and bring Bakiyev back from exile in Belarus. Myrzakmatov is a radical nationalist leader and openly bears an