On February 5, the blogger Akida Khanum reported that land plots under the Chor-Bakr memorial complex, 5 km from Bukhara, were sold at an auction to six business entities. According to her, each of them bought 18 sqm of land.
Chor-Bakr, located on the territory of the Bukhara province, is one of the largest necropolises in the Central Asia. The main buildings of the architectural monument date back to the 16th-20th centuries.
The Agency for Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Tourism and Sports reported that an inspection on January 17 found that sites in the protected areas of a cultural heritage site under state protection were illegally auctioned for transfer on lease and ownership rights.
On January 7, the Department of Cultural Heritage of Bukhara Province recommended that the Department of the State Cadastral Chamber exclude six empty land plots of 0.018 hectares (0.108 hectares in total) from the automated information system YerElectron on the territory of the memorial complex.
In response, the cadastral authority said that the issue was sent for consideration to the Chamber of State Cadastres of the Cadastre Agency.
The Provincl Department of Cultural Heritage, in a letter dated January 10, asked the mayor of the Bukhara district to remove from the auction six land plots put up for auction, as well as to ensure the preservation of the historical and cultural environment in the protected areas of the Chor-Bakr complex and to carry out all types of restoration construction and repair work as agreed with the Cultural Heritage Agency to preserve the natural landscape and its uniqueness.
The materials on the case were sent to law enforcement agencies for a legal assessment.
The agency reported that the Chor-Bakr necropolis was nominated for the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
In the necropolis there are burial places of sheikhs from the family of Dzhuybar seyids. Chor-Bakr is a kind of "city of the dead" - it has streets, courtyards, gates, and instead of houses - family dakhmas and tombstones. In the center of the necropolis there are three main buildings - a mosque, a khanaka and a madrasah.
In 2018, the mayor’s office of Parkent district, in violation of the law, sold 2 hectares of land at the Tepa (Kultepa) archaeological site, where a brick plant was set up. The monument dates back to the 1st-4th centuries and is considered a cemetery of nomads. Damage to the historical site was estimated at 1.5 trillion soums (about $138.5 million).
