the gold mine contributes as much as 25% to the gdp of kyrgyzstan. however, many who live nearby worry about the environmental impact of the mine and a lack of tangible benefits. two years ago, demonstrations against komtor turned violent. protestors who were jailed accused police of brutality. now, activists say nothing has changed. and no one feels safe to speak out. >> translator: the guys who were convicted, their relatives are always being frightened. told that if you talk to someone your boys won't ever get out. they'll rot i in jail. >> we drove to the villages to see for ourselves if things had improved unfortunately we were followed. we know the people we want to speak to have been warned not to speak to foreigners. in fact an international team of environmentalists, came here, held in custody for three hours and told to go back to the capital. >> this is a difficult time for the kyrgyzstan government. it's trying to renegotiate their agreement with the canadian company that runs the mine, centera gold. the director says more than enough is

robin walker, al jazeera, kyrgyzstan. >>> always good to hear from you, was, do check out the website, aljazeera.com. drop us an email or talk to everyone on our various program teams via their facebook pages and their twitter veins, as well or you can tweet me, i'll tweet you back. all that via the website. >>> an al jazeera investigation is raisedding new questions about some of baseball and football biggest stars and their possible use of performance enhancing drugs, allegations they deny. denver broncos quarterback peyton manning calls the report complete garbage. we will bring you part of the interview manning gave. >>> extreme weather, dozens dead as the storm system spawning tornadoes, flooding and snow tears across the u.s.

didn't work out well for him in the long run, so even know in central asia, only kazakhstan and kyrgyzstan are signed up and i think russia in the median term is destined to lose more to china and central asia given just the economic power that the two countries wield. in terms of the caucuses and recruitment in the region, i'm not a specialist on this. the numbers you see run from the hundreds to the thousands in terms of recruits from russia who may have gone to fight prices. there are even conspiracy verkss that the fsb is urging certain militants to leave, so they go fight in syria. i have no evidence that is true, but you hear that in various places. it is interesting and among itself so clearly with iran and a syrian regime that's dominated by shi islam. this could be creating a source of initial instability in the country. not immediately, but you know n the coming years. >> okay. thank you. gerard. >> i'm interested in the relationship between the decision on crimea and the decision on a southeast ukraine the don bass. you mentioned brian the february 23 meeting and that's the offi