More Violence Rips Uzbekistan
NEW VIDEO TELLS OF GRUESOME SCENE IN ABIJAN HERE
SCENES OF MOVING THE DEAD IN ABIJAN HERE
"If the reports of more than 700 deaths since Friday hold true and if Uzbek forces were behind the killing - as most reports indicate - it would be some of the worst cases of bloodshed involving a government's troops and civilian demonstrators since the massacre of protesters in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989."
"Women and Children Shot Like Rabbits..."
Refugees waiting to cross into Kyrgyzstan
Gruesome reports are coming out of Andijan as western media is slowly let back in to certain areas of the city of 300,000:
Uzbek soldiers reportedly fired into a crowd of thousands protesting over hardships in the former Soviet republic as police officers begged them not to shoot.
"They shot at us like rabbits," one youth said. Troops later moved in among the bodies, finishing off some of the wounded with a single bullet, according to another witness. Panic broke out as security forces fired on the crowd from roof tops and pursued fleeing demonstrators down narrow alleyways.
"Those wounded who tried to get away were finished with single shots from a Kalashnikov rifle," one man said. "Three or four soldiers were assigned to killing the wounded."
"Soldiers from two armoured vehicles began shooting at the people several times and in a sweeping fashion," one witness told French media.
Human Rights groups are now reporting 200 more deaths in another eastern Uzbek town following the bloody scene on Friday in Andijan:
Sporadic shooting continued Monday in an eastern Uzbek city where an uprising sparked a crackdown by security forces that left up to 500 people dead, and a human rights group reported that clashes in another town killed an additional 200.
The spreading unrest in a region bordering Kyrgyzstan - the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 - also left 11 people dead in clashes Sunday in a third town and sparked a rampage by residents in a fourth town on Saturday, witnesses said.
Fleeing the violence and brutality
Strong words from Britain:
Britain slammed the violence as "a clear abuse of human rights," the strongest international rebuke of the clashes yet and London's harshest criticism in years of Tashkent, a key ally in Washington's war on terror.
"The situation is very serious, there has been a clear abuse of human rights, a lack of democracy and a lack of openness," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights advocacy group, said Monday that government troops had killed about 200 demonstrators on Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 20 miles northeast of Andijan. There was no independent confirmation of his claim.
That violence would have come a day after some 500 people reportedly were killed in Andijan — Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city — when government troops put down a prison uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dire economic conditions.
Lining up outside an encampment in Kyrgyzstan
Survivors are starting to talk about the bloodbath on Friday as the town slowly opens up to outsiders:
Rustam Iskhakov, a human rights worker in the town, confirmed to The Guardian that the number of dead was "preliminarily about 500".
He said soldiers had walked calmly among unarmed civilians who had been wounded when they opened fire, and shot injured survivors in the forehead.
According to Iskhakov, the largest number of civilian casualties came after troops opened fire on civilians, including women and children, near a college next to the town's centre. "They shot at us like rabbits," a boy in his late teens told Reuters.
For more on Uzbekistan, see:
The Registan
Publius Pundit
Ben Parmaan
Scraps of Moscow
Update: (Monday AM) Bless Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit for using that strong voice of his to share the story of this gruesome massacre from the weekend.
I was reminded as I drove to work this morning that there are others in a far away land finding their loved one dead at a school/morgue... and how the challenges I face today in this prosperous, free country were nothing at all, compared to the horror and tragedy of my brother in remote Uzbekistan.
Update 2: I received an email from Colin from "Hey Dude Whoa" blog who has a friend in the Peace Corps stationed in Uzbekistan. Colin sent me two posts he put up of emails his friend sent from Uzbekistan here and here.
posted by Gateway Pundit at 5/16/2005 03:43:00 AM
2 Comments:
Something that needs to kept in mind here...the Uzbek govt has gone a good way to paint any opposition as being connected to the IMU or the HUT. This group, which the govt has named Akramiya, is a collection of businessmen based in the Fergana Valley. What we are seeing is the latest chapter in a competition between clans.
The power poles in Uzbek clan dynamics are Samarkand, Tashkent and the Fergana Valley. Andijan is in the Fergana. Karimov is from Jizzak near Samarkand. Tashkent is the seat of power. Karimov owes his power to the Samarkand clan but he needs Tashkent to keep the government operating. If you go back through the history of Soviet control over his region you find an ongoing competition between Samarkand and the Fergana with Moscow acting as kingmaker from Tashkent.
The Fergana Valley has several characteristics that make it critical to the future of Uzbekistan. First, it is the most fertile soil in all of Central Asia. The cotton produced there brings in 40% of the countries hard currency. The region also is the recipient of the country's biggest water supply - the Syr Darya which flows in from neighboring Kyrgyzstan. Uzbek needs that cotton desparately. Farmers are ordered to grow it and them sell it back to the govt at heavily deflated prices. Some smugglers take it across the border to Kyrgyzstan where the market price is 20 times higher.
Second, the Fergana valley is the most densly populated region in Central Asia and has extremely high unemployment rates. The average population density is roughly 300 people per sq kilometer. In some areas it is as high as 700. The population grouth rate is 2.3%...roughly on par with the Gaza Strip. Unemployment and underemployment in the Fergana is huge. We don't have exact figures. A conservative estimate of the average is probably 50%. It could be as high as 75%. In some places it is total - 100%.
The Fergana isn't a hotbed of Islamic extremism as the Uzbek govt would claim. It is the one center of pious Islamic practice. Central Asian Islam is often characterized as being "traditional" in that it represents the way that people live and not a political force. Islam was brought to this region by Sufi mystics who were largely very tolerant of assimilating existing native traditions into Islamic practice. The Fergana is different in that it is the one place where Islamic practices truely survived 70 years of Soviet occupation.
The Soviets created SADUM - the Central Asia Muslim Directorate, a Govt Muslim body which would likely fall below the KGB on an organizational chart. All official Islam fell under the rule of SADUM but throughout Russian colonial rule and the Soviet period there was always an "un-official clergy." Never particularly radical, the clergy simply didn't want to be told how to worship and didn't want to answer to a foreign govt...and Tashkent was a foreign govt.
You have to remember that prior to the Russians coming in, there were Khanates - city states like Kokand, Khiva, and Bukhara. Each controlled a specific area and Kokand was the capital of the Fergana Valley. Well, the Kokandis make the mistake of helping the Soviets and were slaughtered by Stalin for their trouble, but the point is that people in these area still identify according to the place where they live. They are not Uzbeks so much as they are Andijanis or Samarkandis.
A persons identity in the region is to a clan and a specific geographical area. It's worth noting that the events of Andijan over the last several weeks are the first time that security troops used force. It is also the first time that troops were brought in from outside the province.
This is not over...
Wow, Eric, thank you so very much for sharing your wisdom. If one follows this story long enough you can sense the deceit coming from the mouth of Karimov. Calling all of his detractors "islamic militants" has fooled many who have not paid attention. But the accusations are getting old as the BBC explains in one of their videos above. I hope to hear from you again, Eric. Thanks.
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