Unrest Simmers in Uzbek Border Town
22/05/2005| IslamWeb
Tensions remained high in this town on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border as Tashkent struggled to quell unrest in the wake of a deadly crackdown that has sparked unprecedented Western criticism of the authoritarian Uzbek regime.
Some 200 demonstrators, mostly women, paraded banners demanding freedom for a self-proclaimed Islamist leader as well as a popular local wrestler in the town of Karasuv, which straddles the border between the Central Asian former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Several hundred soldiers and riot police stood by as the protestors blocked the road leading to a bridge to the Kyrgyz side of the town, over the Sharikh Khansai canal.
The protestors tried to get traders crossing the bridge to join them, with one young man smashing the window of a car that was trying to get to the bridge, witnesses said.
They held placards proclaiming the innocence of the Islamist leader, a cattle farmer called Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, and the wrestler, Dilmorod Mamajanov.
"We don't want anything but the freedom of these two -- we have no other demands," said one of Rakhimov's relatives, named Anakhan.
"They are suffering for you so you can cross, why don't you stand here with us?" another woman shouted at a passerby.
Rakhimov and Mamajanov were among several people arrested two days earlier when Uzbek troops reclaimed the town from protestors who had chased them out last weekend, following clashes in the eastern city of Andijan.
Hundreds of people are feared to have been killed in the bloodshed which began in Andijan on May 13, sparking calls, including from the United States, for President Islam Karimov to allow an independent investigation.
The situation eased here mid-Saturday as Uzbek forces allowed traders to cross the bridge, one of two destroyed by Uzbekistan in recent years in a clampdown on trade with Kyrgyzstan.
But residents crossing to Kyrgyzstan said they feared Uzbek authorities were using harsh methods to deal with those blamed for the recent days' unrest.
Overnight Kyrgyz border guards intercepted a crowd of some 500 residents of the Uzbek side who tried to cross the river, shouting that they wanted refugee status, a spokeswoman for Kyrgyzstan's border service said.
“They were shouting that they were afraid of Karimov's investigations," the spokeswoman told AFP.
"There are many rumours of arrests -- people are complaining, they are fed up," a local farmer said. "We want more money and more work, but the authorities send us more soldiers and more police."
Western officials, led by the United Nations and the European Union, have stepped up the pressure on Uzbekistan's hardline regime for a thorough inquiry into the Andijan events.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed US calls for a transparent, international inquiry, warning Tashkent, a US ally in the war on terror, could face international isolation should it fail to comply.
The Western-led Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also called for an inquiry and said that Uzbekistan was not responding to OSCE efforts to mediate.
Top OSCE officials are "ready to go to Uzbekistan and assist with the dialogue and look at the deeper reasons for the unrest... the problem is that there is no communication with Uzbekistan," said OSCE spokesman Keith Jinks.
The Uzbek authorities have refused to say whether they will let foreign experts look into the Andijan events, while criticising foreign media coverage as likely to inflame the situation.
Witnesses, human rights groups and Uzbek opposition activists said that Uzbek soldiers indiscriminately slaughtered 500 to 1,000 people in and around Andijan.
PHOTO CAPTION
An Uzbek boy looks at soldiers standing guard in Kara-Suu. Tensions remained high in this town on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. (AFP)