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Kyrgyz Officials Order Uzbeks to Remove Barriers

20 June 2010 04:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The Kyrgyz authorities demanded on Saturday that makeshift roadblocks that have turned this distressed city into a patchwork of no manâ€™s lands be removed, setting up a confrontation with ethnic Uzbeks that could lead to more bloodshed, APA reports quoting The New York Times.

The mayor of this southern city issued an ultimatum that Uzbeks voluntarily dismantle the barricades they have sheltered behind by Sunday night or force would be used to eliminate the barriers, some made with the wreckage of trucks destroyed in the rioting, minibuses and large boulders. The Uzbeks have been holed up in their neighborhoods for days in the wake of the ethnic violence that killed thousands and caused a massive refugee crisis.

â€œTo create zones where the government does not have power, we are never going to allow that,â€ said the mayor, Melisbek Myrzakmatov.

Uzbek leaders immediately rejected his demand.

The minority Uzbeks have accused the majority Kyrgyz of carrying out widespread atrocities in the conflict that began on June 10 in southern Kyrgyzstan and lasted several days. Numerous Uzbek neighborhoods were all but destroyed by arson fires.

Uzbeks have said the Kyrgyz military took part in the attacks, and they have repeatedly said that they will not get rid of the barricades because they have no confidence that the provisional Kyrgyz government will protect them.

Ethnic Kyrgyz also died in the rioting, but it appears that most of the casualties and damage were in Uzbek neighborhoods.

The violence has severely destabilized Kyrgyzstan, a poor former Soviet republic that has a strategic location in Central Asia. The United States has a military base in the country that plays a significant role in supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

At a news conference on Saturday, Mayor Myrzakmatov, who is ethnic Kyrgyz, said emergency vehicles and humanitarian aid were unable to get through to Uzbek areas, and he contended that criminals suspected in the violence might be hiding there.

But he also suggested that the police might want to enter the neighborhoods to search for Kyrgyz who he said were missing.

About 20 ethnic Kyrgyz were in the hall where he held the news conference; they were seeking information about relatives who had disappeared in the conflict. Mr. Myrzakmatov pointed to them and said that if Kyrgyz had been kidnapped and were being held in Uzbek areas, then the authorities needed to be able to go there to investigate.

â€œLook here, mothers are crying, children are crying, because there is no news about victims,â€ he said. â€œAre we going to allow that? If one side is clean, without sins, then let them show it.â€

A leader of the ethnic Uzbeks, Jalal Salakhutdinov, said that he had been negotiating with officials and warned them about the potential for violence if they tried to remove the barricades.

â€œPeople are very scared,â€ Mr. Salakhutdinov said. â€œThey do not want to open the barricades. They say, â€˜Give us some guarantees that they are not going to again come in after us.â€™ People are saying, â€˜If they are going to shoot us, they have already killed so many, we are ready to die as well.â€™ â€

Also on Saturday, an American diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State Robert O. Blake, was in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, for talks. Some officials in the provisional government, which took office in April after rioting deposed the Kyrgyz president, have said that the lease on the American base should be renegotiated.

Asked at a news conference about that issue, he said, â€œNobody raised that with me.â€

The interim government has charged that the former Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, provoked the recent violence in an effort to return to power. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that those accusations might be plausible.

â€œCertainly, the ouster of President Bakiyev some months ago left behind those who were still his loyalists and very much against the provisional government,â€ she said.

At the news conference, the Osh mayor said an investigation would determine who organized the violence. But he scoffed at accounts from numerous Uzbeks who have described how they were attacked by Kyrgyz soldiers.

â€œAnyone who wants to accuse our government of taking part, I categorically deny those rumors,â€ he said. â€œSoldiers, the military force of Kyrgyzstan, did not take part in this. Itâ€™s a lie, itâ€™s slander. Our soldiers would never shoot peaceful people.â€

Asked who organized the attacks, the mayor referred vaguely to â€œoutside forcesâ€ and â€œIslamic militants.â€ He maintained that Uzbeks still supported him. â€œThey trust me and believe in me,â€ he said.

Still, the deep ethnic divide was apparent in interviews with Kyrgyz who were in the conference hall.

Nasikhat Kurmanbayeva, 29, was searching for information about her sister, who disappeared during the rioting.

â€œThe Kyrgyz people have good souls, they are a simple, peaceful people,â€ Ms. Kurmanbayeva said.

She had a clear explanation for the extensive damage in Uzbek neighborhoods. â€œThe Uzbeks destroyed and set fire to their own homes so that they could then blame the Kyrgyz,â€ she said. â€œThey want the world to think that the Kyrgyz are guilty.â€