CIS

Home page

CIS

Dozens Held Amid Fears of More Unrest in Kyrgyzstan

16 June 2010 17:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Fearful that violence could spread to the north of Kyrgyzstan, police in the capital of Bishkek said on Wednesday that 111 people had been detained on suspicion of trying to foment unrest, as accusations mounted that days of brutal bloodletting in the countryâ€™s south had been deliberately organized, APA reports quoting â€œThe New York Timesâ€.
â€œThe population is being bribed by third parties,â€ said Zarylbek Rysaliyev, Bishkekâ€™s chief of police, at a news conference in the capital, according 24.kg, a Kyrgyz news service. â€œBut the people know who is arranging all this and where the wind blows from.â€
The neighboring Central Asian nation of Tajikistan announced Wednesday that it was evacuating its citizens from Kyrgyzstan and fortifying borders between the two countries, a sign of anxiety that last weekâ€™s rioting would set off wider unrest.
Chief Rysaliyev said that authorities had set up an outer ring of checkpoints around the capital on Wednesday and would consider three additional rings if conditions worsen.
â€œCheckpoints help us,â€ he said. â€œAs you know, there are plenty of weapons in the hands of the populace.â€ There were no disturbances reported in the north, and humanitarian aid began to flow into the south, where people were beginning to emerge from barricaded homes. Scrutiny was swinging to the question of who or what set off riots in the southern city of Osh, which appeared to have been well-orchestrated rather than spontaneous.
The Kyrgyz government added to its portrayal of mobs that overran Osh beginning last Thursday as being armed with an arsenal of machine guns, automatic weapons and sniper rifles that had been stolen from government forces, a spokesman for the Kyrgyz National Security Committee told the Interfax news service. The spokesman, who did not give his name, said the rioters carried 5,000 iron bars, 279 assault rifles, 25 Makarov pistols and 100 hunting rifles. He said authorities had confiscated a large-caliber tank machine gun, a Kalashnikov tank machine gun and a grenade launcher, among other weapons. There was no explanation of how the authorities had compiled such a specific tally of weaponry.
Russiaâ€™s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Wednesday offered Moscowâ€™s help in identifying who set the violence in motion. He said the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional group of post-Soviet nations, would assist in the investigation.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday said that its investigators believed that the conflict may have been touched off by five coordinated attacks by separate groups of armed men last Thursday night in different parts of Osh, the largest city in the south.
Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the commissioner, said the attacks â€” which left at least 100 dead and 100,000 or more Uzbeks as refugees â€” were â€œorchestrated, targeted and well planned,â€ not a spontaneous outbreak of ethnic violence. He did not mention any names, but the Kyrgyz provisional government blamed the countryâ€™s deposed president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the interim government in Bishkek said the violence was â€œplotted and staged by representatives of the overthrown clan who were banished from Kyrgyzstan.â€
â€œWith only the ruins of the governance system left behind, they are now trying to turn the country into a desolate and scorched desert,â€ said the statement, according to Interfax. â€œThe members of the â€˜familyâ€™ promised the entire world that they would drown the people in blood. And we have now seen how they are doing it.â€
Certainly on the now calmer streets, Mr. Bakiyev is the assumed culprit among Uzbeks, less for direct evidence than for having the motive and the ability to manipulate the regionâ€™s ethnic tensions. Ravshanoi Karimova, 37, an Uzbek who is a chef, said Uzbeks would continue to dread more violence if Mr. Bakiyev continued to cast a shadow.
â€œOur people need to know that there was a major war here,â€ Ms. Karimova said at a charity stand where food was served. â€œOur children, and our childrenâ€™s children, need to know what happened here.â€
Mr. Bakiyev fled this region in April, taking up exile in Belarus. His opponents, though, have feared that he was not finished here, given his familyâ€™s business interests and long hold on power in the south of this nation.
Kyrgyzstan houses both American and Russian military bases.
Mr. Bakiyevâ€™s opponents contend that he provoked the conflict between majority Kyrgyz and minority Uzbek to destabilize the fragile interim government and try to return to office. Mr. Bakiyev has denied any involvement.
Southern Kyrgyzstan, which borders Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, has long been an ethnic tinderbox. Mr. Bakiyev was a rising functionary in the Jalalabad region in 1990, during the last major spasm of violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.
â€œThe situation is obviously tense, and the Bakiyevs took those tensions and ignited them,â€ said Omurbek Tekebayev, a senior official in the interim government, referring to the former president and members of his family.

Mr. Tekebayev pointed out that in May, avowed supporters of Mr. Bakiyev tried to seize government buildings in Jalalabad before they were repulsed.
Confronted by these accusations, Mr. Bakiyev has issued a stream of denials.
The provisional government has maintained that he has used his relatives in southern Kyrgyzstan to foment instability, but he said he was not speaking to them because he was worried about getting them into trouble.
â€œMy brothers and my children have gone underground,â€ he told reporters in Belarus.
At the same time, the detention in Britain on Sunday of Mr. Bakiyevâ€™s son, Maksim, seemed to deepen the speculation. The Kyrgyz authorities said they would ask London to extradite Maksim Bakiyev â€œfor crimes committed on Kyrgyz territory.â€ Maksim Bakiyev himself said he would seek political asylum.
Hostilities began late last week and have led to one of Central Asiaâ€™s worst humanitarian crises in recent decades as marauding bands of Kyrgyz singled out Uzbek neighborhoods. The death toll is in the hundreds, and as many as 100,000 ethnic Uzbeks have fled their homes and are in makeshift camps on the border area between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
In a statement on Wednesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it had begun an emergency airlift of supplies to Uzbekistan for â€œtens of thousands of people fleeing the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.â€
The first two cargo planes to land at Andijan airport near the border with Kyrgyzstan carried 800 lightweight tents, plastic sheeting, blankets and sleeping mats â€œto meet the growing shelter needs of refugees fleeing from Kyrgyzstan,â€ the statement said.
It quoted Uzbek authorities as saying more than 75,000 refugees sought safety in Uzbekistan since last Friday.