Uzbekistan: Concern at Ethnic Trouble in Kyrgyzstan

Last week’s clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan have not been widely reported in neighbouring Uzbekistan, and residents of that country have been left to rely more on rumour than on accurate information.

People in the Uzbek part of the Fergana valley have been alarmed at the stories they have heard of ethnic tensions on the other side of the border.

The trouble began in the Kyrgyz town of Jalalabad on May 19 with a protest rally against Kadirjan Batirov, a leading figure in the Uzbek community of southern Kyrgyzstan. A large group of Uzbeks gathered to support Batirov, and an enraged crowd of mainly Kyrgyz youths attacked the People’s Friendship University, founded by Batirov. 

Batirov, a supporter of the interim government in Kyrgyzstan, had earlier accused allies of former president Kurmanbek Bakiev of trying to stir up trouble between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.

The Uzbek community accounts for about half the population of southern Kyrgyzstan, and 20 per cent nationally.

Kyrgyz officials say at least three people died and 70 were injured in the Jalalabad clashes. A curfew was imposed on the area.

Uzbekistan responded by deploying armoured vehicles along its border with Kyrgyzstan, which had in any case been closed since the unrest in early April that brought the present Kyrgyz interim administration to power.

News of the trouble in Jalalabad spread rapidly in Uzbekistan, even though state media ignored it.

“Our relatives in Osh [in southern Kyrgyzstan] say things are very tense between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz there,” said Akmal, a resident of the Uzbek city of Andijan. “There have been assaults on Uzbeks, and they avoid going out at night so as not to provoke confrontations with the Kyrgyz”.

A taxi driver in the same city said his passengers “talk only about Jalalabad”.

“People are worried about what happens next. They are afraid of a repetition of what happened in Osh,” he said, recalling the 1990 bloodshed between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks.

Another Andijan resident said the general mood there was one of alarm, with talk of “something on its way”.

Observers in Uzbekistan say such fears could be calmed if the authorities provided their citizens with accurate, balanced information about developments across the border.

Leading human rights activist Surat Ikramov says the reason rumours are circulating so fast is that “the majority of people in Uzbekistan citizens don’t have any information”.

According to Dilorom Iskhakova of the opposition movement Birdamlik in Tashkent, the authorities in Uzbekistan are reluctant to make people aware of the power of popular unrest in their near neighbour.

“Since the unrest in Kyrgyzstan started [April 6-7], Uzbek television, radio and newspapers have carried no reports about it,” she said. “That’s because our authorities think it would be fatal to report revolutions and coups.”

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.