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Violent Protests Grip Uzbekistan, 9 Killed
TASHKENT,
May 13, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least nine
people were killed Friday, May 13, as thousands of people took to the
streets in an eastern city to protest the unfair trial of Muslim
activists and to call for freedom in a country widely condemned for a
bad human rights record.
Uzbek
soldiers surrounded a crowd of protesters in the main square in the
eastern Andijan city after an overnight jailbreak to free all the
4,000 inmates, both political prisoners and ordinary criminals, inside
a prison located at the area.
According
to Reuters, 10 police officers were taken hostage when the armed men
broke into the prison and seized a key government building.
The
violence, the worst in the authoritarian ex-Soviet state since
bombings in the capital, Tashkent, last year, hit the densely
populated Ferghana Valley, one of the poorest and most volatile Muslim
regions in Central Asia.
The
protests were triggered by the trial of 23 local businessmen on
charges of religious extremism, a claim observers say used by the
government to crack down on activists.
Uzbekistan,
an impoverished agrarian state of 26 million, has come under criticism
from Western human rights groups for the mass jailing of Muslims who
do not subscribe to state-sponsored Islam.
The
unrest also feeds on long pent-up anger in Andijan regarding the
treatment of prisoners, poverty, unemployment and other social
problems, according to the BBC correspondent in Tashkent.
The
protesters shouted “justice” and “freedom”.
Enforcements
Uzbek
President Islam Karimov rushed Friday to Andijan where protestors were
reported to have taken over the town, according to Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
But
it was not clear who was in control, reported Reuters.
Karimov,
in power since Soviet days, was reportedly deploying scores of
soldiers into the town in jeeps and trucks.
But
a foreign ministry spokesman in Tashkent told AFP that security forces
had brought the situation under control. Karimov is expected to make a
statement on state television later Friday, according to a
presidential press spokesman.
The
Uzbek Foreign Ministry, which denied the seizure of government
buildings, said nine people had been killed and 39 wounded during an
attack on a police station and military unit, and said negotiations
were underway with the armed men.
The
corpses of three civilians, including one woman, and one soldier lay
in pools of blood on Andijan’s streets.
The
soldier, killed by a gunshot wound, was lying face down by an armored
vehicle outside the security services headquarters.
Calls
for Justice
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Karimov rushed Friday to Andijan where protestors were reported to have taken over the town.
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Sporadic
automatic gunfire could be heard, and buses and trucks had been parked
to block streets leading to the center of the city.
The
Andijan armed men demanded Russian mediation to avert further
bloodshed.
“This
is the limit. Our relatives started to disappear,” one leader of the
armed men, who declined to give his name, told Reuters inside
Andijan’s administration building.
“We
suffered too much, people have been driven to despair, it has to be
stopped,” he said, demanding a ceasefire and the release by
authorities of Akram Yuldashev.
Press
reports say Karimov has claimed he is fighting the rise of what he
terms “militant Islam”, to justify his hardline policies and
alleviate pressures on his record of human rights violations.
Karimov
is a key ally in Washington’s anti-terror campaign, having provided
US forces with a major airbase near the Afghan border since 2001.
Rights
campaigners argue that Uzbekistan’s courts are closely controlled by
Karimov’s leadership and that defendants are often tortured and
denied fair trial.
There
was yet no reaction from Washington or Europe on the unfolding crisis
in Uzbekistan.
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