------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Does he tell you he loves you when he's hitting you? Abuse. Narrated by Halle Berry. http://us.click.yahoo.com/aFQ_rC/isnJAA/E2hLAA/1dTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~->
May 23, 2005 Toe Tags Offer Clues to Uzbeks' Uprising By C. J. CHIVERS http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/international/asia/23uzbek.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print KARADARIYA, Kyrgyzstan, May 22 - Since May 13, when Uzbek troops used fusillades of gunfire to put down a prison break and demonstration in the eastern city of Andijon, President Islam A. Karimov of Uzbekistan has insisted the troops were fighting Islamic militants, and any civilians struck were felled either by accident or the militants' guns. But lengthy interviews with more than 30 survivors who fled to Kyrgyzstan, combined with accounts collected by opposition workers and human rights groups, consistently indicate that what happened was not as the official version would have it. Rather, it appears that a poorly conceived armed revolt to Mr. Karimov's centralized government set off a local popular uprising that ended in horror when the Uzbek authorities suppressed a mixed crowd of escaped prison inmates and demonstrators with machine-gun and rifle fire. The few hours of defiance culminated, the survivors say, in a desperate push by hundreds and perhaps thousands of Uzbek citizens, marching and crawling before the firing soldiers, some chanting "freedom" as people died around them. Much about the events in Andijon, a city of 300,000 in the country's main cotton belt, remains unknown. Uzbekistan has blocked free travel to diplomats, human rights investigators and journalists seeking access to the city. The scale of death is fiercely contested. Mr. Karimov said 32 Uzbek troops and 137 other people had been killed. An opposition party says that at least 745 civilians died in Andijon and Pakhtaabad, a border town, the next day. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, a Vienna-based group, says Uzbek troops may have killed 1,000 unarmed people. An independent visit to Andijon by a photographer working for The New York Times also found indications that the death toll was much larger than Mr. Karimov has said. Bullet-riddled bodies were returned to families with numbered toe tags and certificates, families told the photographer and her translator. The numbers on the tags, they said, ranged from the teens to the hundreds. And although the government has since tried to collect the certificates, they said, two families retained them and showed them to the photographer. One was No. 284. The other, which accompanied the remains of Rakhmatula Nadirov, 30, was 378. The same number was written on the dead man's leg, his mother said. The uprising began, Rashid Kadyrov, Uzbekistan's prosecutor general, said at a news conference in Tashkent, that Friday just after midnight, when armed Uzbeks seized a police station, killed four policemen and removed firearms, grenades and ammunition. Then, he said, they raided a military post, killed two soldiers, and took a hostage, more weapons and a truck. That account cannot be verified. But survivors and Mr. Kadyrov agree that violence soon developed at a regional detention center, where among the hundreds of inmates were 23 Muslim businessmen accused of Islamic extremism, separatism and other charges. Their trials, which started in the winter, were one source of Andijon's unrest; poverty, corruption and political repression were others. The 23 men's families and people whom they employed - in furniture factories, bakeries, fabric stores, scrap-metal yards and other businesses - say the charges were contrived, another example of what Western governments and human rights groups have documented as the abuse of state power to squelch political dissent. Mr. Karimov has, in particular, made it clear that he distrusts Islam; his government has jailed thousands of Uzbeks who practice Islam outside of state-sanctioned mosques. His antipathy has personal roots. In 1991, with Soviet authority crumbling, Islamic vigilante groups offered much-needed security and social services in the Fergana Valley. After one group, Adolat, seized buildings in one city, Mr. Karimov went to negotiate with them - and was humiliated when a young religious leader forced him to pray in public. Adolat's leaders formed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terrorist group that allied with Al Qaeda. Some survivors also said the 23 defendants in Andijon were punished because they did not pay all the requisite government bribes. The attack on the detention center began, Mr. Kadyrov said, when the armed men rammed a gate with the stolen truck, and killed three guards. One defendant, Shamshudin Atamatov, 29, said he had awakened to gunfire, and within minutes was released by people forcing open cell doors with metal bars. Mr. Kadyrov said 526 of the 734 inmates there were freed; previous estimates had suggested 2,000 were freed. Little is clear about the men who stormed the jail. The government says they were organized and equipped from outside Uzbekistan; the survivors say they were local men, but offer little else. One inmate, who gave only his first name, Abushakhir, estimated their number at 50 to 100, and said they were neither particularly religious people nor experienced rebels, but ordinary citizens bristling under authoritarian rule. Mr. Kadyrov said the attackers had offered weapons to the inmates they freed, and invited them to join the uprising, and some 200 men then began attacking government buildings. Their targets included a headquarters of the S.N.B., the Uzbek successor to the K.G.B. The attackers, he said, took as many as 50 hostages, and by sunrise were occupying the regional administrative building in Babur Square, where a statue of Lenin once stood. The freed prisoners said no guns had been handed out, though they and demonstrators acknowledged that the armed men - whose number they generally put at 6 to 20 - had taken about 15 hostages, including police officers, soldiers, firefighters and a prosecutor; some hostages, they said, were government workers seized when they arrived for work. As news of the prison break spread in the morning, largely by word of mouth, the survivors said, thousands of people began making their way to the square, and a rally began. The night of violence apparently had inspired a wider, impromptu outcry. A small public address system was taken to the square, and speaker upon speaker, the survivors said, complained of Uzbekistan's poverty, police abuse, corruption and suppression of personal liberties. They described a sense of jubilation at suddenly being able to talk openly. "I liked these speeches, because I have the same pain," said Rakhmat Zakhidov, 38, a furniture maker, who arrived about 6 a.m. The crowd quickly grew to several thousand, survivors said. But bedlam was spreading. A nearby movie theater and another theater began to burn, acts of arson the government and the demonstrators blame each other for. One survivor, Khassan Shakirov, 27, said he saw six Uzbek men carrying rifles in the square. Inside the headquarters, Abduldzhon Parpiev, a local man who had served a prison term on religious charges and now one of the uprising's leaders, negotiated by phone with Uzbekistan's interior minister, said Mr. Shakirov, who said that he had been in the room and could hear Mr. Parpiev's side of the conversation, and that Mr. Parpiev briefed him occasionally during the course of hours of talks. Mr. Parpiev, he said, made three demands: that the government release its political prisoners, grant human rights and political freedoms, and send a senior official to address the demonstration. The interior minister rejected the demands, Mr. Shakirov said. The government says it negotiated for 12 hours. The final clash was coming. Mr. Shakirov said the men inside the building prepared 12 Molotov cocktails. Three or four times over a few hours, the survivors said, military trucks moved swiftly along the edge of the crowd, firing at demonstrators - in one case, after demonstrators threw stones at a truck, according to the account of an Associated Press reporter who was there. Most of the witnesses also said they were fired on by armored personnel carriers. The demonstrators regrouped each time, they said, carrying away the wounded and the dead. But by afternoon, the survivors said, more government troops had arrived. The survivors who reached Kyrgyzstan all said they marched north on Chulpon Prospect, a commercial street. They described a herd of perhaps 1,500 or 2,000 people, propelled by fear and using government hostages as human shields. They insisted that no armed rebels were among them, though their assertion cannot be verified. After they went about 300 yards, they said, three parked buses blocked the way, and they pushed an opening through them and pressed on. Shortly after that, the survivors agreed, the troops opened fire. With fire from snipers and other riflemen in apartment buildings raking the crowd from the left, and automatic fire head-on from soldiers and armored personnel carriers, the survivors said, Chulpon Prospect became a nightmare of bullets thwacking into buildings, poles, people and trees. Shrieks pierced the air, they said. Red tracers zipped past. The first rows of the crowd all but disappeared in the initial bursts, they said, either having been shot or having dropped to the ground, exposing the ranks behind. "I was in the rear of our column, but then I found myself in the front," said Khursanoi Jorayeva, 66. All through the column, the survivors said, they crawled or stumbled, seeking safety. Chulpon Prospect began to run red. Several of the men said they began to chant "ozodlik," the Uzbek word for freedom. Crawling and darting, the survivors finally reached an alley, they recounted, turned east and ran. They massed again, continuing away from the square. Terrified, they said, many did not go home; more than 500 walked 15 miles through the night to the Kyrgyz border. There, they said, they were fired on briefly and lost eight people before a local official told them they could cross the bridge over the Karadariya River and leave the country. Led by two men carrying white flags, the column rose again, walked past a final, silent armored personnel carrier, and reached Kyrgyzstan. Elements of the official version of the uprising continue to raise questions. Mr. Karimov, for instance, said the Kyrgyz guards had found 73 rifles on the refugees, suggesting the rebels were numerous and had hidden among the fleeing. But four of the Kyrgyz guards who searched the refugees and Absabir Eredzhepov, deputy chief of the Kyrgyz border service, said they all arrived unarmed. "Not a single firearm was found," Mr. Eredzhepov said. "Not even a knife." Mr. Karimov has also said he feels sorrow. But in Uzbekistan, where his control is almost absolute, there is little sign of that. At a regional hospital 25 miles from Andijon, Alkhan Doblotov, the chief doctor, could have helped the injured. He had four trauma surgeons, three ambulances and ample medical supplies available. But Dr. Doblotov, a party man, said he had no interest. "We did not receive any instructions," he said, offering visitors tea and gesturing out the window. "As you see, we are planting flowers." C. J. Chivers reported from Karasu, Uzbekistan, and Karadariya for this article. Ethan Wilensky-Lanford contributed reporting from Karadariya, and Yola Monakhov from Andijon. * Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company =========+========= FEEDBACK? http://nativenewsonline.org/Guestbook/guestbook.cgi GIVE FOOD: THE HUNGERSITE http://www.thehungersite.com/ Reprinted under Fair Use http://nativenewsonline.org/fairuse.htm =========+========= Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Native News Online a Service of Barefoot Connection Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nat-International/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
