Uzbekistan closes border to refugees

UZBEKISTAN yesterday ordered its frontier closed to a mass exodus of refugees fleeing clashes between rival groups in Kyrgyzstan where government forces were accused of helping the slaughter of ethnic Uzbeks.

Gunfire rang out across the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh, where bodies littered the streets. More fighting was reported in the nearby city of Jalalabad. Scores are reported killed in three days of clashes.

With estimates of up to 100,000 people already inside Uzbekistan, the Central Asian state’s Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Aripov said the border would be closed.

“Today we will stop accepting refugees from the Kyrgyz side because we have no place to accommodate them and no capacity to cope with them,” he said.

He said Uzbekistan has registered 45,000 adult refugees from Kyrgyzstan and needs international humanitarian aid to cope. “If we have the ability to help them and to treat them of course we will open the border” again, he added.

Another official said there were 65,000 adults in Uzbekistan’s Andijan region alone and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it was sending aid for 75,000.

Ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks have flooded over the border into Uzbekistan in the three days of bloodshed around Osh and Jalalabad which has left at least 124 dead and 1,000 wounded, according to an official toll.

Ethnic Uzbeks said many more had been killed and accused government forces of helping Kyrgyz mobs in their deadly rampage.

Charred corpses lay unattended in a burned out ethnic Uzbek shop in Osh and the streets were strewn with shell cases and wrecked cars.

A military helicopter flew over the city dropping leaflets in the Kyrgyz and Uzbek languages calling for calm.

But intermittent gunfire was heard while new violence was reported further north in Jalalabad.

The deputy chief of Kyrgyzstan’s interim government, Temir Sariyev, said: “There are local clashes and it is not yet possible fully to contain the situation. Armed groups are breaking through here and there and this is linked to the fact that our forces are insufficient” to control events.

Kyrgyz news agency AKIPress said 2,000 people had gathered in the main square in Jalalabad and that cafes and stores were ablaze on main streets. It also said 150 to 200 youths were marching around threatening to shoot Uzbeks.

In Osh, Uzbek men with makeshift weapons stood guard outside their homes while women and children cowered in basements.

An AFP journalist was shown video footage of the burials of dozens of bullet ridden bodies that residents said they had filmed since Friday.

“There are at least 1,000 dead here in Osh. We have not been able to register them because they turn us away at the hospital and say it is only for Kyrgyz,” Isamidin Kudbidunov, 27, told AFP.

The unrest has erupted barely two months after Kurmanbek Bakiyev was overthrown as president in Kyrgyzstan in a popular uprising. Bakiyev’s stronghold is in the south of the country and many analysts said it was a strong factor in the violence. Shocked residents said the violence would have repercussions for generations to come.

Some accused Kyrgyz government forces of taking part in the brutal mob violence.

Dildor Dzhumabayev, a 38-year-old ethnic Uzbek, said people were gunned down by armed personnel carriers that were used to clear the way for mobs on the streets.

Kyrgyzstan is of key importance to the major powers as both the United States and Russia have military bases near the capital of the Central Asian country. There is growing international alarm over the unrest.

China and Turkey sent planes to pick up their nationals in Kyrgyzstan.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said yesterday she was “very concerned” and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his worry at the extent of the violence on Sunday.

Kyrgyzstan’s interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, on Saturday appealed to Russia to help quell the violence. The Kremlin has so far sent paratroopers to reinforce its base and agreed to send humanitarian aid.

Russia leads a regional security body, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, grouping ex-Soviet republics, that held emergency talks yesterday on a deployment of a special force to the region.

The violence exploded last Friday in Osh when ethnic Kyrgyz gangs began attacking shops and homes of ethnic Uzbeks, igniting tensions between the two dominant groups in the region that have simmered for a generation.