400,000 displaced by ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan

ETHNIC violence in southern Kyrgyzstan has displaced 400,000 people, the UN said yesterday, dramatically increasing the official estimate of a crisis that has left throngs of desperate, fearful refugees without enough food and water in grim camps along the Uzbek border.

Ethnic Uzbeks in the city of Osh said ethnic Kyrgyz men had sexually assaulted and beaten more than 10 Uzbek women and girls on a single street during the rampages that erupted last week.

Resident Matlyuba Akramova showed journalists a 16-year-old relative who, she said, had been hiding in the attic as Kyrgyz mobs beat her father. The girl came downstairs to bandage her father’s head and another group sexually assaulted her in front of her father.

Members of the Kyrgyz community have denied accusations of brutality and have accused Uzbeks of raping Kyrgyz women.

Eyewitnesses and experts say many Kyrgyz were killed in the unrest between the majority Kyrgyz population and minority Uzbeks. But the majority of victims appear to have been Uzbeks, traditional farmers and traders who have traditionally been more prosperous than the Kyrgyz, who come from a nomadic tradition.

Odinama Matkadyrovna, an Uzbek doctor in Osh, said there were probably more cases of rape, but many victims were reluctant to speak out.

UN Humanitarian Office spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said an estimated 300,000 people had been driven from their homes but remain inside the nation of 5.3 million people. She said there are now also about 100,000 refugees in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

The government, which overthrew president Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April, says he and his supporters were attempting to reassert their grip on the area’s Afghan heroin trade.