Pogroms leave Uzbek refugees in fear of their lives
Associated Press reporters saw some 50 Kyrgyz troops, many in armoured transport carriers, enter the border village of Suratash and try to reassure refugees in this Central Asian nation that it was safe to return home.
Yet the soldiers’ very presence terrified the families – ethnic Uzbeks who fled after attacks and arson by ethnic Kyrgyz – since they blame Kyrgyz troops for abetting the violence that left hundreds of Uzbeks dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.
“Of course we were afraid. Afraid because they were the ones – the soldiers who fired shots,” said Maplyuba Akhmedova, an Uzbek who fled her home.
In Sakaldy, another village in Kyrgyzstan, ethnic Uzbek men spent the night in a meadow near a barbed-wire fence that marks the border with Uzbekistan. Entire Uzbek neighbourhoods in southern Kyrgyzstan were reduced to scorched ruins by rampaging mobs of ethnic Kyrgyz, who forced nearly half of the region’s 800,000 Uzbeks to flee.
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva says up to 2,000 may have died.
Her government said the attacks were ignited by supporters of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was toppled in April amid accusations of corruption.
The UN has said the unrest appeared orchestrated but has stopped short of assigning blame. Bakiyev, from exile, has denied any involvement.
The UN estimates that 400,000 people have fled their homes in Kyrgyzstan and about 100,000 of them have entered Uzbekistan.
