50 feared dead as soldiers fire on Uzbek protesters

Soldiers opened fire on thousands of protesters in eastern Uzbekistan today after demonstrators stormed a jail to free 23 men accused of Islamic extremism, while a protest leader said about 50 people may have been killed hours earlier in clashes with police and security forces.

Protesters fell to the ground as the soldiers started shooting outside the administration building in Andijan, in the volatile Fergana Valley. An Associated Press reporter saw 10 people lying on the ground, apparently hit. Moments before, demonstrators said three people had been killed.

Soldiers continued shooting as they surrounded approximately 4,000 protesters, and the sound of what appeared to be large-calibre gunfire resounded through the area, along with automatic weapons fire.

There was no word from authorities on the total number of casualties, but officials said that in unrest earlier in the day, nine people were killed and 34 were wounded.

Protest leader Kabuljon Parpiyev said that as many as 50 people may have been killed over the course of the day. Two of the dead were children, said Sharif Shakirov, a brother of one of the defendants, and he said 30 soldiers who had shot at demonstrators were being held hostage. A city prosecutor was led away by demonstrators.

Columns of troops and armoured vehicles were moving toward Andijan from two neighbouring towns.

Outrage over the trial of the 23 Islamic businessmen exploded into broader unrest overnight, with thousands of people swarming the streets, clashing with police and seizing the administration building. Residents of the town said between 1,000 and 2,800 prisoners, including the Islamic businessmen, were freed when protesters stormed the jail.

President Islam Karimov and other top officials rushed to Andijan, where the Uzbek government insisted it remained in control despite the chaos, although it blocked foreign news reports for its domestic audience. Karimov was thought to be in emergency headquarters set up at the local airport.

Islamist sentiment is high in the Fergana Valley, provoking tensions with the secular government that tolerates only officially approved Muslim observances.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is linked to al Qaida and the Taliban, fought for establishment of an Islamic state in the valley in the late 1990s. Concerns are high that Fergana could be a flashpoint for destabilising wide swathes of ex-Soviet Central Asia. The US is using an Uzbek air base far from the valley to support the anti-terror campaign in nearby Afghanistan.

Neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, which also share the Fergana Valley, sealed their borders.

Uzbeks have shown increasing willingness in recent weeks to challenge their authoritarian leadership in protests, apparently bolstered by the March uprising in Kyrgyzstan that drove out President Askar Akayev and by the so-called Orange and Rose Revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia over the past 18 months.

The trial of the businessmen, accused of extremism, has inspired one of the largest public shows of anger over alleged rights abuses by the government. Parpiyev, the protest organiser, said protesters’ main demand was the release of the group’s mentor, Akram Yuldashev, from prison.

Protesters stormed the prison overnight, freeing all the prisoners and seizing weapons, officials and witnesses said. The 23 businessmen were among those freed, said defendant Abduvosid Egomov, 33. The protesters also got hold of weapons when they attacked a military unit.

Thousands of protesters massed on the square outside the administration building, where a podium was erected. Protest organisers, some with Kalashnikov automatic rifles strapped across their chests, took turns addressing the crowd through a microphone.

“We want to be allowed to work and do our business without hindrance,” Parpiyev, the 42-year-old leader of the protest said.

Many of the men wore square black embroidered skullcaps, while some wore the white skullcaps favoured by observant Muslim Uzbeks. The protesters posted their own guards on the perimeter of the square.

Rioters burned cars, and a theatre and cinema near the square were on fire. Two dead bodies laid splayed near the square – one with a stomach wound, another burned. Several military helicopters circled overhead.

Egomov, pale and thin, was holed up in the local government compound, overrun in the morning by protesters who later were breaking up pavement stones to reinforce a metal fence in efforts to stave off security forces. Some prepared Molotov cocktails.

“We are not going to overthrow the government. We demand economic freedom,” Egomov said.

“We are ready to die instead of living as we are living now. The Uzbek people have been reduced to living like dirt,” he said.

Parpiyev said Interior Minister Zakir Almatov called him this morning and heard the protesters’ demands. He initially agreed to negotiations, but later said the offer of talks was off, the protest organiser said.

“He said ’we don’t care if 200, 300 or 400 people die. We have force and we will chuck you out of there anyway,”’ Parpiyev quoted the interior minister as saying.

Karimov’s office, however, issued a statement saying negotiations were under way but that the protesters refused to budge.

“The guerillas, hiding behind women and children and captured hostages, are not willing to make a compromise to solve the conflict,” the statement said.

Shakirov, the brother of a defendant, said the jailbreak was triggered by news that security services yesterday started rounding up people involved in a sit-in outside the courthouse.

The defendants, arrested in June, are accused of being members of the Akramia religious group and having contacts with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Authorities accuse Hizb-ut-Tahrir of inspiring terror attacks in Uzbekistan last year that killed more than 50. The group, which claims to eschew violence, denied responsibility.

Akramia unites followers of Yuldashev, a jailed Islamic dissident accused of calling for the overthrow of the predominantly Muslim country’s secular government – an accusation he denies. The group’s members are considered the backbone of Andijan’s small business community, giving employment to thousands in the impoverished and densely populated Fergana Valley.