UN calls for investigation into Uzbekistan violence

Uzbek officials took foreign diplomats and journalists on a lightning-quick tour of Andijan today, showing them a prison and the local administration building and arranging meetings with local officials, as the top UN human rights official called for an independent investigation.

The people of Andijan were kept blocks away from the delegation, leaving little chance for an objective assessment of last Friday’s violence that reportedly killed at least 169 people by official counts, although a political party, the Free Peasants, and human rights advocate Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov put the figure much higher, at about 500 people.