I guess it's not surprising. The item about casualties in Pakhtabad was picked up by Nathan at Registan here, although his source says 200 killed. I am not able to translate the article here (my batteries are dead), but the headline gets the main points across pretty well:
Arena: 13 dead in Pakhtabad. Curfew declared in Andijan [at 18.00].
IA Ferghana.Ru, Arena, 16.05.2005 22:00
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
This could be bad
I've seen this item mentioned in comments over at Registan.net, so I thought I'd translate it in its entirety (not much to it):
Uzbek authorities are preparing a general mobilizationNo one seems to know why they are doing this. My opinion: in all likelihood, rather than preparing for a draft or military mobilization, the authorities are trying to figure out the pool of potential rebel recruits.
IA Ferghana.Ru, proprietary information, 16.05.2005 17:33
The statistical directorates of Uzbekistan's regions have been tasked this week with starting a headcount of the male population fit for military service. Employees [of these directorates] reported this to Ferghana.Ru correspondents and said that they had never before engaged in such work, and that their superiors did not provide any explanation whatsoever as to the goals of this survey, which they were asked to complete "urgently."
"Information blockade promotes spread of rumors" - Arena
OK, here's where I saw the item about information restrictions promoting wild rumors, mentioned in my long post earlier (my translation):
Information blockade promotes the spread of rumors 15.05.2005The report goes on to talk about the specific section of the Uzbek constitution that's being violated by the media restrictions and makes other interesting points, but I don't have the energy to translate it all and thought this was the best part of the piece.
The end result of the "media liberalization" proposed by the authorities this spring has become absolutely apparent, and its appearance is not pleasing. The silencing by the government of information about the events in Andijan probably killed off the last hopes even among the most incorrigible optimists.
The replacement of news reports on Russian TV channels with "musical breaks" and the blocking of websites did not leave any doubt about the fact that the words "liberalization" and "freedom" are interpreted by official Tashkent in ways directly opposite to their true meanings.
This is incredible, because already on the morning of May 13th, few people under the sunny, cloudless skies in Uzbekistan didn't know about what had happened. Weighing out strawberries, sellers at the bazaars said hurriedly with a concerned expression, "You know there's a war in Andijan!" And in the East, as is well known, if something is being talked about in the bazaars, then everyone knows about it. [...]
Karimov blamed US for unrest - Arena
From the Arena news agency ( the site's address is freeuz.org, and the logo is captioned in part with the only English words on the main page - "Committee for freedom of speech and expression" - so they are not neutral; they have an English-language page, but as with so many of these agencies they are not able to translate most of their content):
Has anyone seen a full transcript of Karimov's remarks on Saturday the 14th? Please comment with a link if so. Thanks.
The President knows which forces have an interest in destabilizing the situation in Uzbekistan 14.05. [I think the headline is intended to be sarcastic]Has anyone seen this sound bite anywhere else? It's hard to believe the Western wires wouldn't have picked it up and run with it if he really said it. If he did, it would reveal extremely poor judgement at best, or paranoia verging on insanity at worst. But don't ask me, I just translate these things, I don't know if they're really true or not.
[...] Karimov thinks that the sources of this operation are outside of the country, and that there are forces which have an interest in destabilizing the situation in Uzbekistan. These are not only Hizb ut Tahrir, but the United States as well. Karimov made it clear that the "leader of a large superpower, who just completed a tour of the CIS nations" is inclined to forcibly implant democracy in the post-Soviet space. [...]
Has anyone seen a full transcript of Karimov's remarks on Saturday the 14th? Please comment with a link if so. Thanks.
CNN interviews ICRC rep in Tashkent
Live from my TV screen: CNN International interviews Red Cross (ICRC) representative Roland Vavre in Tashkent - he has been in Andijan but did not have anything to say about a body count there. At one point he dodged a question about casualties in Andijan by saying, "[ICRC] is concentrating on its humanitarian mission." They "always refrain from commenting publicly" about such things, apparently.
On the situation in Kara-suu, he mentioned that the rebuilding of the bridge between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek portions of the city was most important to the locals, so that they could resume their traditional cross-border trade - "Their main concern is to do business as usual."
So, nothing new, really, but at least CNN is still treating this like what it is - an important story in which key facts are still not yet known.
On the situation in Kara-suu, he mentioned that the rebuilding of the bridge between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek portions of the city was most important to the locals, so that they could resume their traditional cross-border trade - "Their main concern is to do business as usual."
So, nothing new, really, but at least CNN is still treating this like what it is - an important story in which key facts are still not yet known.
UzA news items - comical
Who do they think they are fooling with these reports? (I had to translate them from Russian)
The idea of national independence and education 16.05.2005 18:39A statement which is transparently designed allow the US to say that at least he's making the right noises, if that's what the US decides it wants to do.
In a report to a joint session of the Legislative chamber and the Olii Majlis Senate [I may have butchered that transliteration, someone please correct me if so] President Islam Karimov noted that the reforms being conducted in the country are directed toward democracy and the renewal of society. The participation of the younger generation in this process has significant meaning. [...]
New jobs are being created 16.05.2005 19:33A pointed reminder that the Uzbek government is NOT a fundamentalist government that wants to keep women at home. At least they have that going for them. They just shoot them in the streets.
In our country, much attention is paid to raising the social activity of women, the defense of their rights, and the strengthening of their health. The problem of ensuring employment for women is especially relevant. In the Ferghana region a plan to increase women's employment during 2005-2007 has also [sic] been developed and is being implemented.
The Soviet influence
This won't be news to anyone who's followed Central Asia since, say, prior to the Tulip Revolution, and it isn't news to me, but Uzbek President Islam Karimov (several bios - Wikipedia's, an official-seeming one at uzland.freenet.uz which has a big photo of Karimov and Dubya, a fawning one from gov.uz, and a similar but more ridiculously fawning, cult-of-personality-like one on the Umid Presidential Scholarship Program Official Homepage - which, alarmingly, is hosted by an outfit called "Funeral Packages" - see the fine print at lower left here) is a true product of the Soviet system. Most bloggers who are commenting on Karimov are focusing on his relationship in the last 4 years with President Bush, and although I think news reports often mention in a boilerplate way that he's headed Uzbekistan since before the Soviet breakup, I think this basic fact deserves some detail.
Back in 1989, after a rise through the Communist Party ranks, Karimov became First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party Central Committee (head of the republic, in other words), then he became the first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990. He shepherded the country to independence in August of 1991 and was, uh, "elected" President of newly independent Uzbekistan in December of that year. Time was, lots of heads of post-Soviet states were former republic first party secretaries, but those times have passed in much of the post-Soviet space. Not in Uzbekistan, though.
This article goes in-depth about the ways in which Karimov "simply took all the trappings of Soviet Communism-one-party rule, state control of the press, secret surveillance of the populace, five-year plans, government monopolization of the means of production-and converted them, lock, stock and political prison, into a well-oiled banana republic."
Working Definition (a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan) also talks about the Soviet legacy, but with an interesting twist - he describes how much BETTER it was for the average Uzbek to live under Soviet power than under Karimov's impoverished simulation of Soviet rule.
But the point of this post (yes, now I get to it) is really quite a basic one, and this whole mini-research project was inspired by just one brief comment from Veronica at Neeka's Backlog:
How is this all relevant to what's happening in Uzbekistan today? Let me explain. I have been in touch with a blogger in Tashkent who tells me (this is not going to be news to Nathan and the frequent commenters at Registan, and I know it's been publicized in lots of media outlets, but it makes it more real for me to hear it from someone who's actually there) that certain news resources have been blocked or censored selectively for years. And in recent days, the censorship of outside media has extended beyond just Western outlets - even Russian news broadcasts and websites have been censored. He estimates only 15-20% of internet users interested in foreign news reports are able to use proxy servers and other tricks to get around the filters the government has set up, and he notes that of course internet access is not that widespread - and television is "not unlockable."
So, the authorities in Uzbekistan have been doing their best these past few days to prevent news from the outside world from reaching citizens - their goal is something similar to the media environment in the Soviet Union. As I've seen noted somewhere on the internet (I can't for the life of me find it now, though - too many browser windows open and too much navigating around combined with too little sleep), and really it's common sense, it's socially destabilizing to and in the long term bad for any government to prevent people from getting news from trusted and credible public sources (I'm thinking that many if not most Uzbeks realize that UzA does not fall into that category, though given the level of gullibility I've observed among Russians with respect to news reports here, maybe I shouldn't be so sure). This is because they will still get their news from trusted and credible sources, but they'll be private ones with no public feedback mechanism - their neighbors, their relatives, etc. This (1) eradicates people's trust in the government, (2) provides the potential for damaging/destabilizing rumors to spread, and (3) means there is no public forum for people to express views about news they've heard, since all "trusted" news was heard in private.
The excellent AP report about the protesters in Andijan standing up and speaking out - some of them for the first time in years or ever - about the poverty and unemployment which they face daily is a perfect example of pent-up despair boiling over - and the Uzbek authorities spoke volumes with their response about their concern for the well-being of their citizens. The Soviet experience may seem less relevant here - after all, the USSR was pulled apart and its totalitarian government brought down from within by internal elites (that's a gross oversimplification, of course) who eventually recognized it was not a sustainable model.
But in fact it is relevant, if you consider that it was likely elites who sparked the clash in Andijan with their jailbreak (this comment and others at Registan talk about how financial interests are involved here). Remember, where there's political repression and non-democratic rule, there is often corruption and people jockeying non-transparently for the opportunity to stick their mouth in one government trough or another (be it a position with the Customs service somewhere in the Ferghana Valley or a license to drill for oil in, say, Russia). And rival elites can and will use social discontent (just as those elites who have the government on their side will use law enforcement, as apparently happened with the arrests of the now-infamous 23 businessmen) as their instrument in economic disputes. OK, perhaps the comparison to the Soviet Union unravels at this point. I'm a bit tired, I must confess, and complex logical thinking is becoming a challenge. Does anyone want to pick up this train of thought? Or is it hopelessly derailed? Time for one more brief roundup of the Russian-language wires, and then I'm off for the night (don't be alarmed by the time-stamp, I'm actually in London for a few days but still posting on Moscow time).
[Update: on the Soviet thread in all of this, see also the first comment (it has no link of its own) on this Guardian blog roundup]
Back in 1989, after a rise through the Communist Party ranks, Karimov became First Secretary of the Uzbekistan Communist Party Central Committee (head of the republic, in other words), then he became the first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1990. He shepherded the country to independence in August of 1991 and was, uh, "elected" President of newly independent Uzbekistan in December of that year. Time was, lots of heads of post-Soviet states were former republic first party secretaries, but those times have passed in much of the post-Soviet space. Not in Uzbekistan, though.
This article goes in-depth about the ways in which Karimov "simply took all the trappings of Soviet Communism-one-party rule, state control of the press, secret surveillance of the populace, five-year plans, government monopolization of the means of production-and converted them, lock, stock and political prison, into a well-oiled banana republic."
Working Definition (a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan) also talks about the Soviet legacy, but with an interesting twist - he describes how much BETTER it was for the average Uzbek to live under Soviet power than under Karimov's impoverished simulation of Soviet rule.
But the point of this post (yes, now I get to it) is really quite a basic one, and this whole mini-research project was inspired by just one brief comment from Veronica at Neeka's Backlog:
People outside the country know more than those who are stuck inside. Fucking incredible. And so similar to 19 years ago - the Chernobyl situation.Veronica grew up in what was still the Soviet Union (I am pretty sure of that, and I hope she'll correct me if I'm wrong). I spent three years of my childhood in the USSR (my father was on a diplomatic assignment) and was with my family in Leningrad when Chernobyl happened, so the information-deprived environment is familiar to me as well.
How is this all relevant to what's happening in Uzbekistan today? Let me explain. I have been in touch with a blogger in Tashkent who tells me (this is not going to be news to Nathan and the frequent commenters at Registan, and I know it's been publicized in lots of media outlets, but it makes it more real for me to hear it from someone who's actually there) that certain news resources have been blocked or censored selectively for years. And in recent days, the censorship of outside media has extended beyond just Western outlets - even Russian news broadcasts and websites have been censored. He estimates only 15-20% of internet users interested in foreign news reports are able to use proxy servers and other tricks to get around the filters the government has set up, and he notes that of course internet access is not that widespread - and television is "not unlockable."
So, the authorities in Uzbekistan have been doing their best these past few days to prevent news from the outside world from reaching citizens - their goal is something similar to the media environment in the Soviet Union. As I've seen noted somewhere on the internet (I can't for the life of me find it now, though - too many browser windows open and too much navigating around combined with too little sleep), and really it's common sense, it's socially destabilizing to and in the long term bad for any government to prevent people from getting news from trusted and credible public sources (I'm thinking that many if not most Uzbeks realize that UzA does not fall into that category, though given the level of gullibility I've observed among Russians with respect to news reports here, maybe I shouldn't be so sure). This is because they will still get their news from trusted and credible sources, but they'll be private ones with no public feedback mechanism - their neighbors, their relatives, etc. This (1) eradicates people's trust in the government, (2) provides the potential for damaging/destabilizing rumors to spread, and (3) means there is no public forum for people to express views about news they've heard, since all "trusted" news was heard in private.
The excellent AP report about the protesters in Andijan standing up and speaking out - some of them for the first time in years or ever - about the poverty and unemployment which they face daily is a perfect example of pent-up despair boiling over - and the Uzbek authorities spoke volumes with their response about their concern for the well-being of their citizens. The Soviet experience may seem less relevant here - after all, the USSR was pulled apart and its totalitarian government brought down from within by internal elites (that's a gross oversimplification, of course) who eventually recognized it was not a sustainable model.
But in fact it is relevant, if you consider that it was likely elites who sparked the clash in Andijan with their jailbreak (this comment and others at Registan talk about how financial interests are involved here). Remember, where there's political repression and non-democratic rule, there is often corruption and people jockeying non-transparently for the opportunity to stick their mouth in one government trough or another (be it a position with the Customs service somewhere in the Ferghana Valley or a license to drill for oil in, say, Russia). And rival elites can and will use social discontent (just as those elites who have the government on their side will use law enforcement, as apparently happened with the arrests of the now-infamous 23 businessmen) as their instrument in economic disputes. OK, perhaps the comparison to the Soviet Union unravels at this point. I'm a bit tired, I must confess, and complex logical thinking is becoming a challenge. Does anyone want to pick up this train of thought? Or is it hopelessly derailed? Time for one more brief roundup of the Russian-language wires, and then I'm off for the night (don't be alarmed by the time-stamp, I'm actually in London for a few days but still posting on Moscow time).
[Update: on the Soviet thread in all of this, see also the first comment (it has no link of its own) on this Guardian blog roundup]
Comment - response
I got a brief comment on this post today:
rosignol said...Maybe I should hide my uninformed and/or unoriginal response in the comments section, but I think it's worth airing. I should preface my comments by saying that I really am no expert on the situation in Central Asia (those of you who are can probably already tell), so I'm happy to be set straight by people who are objective and know better.
The Hizb ut-Tahrir website is at http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org/
They're of the 'trying to establish an islamic/sharia state' ilk.
Anyway, thanks for posting the link, but I must say, the comments from a witness to fighting apparently involving Hizb ut Tahrir in Dee's post (which she has since deleted from her site) and Karimov's statement blaming them notwithstanding, that I am not 100% convinced of the Hizb ut Tahrir's involvement in this. Consider that Dee's source likely heard Karimov's remarks and/or earlier government statements that all violent opposition to the government is conducted by Hizb ut Tahrir, and that this might have just been the first (or only) organization he thought of when he saw or heard about armed resistance to the government. Also - and much, much more importantly - I am not convinced that this organization's goals, or their involvement or non-involvement in organizing the uprising, is relevant to a discussion of why so many thousands of protesters turned out (surely they were not all fundamentalists with dreams of restoring the caliphate, starting with Andijan) and why the Uzbek authorities ultimately chose to deal with the situation as they apparently did, by firing without warning on those protesters.
The problem with the "Islamic fundamentalists caused this" idea that the Uzbek authorities and some others are trying to put out there is that it's just too easy for Karimov to chalk up this uprising to Islamic radicals rather than acknowledging the real causes - lawlessness on the part of law enforcement, desperate poverty, and economic/social repression. These seem to be acknowledged as the causes of the Andijan protest (if not the jailbreak that set the situation off) by a consensus of objective observers. It will be easier for Karimov to get away with this if the US and Russian governments don't call him out on it, and they have shown reluctance (in Russia's case, unwillingness would probably be more like it) to do so.
To explain why I think that the Uzbek authorities were firmly in the wrong in their actions, I would separate this into two issues:
1) Who organized the jailbreak and initial hostage-taking (by the "rebels" or "militants") in Andijan, and what might have been a reasonable government response; and
2) The peaceful (by all accounts I've seen they were peaceful except for some stone-throwing) protesters, who (by all credible accounts) were fired on without warning by Uzbek troops, and why the government felt that was a reasonable response to the situation.
Even if - and it's a big if, it seems to me - "Islamic fundamentalist terrorists" (as distinguished from Muslims who may have been opposed to the government for legitimate reasons, and may have felt that violence was justified because their chances of getting a fair shake through the legal system were nil) were behind (1), how does that justify (2)?
Karimov can fire the local police officials, but at the end of the day a general (speaking metaphorically) has to be held responsibile for the actions of his troops, especially since he was present and (we should therefore assume) directly involved in devising the government's response on Friday the 13th. And that response looks to have been excessive, whether or not Hizb ut Tahrir was involved.
Monday, May 16, 2005
NYT interviews Ferghana.Ru editor
Excerpt from today's story on Andijan in the New York Times (registration required):
Daniil Kislov, the editor in Moscow of a Web site, Ferghana.ru, said the site's correspondent in Andijon saw 50 bodies in the city's morgue on Saturday, as well as 15 bodies in the city's central square on Saturday evening. On Sunday, the correspondent, Aleksei Volosevich, saw three more bodies, Mr. Kislov said.The NYT is wisely being conservative with the death toll reports (from the same story linked to above), and explains why:
Mr. Volosevich was not able to visit School No. 15, where The Associated Press had reported that 500 bodies awaited identification, citing an unidentified doctor. Mr. Kislov said the number of dead was less important than how they died.
"I do not think there is any difference between 50 and 500," Mr. Kislov said. "It is equally too many. The government's response was disproportionately tough." The resistance to the government has been variously described as peaceful demonstrators seeking reform, desperate criminals and Islamic militants, and could contain elements of all three.
Reports of the number of deaths since the violence began varied widely, from dozens to hundreds of civilians. The Associated Press reported that residents of the village of Tefektosh had said the latest clashes left several soldiers dead. Uzbekistan's president, Islam A. Karimov, said Saturday that 10 government soldiers and "many more rebels" had been killed.
None of the reports could be verified, and it was difficult to determine who was fighting, and with what ambitions, although in addition to elements of a general uprising against a repressive government, armed and newly freed inmates were in the area of strife. Telephone service has been intermittent, and the Uzbek government has forced many journalists to leave.
Reports on the number of dead, arrested, back in jail in Andijan, Uzbekistan
I just translated several items (interspersed with my comments):
From Echo of Moscow radio:
13:33 16.05.2005 There are 75 bodies in the Andijan morgueThe "buried on the streets without being identified" claim sounds like something that could be used later by people who want to inflate the death toll.
Interfax, citing its sources, reports that these are the bodies of people who died with weapons in their hands. Earlier the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs officially announced that 70 people perished during the unrest in Andijan. Meanwhile, information agencies have cited very different figures. According to them, during the unrest at least 500 people died. Many of them were buried on the streets of the city without being identified.
From Interfax:
In the Andijan morgue there are bodies of 75 people who put up armed resistance during the unrest in the city, according to a telephone report to Interfax by a medical worker in the city.Claiming that "all of these people" were putting up a fight is ridiculous because it is impossible to verify, and this constitutes a claim that will surely be used by people who want to deflate the death toll or demonstrate that the authorities shot only those people who were putting up resistance. So expect continued distortion on both sides of this discussion, which will be played out in further contradictory reports of the number of casualties.
"All of these people were putting up armed resistance to law enforcement officers and were killed in shoot-outs," said the agency's source.
"Currently they are being identified. Among them may be criminals who escaped from the prison," said the source. [the rest of the article is accessible to paid Interfax subscribers only, but I am sure Western wires will pick this up.]
70 organizers of the unrest in Andijan have been arrested - MVD headThe comment about local residents cooperating is probably geared to make other local residents who are as yet undecided on how they feel about what's happened decide they should also be on the side of the authorities.
Tashkent. 16 May. Interfax - Uzbek authorities have arrested no fewer than 70 organizers of the unrest in Andijan, reported the country's Minister of Internal Affairs, Zakir Almatov, at a meeting with representatives of the city's community last Sunday.
He also announced that some of the inmates of the pre-trial detention facility had voluntarily returned to jail.
Z. Almatov called on Andijanians to unify their efforts at bringing order to the city. He noted with satisfaction that city residents are assisting the authorities. "People are turning in weapons abandoned by the criminals and providing essential information to law enforcement agencies," he said.
RIA Novosti is more exact about the number of people back in jail:
Tashkent, 16 May - RIA Novosti. 266 of the inmates who had been liberated by rebels on the evening of Friday, May 13, have returned voluntarily to the Andijan pretrial detention facility, the Uzbek Ministry of Internal Affairs told RIA Novosti.All I can say about this is, consider the source. Over half of the escapees returned "voluntarily"? I don't think that would happen in any jailbreak, anywhere in the world.
As a result of the unrest, extremists freed roughly 500 out of 600 inmates from the jail. Roughly 100 inmates did not leave the jail. [...]
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