- MOSCOW - (KRT) - As authorities
struggled to restore calm in eastern Uzbekistan on Saturday after a bloody
uprising a day earlier, President Islam Karimov defended the decision by
his troops to quell the violence by firing into a large crowd, killing
up to 300 people by some estimates.
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- The uprising's toll became grimly clear at dawn Saturday,
as soldiers were seen by witnesses pulling up four trucks and a bus to
load the bodies of men, women and children shot to death by Uzbek troops
in the eastern city of Andijan.
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- Saidjahon Zainabitdinov, an Andijan human-rights activist
who watched soldiers, estimated that at least 300 bodies were loaded on
the trucks and the bus. Another human-rights activist, Lutfulo Shamsutdinov,
told The Associated Press that he counted 200 bodies being loaded.
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- Uzbek authorities have not released a death toll. At
a news conference in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, Karimov said only that
10 Uzbek soldiers died and "many more" demonstrators were killed.
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- On Saturday, in the village of Kara-Suu on the Uzbek-Kyrgyzstan
border, new clashes erupted Saturday as rioters set on fire Uzbek police
buildings and tax offices and took a local governor hostage. Thousands
of other Uzbeks fled the violence in Andijan and headed for the border,
hoping to seek refuge in Kyrgyzstan.
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- The uprising in Andijan began early Friday morning when
demonstrators overran a police station, gathered up firearms, stormed a
prison and freed 23 Uzbek businessmen facing charges of membership in an
Islamic extremist group. Scores of other prisoners also were freed.
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- The demonstrators stormed a government building and took
several hostages. Later, government troops retook the building, and the
demonstrators escaped with their wives and children and the hostages, according
to witnesses and government officials.
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- Karimov said his troops were justified in firing at the
fleeing protesters because they were "criminals" who tried to
break through a line of Uzbek police and soldiers. He also denied allegations
that Uzbek soldiers fired at women and children.
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- "In Uzbekistan, no one fights against women, children
or the elderly," Karimov said.
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- Basing his account on conversations with several witnesses,
Zainabitdinov said the demonstrators and their hostages were fleeing down
a roadway when soldiers positioned on both sides of the road opened fire.
The demonstrators in the fleeing group were armed, but scores of women
and children in the group were not, he said.
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- "Those people did not expect that the troops would
open fire," Zainabitdinov said. "It was a situation that was
next to impossible to escape. The troops ambushed from both sides of the
road."
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- Zainabitdinov, who lives near where the soldiers opened
fire on the crowd, said he surveyed the scene afterward. "There were
pools of blood everywhere," he said. "There were bodies all over
the place, spent cartridges, dozens of shoes and umbrellas scattered all
over the street."
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- Though Uzbek security forces regained control of Andijan
on Saturday, thousands of protesters massed in the city square to denounce
the government's violent crackdown on demonstrators Friday.
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- "They wanted someone to be held responsible for
the bloodshed," said Mirafror Akhrorov, a Tajik journalist with Radio
Liberty who was in Andijan on Saturday morning. "Some of them were
saying, `Look what the authorities have done to us! Somebody has to pay!'"
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- The Uzbek government appeared to be trying to restrict
media coverage of the ongoing violence. Russian television journalists
in Andijan reported that Uzbek authorities arrested them and seized their
passports. Roads in and out of the city were blockaded.
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- In an indication of how seriously regional leaders regard
the instability in Uzbekistan, Karimov spoke with Russian President Vladimir
Putin on the phone Saturday.
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- "Both sides expressed concern about the danger of
the destabilization of the situation in the Central Asian region,"
the Kremlin news service said in a statement.
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- Uzbekistan is host to a U.S. air base in the Karshi-Khanabad
region, 90 miles from the Afghan border, to support military operations
in Afghanistan. The United States has called repeatedly over the years
for Karimov's government to take steps toward greater openness and democracy.
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- Nonetheless, in his 15-year rule over Uzbekistan, Karimov
has built a reputation as an iron-fisted leader at the helm of a regime
routinely criticized by human-rights groups for torturing dissident Muslims
and jailing political opponents. Central Asia analysts believe Karimov's
brutally repressive policies have transformed Uzbekistan into a seedbed
for the kind of extremist violence that the Uzbek leader's hard-line approach
was meant to prevent.
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- Karimov blamed Friday's violence on an offshoot of an
Islamic extremist group called Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is outlawed in Uzbekistan.
The group advocates the establishment of an Islamic caliphate across Central
Asia. The 23 men freed by demonstrators Friday were on trial on charges
of belonging to a branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir known as Akramiya.
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- Karimov also cited the uprising that led to the overthrow
of Askar Akayev's government in Kyrgyzstan in March in explaining his regime's
harsh reply to the violence in Andijan.
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- Blaming the Kyrgyz uprising on "the weakness of
authorities there," Karimov said protesters in Andijan expected his
government to react similarly.
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- "They had hoped that neither the local authorities
nor the state authorities of Uzbekistan would demonstrate firmness, as
it happened in Kyrgyzstan," Karimov said. "They wanted a repeat
of the events in Kyrgyzstan and they wanted to move what happened in Andijan
to Tashkent."
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- © 2005, Chicago Tribune.
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- http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11648884.htm
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