Terrible, but i fear predictable, will these protestors actually achieve anything?
Results 1 to 14 of 14
Troops, Protesters Killed in Uzbek Clashes
By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA
ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan (AP) - Thousands of terrified Uzbeks fled for the border Saturday but hundreds angrily returned to the square where police fired on demonstrators to put down an uprising against country's authoritarian U.S.-allied leader. A human rights monitor said about 200 people were killed.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov said 10 government troops and ``many more'' protesters were killed but refused to be more specific. He spoke at a news conference in the capital Tashkent a day after the unprecedented clashes in his tightly controlled country, which he has led since before the 1991 Soviet collapse.
In the eastern city of Andijan, hundreds of protesters gathered at the square, displaying the bodies of six people killed in Friday's bloodshed and tearfully denouncing the government.
``Our women and children are dying,'' said Daniyar Akbarov, 24, who claimed to have seen at least 300 people killed in the violence.
Big military trucks loaded with soldiers cruised the streets and troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded the heavily fortified police headquarters.
Earlier, soldiers loaded scores of bodies of those killed onto four trucks and a bus after blocking friends and relatives from collecting them, witnesses said.
Lutfulo Shamsutdinov, the head of the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan, said he saw about 200 victims being loaded onto trucks near the square in Andijan, the fourth-largest city with a population of 350,000.
Another witness who declined to be named said ``many, many dead bodies'' were stacked up by a school near the square. The city's hospital was cordoned off and officials could not be reached for casualty figures.
An AP reporter said she saw at least 30 bodies. All had been shot, and at least one had his skull smashed. She said there were large pools of blood and hundreds of spent cartridges on the streets.
A group of foreign journalists was detained early Saturday and told to leave the city immediately.
Some 4,000 Uzbeks fled to the border with neighboring Kyrgyzstan, seeking asylum. Kyrgyz border guards were awaiting a government decision on whether to allow them in, said Gulmira Borubayeva, a spokeswoman for Kyrgyzstan's border guard service.
A move to shelter the refugees could badly strain Kyrgyzstan's relations with Karimov's government.
Friday's uprising began when armed men freed 2,000 inmates from a prison, including suspects on trial for alleged Islamic extremism.
Later, thousands of people swarmed into the streets of Andijan, seizing control of the administration building and taking city officials hostage, including the prosecutor and the police chief. Nine people were killed in those clashes and 34 wounded, the government said. Cars and nearby theaters were set ablaze.
In the afternoon, about 4,000 protesters massed in front of the building on the central square and set up a podium under a monument to an Uzbek prince, where speakers complained of unemployment and living in poverty.
But shortly before dusk, the soldiers moved in and opened fire, sending the terrified demonstrators fleeing. One man wailed, ``Oh, my son! He's dead!''
Karimov and other officials flew to Andijan during the day but returned to the capital of Tashkent on Friday night. On Saturday, the president said authorities tried to negotiate an end to the protests before firing on the crowd.
But a protest leader, Kabuljon Parpiyev, said Interior Minister Zakir Almatov called him Friday morning and heard the protesters' demands. He initially agreed to negotiations but later said the offer of talks was off, Parpiyev 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 Almatov as saying.
The prison raid and the soldiers' fusillades were in sharp contrast to the largely peaceful uprisings that sparked regime changes in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the past 18 months. Karimov is regarded as one of the harshest leaders in the former Soviet Union and apparently favors quick and decisive action against any threats to his government.
Uzbekistan is a minor oil exporter and hosts a U.S. air base to support military operations in neighboring Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. But it also is frequently denounced by human rights groups for torture and repression of opposition.
The White House urged restraint by both the government and the demonstrators.
``The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government. But that should come through peaceful means, not through violence,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The focus of the jailbreak was 23 men on trial on charges of being members of a group allegedly allied with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create a worldwide Islamic state and has been forced underground throughout most of Central Asia and Russia.
Supporters of the 23 men say they were victims of religious repression by Karimov's secular government.
The 23 are members of Akramia - a group named for their founder, Akram Yuldashev, an Islamic dissident sentenced in 1999 to 17 years in prison for allegedly urging the overthrow of Karimov. He has proclaimed his innocence.
Akramis are considered the backbone of Andijan's small business community, running a medical clinic and pharmacy, as well as working as furniture craftsmen, and providing employment to thousands in the impoverished Fergana Valley, where Islamist sentiment runs high.
There are concerns that the valley could become a flashpoint for destabilizing wide swaths of ex-Soviet Central Asia.
Their trial has inspired one of the largest public shows of anger at the government. In recent weeks, Uzbeks have shown increasing willingness to challenge the leadership in protests, apparently bolstered by the March uprising in Kyrgyzstan that drove out President Askar Akayev and the similar ones in Ukraine and Georgia.
One of the 23 defendants, Abduvosid Egomov, sought refuge with protesters in the adminstrative building on Friday.
``We are not going to overthrow the government. We demand economic freedom,'' Egomov told The Associated Press. ``We are ready to die instead of living as we are living now. The Uzbek people have been reduced to living like dirt.''
05/14/05 06:58
Terrible, but i fear predictable, will these protestors actually achieve anything?
In what relations do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
-Karl Marx
It is only by strengthening ourselves ideologically, inculcating in ourselves the values and ideals of the struggle and building up the ranks of the revolutionary party that we will make it.
- Ta Power
And what's the overall ideological base of the resistance? Towards the end of the article it mentioned those Islamic radicals and groups they're supposedly associated with. But how much influence do the Islamic groups have on the demonstrations?
[FONT=Georgia]Abajo y a la izquierda esta el coraz[/FONT][FONT=Georgia]ón.[/FONT]
No, not when they're dead!!
It is the right of citizens to be able to assemble & vocally denounce leaders and governments they don't agree with without fear of being murdered. You would think!
yeh, what do you expect from such a reactionary government, on the verge of collapse form the sounds of it.
In what relations do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
-Karl Marx
It is only by strengthening ourselves ideologically, inculcating in ourselves the values and ideals of the struggle and building up the ranks of the revolutionary party that we will make it.
- Ta Power
Are you sympathetic to islamists?
If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn't need a union
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz
eh im sympathetic to them if there fighting for democracy as the ones in iran were in their revolution.
In what relations do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
-Karl Marx
It is only by strengthening ourselves ideologically, inculcating in ourselves the values and ideals of the struggle and building up the ranks of the revolutionary party that we will make it.
- Ta Power
Hard to say for sure from available information. But Islamist groups (of various stripes, from nonviolent to al-Qaeda-style) generally seem to be the main opposition in Uzbekistan, so probably a lot.
Anybody who believes Islam Karimov's lame excuses is an idiot.
Karimov has been using the "Islamist" excuse for years, in order to clamp down on any opposition groups.
It's like the WMD lie.
Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time, that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master -- Marwan Barghouti
I wouldn't expect anything else from a government whoss president took his favourite political enemies and boiled them alive for his personal gratification.
"all the people in my books i read are men who fuck each other do drugs and kill people fuck the dead body and eat it. but dissmembering a body to make another is just as cool. "- Captain anarchy
I ate capt. Anarchy, as he stole my thunder! No longer will you hear some bizarre rambling coming from the self assigned Captain of utter non-sense
- T_SP......because he's worth it.
Referring to the Commie Club!...
This very real limitation of the productive forces, both static and dynamic, demands at any given time the most suitable environment for it's advancement. - Gent, head of the RA...aka the People's Front of Judea
ONTO STREET - The immortal HUQIAO
where's all that axis of evil rhetoric now then mr Bush?
"The God of the old testament is arguably the most unpleasent character in all fiction; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogyinistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." ~ Richard Dawkins, "The God Delusion"
His dog ate it, apparently.
"all the people in my books i read are men who fuck each other do drugs and kill people fuck the dead body and eat it. but dissmembering a body to make another is just as cool. "- Captain anarchy
I ate capt. Anarchy, as he stole my thunder! No longer will you hear some bizarre rambling coming from the self assigned Captain of utter non-sense
- T_SP......because he's worth it.
Referring to the Commie Club!...
This very real limitation of the productive forces, both static and dynamic, demands at any given time the most suitable environment for it's advancement. - Gent, head of the RA...aka the People's Front of Judea
ONTO STREET - The immortal HUQIAO
And, yes, I am referring to Condoleeza Rice.
"all the people in my books i read are men who fuck each other do drugs and kill people fuck the dead body and eat it. but dissmembering a body to make another is just as cool. "- Captain anarchy
I ate capt. Anarchy, as he stole my thunder! No longer will you hear some bizarre rambling coming from the self assigned Captain of utter non-sense
- T_SP......because he's worth it.
Referring to the Commie Club!...
This very real limitation of the productive forces, both static and dynamic, demands at any given time the most suitable environment for it's advancement. - Gent, head of the RA...aka the People's Front of Judea
ONTO STREET - The immortal HUQIAO
Apart from the islamic terrorists apparently at work, it sounds like hundreds of women and children were killed as well ... those were not terrorists .. but still Bush doesn't condemn that awful government!
