UZBEKISTAN: Refugees who fled a crackdown by Uzbek troops said yesterday they dared not return home, as the United Nations turned up the volume on its demands for an inquiry into deaths believed to have run into hundreds.
Journalists who travelled to a village near the epicentre of last week's violence, the town of Andijan, saw fresh graves in which, local residents said, victims of the clashes between protesters and troops were buried.
President Islam Karimov has denied ordering troops to fire on civilians in Andijan, but rejected a UN call for an international inquiry. His officials have blamed the violence on armed Islamic extremists.
"We feared they would finish us off in Andijan so we decided to flee to Kyrgyzstan," said Khasan Shakirov (27), who said his two brothers had disappeared. "I will not return." He was among more than 500 people crammed into a small refugee camp inside Kyrgyz territory but just 150 metres from the Uzbek border. In interviews, they said they were ordinary people, not terrorists.
"I was running in the crowd to survive. Those who left the crowd were finished off by snipers," said market trader Nabidzhan Yunusov (41), describing a dramatic border crossing during which he was wounded in the hip.
Mr Karimov has said 169 people were killed when soldiers seized control of Andijan after what he called a "bandit" uprising. Officials say there were only seven or eight civilian deaths, describing the rest as police and rebels. Witnesses said more than 500 people were killed by troops putting down a popular protest against the trial of 23 local businessmen and an outburst of anger over Mr Karimov's tough rule.
About 20 fresh graves near the village of Bogu Shamol outside Andijan contained, locals said, the corpses of unidentified civilians secretly buried by soldiers after the Andijan crackdown.
"This is the place they buried the unidentified bodies of people killed last Friday," said a resident. "There are similar burials at the other end of this cemetery and in neighbouring places."
Despite Mr Karimov's refusal, the UN special investigator on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, has pushed to be allowed into Uzbekistan, while the International Committee of the Red Cross has sought access to those who have been wounded or arrested.
"Quite apart from the need to distinguish political opponents from terrorists, the point is that governments are clearly obligated to address any such situations within a framework clearly governed by human rights law," Mr Alston said.
In the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, two dozen opposition activists picketed the offices of democracy watchdog the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, urging it to take a tougher line with the Karimov regime.
The Uzbek foreign ministry said it had told the Kyrgyz authorities it was ready to take back women, the old and children without conditions. Adult males returning home to Uzbekistan would, though, be subject to checks, the ministry said.
Kyrgyz officials complain they are short of funds to keep up the Barrash camp - a collection of tents housing up to 30 people each. Its residents were getting only one hot meal a day.
But for many of them - even those who do not come from Andijan itself - the tent village seems to be a safer place than home.
European Union foreign ministers will call on Monday for an urgent international inquiry into the killings in Andijan. The EU is also expected to condemn "excessive use of force" in the country.
Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer yesterday criticised Uzbekistan's refusal to allow an independent inquiry and said it could harm the country's fledgling partnership with the military alliance.