INTERNATIONAL RELIEF agencies are warning that a Central Asian “tinderbox” could be ignited by ethnic riots in Kyrgyzstan, which they say have killed far more people than official figures suggest.
The warnings came as interim Kyrgyz leader Roza Otunbayeva vowed not to postpone a planned June 27th referendum on a new constitution, and urged Britain to extradite the “playboy prince” that she believes funded the gangs that have wrought havoc in ethnic Uzbek areas of southern Kyrgyzstan.
Officials say at least 179 people have been killed and nearly 1,900 injured since Kyrgyz mobs started attacking Uzbeks in and around the cities of Osh and Jalalabad last Thursday.
About 100,000 people are believed to have fled into neighbouring Uzbekistan to escape the violence, which Ms Otunbayeva blames on relatives and allies of ex-president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was ousted in a violent uprising in April, and whose stronghold was southern Kyrgyzstan.
The bloodshed has raised fears of a wider conflict in and around Kyrgyzstan, which hosts US and Russian military bases and borders China. Poverty, corruption, the proximity of Afghanistan and the presence of Islamic militants and well-armed drug runners all add to the volatile cocktail.
“According to the team on the ground, several hundred people have been killed in the fighting, although it’s still too early to say precisely how many as a number of bodies have already been buried and may not have been identified or counted, while others remain uncollected,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Reacting to official statements that about 170 people had been killed, ICRC spokesman Christian Cardon said: “We saw that there were more than that when we visited the morgue at Osh, amongst others.” Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said “indiscriminate killings, including of children, and rapes have been taking place on the basis of ethnicity”. Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, said the violence was “to some degree orchestrated, targeted and well planned” and appeared to have started with five co-ordinated attacks by masked gunmen.
“We believe this is an extremely dangerous situation given the ethnic patchwork in this part of Kyrgyzstan,” Mr Colville added. “It has been known for many years that this region is a potential ethnic tinderbox, for that reason it’s essential that the authorities act firmly to halt the fighting.” Government officials claimed security forces had arrested men from Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and neighbouring Tajikistan who had admitted that they had been hired by supporters of Mr Bakiyev to drive around shooting people in order to spark wider clashes.
Ms Otunbayeva says Mr Bakiyev’s allies are determined to force the cancellation of this month’s referendum and elections planned for October, and to return him to power.
She has also demanded the extradition of Mr Bakiyev’s son, Maxim, from Britain, who she accuses of funding the mobs.
