Tension simmered in eastern Uzbekistan yesterday amid heightened security and fears of more violence, days after a military crackdown that witnesses say killed hundreds of people in the autocratic ex-Soviet state.
Uzbek authorities were likely to carry out mass arrests of protesters who staged the uprising bloodily suppressed by troops at the weekend, a leading human-rights campaigner said yesterday.
The rebellion in Andizhan on Friday, sparked by the trial of 23 Muslim businessmen and blamed by President Islam Karimov on Islamic extremists, was put down by security forces in the bloodiest chapter in the country's post-Soviet history.
"One can now only expect massive arrests and the elimination of those opposing the regime," human-rights campaigner Saidzhakhon Zainabitdinov, of the Uzbek rights group Appeal, said in Andizhan.
He has estimated troops killed up to 500 people.
Gunshots were reported overnight in Kara-Suu, a town on the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border. Kyrgyz authorities reported having detained up to 150 refugees trying to cross into Kyrgyzstan, while the eastern city of Andizhan, the epicenter of the unrest, remained under heavy security.
"There are reports coming to me according to which there were gunshots in Kara-Suu during the night," a foreign diplomat said by phone.
"The situation there is quite tense," the diplomat said.
After soldiers trying to disperse the anti-government rally in Andizhan fired into the crowd, reportedly killing several hundred people, scores of Uzbeks have sought to cross into Kyrgyzstan.
A refugee camp set up across the border was reported to be holding some 900 people late on Sunday.
To stem the flow, Kyrgyz authorities have increased border patrols along the Uzbek border.
A border-guard spokeswoman said temporary checkpoints had been set up in the Kara-Suu region "with the aim of preventing destructive elements from entering the country."
Uzbek authorities admitted that the death toll from Friday's clashes in Andizhan was higher than the previously reported figure of 30.
Gulbahor Turdiyeva, chief of the local Animokur non-governmental organization, said she had seen 500 bodies stored at a school in Andizhan and another 100 in a nearby construction college.
In Andizhan, terrified and dejected residents attempted to resume their lives amid such reports and heightened security, as police and troops continued to patrol the city's streets.
Groups of people with missing relatives continued to queue in front of the city's morgue, looking for their missing loved ones.
Amid a national media clampdown, federal authorities have been preventing reporters from entering the city and yesterday detained three photographers for several hours before releasing the men.
Uzbekistan's authoritarian President Islam Karimov has blamed Islamic groups for fomenting the unrest and said soldiers fired only after being shot at.
Although human-rights groups have accused Uzbekistan's autocratic government of systematic use of torture in its police stations and prisons, Western governments' criticism has been muted because Tashkent is considered an ally in Washington's "war on terror," hosting a US military base on its territory.
In a departure, the UK slammed the violence as "a clear abuse of human rights," the strongest international rebuke of the clashes yet and London's harshest criticism of Uzbekistan in years.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS