Kyrgyz Conflict Shifts to Uzbek Airwaves

A song by an Uzbek pop diva about recent ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan has created a fresh furor as Uzbeks and Kyrgyz continue to trade recriminations about who was responsible for the bloodletting that left hundreds if not thousands dead.

Pop star Yulduz Usmanova – whose music is wildly popular across Central Asia and in Russia and Turkey – has released a song in Uzbek about the violence in Osh, in which both ethnic Uzbek and ethnic Kyrgyz died but the Uzbek community appears to have suffered the most.

In her song "To the Kyrgyz," Usmanova asks emotionally: “What was this bloodshed for? Don’t you have a conscience? Ah, my Kyrgyz, how cheaply you’ve sold yourselves and destroyed your wellbeing.”

She also hinted at reports that the violence was instigated by provocateurs who paid locals to take part in attacks on Uzbek neighborhoods: 

“Don’t trust every hand that gives you bread; don’t rejoice in victory for nothing. You’ve inflicted pain on the souls of my Uzbek people; don’t regret it tomorrow.”

“If you kill and strangle each ethnic group, who will stay in the land of the Kyrgyz?” Usmanova asks in the song, to accompanying images of people fleeing, people in burnt-out houses, APCs driving through city streets and houses belonging to ethnic Uzbeks painted with SOS signs in a desperate plea for help.

Unsurprisingly, the song has drawn criticism from cultural figures in Kyrgyzstan, who accuse Usmanova of stoking tension. Kyrgyz composer Gulshair Sadybakasova said singers had a responsibility “to promote peace and accord in society.” 

“Instead, she [Usmanova] openly urges ethnic Uzbeks to be hostile to ethnic Kyrgyz, while insulting the dignity of the Kyrgyz people,” Sadybakasova said in remarks quoted by the AKIpress news agency.

A number of cultural figures have urged the Kyrgyz authorities to take action over Usmanova’s song. Sadybakasova and television host Shayirbek Arapov have penned poems in response. “Better a slave who has a motherland than a singer who has no motherland,” Sadybakasova wrote.

Even Kyrgyz state television aired a report on July 5 (via BBC Monitoring):

In Uzbekistan, where freedom of expression is tightly restricted, singers often use the arts to address political themes. Usmanova is no exception. She wrote the song "I Won’t Give You to Anyone, Uzbekistan" after a series of terrorist bombings in Tashkent in February 1999. The singer previously had strained relations with Uzbek authorities because of her political views, and this song was believed to have gone some way towards mending them.

Yet Usmanova is currently living in Turkey, where she says she moved in protest against the government’s efforts to exert control over artists’ creative independence.