Maybe the protesters had lost faith in Kyrgyzstan’s justice system and figured they had a better chance of being heard if they took their anger into the street: On March 3, a group of 40 tried to storm the Bishkek office of noted human rights activist Toktaiym Umetalieva. Her offense? Invoking the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.
The crowd, held back by police, was reportedly made up of relatives of four police officers shot dead in early January. Umetalieva had sparked her detractors’ anger by doubting the official account of the standoff, which identified the suspects, arrested soon after the shootout, as Islamic radicals. She has pointed out that, after two months, no one has produced proof and said, as other independent analysts have, that Kyrgyzstan’s security forces are exaggerating the threat of radical Islam.
“By defending killers, Toktaiym Umetalieva becomes a killer herself!" read a banner held by one of the protesters, according to 24.kg. Someone in the crowd demanded she be prosecuted, “otherwise we will pull her out and perform our own justice!”
Some of those picketing Umetalieva’s office asserted that, because of her "unpatriotic" behavior, she must be linked to radical Islamists. Do these bereaved relatives feel they have no other recourse than to come into the street and try to tear Umetalieva limb from limb?
Mob justice crops up when government doesn’t function, suggests a March 4 commentary in the Kyrgyz-language newspaper Zhany Agym (translated into Russian by Gezitter.org):
"Sometimes it feels like we have forgotten about patience and reason, about the need to solve problems by legal means. … We have become used to handling everything through shouting and fighting. We should have learned a lesson from the events in Osh and Jalal-Abad."
The lament has become too apt. The author was referring to an episode in Nookat earlier this week when an angry mob burned down the house of someone they thought had ordered the killing of a local tax inspector. Their battle cry seemed to be “guilty until proven innocent,” or maybe just “guilty if I think so.” Last year, similarly motivated attacks against lawyers in southern Kyrgyzstan scared them away from defending their clients. At this rate, how many limbs will get torn off before none are left?
David Trilling is Eurasianet’s managing editor.
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