From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Wed May 02 2001 - 09:46:51 EDT
Uzbeks evict Tajik citizens
Excerpt from report by the Kazakh newspaper Novoye Pokoleniye on 27 April
[newspaper headline] There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests
[subheading] The Tajik population of Uzbekistan, about 2m people, are
beginning to feel rather ill at ease in the Uzbek republic; human right
organizations report the discriminatory policy of the Uzbek authorities
towards the Tajiks and Tajik culture.
By Bakhtiyor Ergashev
According to an Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan [IHROU],
at present in accordance with an instruction issued in 2000 by the
Education Ministry of Uzbekistan, books, literature and school textbooks in
Tajik are being destroyed in the towns of Samarkand and Bukhara, densely
populated by Tajiks.
The books are being destroyed according to a 13 May 1998 Cabinet of
Ministers resolution that demands textbooks and books published before 1993
and not adhering to the national ideology be eliminated. On the basis of
this resolution, the Uzbek Education Ministry issued its own instruction in
2000, approving the destruction of books issued after 1993 as well.
[passage omitted: In one Samarkand school alone more than 2,000 copies of
textbooks on technical and natural sciences published in 1995-1998 and 90
per cent in Tajik were destroyed; the process is happening in all schools
so one can imagine the nationwide scale of the campaign]
"In my village where only Tajiks live, in a library near my place now there
is not a single book in Tajik. The worst thing is that masterpieces of
world literature, works by Avicenna, Saadi, Shakespeare, Byron, Pushkin,
`Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe and many others are being destroyed", an
IHROU representative in Samarkand, Jamol Mirsaidov, said.
Also departments and groups with Tajik as a teaching language have been
sharply reduced in Samarkand educational establishments; there is only one
Tajik-language Philology Department now left at Samarkand University.
Tajiks of Uzbekistan are its native population. At the beginning of the last
century they fell within the jurisdiction of Uzbekistan as a result of the
formation of the national Soviet republics. Scholar Rasim Masov writes that
as a result of a "rough division" of Central Asia, Tajiks turned into a
national minority on territory legitimately belonging to them. Tajiks claim
the Uzbek towns of Samarkand and Bukhara and believe that historically
these belonged to Tajikistan. In many respects this is confirmed by the
fact that now mainly Tajiks live in these towns, where one can hear spoken
only Tajik, not Uzbek.
The formation of Soviet republics in Central Asia has turned out to be a
forcible "Uzbekization" for the local Tajiks. During the population census
before the national and territorial division in 1924 the number of Tajiks
in Bukhara and Samarkand was 75-98 per cent; in the 1926 census the number
fell to 15-20 per cent.
Therefore, today members of the Tajik diaspora say that the real number of
Tajiks living in Uzbekistan is several times higher than official data
shows; simply the majority of Tajiks are registered as Uzbeks. According to
them, there are nearly 7m Tajiks in Uzbekistan.
The civil war in Tajikistan and the military camps that remained afterwards
in East Tajikistan, where an Uzbek religious opposition was trained, have
become a serious bone of contention between Tashkent and Dushanbe.
The sallies against Uzbekistan carried out by the militants of the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan from Tajikistan have confirmed in the minds of the
Uzbek authorities the stereotype that there is a threat to Uzbekistan's
security from Tajik territories bordering on Uzbekistan, while Tajiks
living in border areas with Tajikistan are unreliable citizens.
This is partially true because no-one doubts that sallies were carried out
from Tajikistan and that some local residents, mainly Tajiks by nationality
living in mountain villages on the border with Tajikistan, had contact with
the militants. But the power-wielding machine punishes indiscriminately and
often innocent people suffer.
In spring 2001 the Uzbek authorities forcibly evicted the citizens of
Tajikistan who moved to Uzbekistan during the Tajik civil war and the
action will continue, an official from OVIR (the Entry, Exit and
Registration of Citizens Department) in southern Surkhandarya Region said.
According to them, in March 47 citizens of Tajikistan were evicted from
Termez District of Surkhandarya Region. According to the Uzbek authorities,
the Tajik citizens were in Uzbekistan illegally, with no residence permit
or registration.
[passage omitted: some of the evicted citizens were ethnic Uzbeks who had
been living with relatives since 1992. Now they are on the border area of
Shartuz and have nowhere to go and live because at the time they sold their
houses; the Uzbek Interior Ministry confirmed this but did not comment.
According to the police, a campaign is under way in border areas to reveal
the militants or other dangerous people.]
The human rights advocate, Mirsaidov, says that "the eviction of peaceful
Tajik citizens is a serious violation of human rights and an act of
genocide against the Tajik people".
"It is already usual to consider every Tajik a militant here, in Uzbekistan.
Why then does the top Uzbek leadership speak of friendly ties between
Uzbeks and Tajiks? And as President Islam Karimov said: "This is one people
speaking in two languages", Mirsaidov said.
Later, a new Uzbek political principle was made at the highest state level,
according to which a country cannot have eternal friends, but only eternal
interests; Uzbekistan easily oversteps friendly and fraternal liabilities
and norms whenever required by the political situation.
Today, for the sake of preserving security, the situation demands unfriendly
steps towards neighbours, barbaric treatment of the Tajik population,
depriving them of an opportunity to read books in their native tongue, but
will these measures serve to strengthen security? The destruction of books
and pieces of world literature, according to Jamol Mirsaidov, is an act
that can be compared only with the destruction of Bhudda monuments by the
Taleban in Afghanistan.
Source: Novoye Pokoleniye, Almaty, in Russian 27 Apr 01 p9
BBC Mon CAU 010501/** ag/mv
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