One of Central Asia’s most respected independent news outlets is taking a government agency in Kyrgyzstan to court for blocking its website. The trial is scheduled to begin in Bishkek later this week.
When Osh’s Uzbek Music and Drama Theater opened its 94th season last month, the actors looked nervously into the audience. They had not celebrated an opening night for three years, since before the theater was partially burned amid 2010’s ethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s southern capital, is calmer than it’s been in ages. The hostile vibe that has prevailed since inter-ethnic rioting in 2010 seems to be slowly dissipating -- evidenced by the fact that Kyrgyz and (some) Uzbeks can be seen strolling in the city’s parks together on weekends.
The two losers in Kyrgyzstan’s presidential poll last October are using upcoming municipal elections in the troubled southern city of Osh to make a political comeback by throwing their support behind a volatile but popular local strongman. The southerners’ united front offers fresh evidence that the central government in Bishkek has only limited influence in the country’s second-largest city.
When Odina Solieva left her hometown in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley 10 years ago to marry a man from Osh, across the border in Kyrgyzstan, she didn’t realize she was giving up her legal identity.
Wrapped in a quilted robe, a thick file of papers about his case resting on the table in front of him, Azimjan Askarov is unequivocal when it comes to assigning blame for his imprisonment.
“People would often ask me, ‘Aren’t you afraid of the police?’ And I’d say, ‘Why? I work on the basis of the law. What’s there to be afraid of?’ But in the end they did what they wanted,” he said.
Conditions are such in Kyrgyzstan that a supposed break in a high-profile murder case is reinforcing an impression that the central government is weak, while stoking regional tension.
An Uzbek dies in Kyrgyz police custody. Officials deny wrongdoing, while human rights activists voice alarm. THEN WHAT? The cycle is all too familiar in southern Kyrgyzstan.
A culinary twist in Osh, the capital of southern Kyrgyzstan, highlights how last year’s bout of inter-ethnic violence has reshaped the region’s cultural landscape.
For many in Osh, the anniversary of last year's ethnic violence offers a painful reminder of the severe strains weighing on society. But for Gulmira, an Uzbek, and her husband Saparbek, an ethnic Kyrgyz, the anniversary created an opportunity to promote reconciliation. The couple planned to gather, for the first time since the outbreak of violence, their suspicious Kyrgyz and Uzbek relatives.
