Thousands of ethnic Uzbeks massed on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan refused to return home on Sunday, saying they feared for their lives after violent pogroms and don’t trust Kyrgyz troops to protect them.
Associated Press reporters saw some 50 Kyrgyz troops, many in armoured transport carriers, enter the border village of Suratash and try to reassure refugees in this Central Asian nation that it was safe to return home. Yet the soldiers’ very presence terrified the families — ethnic Uzbeks who fled after attacks and arson by ethnic Kyrgyz — since they blame Kyrgyz troops for abetting the violence that left hundreds of Uzbeks dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. “Of course we were afraid. Afraid because they were the ones — the soldiers who fired shots,” said Maplyuba Akhmedova, an Uzbek who fled her home.
In Sakaldy, another village in Kyrgyzstan, ethnic Uzbek men spent the night in a meadow near a barbed-wire fence that marks the border with Uzbekistan. Entire Uzbek neighbourhoods in southern Kyrgyzstan were reduced to scorched ruins by rampaging mobs of ethnic Kyrgyz, who forced nearly half of the region’s roughly 800,000 Uzbeks to flee.
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva says up to 2,000 people may have died in the clashes. Her government said the attacks were ignited by supporters of ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was toppled in April amid accusations of corruption.