Refugees Tell of Flight From Government Troops
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
KARA-SUU, Uzbekistan, May 17 -- The Uzbek troops were shooting again, this time from rooftops, and Zukra Karimova's 58-year-old father fell to the ground as he ran, a dark bloodstain spreading along his thigh. "Go on without me or you'll be killed, too!" he shouted as she bent down to help him, she recalled.
Karimova made a quick decision to obey -- and went racing on, with her husband, mother and 12-year-old son.
It was early Saturday morning, and the family was fleeing a brutal crackdown that had begun in the central square of their home city of Andijon, where troops opened fire on thousands of people who had gathered to protest the authoritarian government of their Central Asian country.
Karimova made it across the border to Kyrgyzstan, but she has no idea whether her father did -- or her son, who became separated from her in the confusion. On Tuesday, she sat with about 500 other refugees in a tent camp set up near the Kyrgyz city of Suzak, burying her face in her hands as she contemplated the bloodletting that the Uzbek government says claimed 169 lives -- 32 troops and the rest "terrorists." Human rights activists have put the death toll as high as 750, most of them civilians. The U.S. government estimates that 300 people were killed.
"I don't know where my son is," said Karimova, 32, sobbing. "I just don't know."
Karimova and the others at the camp appeared to be among the relatively few Uzbeks who made it out of their country. Several of their number had been seriously wounded and taken to a hospital in Suzak.
The refugees' accounts of the violence and their escape, which could not be independently verified, paint a picture of a peaceful crowd of ordinary families unexpectedly caught up in a nightmarish ordeal.
The unrest in Andijon began when supporters of 23 prominent local businessmen who had been prosecuted on charges of religious extremism raided a military base and seized weapons. The supporters then stormed the prison where the businessmen were being held and freed them along with as many as 2,000 other prisoners.
On Saturday, Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan since it gained independence in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union, said subsequent street protests were orchestrated and largely attended by Islamic extremists.
But refugees said in interviews that many people who turned out and were killed were ordinary citizens like themselves.
Zukra Karimova and her husband, Abdulsalam, said they learned of the demonstration early Friday when organizers began talking over a loudspeaker set up in front of a monument in the central square, near the two-room house where the couple live with their four children.
Intrigued, they wandered into the square with their oldest son, Ali, and Zukra's mother and father.
The Karimovs were sympathetic to the speakers' calls for greater economic opportunity. Abdulsalam, 36, had worked at a bakery owned by one of the 23 businessmen. When the man was arrested several months ago, the bakery closed and Abdulsalam lost his job. The Karimovs had been scraping by ever since, feeding their children soup without meat and making do with old clothing.
So they joined enthusiastically in crying out " Azatlik! " -- Uzbek for "Freedom!" -- after every speech.
Mohammed Mavlanov, a Kyrgyz food wholesaler who trades in Andijon, recalled wandering by in the afternoon. "There were thousands of demonstrators," he said. "About half of them were women and children."
It was a sunny, warm day, and the crowd was suffused with a sense of optimism as speakers said that they had been in touch with President Karimov and that he would be coming soon to listen to their concerns.
But late in the afternoon, dark clouds began to gather and a helicopter began circling, Mavlanov recalled.
Sensing concern in the crowd, speakers urged the demonstrators to stay in the square, promising that no harm would come to them. But soon afterward, several minivans and trucks packed with security officers arrived, and the men began firing on people from the vehicles' doors and windows.
"People were yelling, 'Get down! Get down! They are shooting!' " Zukra Karimova recalled.
"Stay together or you'll get shot," several refugees recalled the speakers yelling into the microphone. The throng tried to break out of the square along a major avenue, the refugees said, with the men trying to push the women and children toward the center of the group for protection. But as they edged toward the avenue, they spotted an armored personnel carrier packed with soldiers firing toward them over a pile of bodies that had accumulated in front of it, survivors recalled.
By this time, it had begun to rain, and the crowd dispersed in a panic down every available side street.
"From the sky there was a storm of rain, from the streets a storm of bullets," Mavlanov recalled. "You could see blood all over the asphalt, and women and children falling down all around like grass when you cut it with a scythe."
Mavlanov recalled feeling a searing pain in his arm. He had been shot. A stranger helped bandage him with a piece of rope.
He and others frantically knocked on doors, pleading for shelter. Only one woman opened her door, Mavlanov said, taking in those who could not walk.
Dwindling in size, the group decided to make a break for the Kyrgyz border, more than 12 hours' walk northward. The survivors received no help until they approached the border town of Dishekdash, when a man suddenly stepped out of the shadows.
"Don't go this way," he whispered, a refugee recalled. "There are troops waiting for you here. Go that way," he said, pointing to a narrow road flanked by houses.
In retrospect, many refugees believe it was a trap, because as they raced down the passageway, Uzbek security officers suddenly popped up from a rooftop and began firing down on them. It was here that Karimova's father was hit and Ali disappeared.
The group rushed backward, then paused for several hours on a byroad not far from the border, unsure where to go next. A few hours later, Uzbek ambulances appeared and took away most of the wounded. Many survivors, including the Karimovs, now fear that this too was a ruse.
"We think those who went in the ambulances were all killed," Abdulsalam Karimov said.
Finally, about 10 o'clock, a local woman came to them with a message from the Uzbek customs guards keeping watch over a river bridge at the border. If the refugees wanted to ford the river, the guards would not fire on them. The people crossed to safety.
Mavlanov recalled breaking down in tears on reaching his home country. "I thought I was going to die. The only question was of wishing for a less painful death," he said. "Maybe a bullet to the head."
About 10 miles south of the refugee camp, in the Uzbek town of Kara-Suu, residents on Tuesday tried to make sense of recent events. Like several other cities in Uzbekistan's Fergana region, this eastern border town erupted in demonstrations after the bloody crackdown in Andijon. Residents set fire to the police station and other buildings in Kara-Suu on Saturday.
Many were belatedly protesting the central government's decision several years ago to destroy a bridge that had allowed the town's traders to export goods to their sister town across the river in Kyrgyzstan.
But there was no massacre in Kara-Suu, a sprawling city of one-story houses and large Soviet-era public buildings shaded by tall trees. Police and other central government officials simply fled, leaving the town to its own devices.
On Tuesday, residents seemed caught between exuberance over newfound freedom and fear that the government might crack down. In place of the destroyed bridge, a group of welders had already built a footbridge leading over the fast-moving river. The welders were now at work enlarging it, as traders strolled by with vegetables and other items.
Jerome Bouyjou, a human rights officer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who had arrived to investigate the situation, watched them pass with a frown. It's hard to say when the Uzbek authorities will come back, he said. "But they are not going to leave things like this."
Many city residents agreed. "Everything is possible," said a 59-year-old former store manager who is now unemployed. "We don't know what to expect." Like many residents, he would not give his name, out of concern that "it could create problems for me."
Over the border in the tent camp, the Karimovs also struggled with uncertainty as they anguished over their son and Karimova's father. With nothing else to do, Karimova was trying to clean the blood off her beige dress, the same one she wore to the demonstration and has worn ever since. "Look," she said, pointing to several stains. "I've been washing and washing, but the blood won't come out."