Article published in La Croix, La Presse and La Tribune de Geneva June 15, 2010.
For the fourth day, inter-ethnic violence continued yesterday in southern Kyrgyzstan. The provisional toll of 138 dead and 1761 injured would be largely underestimated. Russia and its former Soviet allies have ruled again yesterday for the rapid dispatch of a force of peace, nothing seems able to stop the violence in the short term.
ethnic Uzbek refugees continue to attempt to escape from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan neighbor. In four days they would be more than 100 000 to cross the border to seek refuge in camps. At one checkpoint Souzak District, yesterday they were at least 50 000 others want to visit Uzbekistan. The International Committee of Red Cross talks about a humanitarian situation "critical."
Especially since Uzbekistan has closed its border last night and appealed for international aid for 45,000 refugees (only adult males are counted) and their wives and children who have already been received. "We will stop accepting refugees from Kyrgyzstan because we can not accommodate and do not have the capacity to accommodate them," said said Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, Abdullah Aripov at Iorkichlok refugee camp on the border.
In Osh and Jalalabad, the second and third cities, the situation remained very tense. The agency reported that the Kyrgyz AKIpress Jalalabad, "a group of armed young men wearing armbands with the slogan" If there are Uzbeks, we will shoot them "" scoured the city. A reporter for The New York Times visited a district of Osh Uzbek Sunday found that almost all buildings were on fire but one marked with red paint of the inscription "Kyrgyz." Several Kyrgyz have also indicated their ethnicity on their cars to avoid being shot at.
ethnic Uzbek refugees accuse the Kyrgyz army regular, nominally under the control of the interim government to pave the way for gangs to Kyrgyz they commit a "planned genocide" against the Uzbek minority in the country. Uzbek diaspora, which is nearly half the population in some cities in southern Kyrgyzstan, was nevertheless supported the provisional government during the violent riots that overthrew President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, on April 7. But the government control over the situation and even its own army is limited. Acting Chair Rosa Otunbayeva, whose power began to be challenged in Bishkek, recognized its inability to counter the risk of civil war. According
Rosa Otunbayeva, ousted his predecessor Kurmanbek Bakiyev would set fire to the latent ethnic tensions in the south, where it still has significant support and armed, in hopes of regaining control of parts of the country and to overturn the constitutional referendum scheduled for June 27
Without hesitation, Rosa Otunbayeva asked at the outset of the crisis interference of Moscow natural arbiter of conflicts in most former Soviet republics. But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has not had the same eagerness to intervene in this conflict, "internal" he said, that during the war in the separatist Georgian republic of South Ossetia in August 2008. Is that in Kyrgyzstan, Russian interests are not in dispute. The Russian president has promised a true emergency humanitarian assistance, but the only Russian soldiers who landed at the moment sen reinforcement on Kyrgyz soil came ... to protect military families from the Russian base at Kant.
For most observers, the only option to stop quickly inter-ethnic violence would be sending a force of Russian Peacekeeping or Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes seven former Soviet republics. But in an emergency meeting in Moscow yesterday, the secretaries of the member countries rejected the idea of a rapid deployment of their troops in Kyrgyzstan. The organization said after the meeting that "these measures should be thoughtful," according to its secretary general Nikolai Bordiouja.
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