Uzbekistan rejects UN inspectors
Tashkent (AsiaNews/Agencies) Uzbek President Islam Karimov has rejected a UN request for an international inquiry into a bloody crackdown in the town of Andijan and elsewhere.
Karimov told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that the visit on Wednesday, May 18, to Andijan by diplomats and journalists was "sufficient".
UN Human Rights commissioner Louise Arbour said that the brief and tightly controlled visit was "not a substitute for a professional international fact-finding mission which can proceed with some independence".
"I just hope that the president of Uzbekistan can be persuaded that it is in the interests of his people, and of the international community, to let in a credible and transparent process," Mrs Arbour added.
The United States and the European Union have also called for an international inquiry.
The Uzbek government announced that 169 people died in the clashes but the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan claim that more than 500 people died in Andijan, 200 in Pahktaabad and 100 near the border with Kyrgyzstan. Both said that "piles of bodies" were stacked in two schools in Andijan.
The Uzbek government claims that the incidents were the work of "Muslim extremists" but the two human rights groups counter saying that what happened was a "brutal act of repression against the population" to "avoid pro-democracy developments as occurred in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Georgia".
Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah does not exclude the possibility that the demonstrations were caused by Muslim extremists. At the end of a visit to Tokyo he said that "extremist elements trained by the Talibans in Afghanistan were present in the country", adding that he was "convinced" that they played a role in the clashes.
Beijing announced that Karimov will visit China next week. China had publicly approved his "government's efforts to maintain peace and stability".
Troops yesterday retook the border town of Korasuv, in the eastern part of the country, and arrested several people, including Bakhtior Rakhimov who had said he intended to build an Islamic administration in the town.
According to his wife, soldiers came to his house before dawn, beat her husband and took him and their 14-year-old son away.
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28/09/2020 16:09
