Kyrgyzstan pledged yesterday to stick to its plans to hold a constitutional referendum this month despite security concerns following the worst ethnic violence in the nation in 20 years.
The UN warned that continued turmoil in Kyrgyzstan would offer a breeding ground for Islamist militancy in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan has been turbulent since a revolt in April toppled former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev and brought an interim government to power.
At least 191 people have been killed in the south since June 10 in an outburst of ethnic fighting between its two main ethnic groups, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, though some observers in the region put the toll at closer to 1,000.
PHOTO: EPA
The violence has subsided in the last two days but up to hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes and set up camps in the Ferghana valley, where Kyrgyzstan borders Uzbekistan.
The UN spokeswoman in Geneva said yesterday the violence had forced at least 400,000 people to flee the country or their home.
But worries about security persist ahead of the June 27 referendum on the country’s future which, together with the refugee exodus, add a further challenge to the new Kyrgyz authorities’ ability to organize the vote.
The new leadership, which has not been formally elected, said it is determined to hold the vote, which it needs in order to entrench its rule and press ahead with a reform plan.
“The situation in Osh is stabilizing. We have enough forces,” Azimbek Beknazarov, an interim deputy premier, told reporters in the capital Bishkek.
“We have to hold [the referendum] and enter a legal field. We need this like air. Everyone who calls themselves a Kyrgyz citizen must vote in the referendum,” he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to interim leader Roza Otunbayeva by telephone yesterday to discuss the conflict, the Kyrgyz interim government said in a statement.
Assistant US Secretary of State Robert Blake, the top US official for Central Asia, is due to visit Bishkek today.
Deepening problems such as poverty, illiteracy and people’s growing frustration with their governments have made them more susceptible to Islamist ideas, emboldening radical groups to gain strength in Central Asia.
“There is a threat of extremism in the Ferghana valley and, more broadly, in Central Asia as a whole, in the sense that Central Asia borders Afghanistan,” UN Special Envoy Miroslav Jenca said in an interview late on Wednesday.
“There are various extremist organizations ... And of course in these circumstances they are finding a fertile ground to fulfill their plans,” Jenca said.
“If they [elections] are organized incorrectly then of course that would lead to big problems. The government has to assess whether it can organize the referendum in a way that would be legitimate, so it could be recognized,” he said.
Relief aid has been flowing to the south but observers say it is not reaching many neighborhoods that have barricaded themselves in for fear of further violence.
Meanwhile, just inside the Uzbekistan border, refugees trickled into a camp where UN agencies erected hundreds of white and green tents overnight.
Fewer than 1,000 refugees were at the camp, where aid workers were handing out clothing and blankets, but thousands more were expected to eventually be brought from temporary refugee centers set up by the Uzbek government.
“First of all we need clothes and medical supplies, especially for the children, because when we fled our homes we just ran away and couldn’t take anything with us,” Halima Otajonova, a 41-year-old mother of two, said at a refugee center at a stadium in the Uzbek town of Khanabad. “Some of us even ran away in bare feet, without shoes.”
Two planes carrying hundreds of tents have arrived in Uzbekistan and four more were due by the end of the week, officials said.
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