Kyrgyzstan yesterday buried several of those killed in the overthrow of the government, while security concerns prompted the US military to halt troop flights from its base in the Central Asian state. About 3,000 mourners gathered on the edge of the Kyrgyz capital at a mass funeral to commemorate at least 78 people who died in protests on Wednesday, during which government troops opened fire on demonstrators outside the presidential building.
“Those who died on April 7 are the heroes of Kyrgyzstan,” Roza Otunbayeva, head of the interim government, told the crowd.
“It was our duty to establish justice. Those who are being buried here today are all our children, the children of Kyrgyzstan,” she said.
PHOTO: EPA
Mourners carried coffins draped in the red-and-yellow Kyrgyz national flag and clutched portraits of the dead at a memorial complex built in honor of the victims of mass executions ordered by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in the 1930s.
Relatives lowered bodies into 16 graves lined in rows and joined hands in prayer, while mullahs chanted in Arabic.
Mourners showed little sympathy for the president. Kuat Niyazbekov, attending the funeral, said his brother had died in the uprising.
“We don’t even know what really happened on the square, what his last minutes of life were like,” he said. “We can’t forgive a president like that.”
The uprising in Kyrgyzstan, where a third of the 5.3 million population lives below the poverty line, forced the president to retreat to his stronghold in the south of the country and has raised doubts over the future of the US air base near Bishkek. All flights carrying troops from the Manas base, a vital cog in supplying NATO operations in Afghanistan, were suspended from Friday evening, a spokesman for the base said. Troops are using alternative routes in and out of Afghanistan.
“While normal flight operations at Manas were resumed on Friday, a decision was taken Friday evening to temporarily divert military passenger transport flights,” base spokesman Rickardo Bodden said by telephone.
His comments confirmed those of the US military’s Central Command on Friday. Another US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was a security-related decision made by the base commander on the ground.
Pentagon officials say Manas is central to the war effort against the Taliban, allowing around-the-clock flights in and out of Afghanistan. About 50,000 troops passed through last month alone.
Members of Kyrgyzstan’s self-proclaimed new leadership have said the US lease on the base could be shortened.
Russia, the first country to recognize the new Kyrgyz leadership, also has an air base in the country. A Russian official, who declined to be named, said on Thursday that the strategically important country should have only a Russian base.
Bodden declined to say when passenger flights would resume or to reveal the alternative route being used. He said the base was still conducting fuelling, cargo and humanitarian flights.
“The transition center at Manas is conducting other flight operations on a limited basis and continues to support operations in Afghanistan,” he said.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who has refused to step down, remains in southern Kyrgyzstan. Otunbayeva, a one-time ally who helped Bakiyev to power in the 2005 “Tulip Revolution,” offered him safe passage out of Kyrgyzstan should he step down.
Omurbek Tekebayev, a former opposition leader now in the provisional government, told the crowd: “Our people defeated the dictator.”
Otunbayeva has also accused Bakiyev’s supporters of stoking a violent response to the uprising. In the southern Kyrgyz city of Jalalabad, about 200 of his supporters gathered near a billboard picturing a smiling Bakiyev shaking hands with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
A crowd of 5,000 ethnic Uzbeks, who comprise a large part of the population in southwest Kyrgyzstan, rallied several kilometres away, saying they supported Kyrgyz unity and opposed any attempt to divide the north and south of the country.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is leaning into his banking background as his country fights a trade war with the US, but his financial ties have also made him a target for conspiracy theories. Incorporating tropes familiar to followers of the far-right QAnon movement, conspiratorial social media posts about the Liberal leader have surged ahead of the country’s April 28 election. Posts range from false claims he recited a “satanic chant” at a campaign event to artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images of him in a pool with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “He’s the ideal person to be targeted here, for sure, due to
DISPUTE: Beijing seeks global support against Trump’s tariffs, but many governments remain hesitant to align, including India, ASEAN countries and Australia China is reaching out to other nations as the US layers on more tariffs, in what appears to be an attempt by Beijing to form a united front to compel Washington to retreat. Days into the effort, it is meeting only partial success from countries unwilling to ally with the main target of US President Donald Trump’s trade war. Facing the cratering of global markets, Trump on Wednesday backed off his tariffs on most nations for 90 days, saying countries were lining up to negotiate more favorable conditions. China has refused to seek talks, saying the US was insincere and that it
RSS