Uzbek Violence

(Andijan, Uzbekistan) Yesterday, Muslim demonstrators calling for "economic freedom" seized the Andijan's administration building and stormed the jail to free 23 men accused of Islamic extremism. About 2,000 inmates escaped along with the 23 defendants. One of the defendants, Abduvosid Egomov, proclaimed:

"We are not going to overthrow the government. We demand economic freedom," a pale and thin Egomov said.

"If the army is going to storm, if they're going to shoot, we are ready to die instead of living as we are living now. The Uzbek people have been reduced to living like dirt," he said.

Protest leader Kabuljon Parpiyev talked to Interior Minister Zakir Almatov by telephone who rejected the demonstrators' demands.

"He said, 'We don't care if 200, 300 or 400 people die. We have force and we will chuck you out of there anyway,'" Parpiyev quoted the interior minister as saying.

Soldiers were mobilized and surrounded about 4,000 demonstrators in the streets and opened fire with automatic weapons. According to Parpiyev, as many as fifty people were killed. At this point, it's not clear that the government has control of the city. Reporting is sketchy. President Islam Karimov has blocked foreign news reporting.

Uzbekistan is a key US ally in the war on terrorism, providing an air base to support military operations in neighboring Afghanistan. But ties with Washington have drawn international attention to human rights abuses, the Uzbek government is one of the most repressive in the region. Andijan, Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city with 350,000 residents, is in the impoverished Fergana Valley with many Muslims provoking tensions with the secular government.

Linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan fought for establishment of an Islamic state in the Fergana Valley in the late 1990s. Concerns are high that Fergana could be a flashpoint for destabilizing much of ex-Soviet Central Asia. (Source: The Frontier Post)

More coverage is at The Argus by Nathan Hamm. He's getting information from throughout Central Asia, including detailed reports from people on the scene. Some of Nathan's material needs to be translated from Russian, Uzbek, etc. so it necessarily trickles in, but I believe it to be quite accurate.

[Update 0945EDT]

Other coverage from Lyndon at Scraps of Moscow includes a link to a the above screen shot from Russian television. He also has the translated statement of the "Islomii Zhikhod" organization which appears to have declared war on the Karimov government. It's signed by Amir of the "Islamic Jihad" organization, Mukhammad Fotekh Bukhorii. Lyndon notes with suspicion that this message plays into Karimov's hand by indicating the Islamists want to take over the government. It would understandably force international support for his authoritarian government.

Go to Gateway Pundit for a video of the uprising.