Some Kyrgyz government troops took part in mob attacks against Uzbeks during an explosion of ethnic unrest in June, and a brutal official probe into the violence is making matters worse, a rights group said on Monday. New York-based Human Rights Watch said some men in uniform cleared away self-defence barricades with armoured vehicles to unleash mobs of looters on Uzbek neighbourhoods. Other men in uniform fired on civilians in the street.
Since the violence in June, the government has arrested and tortured people, mainly ethnic Uzbeks, as part of its official probe into the unrest increasing tension ahead of an October parliamentary election, the group said.
A researcher presenting the report said the death toll in the bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan, which hosts US and Russian air bases and lies on an Afghan drug-trafficking route, was clearly "far bigger" than the official count of 371.
"Men in camouflage uniforms riding armoured military vehicles removed makeshift barricades erected by residents, giving the mobs access to the (Uzbek) neighbourhoods," the 91-page report quoted witnesses as telling researchers.
HRW researcher Anna Neistat told a news conference: "Witnesses said armed people in camouflage uniform ... would shoot those remaining in the street and then mobs of civilians would come in and loot and torch the houses."
Neistat said more than 2,000 homes had been torched in the clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, which laid waste to parts of the southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad and local villages, forcing 400,000 people to flee. "As for the dead, 371 is the latest official figure, but the authorities themselves admit this is incomplete," Neistat said. "It is clear that the number of the dead is far bigger."
An interim government has struggled to impose control in the south since it took power after the April overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The rights group said it had documented large-scale "sweep" operations in Uzbek neighbourhoods, during which law enforcement officers beat and insulted residents and looted their homes.
"In the village of Nariman, security forces injured 39 residents, two of whom subsequently died," it said. "Those responsible for the heinous crimes against both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks during the June violence should be prosecuted irrespective of their ethnicity, title, or rank," Ole Solvang, one of the authors, wrote in the report.
The investigation into the bloodshed conducted by the Kyrgyz authorities was rife with "huge violations", Neistat said. "We are talking mainly about numerous illegal arrests. Our data show the majority of those arrested are Uzbeks." She said arrests were routinely carried out without proper warrants and unsanctioned searches of Uzbek homes are common. They are accompanied by threats and often by beatings, and families were not told where the arrested were held, she said.
Torture is also common during such investigations, Neistat said. In the most recent case, Neistat said, a 63-year-old ethnic Uzbek was severely beaten at a police station in southern Kyrgyzstan last weekend, after which he suffered a heart attack.
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