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After the 2010 Osh events, Uzbek opposition forces are distributing anti-Semitism and nationalism |
By Uznews.net Editor-in-Chief Galima Bukharbaeva
These days the Uzbek people are remembering the 10-14 June 2010 bloody events in the Kyrgyz towns of Osh and Jalal-Abad.
In some countries, pickets are held putting forward claims and demands for states and international organisations to raise their voice against the discrimination of the Uzbek minority in Kyrgyzstan.
These anti-nationalism actions will be complete if the Uzbek community will learn the main lesson from the Osh tragedy and start eradicating this evil habit not only among the Kyrgyz people but among themselves as well;
If they acknowledge the absolute truth that the land of Uzbekistan equally belongs to all people born and grown up on it regardless of their ethnic belonging just as the land of Kyrgyzstan does to its ethnic Uzbeks;
That people should be judged by their words and actions rather than by their ethnicity; and that the message the oppositions People’s Movement of Uzbekistan (PMU) has been distributing for over a month through the books entitled “Judas-2” and “Devil” is shameful and disgusting.
These books, posted on the PMU website, call for hatred against Uzbek President Islam Karimov for his origin – for the alleged fact that he is an illegitimate son of a Samarkand Jew.
As if they could find no other reason for the hatred of the president after his 23 years of tyrannical rule of the country, turning it into the Karimovs’ business enterprise.
Lack of talent vs. dictatorship
PMU leader Muhammad Salih said in an interview with a number of media outlets that the books, which were first distributed in Tajikistan in May, had been written and published by his supporters. He said he shared views expressed in the books.
Some prominent Uzbek human rights defenders living in Europe are participating in their distribution, handing them out to people in paper bags entitled “Crime of the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov. Crimes and Punishment (The whole truth about Karimov)”.
But when you start reading them, you will understand that the books do not carry what is anticipated as they do not expose any of Karimov’s deeds.
They are a collection of articles copied from Internet articles about the Uzbek-Tajik relations that have neither substantial nor logical links. Moreover, some articles contradict each other, such as those about the fugitive Tajik colonel Makhmud Khudayberdiyev.
In general, the collection “Judas-2” is so pro-Tajik that it recognises Tajiks’ claims to the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara to be fair and accuses Karimov of unleashing a civil war in Tajikistan and the death of each eminent Tajik in the past 20 years.
The book “Devil” is yet more surprising with its impudent retyping of several versions of the made-up story about a girl called Gulsumoy Abduzhalilova who was allegedly driven to commit suicide in Andijan late last year for her refusal to attempt on Muhammad Salih’s life.
Anti-Semitism as argument against Karimov
Only the first chapters of the books are consistent and relevant to Karimov. They are entitled “Meet the Executioner. Biography”.
They carry a retyped story about Islam Karimov’s birth that appeared on Internet several years ago, but has not been confirmed in any way.
The story goes on to say that he could not to be born to his father, Abdugani Karimov, as the latter was in jail between 1936 and 1940, while the Uzbek president was born in 1938.
It also said that his real father was a Samarkand-based wealthy Jew, Iskhak Mirzokantov, with whom Karimov’s mother slept in order to feed her kids.
The same chapter points to the ethnicity of Karimov’s wife, Tatyana, whose father is said to be Tajik and mother to be Jewish.
Why should the birth of Islam Karimov and his ethnic belonging bother me and the community of Uzbekistan on the whole?
Even if the facts brought in the article conform to reality, what will
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Anti-Semite banner on the Kyrgyz government house’s fence in Bishkek after the coup on 7 April 2010. Photo by IzRus |
this change?
For his 23 years’ ruling, Karimov has messed up so many things that he may well take a seat in the dock of the International Criminal Court regardless of his birth details and personal biography.
In order to prove that Karimov is bad, there is no need to make up stories that he is Jewish unless his accusers, as well as people who they address, are not the worst nationalists and anti-Semites.
To understand and explain Karimov’s tyrannical and kleptocratic ruling, opposition leaders have put forward Nazi theory that certain ethnicity can guarantee a person’s decency and honesty and vice versa.
“Is Karimov Uzbek?” questions the Iuda-2 site, which has published the aforementioned books, and then answers “No, he is not Uzbek”. Had he been Uzbek, he would not have driven Uzbekistan to its current condition.
Events in Osh started with anti-Semitism
Disorders and the murder of ethnic Uzbeks in neighbourhoods in Osh and Jalal-Abad did not start spontaneously two years ago.
The second Kyrgyz revolution, which overthrew President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010, immediately revealed nationalistic policy of its leaders.
The answer of society and the system to the question “who is guilty?” first appeared on the iron gate of the White House, the Kyrgyz presidential office building, in the centre of Bishkek.
A huge banner was posted there, which read: “Kyrgyzstan has no place for dirty Jews and the likes of Maksim [a son of President Bakiyev]”.
Then clashes sparked off with Dungans and Turks, as a result of which their restaurants and other businesses were enveloped in fire.
The nationalistic marathon racked with false information to punish the culprits worthily, while distributing profitable business spheres on the quiet, reached its climax two months later, bursting into a war against Uzbeks.
On 10-14 June crowds of nationalists supported by Kyrgyz army and police units started raiding the houses of Uzbeks, killing and raping people just on because of their ethnic belonging.
An international commission reported the murder of 470 people, 74% of them Uzbeks. About half a million people, according to UN reports, had immediately turned into refugees, about 100,000 women and children, as well as old and wounded men, found temporary asylum in the neighbouring Uzbekistan. Thousands of houses were destroyed and partially damaged.
Amateur video footage showed scenes of groups of young people capturing and burning alive Uzbeks despite their appeals for mercy and wisdom.
It is not easy to suppress the genie of nationalism when there is an outburst of crime and anarchy. After two years southern Kyrgyzstan now lives in the shadow of those events.
A resident of Osh has said that today any old respectable ethnic Uzbek can be insulted by any boy who is young enough to be his grandchild. Discrimination is becoming outrageous in society when the cases of ethnic Uzbeks are heard in courts and by public authorities.
Karimov is just Karimov
Opponents of Islam Karimov accuse him of connivance in doing little to protect the Uzbek minority in Kyrgyzstan.
Karimov preferred not to interfere in the conflict, restricting himself only to opening the border and receiving refugees temporarily, but then blamed the event on mythical “third forces”.
Karimov’s position can be criticised for inaction during and after the Osh disorders. His policy decreased the status and reputation of Uzbeks in Central Asia and other countries of the former USSR.
Millions of guest workers from Uzbekistan, who can also be met in poor Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, prompted the appearance of the new image of the Uzbek – cheap and powerless work force.
The shooting of demonstrators in Andijan on 13 May 2005, when hundreds of people were killed by the government troops in Uzbekistan, also put another argument into the mouths of some cynics who ask – do you also kill Uzbeks?
For a civilised and clever people the economic situation in Uzbekistan would have been a reason for compassion, but the level of consciousness and solidarity in our countries leave much to be desired while the level of mutual hatred is just growing.
Nationalism is not a way out
Uzbek opposition should better try to come closer to the people, apply common values and learn how to accept differences, but they are following the path of Kyrgyz nationalists, labelling their main enemy as a Jew.
And this has
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This bag promises “the whole truth about Karimov” |
His main slogan was the country’s independence from Moscow and to make Uzbek the state language. Rallies that he organised often called on Russians to go “to their Russia”.
He is still taking advantage of the communities of large masses, be them ethnic or religious, and accusing those who disagree with him of either Islamophobia or a misunderstanding of the traditions of Uzbeks, making them enemies of the people, pointing to their foreignness.
But in some situations, Salih can portrait himself as a major internationalist who is alien to anti-Semitism and other prejudices.
When the Uznews.net website admitted reader comments which said his wife was Jewish, he threatened to sue the news agency. He claimed that it was distributing racial and national hatred.
“Nobody has the right to insult anyone, calling him an Uzbek, Jewish or Russian. Only immoral people can make insults. I am saying this not only as a person of liberal views but also as a Muslim,” Salih wrote to the editorial office.
Surprisingly, the man who claims this publishes and distributes the books describing Islam Karimov and his wife as Jewish.
As for Karimov’s policy towards his own people, it has analogues in the world. It was not created by a “non-Uzbek” or a “devil” as the anti-Karimov books’ authors put it.
Political experts speak of Karimov’s kleptocratic totalitarian regime in Uzbekistan that is similar to many other present-day and past odious dictatorships.
To condemn Karimov, one does not have to rake up his ethnicity. There are people behind every bad deed. And only their victims can sometimes be united on the single basis of ethnicity.
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