TASHKENT, 18 May 2005 — Uzbekistan’s top prosecutor said yesterday that 169 people had been killed in violence in the eastern town of Andijan.
Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov’s estimate was far below the more than 500 cited earlier in the day by an opposition political party that has been polling alleged victims’ relatives.
Kadyrov said that 32 of those who died were government troops and indicated that the others were militants. “Only terrorists were liquidated by government forces,” he told a news conference, with President Islam Karimov at his side — again contradicting the accounts of witnesses to the violence.
Karimov had told a news conference on Saturday that 10 soldiers and “many more” insurgents had been killed. He did not say anything about civilian deaths.
Following Karimov’s earlier claim of foreign involvement in the Andijan riots, Kadyrov also said that 50 of those killed were foreigners, including two Kyrgyz nationals. Five more Kyrgyz citizens have been detained, he said.
Nigara Khidoyatova, the head of the Free Peasants party, said that 542 people had been killed in Andijan and 203 in Pakhtabad, another city in the Ferghana Valley. Khidoyatova said her party had arrived at the figure by speaking to relatives of those killed, and the count was continuing. “Soldiers were roaming the streets and shooting at innocent civilians,” Khidoyatova told The Associated Press. “Many victims were shot in the back of the head.” She said her party’s representatives had talked to victims’ relatives and attended the victims’ funerals. “The count hasn’t yet finished, and the death toll will rise,” she said.
The crackdown in Andijan came Friday after protesters stormed a prison, freed inmates and then seized local government offices. But many of the demonstrators were citizens complaining about poverty and unemployment.
Karimov’s government has blamed the violence on Islamic militants. However, an AP reporter and other journalists witnessed troops opening fire on the crowd at Andijan’s central square.
“Relatives of the victims are in shock, and they can’t understand why their near ones were killed,” Khidoyatova said. “Once the funerals are over, they aren’t going to let it go unpunished and will take revenge. They are boiling with anger.”
In one example, Khidoyatova said that her party’s members had attended the funeral of Sardor Khasanov, an 18-year old resident of Andijan who walked out to buy a loaf of bread and was killed with a bullet to the back of his head.
In Pakhtabad, virtually all the victims were women and children apparently trying to flee violence by escaping into neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Khidoyatova said. “They were refugees trying to escape.”
