[新聞] 吉爾吉斯暴動稍緩，難民開始回國
標題:Refugees Return to Kyrgyzstan as Crisis Eases
吉爾吉斯暴動稍緩，難民開始回國
新聞來源: (須有正確連結)
http://tinyurl.com/24grsep
OSH, Kyrgyzstan — Refugees who had fled the brutal ethnic violence in
Kyrgyzstan began crossing back over the border with Uzbekistan on Friday,
indicating that the humanitarian crisis in the region might be stabilizing.
Even so, the United Nations said that more than one million people might need
assistance.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of the estimated 75,000 ethnic Uzbeks who had
been living in recent days in tent camps in Uzbekistan walked through a
checkpoint ringed with barbed wire. The vast majority were women, children
and the elderly who left areas of southern Kyrgyzstan that came under attack
from mobs and what appeared to have been elements of the Kyrgyz military.
Some refugees said in interviews that they feared more bloodshed, but missed
their homes and the men who stayed behind. Many Uzbek men have been
barricaded in recent days in Uzbek neighborhoods and villages in southern
Kyrgyzstan, guarding buildings that had been destroyed by arson.
“Of course, we are scared,” said Nigora Ruziyeva, 28, who crossed with her
two young children. “We do not know how we are going to live now, but we
decided that we had to come back.”
While the crisis is now less severe, Kyrgyzstan, an obscure country with a
coveted location in Central Asia, is in serious danger of fragmenting.
The provisional Kyrgyz government has lost control of large areas in the
southern part of the country because of its failure to quell attacks that
have killed at least several hundred ethnic Uzbeks, and possibly many more.
Uzbeks have essentially set up autonomous zones and are refusing to recognize
the authorities in the Kyrgyz capital.
United Nations agencies said 375,000 people had fled the conflict, almost all
of them ethnic Uzbeks, with 75,000 entering neighboring Uzbekistan. A United
States diplomat, Robert O. Blake, arrived in the region on Friday, and called
for an international inquiry.
“We urge the provisional government of Kyrgyzstan to take immediate steps to
stop the violence,” Mr. Blake said.
Despite the threat of a breakup of the country, the Kyrgyz government seems
unable to respond in any meaningful way. The provision of humanitarian aid
has been slow. On Friday, the interim president, Roza Otunbayeva, flew to the
affected regions for the first time since the violence began on the night of
June 10.
She acknowledged that the death toll from the clashes could be near 2,000.
But she has not responded to numerous credible reports that elements of the
military carried out horrific assaults on ethnic Uzbeks. The reports indicate
that the government, which took office in April after rioting ousted the
Kyrgyz president, does not have the full allegiance of the military.
“They fear the generals,” a prominent Kyrgyz human rights lawyer, Nurbek
Toktakunov, said Thursday. “Sooner or later, these issues are going to have
to be tackled.”
This reluctance is especially striking because the government has charged
that the deposed president, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev, incited the violence as a
way to return to office. But it has yet to explain how Mr. Bakiyev exercised
that power or whether senior military officers remain loyal to him, allowing
him to use troops to incite ethnic warfare.
American officials are keeping a close eye on the conflict, not least because
the United States has an important military base on the outskirts of the
Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, that supplies the expanding NATO mission in
Afghanistan. An American official in Washington confirmed that the Kyrgyz
government was having “trouble exercising command over the security forces.”
Already, the new government has given mixed signals about whether it will
renew the lease on the American base — and its weakness has added fresh
uncertainty over a strategic competition between the United States and
Russia. Russia also has military facilities in Kyrgyzstan and in recent years
has vied with the United States to win the favor of the Kyrgyz.
While it is still early, the tensions here could lead to the kind of ethnic
standoff that has repeatedly arisen across the former Soviet Union. These
clashes — in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and elsewhere — are often
referred to as frozen conflicts because they have not been resolved over many
years. They entangle the major powers, as in the case of the 2008 war between
Russia and Georgia over the renegade enclave of South Ossetia, which soured
relations between Russia and the West, particularly the United States.
The government had been hoping to solidify its standing by holding a
referendum on a new constitution on June 27, but the ethnic violence has
thrown those plans into doubt. Ethnic Uzbeks, who make up about 15 percent of
the population, are not expected to will not take part in the voting unless
international peacekeepers arrive in Kyrgyzstan, an unlikely prospect.
If the referendum is canceled, then the government may be further adrift.
Senior officials in Bishkek defended the government’s performance, saying
that they were facing towering obstacles in trying to steer the country,
including a depressed economy and meddling by Mr. Bakiyev, who is in exile in
Belarus.
Farid Niyazov, a government spokesman, said Thursday that Ms. Otunbayeva, who
is an ethnic Kyrgyz, believed that it was improper to make overtures to
either Kyrgyz or Uzbeks based solely on their ethnicity.
“The government is offering its condolences to all and its commitment to
maintain peace and security,” he said. “We do not name ethnic groups. To do
so could provide the impulse for another explosion.”
No matter what Ms. Otunbayeva does, it will be enormously difficult to salve
the fury of Uzbeks. That was clear during a visit on Thursday to an
improvised cemetery in a barren lot in Osh, where Uzbek victims of the
violence were being buried.
The first was Lochinbek Sabirov, 15. His father looked on, wiping his tears
with a handkerchief, unable to make sense of what had happened.
The father, Makhamadzhan Sabirov, 42, said Lochinbek had been wounded in the
chest and hand on the first day of the conflict, when he went outside to see
what was causing the commotion. He died later at the hospital.
“Do you think that this is going to be easy to forget?” he said. “If I had
a machine gun, I would go out into the city and shoot people. I don’t want
this government anymore. They don’t have the right to be in power.”
The bodies of other Uzbeks followed, borne into the earth on a bier wrapped
in multihued fabric: a 50-year-old woman whose throat had been slit, a
39-year-old man who had been clubbed to death. Some had already been hastily
interred without identification, their remains burned beyond recognition,
their loved ones unable to properly mourn.
The scene at the cemetery strongly suggested that the scope of the bloodshed
was far greater than the interim government had formally acknowledged. The
official death toll is about 200, but volunteers overseeing this cemetery
alone said they had buried more than 50. And ethnic Uzbek leaders said many
cemeteries had been set up. At just four cemeteries, the figure totaled more
than 160, according to interviews. (An unknown, but much smaller, number of
Kyrgyz were also killed.)
The government is not recording the Uzbek burials or playing any role in
overseeing them, underscoring an increasingly significant dynamic here: the
ethnic Uzbeks want self-rule, and nothing to do with the Kyrgyz authorities.
Bakhrom Iminov, 34, was keeping track of the burials in a children’s
notebook, sketching out grids that he filled with any information he could
gather about the dead. He said about 20 percent or 30 percent were
unidentified.
“The only way that we can protect ourselves is to put a fence up and govern
ourselves,” Mr. Iminov said. “That is the only way that we can guarantee
that what occurred will never occur again.”
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個人評論：
吉爾吉斯的暴動目前暫時平息，難民開始回到國內。這場暴動原因至今不明，但佔
多數的吉爾吉斯族明顯壓迫南部的烏茲別克族，官方估計約有2000人死亡，但據分析家
推測實際數字可能在10000左右，可見這次暴動傷亡慘重。而目前各大國際媒體關心的焦
點有三：
首先，暴動如何開始，又該如何結束？有人認為是吉爾吉斯軍方有意藉族群間的小爭執
進行種族淨化，也有人認為是前總統巴卡耶夫試圖煽動軍方攻擊支持臨時政府的烏茲別
克族；但無論如何，目前的政府在趕走前總統巴卡耶夫後，仍然無法控制軍方，直到俄
羅斯與聯合國軍隊進駐後，亂事才開始平息。
其次，美中俄三方的吉爾吉斯的競爭開始白熱化，吉爾吉斯位於阿富汗的北方，美軍一
直有意在此建立軍事基地；另一方面，俄軍仍有自蘇聯時代殘存的軍事哨站，且不時提
供吉國軍方軍事資源；中國則與吉國交界頗長，對吉國貿易與投資也相當的大，也希望
藉由上海合作組織糾結中亞五國，共同打擊東突組織；因此暴動一開始時，三方皆按兵
不動，反而使吉國軍方造成慘重傷亡。
最後，吉爾吉斯曾以「鬱金香革命」推翻獨裁者阿卡耶夫，成為中亞民主化典範，但繼
任這巴卡耶夫政府貪腐，族群對立嚴重，社會經濟面臨崩解。臨時政府是否能以外交手
段，拉攏美中俄三方共同壓制吉國軍方，是吉國目前政府穩定的關鍵，一旦外國勢力袖
手旁觀，政府將無法來自軍方的跋扈。
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