Debate: are Kyrgyz squatters right to seize land?
Business and Economics, Kyrgyzstan, Politics and Society11 Comments
Bishkek residents are preparing squads to protect their property from squatters. Click on the image to read a report from CA-News.
neweurasia and has been running coverage of squatters and other impoverished citizens of Kyrgyzstan seizing land, especially in the north of the country, after the uprising earlier this month. It’s an old problem with increasing political ramifications: they are threatening to re-destabilize the situation, as neweurasia‘s Mirsulzhan reports today via his Twitter,
Squatters threaten to overthrow the provisional government if the latter won’t give them plots near the diplomatic town.
Are the squatters right to make such demands? Our resident poet, Rubaiyat, doesn’t think so. She has written these lines critical of the squatters, both for the overthrow of Bakiyev and their violation of the principle of private property:
… the best sunlight is private property / for a tulip can drink justice for only so long / before its petals bleed collective tyranny / you weeds, so busy stealing the nation’s rich soil, / ravenous for the trace elements of entitlement, / have sickle thorns and hammer blossoms
However, one of our bloggers in Bishkek, Nils, thinks this is a positive development:
After things have settled a new spirit is affecting daily live. I have noticed a long time ago that Kyrgyz people are far more self-motivated, entrepreneurial and able to improvise. But now hope, aspiration and demands related to the chance for a somehow new start contributes to such (mostly positive) activism even further. In Bishkek for example, many people have started to claim land plots and have even started to build jurts and homes.
What do you think? Leave a comment!
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Hi Chris,
well… when I wrote the piece I could not foresee such dramatic development. There is certainly a large difference between the revolutionary spirit and hopes of the first days – seeking a new start and new opportunities – and the current events, where I completely agree with Rubaiyat. These porgroms seem to have their roots more in discrimination and even racism and are therefore directed against individual people and groups of people. I personally hope that the government will be able to re-gain control over the situation in the suburbs, while my respect for the local population that establishes voluntary guards squads as a last resort is ever-growing.
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Schwartz Reply:
April 20th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
@Nils, thanks for the clarification. I myself am torn on the subject. Although I’m very Left-wing, I’ve had to seriously confront myself about my feelings toward private property. After all, Marx et al were right that private property is the root of so many human ills, so am I willing to put my money where my mouth is? The answer is: not yet.
On the one hand, I have personal reasons for the equivocation (duh). On the other hand, there’s something really important and positive going on in the concept of private property, namely, the sense of ownership itself, of possessing if nothing else one’s inner world and ultimate destiny. Private property, then, is ultimately about the immortal soul. But it’s precisely for that reason why in the end private property is also ultimately poison to human beings (not to mention a danger to society if taken too far). So, how can we make a socioeconomic system that can encompass this paradox? I have some ideas, but they’re vague, and I’m sure the new Kyrgyz government isn’t going to have any big epiphanies…
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Averroes Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:58 pm
@Schwartz, actually, I think the problem is government, period. In principle land belongs to no one and to everyone. No surprise that nomads can understand that. I think this is a potential wake up call for the Kyrgyz authorities — go Rousseau or get Rousseau’d.
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[...] another, in light of the uprising in Kyrgyzstan and subsequent land seizures by impoverished citizens of that nation, I’ve had to seriously confront myself about my feelings toward private property. After [...]
Well, what do you want to say against an impoverished land squatter from, say, At-Bashy or Jumgal when the urban ‘elite’ had no scruples and no respect for whatsoever when it snapped land to build its tacky villas and resorts?
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Interesting comments. I hope there are some more soon.
One aspect that deserves consideration is the likely outcome of the land occupations/seizures. In other countries, notably in South America, such actions have had mixed results.
In some instances, the poor occupy land and then struggle to utilise it effectively. They lack either the skills or the capital to work the land and wait for government assistance that does not materialise. The land is then wasted, the people become disheartened and remain impoverished, and former landowners (rightly enough) become outraged that their land is no longer being used fruitfully.
In other cases, the poor who undertake land occupations are protected by law provided that they only seize unproductive land. And they are well-organised, building homes, running farms, and even creating schools and other infrastructure.
The ethical dimension of land seizures in Kyrgyzstan is only part of the issue. The other question is, will land seizure be an effective strategy for the poor? Or will it lead only to further conflict?
I don’t know enough about Kyrgyz society to take a stab at these questions, so I would be interested to hear what others think. What are the prospects?
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Schwartz Reply:
April 20th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
@Toaf, like you, I don’t know enough about Kyrgyz society. But I’ll hazard the following:
The squatters seem to be for the most part pastoralists (they are literally setting up yurts in parks and lawns). So, they are probably very equipped skills-wise to handle harsh living conditions (making their demands perhaps a bit paradoxical from a logic viewpoint) but probably not very equipped to productively participate in the economics of an urban area like Bishkek.
If I’m right, then I anticipate that the more traditional among them will only ever be semi-sedentary, returning to their usual activities during some seasons and living in the seized land during others. The less traditional among them might end up creating small-scale slums.
Moreover, precisely because they may be mostly pastoralists, I wonder as to when they began thinking of themselves as “poor” and to what extent the old nomad-city dynamic is still at work here (mixed feelings of jealousy and pride vis-a-vis city-dwellers, perhaps even a sense of entitlement?)
I’ve been talking very theoretically here, of course, and perhaps unfairly, too. So hopefully someone with more expertise can corroborate or correct my impressions.
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Are these squatters landless, or do they have land farther away from the capital? People who lived in the area around Bishkek before the end of the Soviet Union sometimes resent newcomers because they have a house and land somewhere else in Kyrgyzstan and now they’ve got a second place. “I have only one place. Why should they have 2?”
They are being pretty selective about where they’re trying to seize property — not unlike their political leaders who in the past have always helped themselves to the choicest bits to line their own pockets. I think Turgai Sangar makes a good point — that they’re just emulating what they’ve seen others do. However, that doesn’t justify what they’re doing. They don’t understand that this kind of instability and lawlessness will only end up hurting them in the end.
I haven’t heard anything about land seizures in the more rural regions like Talas or Osh. So, do you think these squatters have a right to seize land if they’re only interested in “expensive” land?
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[...] especially considering the recent land-seizures, the ethics and nature of which we here at neweurasia and our friends at The Registan have been [...]
IWPR reporter Аsyl Osmonalieva has written a piece on the land issue. Among other things, it mentions suspicions that opponents of the new regime may be coordinating the seizures to cause chaos, and comments made by those involved in seizures that suggest some of the people who took part in the actual revolt may be looking for “payback” in the form of property.
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[...] ethnic Kyrgyz in the north are illegally seizing private property for themselves. Encampments of yurts are reportedly cropping up all over the suburbs of [...]