Imam allegedly shot dead
Kyrgyzstan, Politics and Society2 Comments
The BBC has a report that Rafik Kamalov, an imam from the southern town of Karasuu, has apparently been killed, according to his family:
According to his family and local police, the imam – Rafik Kamalov – was shot dead by Kyrgyz special forces.
But security officials have not confirmed his death.
The Ferghana Valley lies in the south of Kyrgyzstan – the very heart of Muslim Central Asia.
Authorities have been cracking down on what they call Islamic fundamentalism.
Outcry
In an interview with the BBC, Kyrgyz security officials confirmed that they had killed three men during a special operation on Thursday night and that all of them were members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan – a banned radical organisation.
The officials neither confirmed nor denied that Rafik Kamalov, the Imam of the biggest mosque along the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border, was among them.
But family members, who are preparing for the funeral, deny that he belonged to any Islamic group.
For the past month, Kyrgyz security services, often with the help of their Uzbek colleagues, have launched a massive operation aimed at eradicating what the government here calls the serious threat of Islamic fundamentalism.
But human rights groups have voiced concern that this label is often used to silence political dissent.
The death of this hugely popular Imam could provoke a major public outcry among the deeply Islamic population of the Ferghana Valley.
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It’s indeed not yet clear whether this fits in ‘Rumours, rumours…’ or in ‘Current events’.
At last search at least, there was not a word about Rafik Qori Kamaluddin’s death in the ‘regular’ Russian press (checked Nyezavissimaya Gazeta; Gazeta.ru; Rossiiskaya Gazeta).
Unsurprisingly, they cover it on the Russian (though not the English at last search) section of Muslim Uzbekistan: http://muslimuzbekistan.net/ru/centralasia/featured/story.php?ID=6121 .
Abdulla Yusupov is with a nongovernmental group called the Committee to Protect Revolution. He told RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service in Jalal-Abad that he thought the imam’s death must have been a tragic mistake.
“I believe his killing was a mistake by the [National Security Service] officers,” Yusupov said. “We knew this person very well. He was the main imam of the Kara-Suu mosque. In his mosque, I never noticed anything terrorist — that went against the government or the people.”
Source: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/8/CBAA48C8-5A0E-41F1-8CD7-ADCC167463B7.html
A mistake, my ass. If Kamalov has indeed been killed then this was the work of a karimovist death squad. Not difficult to see the, ahem, ‘operational context’: http://www.ng.ru/cis/2006-07-31/7_bakiev.html
If he has indeed been killed: condolences to his family and congregation.
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