A call in the night

My uncle’s son never calls me at 2 am in the morning. But on the night of June 11 he did so to wake me and to find out if I was OK. I asked if there was anything that would make him think I am not. “Didn’t you hear the Uzbek-Kyrghyz [clashes] started?” was the answer. I stood in our home’s yard in my pajamas for some time unable to utter a word. The night chill I was feeling a few seconds earlier was gone. I asked him for details. “There was some fight in a casino [a gambling house with slot machines] near the Alay Hotel. I heard shootings and saw some fire.” I said I had to go see if my mother was fine and hung up.

Immediately I receive a call from a friend speaking in a worried voice. He too asked if I was safe. I asked him about his whereabouts. He was in the Oshki Rayon mahalla (neighborhood) and saw the Elina Restaurant damaged. He asked me to keep him posted if I heard anything new. Apparently the news spread around the town by that time and everyone was up calling relatives and friends.

I quickly dressed myself and drove to my parent’s house located less than a kilometer away. Everyone in the neighborhood in that short section was already on high alert. My immediate neighbors demanded I stop the car and turn the far light. The nervousness and anxiety blinded them, but they calmed down a little when I told them it was me. It was the last time I drove my car – the barricade erected almost immediately I entered garage is still blocking the gate. I got out of the car and asked for details. As I learned, no-one knows details but one thing was certain “it [the awaited clash] has eventually erupted”.

The life behind barricades

The night between Thursday and Friday was the first sleepless night, one of so many to come. Every single man, young and elder, gathered in the darkness under the apricot trees in our mahalla and discussed the further actions sitting on a soori [a wooden bed for sitting]. Those who witnessed the atrocities in 1990 recommended erecting barricades immediately. Younger ones saw no need in doing so. The further events proved them wrong. Since early morning on Friday, June 12, we have received tens of phone calls from different parts of the town on assaults being made on Uzbek mahallas by “first APCs breaking through barricades, then man in military uniform shooting in air and at people, then looters following” to loot homes, rape women and children, set ablaze alive people and property. When we tried to send people to help Uzbeks in Cheremushki we were “helped” to change our minds by young men with AK guns in vehicles with no license plates. They looked out of barely open completely tinted windows, and either pointed at us or opened fire in the air. Everyone understood that we do need barricades.

The barricades were erected as quickly as they were later torn down at the city mayor’s orders. They were erected after hearing eyewitness testimonies on APC ramming through them to pave way for looters and shooters. We were unable to leave our neighborhood fearing for our lives and the life on this side of the barricades began.

There are 2-3 small grocery and convenience shops in our neighborhood. The shops ran out of whatever reserves they had in several hours, since people wanted to buy provisions “just in case”. The humanitarian aid did not reach us the first few days. Not because of the physical barricades we put up, but because of the mental “barricades” the distributors of the other ethnicity had.

“Why are we going to Uzbekistan?”

We realized an assault on our neighborhood would soon happen. Therefore, the men held a council and decided to send our women, children and elderly to Uzbekistan while they were still admitting refugees. Many women said they wouldn’t leave because “I was born here and will die here – this is my homeland.” The question my 6-year old niece asked upon hearing the news about Uzbekistan was “Uncle, why are we going to Uzbekistan? For a summer camp?” I did not know the answer for the question. She attentively looked into my eyes and silently walked away “telling” with her body language she did not want to leave. But it was better for her and other women. The scarce resources were running out, the humanitarian aid was not coming. But we received news that some of the vehicles with Uzbek refugee women and children were taken hostage or killed on their way to Uzbekistan. The evacuation plan was thus cancelled.

Today’s life

Our mahalla was spared, thank God. The rapists, looters, shooters, killers, assassins did not come to our mahalla. And looking at the map UNOSAT provided, we can clearly see there was no plan to attack either our mahalla or any other mahallas except for those on “strategic locations”. The map suggests the houses around the Takhti Sulaymon Mountain were orderly set afire to clean the area up from homes and businesses Uzbeks owned around it.

Today’s life suggests Uzbeks of Kyrgyzstan were/are subjected to a highest level of nationalism these lands saw in the last couple centuries. The mayor of Osh, Melis Mirzaakhmatov, forced “the closed areas” to pull down the barricades although those were the very areas damaged mostly – both physically and morally. The commandant of Osh, Khursant Khasanov, claims Uzbek neighborhoods harbor arsonists and other bandits and that there are “arsenals of weapons used” during the turmoil. He and his soldiers are staging sweep operations in Uzbek quarters and keep finding only bullets and RGD-5 hand grenades, which sometimes forces one to think whether they have already seen these very bullets and grenades in previous TV reports. Lack of documents, which were burned or torn by soldiers during sweep operations, is yet another harsh reality Uzbek men and sometimes women are facing when being detained, tortured and exhorted astronomic bribes.

Uzbeks’ attitude towards the outer world

“We thought soldiers arrived on Friday to save our lives from looters, rapists and assassins. Alas, they only heightened the scale of the genocide to one step higher with their machine guns and large-caliber tank cannons,” an Uzbek told me from Shahid Tepa District of Osh.

“They just come, in military and police uniform, and take our young men away. They beat them there, torture and then demand bribes. Those whose families are unable to pay later find them in morgues,” an Uzbek man told me in the Tashlak District of Osh.

“We trust neither the government, nor police and nor military. Look, [Roza] Otumbayeva did not bother to at least drive, leave alone walking, through the neighborhoods which were burned down to ashes [during her trip to Osh several days after the riots broke up]. We don’t have weapons, she should not have worried! If we had guns, we wouldn’t let our brethren be killed. She has not said a single word expressing sorrow. How can we and why would we trust such people,” a crowd of angry Uzbek men and women shout out.

The only solution these people see is cancellation of sweep operations, restoration of their identification and other documents, and, finally but mostly, arrival of “any peacekeeping troops”.