UM del - 2004-05 (2. samling) - Bilag 28: Human Rights Watch-rapport vedr. begivenhederne i Andisjan i det østlige Uzbekistan

Map of Andijan Center................................................................................................................. 1Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 2Note on the Use of Names.......................................................................................................... 6Introduction: Prelude to the May 13 Events ............................................................................ 6Trial of 23 Businessmen........................................................................................................... 6May 13: A Day of Violence, Protests, and Massacre ............................................................... 9The Attacks in the Night and the Prison Break................................................................... 9The Protests at Bobur Square ............................................................................................... 15The Taking of Hostages......................................................................................................... 17The Continuing Rally and Government Shootings ........................................................... 20The Negotiations with the Government............................................................................. 23The Storming of Bobur Square and the Killing Zone ...................................................... 24Sealing off of Bobur Square.............................................................................................. 25Human shields and the flight down Cholpon Prospect ............................................... 28The killing near School 15................................................................................................. 30The Flight from Andijan........................................................................................................ 32Lack of Medical Attention for the Wounded, and the Execution of Wounded Persons................................................................................................................................................... 34The Aftermath of the May 13 Shootings................................................................................. 36The Government’s Account of the Events ........................................................................ 36Unknown Fate of the Bodies ................................................................................................ 39City Sealed Off ........................................................................................................................ 43Intimidation of Witnesses...................................................................................................... 43Preventing the Flow of Information.................................................................................... 45The Human Rights Context of the Andijan Events .............................................................. 49Terrorism and Political Violence in Uzbekistan................................................................. 49Uzbekistan’s Human Rights Record .................................................................................... 50Significance of the Fergana Valley ....................................................................................... 56Economic Background .......................................................................................................... 57

Risks of Future Violence and Instability ............................................................................. 59Recommendations:...................................................................................................................... 59To the United Nations:.......................................................................................................... 60To the United States............................................................................................................... 60To the European Union:........................................................................................................ 61To the Government of the Russian Federation:................................................................ 62To the Government of China: .............................................................................................. 62To the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE): ....................... 62To the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD): ...................... 62

Most people died near School 15, near the Cholpon Cinema. There were armored cars there, and troopson the road. They were also shooting from the buildings. It was getting dark and the bullets were verybig, they would go through several people. The road was completely blocked ahead. We couldn’t even raiseour heads, the bullets were falling like rain. Whoever raised their head died instantly. I also thought Iwas going to die right there.Survivor of the Andijan massacreThe next day [May 14] I heard there were lots of bodies near School No 15, and I went there. I gotthere before lunch time, but there were already no bodies there — I just saw blood, insides, and brainseverywhere on the street. In some places there were up to 1.5 centimeters of dried up blood on the asphalt.There were also lots of shoes — most of them looked really old and shabby, and there were some tinykids’ shoes there. Then I went to the hokimiat and saw the same scene there, plus lots of machine-gunand automatic gun shells.A witness to the Andijan massacre

Executive SummaryOn May 13, 2005, Uzbek government forces killed hundreds of unarmed people whoparticipated in a massive public protest in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan. The scaleof this killing was so extensive, and its nature was so indiscriminate anddisproportionate, that it can best be described as a massacre.The government has denied all responsibility for the killings. It claims the death toll was173 people— law enforcement officials and civilians killed by the attackers, along withthe attackers themselves. The government says the attackers were “Islamic extremists,”who initiated “disturbances” in the city. Uzbek authorities did everything to hide thetruth behind the massacre and have tried to block any independent inquiry into theevents.A Human Rights Watch field investigation in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan recreated acomprehensive account of the events of May 13 and 14 in Andijan, presented in thisreport. Our findings clearly demonstrate the Uzbek government forces’ undeniableresponsibility for the massacre.While the government’s efforts at sealing off the city and intimidating people fromtalking about the events to outsiders have made it exceedingly difficult to establish thetrue death toll – and reveal an attempt to cover up the truth – Human Rights Watch

believes that hundreds were killed. Eyewitnesses told us that about 300-400 people werepresent at the worst shooting incident, which left few survivors. There were severalincidents of shooting throughout the day.The May 13 killings began when thousands of people participated in a rare, massiveprotest on Bobur Square in Andijan, voicing their anger about growing poverty andgovernment repression. The protest was sparked by the freeing from jail of twenty-threebusinessmen who were being tried for “religious fundamentalism.” These charges werewidely perceived as unfair, and had prompted hundreds of people to peacefully protestthe trial in the weeks prior to May 13.The businessmen were freed by a group of armed people who, earlier in the day, raided amilitary barracks and police station, seized weapons, led a prison break to free thebusinessmen, took over the local government building, and took law enforcement andgovernment officials hostage.The attackers who took over government buildings, took people hostage, and usedpeople as human shields, committed serious crimes, punishable under the Uzbekcriminal code.1But neither these crimes nor the peaceful protest that ensued can justify thegovernment’s response. It is the right and the duty of any government to stop suchcrimes as hostage-taking and the takeover of government buildings. However, in doingso, governments are obligated to respect basic human rights standards governing the useof force in police operations. These universal standards are embodied in the UnitedNations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law EnforcementOfficials.2The Basic Principles provide the following:Law enforcement officials, in carrying out their duty, shall as far aspossible apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force.… Whenever the lawful use of force … is unavoidable, law enforcement

officials shall … exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion tothe seriousness of the offense.3The legitimate objective should be achieved with minimal damage and injury, andpreservation of human life respected.4As the subsequent sections of this report will show, Uzbek forces did not observe theserules. According to numerous witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, therewere many instances on May 13 when government troops on armored personnel carriersand military trucks, as well as snipers, fired indiscriminately into a crowd in which theoverwhelming majority of people—numbering in the thousands—were unarmed. Whilesome testimony indicates that, in one shooting incident, security forces first shot into theair, in all other incidents no warnings were given, and no other means of crowd controlwere attempted.After troops sealed off the area surrounding the square, they continued to fire fromvarious directions as the protesters attempted to flee. One group of fleeing protesterswas literally mowed down by government gunfire. The presence of gunmen in thecrowd, and even the possibility that they may have fired at or returned fire fromgovernment forces, cannot possibly justify this wanton slaughter.Human Rights Watch interviewed more than fifty people in a refugee camp inneighboring Kyrgyzstan and in Andijan itself who participated in the demonstrationsand witnessed the violence, marking the most comprehensive research into the eventsdone so far by any nongovernmental or media organization.The government sought to justify its acts by casting the events in the context ofterrorism, and has claimed that all of the dead were killed by the gunmen, and has statedthat the organizers of the protest were Islamic “fanatics and militants” who sought tooverthrow the government and establish an Islamic state. This is unsurprising. For nearlya decade, the Uzbek government has cast nearly all of its domestic critics as “terrorists,”“extremists,” and “Islamic fundamentalists.” The government has faced seriousincidents of terrorism and insurrection, but it has also used threats of terrorism to justifyessentially banning nearly all political opposition, religious or secular. Human RightsWatch research found no evidence that the protesters or the gunmen had an Islamistagenda. Interviews with numerous people present at the demonstrations consistently

revealed that the protesters spoke about economic conditions in Andijan, governmentrepression, and unfair trials—and not the creation of an Islamic state.This report documents the government killings on May 13 and the government attemptto intimidate witnesses in the aftermath. The report places the events of that day againsta background of Uzbekistan’s worsening human rights record, its brutal campaignagainst Islamic “fundamentalism,” and rising impoverishment, and explains how all threehave affected the Fergana Valley in particular.The Uzbek government has launched a criminal investigation into the events in Andijan,but as of this writing there is no indication that it will include an examination ofgovernment forces’ use of lethal force against unarmed people.The Uzbek parliament has created an independent commission of inquiry into theAndijan events whose mandate includes “a thorough analysis of the actions ofgovernment and [law enforcement, security and military] structures, and a legalassessment.5” But given evidence to date that the government has sought to cover up itstroops’ use of indiscriminate force, and the pressure it has put on people not to talkabout what happened, it is reasonable to assert that this commission will be subject topolitical pressure and therefore lack credibility.Finally, given the government’s overall poor human rights record, and in particular itsrecord of impunity for human rights violations, it is unlikely that any government-ledinvestigation would be credible. This makes an independent, international investigation,led by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, imperative for theestablishment of a true record of the killings and the start of an accountability process.The Uzbek government has rejected an international investigation, saying that it isgroundless. Last week the foreign minister said the government would allow foreign

diplomats to monitor an investigation under way by the Uzbek parliament.6But giventhe government’s lack of credibility on investigating abuses, this is not enough toguarantee the integrity of the investigation.While the present report demonstrates the government’s use of excessive lethal force,questions about the precise death toll and the units responsible for the killings remainunanswered. A thorough investigation into the killings must therefore include ballistic,forensic and crime scene investigators, and must have unhindered and independentaccess to hospital, morgue, and other officials records.We call on the international community, including the United Nations, the EuropeanUnion, and the governments of the United States, Russian and China, to ensure thatsuch and investigation is launched.

According to reports, journalists and most relatives of the defendants were prohibitedfrom observing some sessions of the trial.10A local activist, Saidjahon Zainabitdinov,served as a non-lawyer public defender for one of the defendants. Zainabitdinoveventually refused to participate in the proceedings, protesting that they were a sham andthat the judge refused to allow him to pose questions to witnesses and carry out thedefense of his client.11The government claimed that the men were members of an underground Islamic group,“Akramia” (see below), but the extent to which the defendants subscribed to theteachings of Akram Yuldashev or had links to the Akramia movement is unclear. Thefather of one of the defendants asserted that all the defendants were simply devoutMuslims and successful businessmen who pooled resources to assist the growth of oneanother’s businesses and funded charitable work in the community.12The defendants’ businesses—which included furniture factories, business supplycompanies, bakeries, tailoring firms, construction companies, and transportation firms—employed thousands of people in impoverished Andijan. The defendants were wellknown for their role as community leaders. They established a minimum wage thatexceeded the meager government-mandated wage, paid employees’ medical expensesand sick leave, and provided free meals to staff. They also financially supported a localhospital and orphanage and made donations to local schools andmahalla,or localneighborhood, committees.13When interviewed by Human Rights Watch in the refugee camp in Kyrgyzstan, the freedbusinessmen explained that they did indeed have close ties to each other, but that theirrelationships had nothing to do with religious extremism. Many of their families facedgovernment repression after the 1999 Tashkent bombings (see below), and they were

unable to obtain credit from government-controlled banks. The businessmen had joinedand used their combined capital to finance each other’s businesses.14Operating outside the government-controlled banking system, the businessmen werebeyond the usual levers of state control. In many areas of commerce and industry, theysuccessfully undercut the market share of pro-government monopolies. They enjoyedthe loyalty of thousands of employees who were generally paid better and had betterworking conditions than most others in Andijan. The entrepreneurs’ popularity on thesegrounds presented a challenge to Uzbek authorities.The twenty-three businessmen were not the only group of entrepreneurs targeted by thegovernment. In January 2005, the authorities arrested a second group of thirteenbusinessmen on the same charges, and other businessmen in Andijan lived in fear ofarrest. One Andijan businessman told Human Rights Watch that he had left Andijan inJanuary for Moscow to escape arrest and that there were rumors that the Andijanauthorities had drawn up a list of 500 businessmen whom they suspected of involvementin “Akramia.”15The crackdown on the Andijan business community and the closure of these firmsraised tensions not only because of the unfairness of the businessmen’s trials. In thealready economically depressed Fergana Valley, the loss of thousands of jobs as a directresult of the crackdown was devastating, plunging many families into poverty. And noend to their misery was in sight: instead, the government was continuing to arrest morebusinessmen and shutting down their companies, adding to the economic hardship.On April 25, 2005, the defendants announced a hunger strike during the trial to protestthe judge’s actions at the trial.” Defense counsel petitioned the court to have aprosecution witness evaluated for mental fitness to testify, and to call as witnessesAkram Yuldashev as well as the government expert in religious affairs who had issuedthe conclusion that Yuldashev’s writings should be banned as extremist.16

The judge refused all these defense motions, and the defendants abandoned the hungerstrike when authorities attempted to force feed them through feeding tubes.17Throughout the trial, relatives and supporters of the defendants gathered daily outsidethe court to protest the trial. The demonstrations were orderly and quiet and grew toinclude several hundred people. On May 10, approximately 700-1000 people protestedoutside of the city court where the trial was taking place.On May 11, police arrested three young men who had been supporters of the twenty-three businessmen, apparently on suspicion of beating police officers in a neighborhoodin the outskirts of Andijan.18On May 12, the relatives of the three young men went tothe local police station, where one officer acknowledged that the three were alsoconnected to the trial protests. The officer told the relatives that two of the young menwere at the local prosecutor’s office, and that a third was at the city prosecutor’s office,for questioning. No one from the local prosecutor’s office would give any informationabout the two, according to a BBC correspondent who accompanied the relatives to thestation.19

attacks on the police building and military barracks, but during these attacks, the menmanaged to obtain a significant number of weapons, including automatic AK-47 riflesand grenades, as well as a Zil-130 military truck. It appears that the attackers managed tosurprise the weakly guarded police and military units, and that only limited fighting tookplace during both attacks.23According to the government, the attack resulted in thedeaths of four policemen at the police station and two soldiers at the military position.24The attackersIt appears that most of the attackers were young men, including relatives and supportersof the twenty-three imprisoned businessmen. According to one of the lawyers whodefended the twenty-three businessmen, Ravshanbek Khajimov, the attackers were“their friends, their colleagues who were still free, and their relatives who just lost theirheads. … They decided that all other means had been exhausted and total injustice wasbeing done, and they could bear it no longer. They decided to resort to force.”25Asecond witness, a human rights activist from Andijan who went to Bobur Square on themorning of May 13 after hearing some shooting in town, told Human Rights Watch thathe saw armed men deployed around thehokimiat(regional government building), after itwas firmly under control of the gunmen:Near the hokimiat, I saw a group of people in civilian clothes armedwith submachine guns that kind of guarded the area. I recognized them:they were all familiar faces—people whom I had seen for three monthsin the court, supporters of the defendants. …I also recognized somepeople at the door of the hokimiat. I did not dare to go inside thehokimiat. …The gunmen looked like they had been busy fightingthroughout the night: their clothes were dirty and shabby.26

their friends and family members out of detention. They started at the traffic police office, and as numbers builtup they moved towards a military unit in the city, where they forced troops onto the defensive and seizedKalashnikovs.” Shokirov is believed to have been killed during the government assault. Galima Bukharbaeva,“Blood Flows in Uzbek Crackdown,”Institute for War and Peace Reporting,May 14, 2005.According to a lawyer for the twenty-three men, Ravshanbek Khajimov, the police unit was guarded by onlyfive policemen, but the attackers managed to obtain about 100 AK-47 rifles. David Holley and Sergei L. Loiko,“Uzbek Witness Tells of Brutality on Both Sides; Government Troops Killed Hostages After Relatives andFriends of Men Freed in Jailbreak ‘Just Lost Their Heads,’ A Defense Lawyer Recounts,”Los Angeles Times,May 23, 2005.242523

The attackers, who referred to each other as “brothers” and may have been members ofan informal “brotherhood” of devout Muslims, would remain a cohesive groupthroughout the unfolding events in Andijan.27Among their leaders was SharifjonShokirov, the brother of one of the twenty-three defendants, Shakir Shokirov. Thefather of the Shokirov brothers, Bakaram Shokirov, had been imprisoned in 1998 on thecharge of religious extremism and was an acquaintance of Akram Yuldashev.28SharifjonShokirov gave statements to the press during the protests, and is believed to have beenkilled during the government shooting. A second leader, Abduljon Parpiev, who hadbeen imprisoned after the 1999 Tashkent bombings, conducted negotiations withInterior Minister Zokirjonjon Almatov (see below).29It is unknown whether Parpievsurvived the crackdown.Although it is clear that a small number of protesters were armed, there is no indicationthat they were “fanatics and militants” with an Islamist agenda as alleged by PresidentKarimov.30The president has consistently painted his opponents as Islamic radicals, withlittle factual basis for such allegations, in a blatant attempt to discredit his opponents andgain international support for his war against “Islamic extremism.” None of thedemands of the attackers had any manifest relation to Islamic fundamentalism, andIslam was barely mentioned in the speeches in Bobur Square, other than in the form ofcomplaints against the imprisonment of people on charges of “Islamic extremism.”Interviews with numerous people present at the demonstrations consistently revealedthat the protesters spoke about economic conditions in Andijan, government repression,and unfair trials—and not the creation of an Islamic state. People were shoutingOzodliq!(“Freedom”), notAllahu Akbar!(“God is Great”).31

In his press conference on May 14 President Karimov attributed to the protesters and their leaders a desire tooverthrow the Andijan government and install a “Utopian Muslim caliphate.” Tashkent, Uzbek Television FirstChannel in Uzbek, May 14, 2005.Interfax News Servicecited President Karimov as saying, “According to the information we have, [the protestorganizers] are brainwashing young people with ideas of creating a unified Islamic state,” See, “Andizhanunrest orchestrated by Hizb ut-Tahrir - Karimov (Part 2),”Interfax News Service,May 14, 2005.Several news outlets reported that in a press conference on May 15 President Karimov blamed “Akramia,”which he called an “extremist organization”and which he said was a part of Hizb ut-Tahrir, for organizing theprotests.A Western journalist later commented: “This rebellion has nothing to do with religion. I did not hear cries ofAllahu Akbar, and none of the rebels inside the regional administration building mentioned anything about anIslamic state.” Galima Bukharbaeva and Matluba Azamatova, “No Requiem for the Dead,”Institute for War andPeace Reporting,May 16, 2005.31

A leaflet found by a reporter on Bobur Square, apparently written in the name of theimprisoned businessmen and distributed to encourage the residents of Andijan to attendthe protest march, clearly explains the reasons behind the protest:We could tolerate it no longer. We are unjustly accused of membershipin Akramia. We were tormented for almost a year, but they could notprove us guilty in court. Then they started persecuting our nearest anddearest.If we don’t demand our rights, no one else will protect them for us. Theproblems that affect you trouble us as well. If you have a governmentjob, your salary is not enough to live on. If you earn a living by yourself,they start envying you and putting obstacles in your way. If you talkabout your pain, no one will listen. If you demand your rights, they willcriminalize you.Dear Andijanis! Let us defend our rights. Let the region’s governorcome, and representatives of the President too, and hear our pain. Whenwe make demands together, the authorities should hear us. If we sticktogether, they will not harm us.32The prison breakAfter obtaining weapons, the attackers moved to the Andijan prison after midnight,breaking down the gate of the prison by ramming it with a vehicle. The attackers appearagain to have faced minimal resistance and quickly managed to enter the prison. One ofthe twenty-three defendants, “Faizullo F.” (not his real name), explained to HumanRights Watch:On the twelfth of May, we were ordered to go to sleep at 10:00 p.m. Wewere woken after midnight. I was on the third floor. After midnight, weheard some noises, shouting and some shooting, single shots.Everything happened very fast. Ten, fifteen minutes later people wereinside the prison and started breaking open the doors with metal bars.Those who attacked the prison had weapons, but we didn’t. The personstook us out of the cells and said, “Now you are freed from injustice,

please go out.” At first we were shocked. Then we decided to go downand go out.33According to the government, three prison guards were killed during the attack. Severalof the freed prisoners told Human Rights Watch that they had seen two bodies ofguards near the entrance gate, but that they were not sure whether the guards were deador wounded.The attackers freed not only the defendants,34but hundreds of other prisoners, many ofthem also charged with “religious extremism.” The freed prisoners claimed to HumanRights Watch that as many as a thousand prisoners were freed, although the ProcuracyGeneral President Karimov publicly has stated that 526 of the 734 prisoners at theprison were freed during the attack.35After the attack, the freed prisoners were given thechoice of joining a downtown protest, or going home: “The people who attacked theprison said that those who wanted to could go with them to the hokimiat to tell whathappened to us.”36Following the attack on the prison, the attackers began to make their way to thehokimiat, and called on others to join them, using cell phones to mobilize knownsupporters. One of the participants in these early events described to Human RightsWatch how he came to join the events:My brother-in-law is one of the twenty-three. I was taking part in thedemonstrations to protest the unfair trials. Around 1:00 a.m. on thenight of the 13th, I got a call and one of the organizers told me to cometo the prison. When I arrived there, all of the prisoners were already out3334

Some persons interviewed by Human Rights Watch claimed that six defendants were not at the prison at thetime, but were in detention at the offices of the SNB (Sluzhba Natsionalnoi Bezopasnosti, the national securityservice). However, several of the twenty-three businessmen interviewed by Human Rights Watch stated that alltwenty-three of them were at the prison at the time of the attack, and that all had been freed. President Karimovalso suggested in his official version of events that some of the businessmen were still in government custodyduring the protest, stating that the first demand of the protesters was “There are six of our people held by you—you bring them here and hand them over to us, everything will be over.” “Uzbek leader gives news conferenceon Andijon events - full version,”BBC Monitoring Central Asia,May 14, 2005.Human Rights Watch interview with “Faizullo F.” (not his real name), Kyrgyzstan, May 24, 2005; HumanRights Watch interview with attacker, May 24, 2005; C.J. Chivers, “Survivors and Toe Tags Offer Clues toUzbek Uprising,”New York Times,May 23, 2005. On May 30, the Procuracy General of Uzbekistan reportedthat 527 prisoners had been illegally freed, and that 470 subsequently voluntarily returned to the prison.www.gov.uz/ru/content.scm?contentId=12919. Earlier claims that up to 2,000 prisoners were freed appearinaccurate, as the population of the prison appears to have been about 1,000.3635

on the street. There were about fifty of us [attackers]. We told theprisoners, “if you want to join us, join us, if not, you can go home.”Some thirty people came with [our group], the rest went away. We gotinto two cars and drove to the hokimiat.37The shooting at the headquarters of the National Security ServiceThe attackers and the freed prisoners made their way over to the hokimiat, located aboutsix kilometers from the prison. On the way, some of the attackers and their supportersran into resistance from Uzbek security services being mobilized around the city. One ofthe participants told Human Rights Watch that soldiers in camouflage ambushed hisconvoy of two cars on Oshskaia Street, and that three of his colleagues were killed in theambush.38However, most of the attackers made it to the hokimiat and easily took overof the building, which had only a single guard during the night.39A second shooting incident took place as the gunmen moved past the building of theNational Security Service (in Russian,Sluzhba Natsionalnoi Bezopasnosti,and known locallyas the SNB), which was a focal point of the protester’s anger, as SNB officers hadarrested and interrogated most of the twenty-three defendants. A heavy gun battle brokeout around the SNB building, although it is unclear whether the fighting was initiated bythe attackers aiming to overrun the SNB building, or by SNB officers trying to stop theattackers’ progress. According to one of the freed defendants who had already reachedthe hokimiat by the time the shooting at the SNB took place, heavy gunfire at the SNBbuilding lasted for about one hour. A local human rights defender walked by the SNBbuilding, apparently after the attack had been repulsed: “There was blood [on the street]near the SNB building and automatic weapons lying on the street. Under an APC therewas the body of a soldier in a bullet-proof vest, and there were bullet marks on thebuilding of the SNB,” and a second human rights defender gave an almost identicaldescription to Human Rights Watch.40According to one of the attackers interviewed by373839

Human Rights Watch interview with “Rustam R.,” Kyrgyzstan, May 20, 2005: “When we arrived at thehokimiat, the building was already taken over by another group [which arrived before us]…. When they weretaking over the building, there was only one person there, so it was not difficult. They did not kill him, they justtook him inside.”Human Rights Watch interview with Kodyrzhon Ergashev, Andijan, May 24, 2005. A second human rightsactivist told Human Rights Watch: “I went to see what was happening at the SNB and the MVD [Ministry ofInternal Affairs] buildings. I drove around the center of the city and saw several burned military cars and bodieshere and there. At the SNB, I saw intensive shooting, and a dead soldier at a damaged APC.” Human RightsWatch interview with “Bakhit B.” (not his real name), Kyrgyzstan, May 20, 2005. President Karimov said in hisstatement after the attack: “Then [the attackers] went and encircled the regional interior directorate’s buildingand the building of the regional department of the [National] Security Services [SNB]. As officers at thesebuildings were armed, they were not able to overrun them.” Speech of President Islam Karimov, May 14, 2005.40

Human Rights Watch, fifteen attackers died at the SNB building, although he personallyhad only seen two of the bodies.41A reporter who interviewed Sharifjon Shokirov, oneof the protest leaders, also confirmed the attack on the SNB building, writing that SNBofficers successfully repelled the attack and that as many as thirty attackers may havedied during the assault on the SNB.42The group of attackers, freed prisoners, and their supporters began reaching thehokimiat long before dawn:There were only a few people in the square, about one hundred, whenwe first arrived. … As we reached the square, we just waited. It was stilldark, so we were waiting for the morning to come and for the people tojoin the meeting.43Meanwhile, the government started pulling its forces up to the city center. A journalistwho was making his way to Bobur Square to see what was happening there in the earlymorning of May 13 told Human Rights Watch:The first thing I saw was a column of military vehicles, four trucks.These were heavy military trucks, ZIL-131 and URALs. They werefollowed by a column of ten jeeps, seven or eight were open jeeps,American or British, and the rest were Russian jeeps. Inside were menarmed with automatic guns pointed at people. They were going upNavoi Prospect. I saw no policemen in the streets, but near the UVD[local department of Ministry of Interior] we saw huge number ofpolicemen, fully armed and in bullet-proof vests.44

The group began to prepare for a massive protest in Bobur Square, in front of thehokimiat. At the stage next to the Bobur monument at the northern end of the square, aloudspeaker system was activated to allow people to address the growing crowd. Whilemany protesters joined the crowd on their own initiative, the original group continued touse their mobile phones and other means to draw more people to the protest. Accordingto one person who was inside the hokimiat during the protest, the group leader,Sharifjon Shokirov, kept asking his men, “Have you invited the people from themahallas(neighborhoods)?”45As the crowd grew into the thousands, the protest was transformed from the actions ofseveral dozen armed gunmen into a massive expression of dissatisfaction with theendemic poverty, corruption, unemployment, repression, and unfair trials that plaguedthe area. The first speakers were the attackers themselves, who explained to the crowdthat they had acted because “they were displeased about the unjust imprisonment of thetwenty-three defendants, and demanded justice and a fair sentence in the case.”46Theywere followed by some of the freed prisoners themselves, who described their unfairtrials and the terrible conditions they faced in prison.47Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch spoke only of gunmen around thehokimiat building and at the perimeter of the square, and not within the protestingcrowd or on the speaker podium. Human Rights Watch has reviewed numerousphotographs taken by international and local journalists during the protest, and thesephotographs confirm the description of witnesses of a massive civilian crowd ofprotesters, as well as the location of a small number of gunmen outside the crowd andaway from the protesters. The photographs clearly show that there were large numbersof women and children among the civilians in the square during the protest.Soon, the loudspeaker was opened to the crowd, and ordinary people came forward tovoice their grievances and demand jobs and fair treatment from the government. Evengovernment employees came to the microphone, explaining that they too were suffering,and had not received their salaries since January.48The crowd soon swelled to thousandspersons, according to many accounts, up to 10,000.49In deeply repressive Uzbekistan,

The Taking of HostagesIn the early morning of May 13, as the crowd grew in Bobur Square, the gunmen startedtaking law enforcement and government officials hostages. Some of the hostages werealso captured by unarmed people in the square and handed over to the gunmen.The first hostages were people in military uniforms, either policemen or military, whodrove along the fence surrounding the hokimiat building and started shooting at thecrowd through the fence. A witness who at the time was standing near the hokimiatbuilding told Human Rights Watch:Early in the morning a green car with black windows arrived from theside of Cholguzar with three people inside.50Two of them came out ofthe car and fired several shots from sniper rifles at the crowd throughthe fence around hokimiat. A seven- or ten-year-old boy was killed. Thebullet hit him in the head. I saw it with my own eyes. A big group ofpeople rushed there, surrounded and detained these people with theirbare hands and took away their weapons. They tied them up, beat themand brought them to the hokimiat. These three people wore very lightgreen or yellowish military uniform, caps and army boots.Fifteen or twenty minutes later people detained a policeman with asubmachine gun who was dressed in police uniform but wore a red andblue jacket over the uniform. He made a few shots from hisKalashnikov and also killed a guy.51One of the gunmen confirmed to Human Rights Watch that they had taken hostages,and explained the process. He claimed that cars of police and soldiers kept driving pastthe square, shooting at the crowd, and that they started taking hostages in response tothese shootings:

We started stopping the cars by throwing stones and blocking the roads.We took the soldiers and policemen out of the cars and took themhostage. Besides, people from the square also brought hostages to us.We kept them inside the hokimiat, there were about twenty of them. Welet the soldiers go because we didn’t believe them responsible, they werejust following orders. … But we kept the policemen, the tax inspector,and the city prosecutor.52A second man involved in the hostage-taking gave Human Rights Watch a very similaraccount:First they came with a military KAMAZ truck and just [drove and] shotat people, and then left. We lost about ten people in that first attack.Also among the crowd were a few police in uniform and some SNBofficers.53The man said that the soldiers first fired shots in the air and that then several smallchildren were hit.After these first shootings, the people became very angry—Why was thegovernment shooting peaceful people? When they became angry, theystarted capturing people in uniform, catching seven or eight policeofficers and five or six SNB officers.Near the hokimiat there were buildings for housing officials, just fiftymeters away. The people went to capture these officials also. Theycaptured the prosecutor and the trial judge, and the head of the taxdepartment. About twenty government officials were captured, alsosome when they came to work. I am a witness to this myself: when theycaptured the[se] hostages, they did not allow anyone to beat them.54

The hostages were taken into the hokimiat building. Throughout the day, the gunmen aswell as civilian protesters continued to bring more hostages into the hokimiat, includingsuspected government agents in the crowd.According to several witnesses, more than twenty-five people, and possibly as many asforty persons, were taken hostage.55Among the hostages were uniformed and plain-clothed policemen, firemen, the head of the tax inspectors, at least one judge, and thecity prosecutor. A journalist who was allowed by the gunmen inside the hokimiat toldHuman Rights Watch that he saw ten tied-up policemen on the second floor of thebuilding.56In the afternoon, around 3:00 p.m., several of the high-profile hostages wereforced to appear in front of the crowd and “confess” their role in the unfair trials of thetwenty-three businessmen:They brought the head of the prosecutor’s office and the head of the taxdepartment. They had captured them and brought them to the podium,and told them to tell the truth about the twenty-three jailed persons—they were factory owners and provided work for the people. The[armed] men accused [the prosecutor and tax inspector] of being unjust.The prosecutor said he knew [the defendants] are good [people], but“we can’t do anything, we were ordered to do it [convict them], we arelike puppets [kukly] in the hands of the power.”…The head of the taxinspectors also said they were compelled to do what the governmentordered.57At the same time, small groups of armed men engaged in skirmishes with governmenttroops in the streets adjacent to Bobur Square, and chaos ruled in parts of the city. TheBakirov and Akhunbabev cinemas were set on fire during the early afternoon, althoughall of the participants in the events interviewed by Human Rights Watch denied that themilitants had been responsible for these arson attacks, instead blaming them on“provocateurs.”58Sporadic fighting also continued in parts of the city away from theHuman Rights Watch interview with “Rustam R.”, May 20, 2005, Kyrgyzstan; Human Rights Watch interviewwith Kodyrjon Ergashev, Andijan, May 24, 200556575855

The Continuing Rally and Government ShootingsThroughout the day, the protest rally in Bobur Square continued to attract more andmore people. The overwhelming majority of people on the square at all times wereunarmed protesters, whose numbers grew as the day wore on. By noon the crowdnumbered up to 10,000 people, and included many women and children. Two of thewomen interviewed by Human Rights Watch, “Razia R.” and “Makhbuba M.,” (not theirreal names) said they had come to the protest with their five and four childrenrespectively.60According to all of the witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch,the overwhelming majority of the protesters behaved peacefully and did not engage inany violence or threats. Women and children were sitting on carpets brought to thesquare from the hokimiat building; at lunchtime, food was distributed.61Witnesses who were around or inside the hokimiat estimated the number of armed menaround and inside the building at between fifty and one hundred; although many peoplein Bobur Square said they had seen only a few armed men in the area.However, at various points during the day, troops in armored personnel carriers (APCs)and military trucks periodically drove by, firing randomly into the edge of the largelyunarmed crowd. The government had also deployed snipers above the square, butneither the snipers nor the drive-by shooters appeared to be directing fire at personswho were posing any threat. Protesters and observers interviewed by Human RightsWatch all stated that there were almost no armed men on the square itself, and there isno evidence to suggest that the security forces made any attempts to focus their fire onlegitimate targets such as the few gunmen in the square. One of the witnesses said, “Thepeople in the APCs were not aiming at specific people, they just shot at the edges of thecrowd as they were moving. They were driving and while they drove, they were shootingat people from the side openings of the APCs.”62Means of restoring order or dispersingthe crowd short of lethal force do not appear to have been used.

The first attack on the crowd in Bobur Square by security forces took place early in themorning, around 6:00 or 7:00 a.m., when the crowd in the square numbered only about300 to 400 persons, many of them the released prisoners and the armed men who hadattacked the prison. A military vehicle came from the direction of the old market andpolyclinic, and opened fire on the crowd from automatic weapons while continuing todrive, ultimately driving away onto Cholpon Prospect.63Around 10:00 a.m., troops in an APC drove around the edges of the square, firing intothe much larger crowd, and killing as many as twelve people, including a young boy anda woman: “They came in one APC and shot [into the crowd] at the edge of the crowd,and then a few minutes later they also came to the opposite edge and shot.”64One of theattackers gave a similar account of the attacks on the protesters:Several cars drove along the square, and people were shooting from thecars. They were policemen and soldiers. They would kill five, six peoplein the square as they were shooting, and the rest of the people would geton the ground. The rally would then continue, and people would comeback. …Then we started stopping the cars by throwing stones andblocking the roads. … After the cars, an APC arrived. It drove along thesquare six, seven times, shooting. Every time, several people would fall.It was a yellowish APC. I believe it was military.65“Muhamed M.” (not his real name), a thirty-eight-year-old furniture maker and father oftwo, recalled how he came to the square and witnessed the attack on the demonstratorsat around 10:00 a.m.:Suddenly, at 10:00 a.m., a military car drove along Komil Yashin Street[running east-west along the edge of the square] and they were justshooting as they were driving. I was shocked they would just shoot atthe people. A twelve-year-old boy was shot in the legs right in front ofme, a lot of people were wounded. …In front of us, there were noarmed people. They were driving at high speed and just shooting as theydrove by.66

When asked why he remained in Bobur Square despite this and subsequent attacks,Muhamed M. explained that government repression was directly responsible for thedetermination of the protesters to stay in the square:Why did we stay in the square? People had waited for this moment forso long. When we were shot at, we came back. We were waiting for theofficials to come to the meeting, we wanted this so badly. The peoplehad become scared because of the repression of the regime, and theyhad no opportunity to express their problems because of it. People justthought that if they gathered all together and stated their complaints, thegovernment would do nothing [against them]. But if you are alone, oneor two, the government would deal with you [arrest you]. That is whythe people were so happy the crowd was so big. Finally, after all thistime, they could express their problems. The whole population had beenwaiting for this moment.67The attacks by APCs firing blindly into the crowds continued throughout the day. Oneof the witnesses said the snipers deployed around the square were systematicallyshooting people who had just finished speaking at the podium.68Because the crowd hadgrown to fill the entirety of Bobur Square by mid-day and was overflowing into thenearby streets, protesters were often only aware of what was happening in theirimmediate area, and could no longer see what was happening on opposite sides of thesquare. But almost all of the protesters recalled regular shooting incidents at the square:“While we were staying in the square, the APC passed through five or six times, drivingtwo ways. The time in between varied, sometimes forty-five minutes or one hour,sometimes longer.”69In addition to those killed from the APC and sniper fire there were many woundedpeople at the square. The wounded had initially been taken to nearby hospitals, but thensecurity forces began blocking the roads and it became too dangerous to take thewounded to the hospital. A first-aid station was established inside the hokimiat, staffedby doctors and other medical personnel who were attending the protest. It is not knownwhat happened to the wounded in the hokimiat after Bobur Square was stormed (seebelow).

The Negotiations with the GovernmentSome of the gunmen made contact with top government officials, and began negotiatingwith Uzbekistan’s interior minister, Zokirjonjon Almatov. According to a witness whowas inside the hokimiat, the contact was initiated when the city prosecutor gaveAbduljon Parpiev Almatov’s phone number, and urged Parpiev to call Almatov, sayinghe was certain the government would come to listen to their demands once officialsrealized how big a crowd had gathered.70The witness said that Parpiev called Almatov,71and negotiations began.This and one other witness familiar with the negotiations, who were interviewedseparately by Human Rights Watch, both said that Parpiev demanded that thegovernment respect the human rights of the population, stop illegal arrests andpersecutions, and release illegally arrested persons, including Akram Yuldashev. Parpievalso asked Almatov to send a high-ranking government representative to the square tolisten to and address the grievances of the population.72Almatov apparently respondedby suggesting that the government open a corridor to Kyrgyzstan to allow the protestersto leave the country—a strategy used in the past to end a stand-off with armed Islamicmilitants in Central Asia,73Parpiev tried to explain that this is not what the protesterswanted, saying “Don’t look at it like this, you have to come and meet the people andlisten to their demands.”74Almatov said he would consider the demands, and call back.According to two separate witnesses, Almatov called back about thirty minutes later andsaid that the government would not negotiate.75

According to President Karimov, it was Minister Almatov who established contact with the people in thehokimiat. “I can also tell you about the people who held negotiations with us. In the first place, we gave [UzbekInterior Minister] Zokirjonjon Almatov this difficult and complicated task. He constantly guided negotiations onthe phone”. See, “Uzbek leader gives news conference on Andijon events - full version”,BBC MonitoringCentral Asia,May 14, 2005.Human Rights Watch interview with “Rovshan R.”, Kyrgyzstan, May 26, 2005; Human Rights Watch interviewwith “Kamil K.”, Kyrgyzstan, May 27, 2005. See also Chivers, supra (“Parpiev…made three demands: that thegovernment release its political prisoners, grant human rights and political freedoms, and send a senior officialto address the demonstration.”); Galima Bukharbaeva and Matluba Azamatova, “No Requiem for the Dead,”Institute for War and Peace Reporting,May 16, 2005 (“Parpiev…told reporters shortly before the assault thatthey were not making political demands. ‘We only want freedom, justice and protection of human rights. Also,we want the release of Akram Yuldashev from prison,’ he said.”).In 1999 the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (see below) took hostages in Kyrgyzstan and apparentlynegotiated money from the Japanese government in exchange for the release of Japanese hostages, and thenwere allowed by Kyrgyz and Uzbek forces to leave the country, presumably to Tajikistan and eventuallyAfghanistan. Prior to that resolution, the Kyrgyz and Uzbek governments used force against the hostage-takers,including bombing the area where they were presumed to be hiding74757372

The Storming of Bobur Square and the Killing ZoneFor most of the day, the protesters in the square endured periodic attacks by the securityforces. According to witnesses who were at different locations in the square at the timeof these attacks, each of the attacks resulted in casualties among the protesters. One ofthe witnesses said that he saw five people wounded around him.76Another witness, whowas standing near the Bobur monument, recalled:An APC was moving by, shooting at the street and at the square. Threepeople who were standing not far from me were killed. One of themwas hit with a bullet in the head—the entire upper part of his scull wasblown off by the shot. The other one was hit by two bullets—one in thestomach and one in the neck. I could not tell how the third one waswounded—other people carried him away immediately. When the APCdrove by I suddenly felt like my right ear was burning—I thought I waswounded, but it turned out the bullet passed just by me. I became deaffor some time.77Human Rights Watch does not know of any source that performed a body count, butthrough the interviews we have conducted, it seems likely that well more than a dozen,and possibly up to fifty persons were killed in these early skirmishes.Rumors spread around the square that President Karimov himself was coming toaddress the crowd, as demanded by the protesters. The demands of the protesters inAndijan had belied the government’s own claims that they were “fanatic and extremistgroups” aiming to “overthrow the constitutional government.” Witness after witnesstold Human Rights Watch that the main aim of the protest was to bring their grievancesto the attention of President Karimov, and that cheers had gone up in the crowd when it

was incorrectly announced that Karimov was coming. A baker with two children arrivedat the protest in the afternoon and stayed on, even after being shot at:After the shooting was done, the people just stood up and continuedwith the meeting. People were waiting for the president to come. Theywanted to meet him and explain their problems. They wanted to know iftheir problems came from the local [administrative] level, or if they camefrom the top. We wanted to ask the president to solve our problems andmake our lives easier, but we were not trying to get rid of thegovernment of Karimov.78Another woman said, “I came to the protest with my five kids. We came there becausethe president had always promised to take care of the people and we believed [him]; weheard [rumors] and we were hoping that the president would come and we were waitingfor him.”79A third witness, a mother of two, simply said, “we stayed in the square because wethought Karimov was coming, especially when we saw the helicopter flying overhead.…We were expecting Karimov, but they started shooting at us instead.”80

Sealing off of Bobur SquareDespite the expectations of the demonstrators, no government official came to addressthe crowd. Instead, the security forces began to prepare to attack the protesters.Protesters had still been able to freely reach the square at 3:00 p.m.,81but by about 4:00p.m., they began to understand that the roads around the square were being blocked off:People said that we were all blocked off, that the military had deployedin all the streets, that there was no way out of there and that the troopswere going to storm the square. We did not see the troops, but thepeople who tried to get out told us about this. The military did not letpeople in or out. People who tried to escape through the side streetsnear the Detskii Mir shop [one block north of the square, along

Cholpon Prospect] returned and said the road was blocked. …Thepeople were getting panicked.82Most of the roads out of Bobur Square were blocked by government troops, APCs, orby buses parked across the road. Navoi Prospect and Cholguzar streets, running southfrom the square, were both blocked; troops were also deployed at School 30, the parkeast of the square, and at the market area north of the square. The only effective escapepath was north onto the main avenue of the city, Cholpon Prospect, which had alsobeen blocked off by three buses being parked across the road.Shortly after 5:00 p.m., APCs and military lorries suddenly arrived at the far end of thesquare, and the troops began firing directly into the massive crowd. Other troopsemerged from behind the hokimiat, which by this time had brick barricades around it,and various side streets. Galima Bukharbaeva, the Uzbekistan project director for theimpartialInstitute for War and Peace Reporting(IWPR), was in the square at the time of theassault and later described it in her dispatch:The assault began at 5:20 p.m. local time. At least nine people werekilled in the first volley of gunfire. Their fellow demonstrators carriedtheir blood-covered bodies inside the compound of the Andijan regionalgovernment building, which was being held by protesters….The eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers, APCs, appeared out ofnowhere, moving through the streets at speed, past the people on theouter fringes of the rally. The first column of vehicles thundered pastwithout taking any aggressive action.But a second column arriving five minutes later suddenly opened fire onthe crowds, firing off round after round without even slowing down totake aim…. Overhead, helicopters circled, clearly spying out where thebiggest concentrations of people were gathered.83Another journalist, who was standing near the hokimiat at the time, provided a similaraccount to Human Rights Watch:

At 5:15 p.m. I saw an APC and then a truck moving along NavoiProspect. They passed by me and moved up towards CholponProspect... Five minutes later I saw another truck on Navoi Prospect.While the first truck was covered with an awning and there weresubmachine-gunners inside, the second one had an open top and therewere thirty or forty soldiers with Kalashnikovs sitting there. There worecamouflage uniforms. Those were military uniforms and a military truck.I felt that something is about to happen and moved to a more securelocation, closer to the pavement. The truck stopped at a distance of fiveor six meters from me. And as soon as it stopped, they opened fire,without any warning.I immediately hit the ground. It lasted for may be a minute, was hard totell. The truck was moving all the time and shooting in all directions... Icould not see what was happening on the square. When the shootingceased, I got up and started running... People were fleeing from thesquare, the [sounds of] heavy shooting were coming from there, and twocolumns of smoke were rising into the air.84Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the attack on the square, like theprevious attacks throughout the day, took place without any warning. Those interviewedsaid that the authorities did not make any announcements to order the massive crowd todisperse or to warn them of the upcoming attack, or to call on the gunmen to surrender.Certainly the Uzbek authorities could have issued warning calls, using the public addresssystems of the APCs or the helicopters flying overhead, or from the neighboringapartment buildings in which snipers were deployed. One of the demonstrators recalled:“No one from the government gave any warning. We were just waiting for a governmentrepresentative [to come talk to us]. There were no announcements to leave the square,and without any warning they just started to shoot.”85A second witness told HumanRights Watch: “There was no warning, they started shooting without any warning.”86The shooting [at the square] was very severe, and a lot of people died there. After this,the people were directed to go to the side of the old city,” recalled one survivor. Panic848586

ensued in the crowd. A woman who had been in the crowd told Human Rights Watch:“There was a guy on the podium, and he was shouting, ‘Look! Look, people! At theback they are shooting at us! People are dying! Run away!”87A journalist who was trying to escape along with a group of about a dozen people saidthat around 5:45 p.m. he heard heavy shooting right behind him. He said:I turned around and saw an armored personnel carrier moving right onto us... We started running in the direction of the square, and we gotvery lucky—there was a park on our way, the side gates were open, andwe ran in. I was counting from there—after the APCs, five URALtrucks passed by. As we were running through the park, we kept hearingheavy submachine gun fire. They were shooting at us, at all the peoplewho were fleeing... We understood that a real carnage was happeningthere.88

Human shields and the flight down Cholpon ProspectAnother survivor gave a detailed account of the chaos which ensued when governmenttroops stormed the square, and of the failed effort by the armed militants to bring themassive crowd to safety by using the hostages as human shields:Then the shooting started. We saw people falling down from theshooting, I saw a twelve-year-old boy killed next to me. People got upconfused, saying “They are shooting us, people are dying!” Afterstanding up, we ran to all sides. People were being shot as we ran, andfell down. The fellows who brought the prosecutors and tax inspector[to the podium] brought the people together. They told us not to beafraid—they would put the hostages in front of the crowd to cover us.They told us [over the microphone] that when the soldiers saw thegovernment people, they would not shoot us. We were directed towardsCholpon Prospect. I can’t say how big our group was, we were runningand pushing our way out of the square. If you ran into another direction,you were shot, so your life depended on staying with the group.89

Two separate groups made their way into Cholpon Prospect: a first group of about threehundred persons, mostly men, with a large group of hostages in front of them, and asecond, much larger group, which included many women, children and old men, andwas surrounded by men trying to protect them and also headed by a group of hostages.90“At 6:00 p.m., the shooting started again, “Kamil K.” (not his real name), who was in thesecond group, told Human Rights Watch the following:People were afraid they were being attacked. Two hundred or threehundred people took fifteen or twenty of the hostages in front of them,and headed towards Cholpon Prospect. … There were about 500 metersbetween us and this first group, and we also had hostages in front of us,maybe six or so policemen.91As the crowd moved into Cholpon Prospect and headed north, they immediately foundtheir way blocked by three buses parked across it, at the crossing of Parkovaya Street.Some shots were fired at parts of the crowd from the area of the stadium to the right.92The panicked crowd pushed aside the middle bus to allow people to pass through, butsoon came under heavier fire as people moved ahead. “The shooting began again as wepassed the buses. Automatic weapons were being fired at us from everywhere, from theroofs and behind the trees,” one survivor recalled.93A second witness told HumanRights Watch:I saw a few buses in front of us that blocked the road. People pushedone of them aside and made their way through. The shooting resumed. Iheard a scream behind me. I looked back and saw a man with half of hishead. The shooting became heavier. The number of wounded was morethan those killed. They fired at us with all kinds of weapons. There were[red] tracer bullets. People got down on the ground and the shootingstopped. Then we got up and walked again. After we walked twentymeters the shooting resumed.94

The killing near School 15The worst was still to come. Just a hundred meters ahead, APCs were parked across theroad, effectively blocking the main escape route of the crowd, and trapping the crowd ina sniper alley. In front of the APCs, soldiers were laying down on the ground behindsandbags. As the first group reached this area, they were wiped out by the fire from theAPCs, the soldiers behind sandbags, and soldiers shooting from the roofs of nearbyapartments. The second group similarly came under heavy fire, causing massivecasualties. “As we moved ahead on Cholpon Prospect, we saw the APCs and the soldierslying down in front of them,” one survivor from the second group stated. “We were justshocked. It was like a bowling game, when the ball strikes the pins and everything fallsdown. There were flashes from the APCs, there were bodies everywhere. I don’t thinkanyone in front of us survived,” he said.95Another survivor recalled:At School 15, in front of us were several armored cars at a distance ofabout 300 meters. They started shooting and people were screaming. Welay down, and some tried to run away. They were also shooting from theroofs of Cholpon Cinema. There were also soldiers on the ground [infront of the APCs] shooting at us. The street was full of blood.96All of the other witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch who had been present inCholpon Prospect gave almost identical testimony of the heavy fire they faced when theycame face to face with the APCs blocking Cholpon Prospect near School 15. “YuldashYu.”, a businessman freed during the prison break, told Human Rights Watch:Most people died near School 15, near the Cholpon Cinema. There werearmored cars there, and troops on the road. They were also shootingfrom the buildings. It was getting dark . . . The road was completelyblocked ahead. We couldn’t even raise our heads, the bullets were fallinglike rain. Whoever raised their head died instantly. I also thought I wasgoing to die right there.97Almost all of the people in the first group to move up Cholpon Prospect were killednear School 15, and heavy casualties resulted in the second group as well. “When we

came to Cholpon Cinema, we saw how the first group of [200 to 300] people had beenshot dead,” recalled one survivor of the second group.98As the fleeing people were trapped at the top of Cholpon Prospect, thousands ofprotesters were attempting to leave the square but became effectively trapped in a sniperalley behind the lead group, unable to flee to safety. As they attempted to move downCholpon Prospect and were blocked from advancing, they came under constant firefrom snipers located in the apartment buildings and a school lining the roads, as well assoldiers located in the trees along the road: “As we moved past the buses, we continuedto head down Cholpon Prospect. Along the way, there were four and five-storybuildings. They were shooting from those buildings’ apartments, and about 100 peopledied here,” one survivor recalled.99A second survivor said:Some soldiers had climbed into the trees and the buildings and theywere shooting down on us. I was in the middle of the crowd, a distancefrom the front. I had not yet gone past Cholpon Cinema. One man waskilled right in front of me, he was shot in the head and we were coveredwith his blood. People went to lie down, but this did not stop theshooting.There were two buses right near the square, at the beginning of CholponProspect [blocking the road]. They did not block the street completely,we had some space [to sneak through]. They were shooting all aroundus, all around, even in the park. The whole Cholpon Prospect was ashooting gallery, they were shooting from the roofs of the apartments.They shot at people when they tried to move. I raised my head, and assoon as I did, they fired [on me]. Nobody could help anyone, because ifyou tried to move they would shoot at you.100Two of those interviewed told Human Rights Watch that the gunmen who were movingalong with the crowd fired back at the government troops. One witness said:When I walked with the crowd along the Cholpon Prospect I sawseveral armed men among us who fired at the soldiers. People shoutedat them, ‘Do not shoot! Do not shoot!,’ but they did. They were in9899

civilian clothes and walked aside from the crowd, hiding themselvescloser to the houses.101Another witness, “Shukkhrat Sh.” (not his real name) said, "First we sent the womenand then we followed [onto Bainalminal street]. Two or three people with weaponsstayed behind [on the corner], to cover the others, but they [gunmen] were killed."102The presence of gunmen in the crowd, and the fact that some of them fired at orreturned fire from government forces, cannot possibly justify this wanton slaughter.The heavy fire from the APCs and the snipers killed hundreds of protesters, as well as allbut four of the hostages. One of the survivors recalled suddenly finding himself in frontof the crowd as row after row of people was mowed down, and seeing a street of deadbodies ahead of him: “Ahead of us, I saw the road blocked by APCs, and there were 150to 250 people dead in the street. … The man right in front of me was shot and died.”103Realizing that there was no escape on the main road, the survivors decided to veer right,onto the small Bainalminal Street, still facing heavy gunfire. As people around them werebeing shot down, the survivors ran for their lives. “Our women were the first to turnonto Bainalminal Street. There was a low fence at the sidewalk, and some of us jumpedover the fence, but the people who followed broke it down. Many people of our groupwere killed there,” one person recalled.104They left behind a street filled with bodies andwounded people.

Andijan remains sealed off at the time of the writing of this report, little is known aboutthe fate of protesters who fled in other directions.The fleeing survivors left with local residents, many of the wounded and others unableto make the fifty kilometer walk to the Kyrgyz border: “We had a lot of old andwounded people with us who couldn’t walk, so we left them at the gates of the houses,with the local people.”105It is not known what became of these wounded persons.The Cholpon Prospect survivors walked throughout the night towards the border withKyrgyzstan, remaining in a tight-knit group. One of the women with the group recalledthe exhausting, desperate journey:I was wearing high heeled shoes, and had to take them off and continuebarefoot. It started raining and we were all wet. We walked on a gravelroad, and we had to keep going. If you slowed down, the people behindyou would just push you. We couldn’t use the toilet or drink water. Weknocked on some doors, but the people just told us to go away, theywere very afraid. It took eleven, twelve hours to walk to the border.106When the group reached the border town of Teshik-Tosh around 6:00 a.m., they did notknow how to cross. Local villagers offered to show them the way. As they crossed asmall hill, they came under fire from Uzbek soldiers or border troops, and two localvillagers showing them the way were killed:When we reached Teshik-Tosh, a villager said there was another way toKyrgyzstan through the hills. We had to reach Kyrgyzstan by any means.He showed the road and we followed him. … I was in the rear, in thefront were mostly women. Troops were waiting for us up ahead, theywere expecting us. We got ambushed, they opened fire on us. I myselfsaw three dead women, three dead men, and a dead child. A lot ofpeople were wounded in the back, they were shot as they were runningaway.107

Local residents in the Pakhtabad border area of Uzbekistan said that Uzbek authoritieshad warned them not to open their doors and that a large crowd of armed people weremoving towards the area.108The crowd retreated to the village of Teshik-Tosh, where anurse in the crowd attempted to save the wounded. In total, eight people were killed inthe ambush, including thirty-six-year-old Odinakhan Teshebaeva, a mother of two,forty-three-year-old Hidaiat Zahidova, twenty-two-year-old Makhbuba Egamberdieva,and a boy aged around nineteen.109Between eight and twelve people were wounded. Thelocal villagers managed to arrange for ambulances to take away the wounded, but someof the wounded refused to go with the ambulances, afraid they would be arrested orkilled if they remained in Uzbekistan.Human Rights Watch investigated media reports that further unrest in Pakhtabad hadresulted in the deaths of some two hundred persons. A visit to the town of Pakhtabadfound no evidence of unrest there. It appears that the only incident in the area tookplace in the village of Teshik-Tosh, as described above, which is near the Pakhtabadadministrative district.Ultimately, after negotiating for safe passage into Kyrgyzstan, the group managed tocross safely to Kyrgyzstan, where they remain to date.

When the shooting started, the first rows fell. I lay on the ground fortwo hours, fearing to move. From time to time, the soldiers continuedto shoot when someone raised their head. When it got dark, I waswounded in my arm and started crawling away. I got to the constructioncollege and hid there for the night [and was unconscious much of thetime].Around 5:00 a.m., five KAMAZ trucks arrived and a bus with soldiers.The soldiers would ask the wounded, “Where are the rest of you?”When they would not respond, they would shoot them dead and loadthem into the trucks. There were no ambulances there. …Soldiers werecleaning the [area of] bodies for two hours, but they left about fifteenbodies on the spot.110A second witness, one of the hostages who was in front of the first group, survived byremaining motionless under several dead bodies throughout the night. His testimonyalso shows that no ambulances came to collect the wounded throughout the night, andthat soldiers continued to kill wounded persons:[The shooting] lasted [sporadically] almost until the morning. …Therewere four dead bodies on top of me. When someone tried to get up, theshooting would start again. Close to morning, someone walked up tome, [touched me] and said in Russian, “Oh fuck, there are still peoplealive here!” He touched my leg and said, “He is still warm!” Apparently,he wanted to kill me…Around 6:00 a.m., everything became very quiet.APCs started moving back and forth. Four of us were wounded [butsurvived]: a Ministry of Emergency guy, a fireman, a policeman, andmyself. All of us were seriously wounded. I believe there were only fourof us alive in the area. Prosecutors arrived and were making videofootage. They ordered us to lay there until our identities could bechecked. The prosecutor and a policeman recognized me and they tookus on a bus. As we were getting on the bus, I turned around and saw thebodies. There were many of them, on the road and the sides of theroad.111

A human rights activist from Andijan confirmed to Human Rights Watch that seventeenbodies remained in the street when he went to the area on the morning of May 14, andthat all were muscular males. He believed the bodies had been left to create theimpression that only militant-looking men had been killed, and to lower the officialbody-count of the incident.112Another group of bodies was seen by witnesses near the hokimiat building on May 14.The bodies matched a similar profile. “Tursinbai T.” said:I saw thirteen bodies not far from the hokimiat, near the Bobur statue. Iwas looking for my friends among them, but have not found anyone. Allof these bodies were big men thirty to fifty years old. Their feet and jawswere already tied in accordance with Muslim tradition. Many peoplecame there to look for their relatives among these bodies but I have notseen anyone taking any of the bodies from there.113Later in the morning of May 14, Andijan residents who went out into the streets lookingfor their relatives and friends were able to observe unmistakable evidence of the night’sbloodshed. “Tursunbai T.” was one of them. He told Human Rights Watch:The next day [May 14] I heard there were lots of bodies near School No.15, and I went there. I got there before lunch time, but there werealready no bodies there —I just saw blood, insides and brainseverywhere on the street. In some places there were up to 1.5centimeters of dried up blood on the asphalt. There were also lots ofshoes—most of them looked really old and shabby, and there weresome tiny kids’ shoes there. Then I went to the hokimiat and saw thesame scene there, plus lots of machine-gun and automatic gun shells.114

The government has characterized the Andijan events as an attempt by terrorists,motivated by an Islamist agenda and supported by foreigners, to seize power inAndijan.115It has attributed all deaths to the gunmen and in public has not explicitlyacknowledged any casualties inflicted by government forces.The government rejects characterizing the gathering on Bobur Square as a “protest.” Inhis statement to the press on May 19, President Karimov said that after gunmen seizedthe weapons, the army barracks no. 34, and conducted the prison break, they gatheredpeople at the hokimiat “and used them as human shields.”116President Karimov alsosaid that people were promised up to U.S. $3,000 to go Bobur Square.117President Karimov said that he personally went to Andijan to set up headquarters,consulted with local leaders, and sought to establish contact with the gunmen. Ministerof Internal Affairs, Zokirjonjon Almatov, then was tasked with negotiating with thegunmen.118As Karimov said at the press conference, the negotiations continued for thewhole day until 5:00 p.m. when the gunmen rejected the last government proposal thatwould allow them to leave the city. They left the hokimiat building after they realizedthat the military were surrounding them, he said. President Karimov said that after thegunmen left the hokimiat building, at about 7:40 p.m., government forces “pursued”them, and indicated that government forces fired only in response to gunfire from thegunmen.119The government denies that military or internal affairs troops shot at fleeing protesters,and has attributed all deaths to the gunmen. Minister Almatov told diplomats and

In several public statements President Karimov blamed the violence on Islamic extremist and particularlyHizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation, see below). In his press conference on May 14 President Karimov said thatthe unrest was led by “fanatic and extremist groups” who were trying to repeat in Uzbekistan the politicalupheaval that had taken place in Kyrgyzstan in March. “Their main intention was. . .to set up a branch ofUtopian Muslim Caliphate.” Regarding the participation of foreigners, the president said that some of thegunmen and their weapons came from abroad. He also said “. . . Without help from outside, without foreignsponsors, they would not be able to commit such a crime. And without the funds they would not have been ableto organize their action.” See, “Uzbek leader gives news conference on Andijon events - full version”,BBCMonitoring Central Asia,May 14, 2005.“Uzbekistani President Details Negotiations with Andijon Rebels—Full Version,” Tashkent, Uzbek TelevisionFirst Channel in Uzbek, May 19, 2005.See, “Uzbek leader says no international probe into Andijon crisis,” BBC Monitoring Central Asia [online],May 25, 2005. President Karimov is quoted as saying, “There is money behind the lies. The investigation willshow how people in Andijon were taken to the street with promises of $1,000 or $3,000. Their photos will beshown on TV, they will be shown speaking on TV.”“Uzbekistani President Details Negotiations with Andijon Rebels—Full Version,” Tashkent, Uzbek TelevisionFirst Channel in Uzbek, May 19, 2005.119118117116

journalists visiting Andijan on May 18 that “the extremeists. . .forced their way throughthe ring of law enforcement bodies using women and children douched [sic] withgasoline as a cover. The terrorists shot down dozens of peaceful people, including threeambulance doctors going by.”120The government has launched an investigation into “terrorism, attacking theconstitutional order, murder, the organization of a criminal band, mass disturbances, thetaking of hostages, and illegal possession of arms and explosive materials.”121Accordingto Xinhua news agency, the prosecutor’s office announced the arrest of fifty-two ofninety-eight people detained for the Andijan “riot.”122To date, no governmentstatement of which Human Rights Watch is aware has indicated that the criminalinvestigation will examine the government’s use of lethal force.The Uzbek parliament has created an independent commission of inquiry into theAndijan events whose mandate includes “a thorough analysis of the actions ofgovernment and [law enforcement, security and military] structures, and a legalassessment.123”President Karimov has categorically rejected an international investigation, suggestingthat it would be inconsistent with Uzbekistan’s sovereignty, that it would cause furtherupheaval, and would be biased.124

“The Formation of an Independent Commission to Investigate the Events in Andijan,” Resolution of theLegislativeChamberoftheOiliMajlis[parliament]ofUzbekistan,May23,2005.http://www.gov.uz/ru/content.scm?contentId=12831 [accessed June 2, 2005] “The commission has beenentrusted to conduct careful investigation of all circumstances of Andijan events, deep and all-round analysis oftheir development, revealing the reasons and conditions that led to tragic events on 13 May of this year,revealing basic relationships of causes and effects of these events, and also those forces which are behindthese criminal acts those led to human casualties. The deputies have charged the commission to carry out theall-round analysis of actions of the government and the law enforcement agencies, to give them legalassessment, and also regularly inform the parliament and the public on the course of investigation, includingthrough mass media.” www.gov.uz/en/content.scm?contentId=12881See, Uzbek leader says no international probe into Andijon crisis,” BBC Monitoring Central Asia [online], May25, 2005. President Karimov is quoted as saying,: “Uzbekistan is a sovereign state, it has its own gates anddorrsteps . . .its own constitutional system, elected government and elected president. . . .How could acommission from outside come and . . .be compromised by them, and they would . . .make another upheavaland draw their own conclusion and cry to the entire world. I can even say in advnce what their conclusionswould be. The conclucsions would be no different from those in Chechnya and other couhtries. Their aim is tolabel us with what we have not done, and, after they do so, we would be responsible for it. . . .And as if we are aguilty country and, as a poor thing, beg them for forgiveness.” Uzbek124

Unknown Fate of the BodiesOne of the enduring mysteries of the Andijan events is the fate of the bodies of thosekilled. After the authorities removed most of the bodies from the streets during the nightof May 13, they delivered some of them to at least one official and several ad-hocmorgues. Some of the bodies were buried by the authorities in the following days ratherthan being handed over to the families for burial, probably because the morgues did nothave the storage capacity for all of the bodies.While some families managed to find the bodies of their relatives in the streetsimmediately after the killings or later in the local morgue, as of this writing it is unclearwhere most of the bodies were taken. Human Rights Watch was unable to verifypersistent rumors about mass graves in various locations outside of the city, yet a largenumber of the bodies clearly did not end up in the local morgue. A law enforcementofficial who was among the team collecting the bodies told his relative that:I was called in on May 14 and we were loading the bodies – from thesquare and the avenue [Cholpon Prospect]. I think there were about 500bodies there. We first brought them in three URAL trucks to themorgue, but there was no space there, and the trucks had to leave. I wasnot with the group that drove [the bodies] away from the morgue, butcolleagues said they were taken to Bogshamal [an area outside Andijanwhere there is a cemetery].125Several other witnesses also mentioned a rumor that some bodies were buried near theBogshamal cemetery.126This and other suspected burial places were off limits forjournalists and human rights workers. A journalist who tried to investigate the Andijanslaughter cited a Bogshamal cemetery caretaker saying that thirty-seven bodies had beenburied by government workers in a nearby field. The journalist, who reportedly visitedsixteen cemeteries in Andijan, said he had found only sixty-one graves of the peopleallegedly killed in the city during the May 13 events.127It is unclear whether any investigative activity preceded the removal of the bodies fromCholpon Prospect on May 14 and whether the necessary forensic and ballistic

examinations, such as on-the-spot photographing, identification, or collecting of materialevidence (clothes, bullet shells, etc.) have been undertaken. Aside from one person whomentioned that law enforcement officials were shooting video footage on CholponProspect in the early morning, none of the three other witnesses whom Human RightsWatch interviewed who saw the crime scene the next day observed any of thesemeasures taken. The fact that some of the bodies of militant-looking men were left inCholpon Prospect and near the hokimiat building (see above) suggests that thegovernment might have already started arranging the evidence at that point tocorroborate its version of the events.It does appear that a number of the bodies were photographed at some point to helpwith identification, as some relatives looking for the missing were given stacks ofphotographs of individual corpses to look through.128It is unclear, however, whetherthe authorities took steps such as compiling full lists of those killed, notifying relatives,or keeping track of identification documents found on corpses, all measures to facilitatepeople’s efforts to locate and identify dead relatives.The way the bodies were removed from the streets and handled made it very difficult forfamilies to find the bodies of their relatives and bury them. The family of twenty-five-year-old “Khassan Kh.” (not his real name), who was killed while trying to return homefrom the Old Market, where he worked, found his body in the morgue after several daysof searching. His relative said:We were looking for him everywhere around the city, and then we wentto the morgue on Semashko street. Lots of bodies were piled up there,with their insides out. There were so many bodies there — we keptlooking for a long time. We hardly found him —there was almostnothing left from his head, we recognized him by his clothes. Therewere soldiers and policemen in the morgue. They asked, ‘who was yourson?’ We told them he was just a tradesman in the market and then theytold [the morgue workers] to give the body to us.129Almost two weeks after the events, some families were still looking for their relatives.“Orzibeka O.” (not her real name) told Human Rights Watch that she has not seen herfifteen-year old son since 5:30 p.m. on May 13 when he left with his friends to see what

was happening in the city. She was waiting for him all night and went to look for him atdawn the next day. She said:First I went to Sai [area]. Other people also came there to look for theirrelatives. I heard that about forty dead bodies were there. But I did notfind him there. I also checked in all hospitals and morgues, but he wasnot there. When I looked through the lists in the morgue, I saw 390names but I did not see my son’s name among them.130The woman eventually came to Kyrgyzstan hoping that her son might have been amongthe refugees who fled across the border after the May 13 events. However, she did notfind him in the camp.Media reports also suggested that many families never found their relatives or theirrelatives’ bodies after the events.131The morgue in Andijan remained practically off limits for any human rights workers orjournalists. Several journalists said that their attempts to enter the morgue and receiveofficial information from its staff proved futile, as they or their local colleagues helpingthem were prevented from entering the premises by plainclothes security officials.132Andijan cemeteries, where some of the victims of the killings have been buried over thelast weeks, are also being closely watched to prevent the spread of information about thedead. In one of the areas of Andijan visited by Human Rights Watch, local residentswarned us not to go to the local cemetery where there were visibly fresh graves, because“there is an informant sitting near the gates watching for any strangers who come to thecemetery.”133Passing by the cemetery gates, Human Rights Watch indeed saw a manmatching the description provided by the residents.

Human Rights Watch interview with “Orzibeka O”, Kyrgystan, May 22, 2005. “Orizbeka O.” said that thenames were numbered. She did not know, however, whether the numbering system referred to the total numberof dead from May 13, or whether it corresponded to some other time period.See e.g., David Holley and Sergei L. Loiko, “Lethal Clashes in Uzbekistan Sow Fear for the Fates of theMissing; Many are unaccounted for after last week's protest, which ended in bloodshed. A key Islamic dissidentis reportedly arrested,”Los Angeles Times,May 20, 2005.Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Andrei Babitski, May 26, 2005. See also, Burt Herman,“Questions Linger Over Bodies,”The Moscow Times,May 26, 2005.Human Rights Watch interview, Andijan, May 23, 2005. The witness requested not to be indicated by anyname.133132131

The fate and the actual number of the wounded also remain unknown to date. Uzbekofficials referred to 276 people who “sought medical attention” after the May 13shooting in Andijan.134The actual number, however, is likely to be much higher.Several witnesses who were in Andijan hospitals on May 13 for different reasons saidthey saw “lots and lots” of wounded being brought there, but nobody knew the exactnumber.135When a group of journalists decided to visit a local hospital on the morning of May 14to seek information about the wounded, they saw that the hospital was surrounded by“the military and APCs.” A member of this group later told Human Rights Watch:[The soldiers] pointed their guns at us and said, ‘Go away.’ While mycolleagues tried to talk to the soldiers, I saw a doctor who stepped out ofthe hospital. He looked very tired. I asked him how many wounded[there were]. He said that ninety-six persons were brought during thenight. I asked him, ‘how many killed?’ He said he could not tell. I asked,‘twenty?’ He was silent. I went on, ‘thirty? fifty?’ He said, ‘more.’ I asked,‘hundred?’ He said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it; lots and lots...’ He saidmost were civilians, and added that at night he was operating on apregnant woman who was hit by a bullet while she was walking along astreet.136A worker from one of the hospitals told Human Rights Watch that when he came towork on May 14 he was not allowed in and was told to “go home and rest.” He said thatwhen he got to the hospital on May 16, there were already no wounded there— thedoctors told him that all of the wounded from various hospitals were moved to onehospital—he believed it was Regional Emergency Hospital (OblastnaiaBolnitsa SkoroiPomoschi).The hospital, he was told, was heavily guarded by SNB agents who watcheveryone coming in.137134

City Sealed OffPrompt removal of the bodies from city streets was followed by a thorough cleaning andcovering up of the traces at the sites where major shooting took place. Witnesses saidthe government used fire trucks and water cannons to wash the blood off the streets;buildings with the most bullet marks on the walls were quickly painted over andwindows were replaced.138At the same time, access to Andijan was essentially closed to obvious strangers, withnumerous checkpoints established on all of the main roads leading to the city. Ten daysafter the events, the checkpoints were still in place, at every entrance to the city, andalong the roads. While traveling to the city, a Human Rights Watch researcher wentthrough six checkpoints on one of the roads in just one hour. Travelers to the city alsoundergo thorough searches and document checks.Nearly two weeks after the events, all over the city Human Rights Watch saw largegroups of young men wearing blue camouflage uniforms and closely monitoring thestreets. Local residents said that these were mostly students hired shortly after theshooting as “people’s militias” to monitor and prevent any suspicious activity in thestreets.139

‘Karimov and Alamatov on TV said that they know everybody whogives information; Alamatov said they know all telephone numbers ofthe people who gave details and information [to journalists] and they willdeal with them.’140Most witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Andijan clearly fearedgovernment retribution for speaking about the events. They insisted that Human RightsWatch not release their names or any details that may allow the authorities to identifythem. A woman who was wounded and lost two family members on May 13 toldHuman Rights Watch:I am so scared, I don’t want anything, I don’t want any justice. Don’t tellour names, don’t say you came to our house—just say you heard aboutwhat happened to us from other people.141Many other people refused to talk even on condition of anonymity. Several people toldHuman Rights Watch that police had explicitly warned them not to talk to journalists orother “outsiders.” One person told Human Rights Watch:Last night there was an [identification] check throughout theneighborhood. Several policemen were checking the documents in everyhouse. They warned us, “If the journalists, correspondents come— youshould not tell them anything, otherwise we will find you.”142People from several different neighborhoods of Andijan told Human Rights Watch that“spies frommahallacommittees” are watching closely for any strangers coming to theneighborhood and especially visiting the families whose relatives were killed during theMay 13 shooting.143Relatives of persons who have fled to Kyrgyzstan are also being pressured by the Uzbeksecurity services. Human Rights Watch met one elderly man who had come fromAndijan to the Kyrgyz refugee camp to try to convince his relatives to return home. He140141142

Preventing the Flow of InformationImmediately following the May 13 protest and killings, Uzbek authorities imposed astrict clampdown on media coverage of the events, effectively banning journalists fromentering the city and taking harsh measures against those who tried to report openly onthe events.First, authorities made sure to deal with the journalists who happened to witness thekillings in Andijan, confiscating materials they managed to gather and blatantlythreatening them. One journalist who was closely following the May 13 events inAndijan and stayed in the city through the night with several of his colleagues, toldHuman Rights Watch:[In the morning of May 14] we were brought to a police station wherewe spent about three hours. They told us it was unsafe for journalists inthe city, and that there were lots of fighters in the streets. They wrotedown the information from our passports.... Then three men incamouflage uniforms with no insignia searched us. They confiscatedmemory cards from a photo camera, a cheap digital camera, and tapesfrom tape-recorders... They requested that I show the photo files frommy cell phone, asked me to produce my laptop computer, and took aCD.Then they put us into a bus and brought us to the Elite hotel. As wewere leaving the bus, a guy in civilian clothes approached one of mycolleagues and said, “They are foreigners, and you are a local, youprobably understand what may happen [to you]. You all have thirtyminutes to leave the city; otherwise, we are not responsible for yoursafety.”

We discussed that with colleagues and decided that we should leave,because there may be a provocation against us, and we left Andijan.145Journalists who tried to get to Andijan in the days following the killings encounteredconsiderable obstacles.A crew from the Russian television station REN-TV tried to get to Andijan on May 14,2005. The journalists were first stopped and briefly detained in a village near the city ofNamangan, and then again at one of the checkpoint at the entrance to Andijan. REN-TV correspondent Dmitri Iasminov told Human Rights Watch:At the checkpoint they requested the tapes [the crew had filmed thecheckpoint], and we had to delete the recording immediately. [Thesecurity officials] then told us that they were not allowed to take footageand should leave immediately. It was late, and we decided to spend thenight in the Namangan hotel—there we were closely watched by thelocal criminal police who had breakfast with us and made sure we leftthe town.146The journalists returned to Tashkent the next day to acquire accreditation. Shortlyafterwards, a press secretary of the Russian embassy in Tashkent told the crew that theyshould leave the country immediately because “Uzbek authorities were seriouslydispleased with them.” Realizing that they would not be allowed to work any further, thejournalist left the next day.147The British newspaper,The Independent,reported on May 16 that it “made two attemptsto by-pass the checkpoints around the city” but its reporter “was briefly threatened withdetention and then escorted to the nearby city of Namangan, under the guard of a manwho identified himself as a police colonel.”148

Another foreign journalist,Associated Press’sBurt Herman, who managed to get intoAndijan, wrote in one of his reports that he interviewed several families whose relativeswere killed during the May 13 violence, but “details of those interviews were lost whenofficers confiscated the AP reporter's notebook after physically threatening him.”149Radio Liberty’s Andrei Babitski told Human Rights Watch that he managed to get toAndijan without revealing that he was a journalist, and worked there for several days bynot drawing any attention to himself. On May 18, however, he was approached by anofficial who requested his documents and then “recommended” that he leave Andijan.Babitski left the next day.150While blocking journalists from entering Andijan and suppressing every effort to reporton the events independently, Uzbek authorities responded to growing internationalconcern by demonstrating that they have nothing to hide, and organized a tour fordiplomats and journalists to Andijan on May 18.About sixty diplomats and journalists, mostly representing official Russian media (TVChannels 1 and 2, ITAR-TASS,Rossiiskaia Gazeta,and the like) were taken to Andijan ona special plane from Tashkent and driven across Andijan in the course of approximatelyone hour, accompanied by heavily armed special forces troops. The participants wereshown the major sites of “rebel” attacks—the prison and the hokimiat.According to media reports, the only witness diplomats and journalists were allowed totalk to was the father of one of the killed policemen who spoke supportively of theactions of the government to fight off the terrorists.151Uzbek TV channels aired thisconversation many times thereafter.People later alleged that prior to the official visit, authorities explicitly prohibited peoplefrom showing up in the streets along the tour’s path or attempting to talk to thevisitors.152Western diplomats expressed disappointment about the visit to Andijan, complainingabout the short term and limited nature of the visit. However, when they tried to

emphasize the need for further visits and investigation, the Uzbek presidentunequivocally stated that the tour was “enough.”153Meanwhile, state-run Uzbek media incessantly disseminated the government version ofevents, putting the blame for the violence exclusively on the “terrorists and extremistelements,” persuading the public that the government response was necessary andadequate, accusing foreign media and international organizations of disseminating falseinformation about the events, and warning citizens against participating in any massprotests, even as on-lookers, as it may result in “tragic consequences.”154With foreign journalists denied access to Andijan and Uzbek media strictly censored,local stringers and Andijan-based human rights activists became the most importantsource of information for the outside world, especially in the first days after the events.These journalists and human rights defenders, who witnesses the events and dared tospeak publicly about them, faced serious consequences. Some had to flee the countryshortly after their first reports were published, having received death threats.One of the most outspoken human rights defenders, Saidjahon Zainabitdinov, whosedescription of the killings in Andijan was widely reported in the media, was arrested onMay 21 and remains in custody to date.155He is charged with slander, which ispunishable by up to three years of imprisonment.The Andijan province branch of the human rights group Ezgulik (Goodness) reported thaton May 20, 2005, the authorities beat and harassed two Ezgulik members as theyconducted independent research on the events in Andijan. Ulugbek Bakirov andFazliddin Gafurov were on their way to interview witnesses of the Andijandemonstrations and relatives of those killed when they were stopped by three men inplainclothes who followed them in a car without a license plate. According to Ezgulik,the men got out of the car and asked Bakirov and Gafurov where they were going. Oneof the men grabbed Bakirov and began hitting him. Gafurov intervened and was alsobeaten by the men, reportedly suffering a concussion and an injury to his left shoulder.156

On May 28, 2005, a group of six armed policemen broke into the house of DilmurodMuhitdinov, head of the Markhamat district branch of Ezgulik and one of the publicdefenders of the twenty-three businessmen. Police seized human rights documents, theprogram and charter of the unregisteredBirlik(Unity) opposition party and a computerbelonging to Ezgulik. Musozhon Bobozhonov, Muhitdinov’s assistant, was treated in thesame way by the police. That day the police team also visited MukhammadqodirOtakhonov, an activist of the Uzbek branch of the International Human Rights Society,and detained him. All three activists remain in Asaka district internal affairs custody inAndijan province. All three are being charged under article 224-1 of the criminal code(“preparing or distributing materials that threaten public safety and order”).157

Terrorism and Political Violence in UzbekistanThe Uzbek government has placed the Andijan events in the framework of terrorismand has argued that its perpetrators were terrorists with an Islamic “fundamentalist”agenda. Human Rights Watch research found no evidence to support the notion that theattackers who seized the prison and government buildings or the protesters on BoburSquare were in any way motivated by an Islamist agenda.This does not minimize the acts of terrorism and political violence Uzbekistan hasendured in recent years. In 1999, bombings of government buildings in Tashkent killedmore than a dozen people and wounded many others; the government blamed thebombings on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), independent Muslim leaders,and members of the secular political opposition. The country also faced incursions in1999 and 2000 by the IMU, an armed group that had been based in Afghanistan (and attimes in Tajikistan), that had links with the Taliban, and was routed with it in 2001 by“Aresty Pravozashitnikov v Andizhane Prodolzhaiutsia” (Arrests of human rights activists in Andijan are goingon”), Ezgulik report, May 29, 2005 [online], http://www.ezgulik.org/news.php?id=197&status=1 (retrieved May31, 2005).157

U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. The IMU has been designated by the U.S. government asa terrorist organization.In late March and early April 2004, a series of explosions directed against police officersin Tashkent and Bukhara, combined with shoot-outs between gunmen and police,resulted in the death of forty-seven people. Four of the dead were innocent bystanders,ten were police officers, and the rest were perpetrators, most of whom were killed eitherin shoot-outs or in an explosion in a house that the government has said was used tomake bombs. The government accused Hizb ut-Tahrir (see below), of orchestrating theviolence.On July 30, 2004, bombs exploded near the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the GeneralProsecutor’s office in Tashkent, killing four police and security officials, as well as thesuicide bombers.

Uzbekistan’s Human Rights RecordCivic freedomsUzbekistan has faced growing public criticism over its dismal human rights record that islong-standing and well-documented, with major violations of the rights to freedom ofreligion, expression, association, and assembly.158In response to such pressure, thegovernment has made some incremental reforms in legislation, for instance in torturereform, but these have not been implemented in practice or translated into moresystemic change. Moreover, they have been undermined by other setbacks to humanrights, particularly the deepening of restrictions on civil society the government imposedfollowing public uprisings in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004).The government of Uzbekistan exercises tight control over most aspects of public lifeand imposes restrictions on all avenues of peaceful civic participation. It has a longrecord of formal and informal censorship of the media, intimidating independent civilsociety activists, severely restricting public demonstrations, and banning political partiesSee for example, Human Rights Watch, “Persecution of Human Rights Defenders in Uzbekistan,” HumanRights Watch briefing paper May 1, 2003. Available at: http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/uzbek050103-bck.htm.“Uzbekistan and the EBRD: Progress Report on the Human Rights Benchmarks”, Human Rights Watch briefingpaper March 23, 2004. Available at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/uzbekistan/2004/. “Uzbekistan’s ReformProgram: Illusion or Reality?” International Crisis Group, Asia Report No. 46, February 18, 2003. Available at:http://www.icg.org//library/documents/report_archive/A400894_18022003.pdf. “Uzbekistan 2004 Report,”Amnesty International, January 2004. Available at: http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/uzb-summary-eng. “TheWorst of the Worst: the World’s Most Repressive Societies 2005,” Freedom House, Special Report to the 61stSession of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Geneva. Available at:http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/mrr2005.pdf.158

that are not loyal to the government. These restrictions violate fundamental rights andstifle peaceful outlets for citizens’ expression and participation, essential to accountablegovernment and the rule of law.The government has refused to register all genuine opposition political parties andelections are empty exercises. Although five registered political parties participated inUzbekistan’s December 2004 parliamentary elections, all of them publicly supported thepolicies of the president and current administration, offering voters no real choice.159The government formally lifted pre-publication censorship in 2002, but continues toexercise control over media to restrict critical content. No independent media operate inUzbekistan, and editors and journalists practice self-censorship. The government stillrestricts undesirable content through intimidation and by bringing arbitrary lawsuitsagainst journalists, editors, and media outlets for criminal libel, or purported violationsof tax and registration regulations.160Following the popular uprising in Georgia, the environment for Uzbekistan’s nascentcivil society has grown increasingly hostile, as the government tightened restrictions onlocal and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), harassed and arbitrarilydetained human rights defenders, broke up peaceful demonstrations, and tightenedrestrictions on international NGOs.161The government for the first time registered an independent local human rightsorganization in 2002, and registered another in 2003. The authorities have included somehuman rights defenders in roundtable events with government officials but at the sametime steadfastly refuse to allow independent domestic human rights groups to register,restricting their operation and rendering them vulnerable to harassment and abuse,including physical assault, arbitrary detention and house arrest. Uzbek authorities haveharassed, detained or held under effective house arrest activists who attempt to stagedemonstrations.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and HumanRights (ODIHR), “Republic of Uzbekistan, Parliamentary Elections 26 December 2004, OSCE/ODIHR LimitedElection Observation Mission Report.” Available at: www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2005/03/4355_en.pdf.For example, on April 13, 2005, authorities in Tashkent arrested Sobirjon Yaqubov, a journalist for thenewspaperHurriyat;he is being charged with attempting to overthrow the constitutional system of Uzbekistan(article 159 of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan), on what appear to be politically motivated grounds. On April23, Ulugbek Haidarov,a journalist for IWPR was beaten by unknown assailants while waiting at a bus stop inJizzakh, suffering a broken arm. According to Haidarov, the assailants yelled “we’ll teach you how to write,”suggesting that he was targeted for his articles critical of the local government.161160

Since the May 13 killings in Andijan the authorities have arrested at least five humanrights defenders in connection with the Andijan events and have harassed andintimidated others. Saidjahon Zainabitdinov, chair of the group “Appeliatsia,” wasarrested on May 21 and has reportedly been charged with inciting the May 13demonstration through an article he published on the Internet.162Zainabitdinov hadspoken out about the killings on May 13 to the press and was cited by foreign newsoutlets. On May 23, Sobitkhon Uztabaev was arrested in Namangan, after he announceda hunger strike to protest the May 13 killings. And on May 28, MukhammadqodirOtakhonov, Dilmurod Muhiddinov, and Musazhon Bobozhonov, all from the Andijanbranch of the human rights group Ezgulik, were arrested. The men are being chargedunder article 224-1 of the criminal code (“preparing or distributing materials thatthreaten public safety and order”).163Also, authorities in Tashkent and Jizzakh, in central Uzbekistan, have harassed andintimidated human rights defenders, warning them not to plan or participate in publicprotests.TortureUzbekistan has no independent judiciary and torture is widespread in pre-trial detentionand post-conviction facilities. Prison conditions are atrocious. In 2003, the UnitedNations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, called the use of torture“systematic” in Uzbekistan.164Torture and ill-treatment remain pervasive throughout theUzbek criminal justice system, and occur with near-total impunity. Although thegovernment claims to have increased prosecutions of law enforcement officials for usingtorture and other illegal methods, no information about these convictions has beenmade available, despite requests, rendering them impossible to verify. Countless reportsof torture remain without remedy; legal safeguards against torture that have beenintroduced are rarely implemented in practice, despite persistent recommendations tothat effect by international monitoring bodies. For example, judges routinely admitconfessions as evidence even when defendants allege that the confessions were coerced

or obtained under torture or mistreatment, despite rules that prohibit the admission ofany evidence gained through the use of torture.Religious PersecutionThe arrest and trial of the twenty-three businessmen on charges of “religiousfundamentalism,” which set off events off the events of May 13, should be seen in amuch broader context. Throughout the past ten years, the Uzbek government hasimprisoned as many as 7,000 people on charges of religious “extremism” or “attempt tooverthrow the constitutional system.” The government first justified this tight controlover religion as necessary in defense of a secular state, and then, in the late 1990’s, asnecessary to the fight against terrorism. However, the targets of the campaign arenonviolent believers who preach or study Islam outside official institutions andguidelines.The government repression that has attended this campaign againstindependent Muslims—those who practice their faith independent of government-sanctioned mosques andother government religious institutions—has included illegal arrest and torture,sometimes resulting in death. The accused have faced unfair trials and lengthy terms inprison under inhumane conditions. Family members of those targeted have also beendetained, tortured, threatened, and stigmatized.Arrests of independent Muslims have occurred nationwide, but the overwhelmingmajority have taken place in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, and the Fergana Valley citiesof Andijan and Namangan.165Over the years, the scope of the campaign has been expanded from a focus onindependent-minded and popular spiritual leaders to anyone in the religious communitywho expresses dissent with the policies of the Karimov government.

Religious activity deemed deviant by the state has included studying Arabic in order toread the Koran in its original language, sticking strictly to the observance of the five dailyprayers, or appearing in public dressed in a way that suggested piety, i.e. wearingconservative Islamic dress. Refusal to praise the president and his policies duringreligious services or expression of a desire for a state governed by Islamic law has beentreated as anti-state activity. In fact, the government views as an affront to its power anydisplay of loyalty not directly associated with the state. This includes visits to the homesof local religious teachers, attendance at mosques not registered with the state, and mostimportantly the placement of loyalty to Islam before loyalty to the country’s politicalleaders. Imams who have become popular and developed a regular following or whorefuse to serve as informants for the state security agents are similarly seen asunacceptably insolent. The Uzbek government has labeled these independent Muslims“Wahhabis” to denote “Islamic fundamentalism” and as a slur.166In addition to so-called Wahhabis, at least half of those arrested on religion-relatedcharges have been members of the group Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation). Hizb ut-Tahrir members form a distinct segment of the independent Muslim population byvirtue of their affiliation with a separate and defined Islamic group with its ownprinciples, structure, activities, and religious texts. Hizb ut-Tahrir is an unregistered—effectively, banned—organization in Uzbekistan. The group is an international Islamicorganization with branches in many parts of the world, including the Middle East andEurope. Hizb ut-Tahrir propagates a particular vision of an Islamic state. Its aims arerestoration of the Caliphate, or Islamic rule, in Central Asia and other traditionallyMuslim lands, and the practice of Islamic piety, as the group interprets it, (e.g., prayingfive times daily, shunning alcohol and tobacco, and, for women, wearing clothing thatcovers the body and sometimes the face). Hizb ut-Tahrir renounces violence as a meansto achieve reestablishment of the Caliphate. However, it does not reject the use ofviolence during armed conflicts already under way and in which the group regardsMuslims as struggling against oppressors, such as Palestinian violence against Israelioccupation. Its literature denounces secularism and Western-style democracy. Its anti-Semitic and anti-Israel167statements have led the government of Germany to ban it.168The “Wahhabi” label has also been used in other parts of the former Soviet Union as short-hand for militant.According to Central Asia scholar Mehrdad Haghayeghi, the term was first used by the Soviets to refer to“fundamentalist” Muslims in general during the 1980s. Mehrdad Haghayeghi,Islam and Politics in Central Asia,St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1995, p. 227, note 55. In the Tajik civil war, fighters seeking to overthrow thegovernment were nicknamed “vofchiki,” a diminutive form of “Vahabit,” or “Wahhabi.”Hizb ut-Tahrir materials often denounce Israeli occupation of Palestine and Israeli conduct in the conflictthere.The German Ministry of the Interior issued a statement on January 15, 2003 announcing that Hizb ut-Tahrirwas banned in the country. http://www.bmi.bund.de/dokumente/Pressemitteiling/ix_91334.htm. The ministrystatement cited as grounds for the decision, paragraphs 3, 14, 15, and 18 of the German Vereinsgesetz(congregation laws). German Minister of the Interior Otto Schilly said that, “Hizb ut-Tahrir abuses the168167166

The government of Russia has also banned the group, classifying it as a terroristorganization.169AkramiaThe twenty-three businessmen whose arrests sparked the protests and subsequentkillings in Andijan were accused of being followers of “Akramia,” which refers to thereligious teachings of Akram Yuldashev, a former mathematics teacher from Andijan. In1992, Yuldashev wrote a religious pamphlet entitledYimonga Yul(“Path to Faith”),consisting of twelve lessons on the path to faith which analyze thought and logic inIslam.170Yuldashev was arrested on drug charges in 1998 and sentenced to two and a half years inprison. He was released under a presidential amnesty in December of the same year butre-arrested the day after the February 1999 bombings in Tashkent. He was sentenced toseventeen years of imprisonment, having been found guilty of being a main organizer ofthe bombings and of forming an extremist religious organization whose aim was theoverthrow of the secular Uzbek government and the establishment of an Islamic state.Around the time of his trial the State Committee on Religious Affairs bannedYuldashev’s pamphlet as “extremist,” and the court that sentenced Yuldashev found hiswritings to advocate the overthrow of the Uzbek government.171democratic system to propagate violence and disseminate anti-Semitic hate-speeches. The organization wantsto sow hatred and violence.” He also stated that, “The organization supports violence as a means to realizepolitical goals. Hizb ut-Tahrir denies Israel’s right to exist and calls for its destruction. The organization furtherspreads massively anti-Semitic propaganda and calls for killing Jews.” See also, Peter Finn, “Germany BansIslamic Group; Recruitment of Youths Worried Officials,” TheWashington Post,January 16, 2003. That articlestates that German officials accused Hizb ut-Tahrir of spreading “violent anti-Semitism” and establishingcontacts with neo-Nazis. In April, German police searched the homes of more than eighty people suspected ofsupporting Hizb ut-Tahrir. No arrests were made. See, Associated Press, “Germany stages new raids againstbanned Islamic organization,” April 11, 2003.On February 14, 2003, Russia’s Supreme Court, acting on a recommendation from the Office of theProsecutor General, designated Hizb ut-Tahrir a terrorist organization. According to a press statement releasedby Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 9, 2003, “The main criteria for the inclusion of organizations inthe list of terrorist outfits were: the carrying out of activities aimed at a forcible change of the constitutionalsystem of the Russian Federation; ties with illegal armed bands, as well as with radical Islamic structuresoperating on the territory of the North Caucasus region, and ties with or membership of organizations deemedby the international community terrorist organizations.” “On the Detention of Members of the TerroristOrganization ‘Islamic Liberation Party’ (‘Hizb ut-Tahrir al Islami’),” Publication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ofthe Russian Federation, Information and Press Department, June 9, 2003, from theDaily News Bulletin,postedJune 11, 2003. http://www.ln.mid.ru/bl.nsf/0/43bb94f12ad12c7543256d42005a9b49?OpenDocument.“Uzbekistan: Islamic Charitable Work “Criminal” and “Extremist?,” Igor Rotar, Forum 18 News Service,February 14, 2005. Available from http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=508&printer=Y .Ibid and “Uzbekistan: The Andijon Uprising,” p. 2. International Crisis Group Asia Briefing No. 38, May 25,2005. Available from http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3469&l=1; and “Akramia: Mif idestvitel’nost’,” (Akramia: Myth and Reality), Saidjahon Zainabitdinov, August 25, 2004. Available from:http://centrasia.ru/newsA.php4?st=1093410660.171170169

Significance of the Fergana ValleyDue to its history, location and demographics, the Fergana Valley occupies a specialplace in Uzbek politics. The valley cuts a path through the three neighboring states ofUzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Areas on the Uzbekistan side are denselypopulated—Andijan province accounts for about 7 percent of Uzbekistan’spopulation—and impoverished (see below).174The area’s residents are perceived asbeing especially devout Muslims and socially conservative.The Fergana Valley handed President Karimov a major political challenge in the firstdays of Uzbekistan’s independence from the Soviet Union. In December 1991,residents demanding reforms in the Fergana Valley city of Namangan took over agovernment building. Karimov traveled to Namangan to address the large group ofprotesters, but was met with jeers and derision and was openly challenged by a youngand charismatic political opposition leader, Tohir Yuldash. Karimov was silenced by thecrowds’ shouts and consigned to crouching on the stage as Yuldash and othersarticulated their demands, including for application of Shari’a (Islamic law) as the law ofthe land. Karimov left Namangan humiliated, but exacted his revenge, as those involvedin the rally were arrested or forced to flee the ensuing government crackdown.Yuldash fled the country and went on to form the IMU along with another FerganaValley native, Jumaboi Khajiev (aka Juma Namangani). Namangani was presumed killed

when U.S. bombing operations in Afghanistan destroyed the group’s camps in 2001.Yuldash is believed to have survived.In addition to being a site of political crackdown, the Fergana Valley has been a focalpoint of the Karimov government’s multi-year campaign against independent Islam.Along with Namangan and the capital, Tashkent, Andijan has been particularly hard-hitby government repression. The “disappearance” of Andijan’s most famous imam in1995 was in fact the first major indication of the government’s increasing hostilitytoward independent Islam.175Sheikh Abduvali Mirzoev, head of the Jo’mi (Friday)mosque in Andijan, was extremely popular in Andijan province and with theindependent-minded Muslim community throughout Uzbekistan. In the years thatfollowed his “disappearance,” government antagonism for independent Islam deepenedand the list of “suspects” grew. Andijan, home to numerous Muslims who practice theirfaith outside state controls, saw estimated hundreds and possibly thousands of itsresidents caught in the crackdown.

Although the official unemployment rate is recorded as less than 1 percent, hidden andinformal unemployment and underemployment are serious problems.181Unemploymentand underemployment are particularly significant in rural areas, where more than 60percent of the population lives.182Furthermore, even full employment does not protectfrom poverty, due to low wages and wage arrears.183Some 28 percent of the populationis poor and approximately 1/3 of all poor households can be considered extremely.184People living in rural areas suffer disproportionately: the poverty rate in rural areas isestimated at 30.5 percent compared to 22.5 percent in urban areas.185Poverty in theFergana Valley economic area is recorded at 30.3 percent—the second highest rateamong all economic regions in Uzbekistan.186In the densely-populated Andijanprovince, which accounts for 8.9 percent of the total population of Uzbekistan, theincidence of poverty is 31.8 percent and the incidence of extreme poverty 9.1 percent.187As a result of the limited economic opportunities and real problem of poverty, manyUzbeks have turned to shuttle trading and work in local bazaars as some of the onlyoptions for generating income. However, since June 2002, the government has imposednumerous restrictive regulations on traders’ activities, including high tariffs on importedgoods, restrictions on border crossings, and requirements for traders to obtain licenses,register with various government agencies, and deposit all revenue in bank accountswhy?.188Tax inspectors and police often have enforced these regulations aggressively.Countless traders have been forced out of business. Government policies in theagricultural sector have been similarly damaging to individual livelihoods, as authorities

pay below market rates for crops or impose quotas and confiscate land for failure tomeet expected production levels.189In recent years, both farmers and traders in many regions of Uzbekistan have organizedsmall protests over economic conditions and restrictive government policies. In Andijanprovince, traders participated in several protests in the months prior to the May 13uprising. In early September 2004, traders of imported goods at the Kholis market andin the vicinity of the city's Central Department Store were forced to stop selling as aresult of new government resolutions requiring individual registration. On September 7,a group of nearly 500 women halted traffic on a major street in protest. A few days later,the government began demolishing trading booths, leading to more demonstrations thatcontinued for several days.190In January 2005, a group of traders gathered near a districtadministration building in Andijan province to protest interference by the taxauthorities.191

Risks of Future Violence and InstabilityAccording to foreign journalists and local activists in Tashkent, the official version ofevents in Andijan offered by the Karimov government has been met with extremeskepticism by the general population. This, on top of years of government repression,corruption, and a deteriorating standard of living, has the potential to create furtherpopular discontent and unrest. There are no indications that the government wouldrespond to future protests or other dissident activities with greater restraint thanpracticed in Andijan. The risk of additional violence, including use of excessive force bylaw enforcement agencies, is therefore acute. The possibility that such unrest wouldresult in mass refugee flows to neighboring states and regional instability also remains ofconcern. As noted above, a government crackdown on human rights defenders andother perceived critics is already underway and there is a real threat that furtherrestrictions will be placed on the population as a whole.Recommendations:

The government of Uzbekistan has a record of resisting serious investigation intohuman rights abuses by law enforcement and security forces agents. Statements byUzbek officials to date indicate that the government’s investigation into the Andijanevents will not include a serious examination of abuses by government forces. Thecommission of inquiry established by the Uzbek parliament is welcome, but is unlikely tobe free of government pressure. For these reasons, the international community shouldpress for and make possible an independent, international investigation into the eventsof May 13 in Andijan, and in particular, into the killings. The investigation should havecompetent expertise in forensics, ballistics, and crime scene investigation and mustinclude in its mandate a determination as to whether, and which, Uzbek troops usedexcessive force against unarmed protesters.The Uzbek government should cooperate with and support an independent,international investigation into the events of May 13 and should hold accountable, in amanner consistent with international human rights law, those responsible for usingexcessive force on unarmed protesters.

To the United Nations:Secretary General Kofi Annan has endorsed a call by Office of the High Commissionerfor Human Rights for an independent, international investigation into the events inAndijan.The Secretary General should mandate the Office of the High Commissioner to conductan investigation into the events in Andijan that has relevant expertise in forensics,ballistics, and crime scene investigation, and to report on its findings to the SecretaryGeneral and the Security Council.The Security Council should stand ready to receive the findings of an investigation bythe Office of the High Commissioner. It should acknowledge the threat to peace andsecurity that is posed by the lack of a transparent, credible investigation and, in the eventthat Uzbekistan continues to reject an independent, international investigation, shouldexplicitly intervene to demand that such an investigation be carried out.

support its operations in Afghanistan and has provided aid and training to the Uzbekmilitary, as well as counterterrorism assistance.The U.S. and Uzbek governments have been engaged in discussions on a formal, long-term agreement that would allow the United States to maintain its military base insouthern Uzbekistan. The United States currently uses the Uzbek base rent-free; aformal arrangement would provide the Uzbek government considerably greater financialbenefits. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has also reportedly "rendered" prisonersto the Uzbek security services, even as the State Department has denounced torture bythose very same services.In July 2004, the U.S. government cut most direct government-to-governmentassistance, including military aid, to Uzbekistan because of the country’s poor humanrights record.192The U.S. Defense Department, however, has continued to provide somecounter-terrorism assistance to Uzbekistan. Under a U.S. law known as the LeahyAmendment, this aid would have to be suspended if the units receiving it were found tohave participated in gross human rights violations, such as any unlawful killings inAndijan.The U.S. government should not engage in any further discussions with Uzbekistanabout a long-term agreement on its military base until the Uzbek government accepts anindependent, international investigation into the Andijan events. The United Statesshould begin exploring alternative basing facilities elsewhere in the region. If the Uzbekgovernment does not accept such an investigation, the United States should bring an endto its post-September 11 strategic partnership with Uzbekistan and discontinue itsmilitary presence in the country.

To the Government of the Russian Federation:The Russian government should publicly acknowledge the need for an independentinternational investigation that includes in its mandate examining human rights abusescommitted by government forces.To the Government of China:The government of China should lend support to the idea of an independent,international investigation.To the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE):The OSCE should deploy special missions to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan speciallymandated to monitor the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in Uzbekistan andits effect on stability in the region.To the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD):In 2004 the EBRD cut back its assistance in Uzbekistan over the governement’s lack ofprogress toward human rights and economic benchmarks the Bank had set out in 2003.The Bank limits investment to the private sector and stays involved in public sectorprojects only to the extent that they directly contribute to the well-being of the generalpopulation, or involve neighboring countries.Until the Uzbek government accepts an international investigation, the EBRD shouldvet all lending to Uzbekistan to identify private sector projects in which the governmentor particular government officials have a stake in order to suspend assistance to thoseprojects.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis report was researched and written by a team of Human Rights Watch researchers.It was edited by Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asiadivision, and Iain Levine, program director of Human Rights Watch. DinahPoKempner, general counsel for Human Rights Watch, also reviewed the report.Valuable technical support was provided by Inara Gulpe-Laganovska and VictoriaElman, associates from the Europe and Central Asia division in New York. JohnEmerson designed the map.Human Rights Watch expresses its sincere thanks to the brave women and men whoshared their stories with us about the tragic events in Andijan. We extend oursympathies for the loss of life there. We also recognize the contribution that rightsdefenders in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have made to this report. They have facedgreat personal risk researching the events in Andijan and have shown deep commitmentto the cause of human rights.