MARKHAMAT, June 12: Kyrgyzstan imposed a state of emergency in a second southern city as its interim leader warned ethnic violence was spiralling “out of control” and asked Russia to send in troops.
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva appealed to Moscow to intervene militarily after at least 75 people were killed and 977 wounded, according to the health ministry, in nearly three days of unrest.
“Since yesterday the situation has got out of control. We need outside military forces to halt the situation. For this reason we have appealed to Russia for help,” said Ms Otunbayeva in a TV address.
But while Moscow said it was rushing humanitarian aid to the former Soviet Central Asian republic, a spokeswoman for President Dmitry Medvedev said it would not yet send troops.
“This is an internal conflict and Russia does not yet see the conditions for its participating in resolving it,” Natalya Timakhova was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. A decision to dispatch peacekeepers could be taken only after consultations with the UN, she added.
The provisional government is struggling to halt a descent into civil war between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south of the country.
The second state of emergency in the city of Jalalabad was necessary because “instability is spreading,” Deputy Interim Minister Azimbek Beknadzarov declared on TV.
Thousands of Uzbek women and children fled to the nearby border with Uzbekistan, raising the spectre of a humanitarian crisis.—AFP
Thinking about ethics and current events (Began 1 April 2008)
Showing posts with label ethnic clashes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethnic clashes. Show all posts
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Riots in Western China
URUMQI, China, July 8 -- Chinese President Hu Jintao canceled plans to attend a major summit in Italy and flew home early Wednesday after reports that chaos and panic had spread throughout the capital of China's far western region of Xinjiang.
Since clashes erupted Sunday between the region's Muslim Uighur minority and the dominant Han Chinese, leaving more than 150 dead, the government has deployed police and paramilitary troops, closed mosques, instituted a curfew and rounded up at least 1,400 people. Hu's withdrawal from the Group of Eight summit, reported by state media, signaled his government's growing concern about the unrest that continued to flare across this city.
Early Tuesday, a group of several hundred Uighur protesters, most of them women in head scarves, gathered to demand that their detained husbands and brothers be released and their dead be accounted for. At midday, Uighur and Han Chinese men traded blows at the train station until riot police dispersed them with tear gas. In the late afternoon, hundreds of Han Chinese men armed with everyday items such as kitchen knives, shovels, hammers and pipes began smashing Uighur food stalls and stores, and headed to a local mosque.
Read it all here.
Since clashes erupted Sunday between the region's Muslim Uighur minority and the dominant Han Chinese, leaving more than 150 dead, the government has deployed police and paramilitary troops, closed mosques, instituted a curfew and rounded up at least 1,400 people. Hu's withdrawal from the Group of Eight summit, reported by state media, signaled his government's growing concern about the unrest that continued to flare across this city.
Early Tuesday, a group of several hundred Uighur protesters, most of them women in head scarves, gathered to demand that their detained husbands and brothers be released and their dead be accounted for. At midday, Uighur and Han Chinese men traded blows at the train station until riot police dispersed them with tear gas. In the late afternoon, hundreds of Han Chinese men armed with everyday items such as kitchen knives, shovels, hammers and pipes began smashing Uighur food stalls and stores, and headed to a local mosque.
Read it all here.
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