Racist Slogans Panic Uzbeks in South Kyrgyzstan

A spate of anti-Uzbek graffiti in Osh, the main city in southern Kyrgyzstan, has revived memories of the bloodshed that devastated the region in June 2010. 

Police are treating the racist remarks daubed on walls around the city as simple vandalism, but for many Uzbeks they are a sinister reminder of the unresolved tensions and mistrust left behind by the 2010 violence, in which over 400 people died – both Kyrgyz and Uzbek, but mostly the latter.

One of the most prominent inscriptions was painted on an aircraft used as a monument in the city centre, saying (in Kyrgyz) “Death to Sarts” – a derogatory term for Uzbeks. Similar graffiti appeared on an Uzbek-language theatre in Osh, in the largely Uzbek-inhabited Cheremushki district, and on the houses of well-to do people in some traditional “mahalla” neighbourhoods where mostly Uzbek nationals live, as well as in some mahallas on the houses of wealthy Uzbeks.

“People are in a panic,” Uzbek resident Solijan told NBCentralAsia. “We are afraid of going outside in the afternoon and we don’t let our children out. We try not to stray outside our own mahalla.”

A human rights activists from the Human Rights Advocacy Centre in Osh said the Uzbek community was already feeling apprehensive, and the racist slogans had only fueled these fears.

The wounds left by the 2010 clashes have not healed, and government efforts to facilitate a rapprochement have had little effect, local observers say.

“No serious measures have been undertaken],” Rashid Khojaev, the head of the Uzbek cultural centre in Osh, said.

Abdurazzak Ishonov, an activist from Batken region, also in the south, said relations between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities remained poor.

“Young Uzbeks aren’t in contact with their Kyrgyz counterparts, and visa versa,” he said. “Both Uzbek and Kyrgyz people used to attend Uzbek weddings and funerals. Now they don’t.”

Ishonov said the blame lay with the authorities, who he said were uninterested in the social, economic and legal issues facing ethnic minorities.

Speaking on January 16, Shamil Atakhanov, head of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security, told a parliamentary hearing that his agency had identified 29 locations at risk of ethnic violence. He accused local government institutions of performing poorly and failing to put plans in place to avert such conflicts.

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

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