KYRGYZSTAN: THE NEXT FORMER SOVIET REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA?
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Recent clashes between Kyrgyz and Dungan youth are a symptom of growing
resentment and nationalism, some fear.
ISKRA, Kyrgyzstan | More than a week after clashes attributed to ethnic
divisions that left six people injured in the Kyrgyz village of Iskra,
about 70 kilometers east of Bishkek, local people were still clearing
up broken glass and pondering what was behind the violence.
The problems began early in February when a fight broke out between
Kyrgyz and Dungan youth. The Dungans are Muslims of Chinese origin who
moved to central Asia in the 1870s to escape persecution at home. Many
found refuge in Kyrgyzstan, then part of the Russian empire, and there
are about 40,000 in the country today.
Police had to resort to using tear gas on 6 February to restore order
in the village after two young people were hospitalized after a fight
over computer time at a local school erupted into a riot.
Two Dungan youths are alleged to have attacked the pupils. Dungans
account for 90 percent of the village's 3,000 residents. In the
aftermath of the original incident, about 150 Iskra residents gathered
to demand that some Dungan families be resettled, which then escalated
into protesters throwing stones and setting fire to some Dungan houses.
According to the Interior Ministry, the incident resulted in criminal
cases being filed against six Dungans for possession of firearms.
Residents of Iskra told IRIN fights between gangs of young people -
which tend to follow ethnic lines - were common. "A week ago, I was
beaten by a group of Kyrgyz boys in my school, and then, of course, I
went and gathered my gang in order to fight them back," Roman, a
17-year-old ethnic Russian, said.
Bishkek has been reluctant to label the violence in the village as
ethnically based. "If a person hits another person it should not
necessarily imply an interethnic conflict. Such teenager fights are
very frequent," the Khabar news agency quoted Prime Minister Felix
Kulov as saying last week.
ECONOMIC ROOTS
This mountainous former Soviet republic of 5.1 million is home to more
than 80 ethnic groups, including substantial minorities of ethnic
Uzbeks and Russians, along with Uighurs, Dungans, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and
Tatars.
Between 1991 and 2002, more than 600,000 people emigrated from
Kyrgyzstan and the ethnic minority population declined from 47 to 33
percent. Ethnic clashes have been infrequent but sometimes serious.
Fights between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the southern cities of Osh and
Uzgen on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 claimed
more than 300 lives.
Some say more needs to be done in Kyrgyzstan to promote interethnic
harmony. "A couple of years ago the government began implementing an
ethnic-tolerance program in schools, as well as broader educational
programs that can promote the idea of a multicultural Kyrgyzstan, but
this has now all been forgotten; it should be revived," Valeriy
Vishnevskiy, a chair of the Slavic Fund of Kyrgyzstan and a member of
the Assembly of People of Kyrgyzstan.
But with as much as 65 percent of the country's rural population
living below the national poverty line, according to the World Bank,
observers say lack of opportunity and conflict over scarce resources,
rather than ethnic differences, are fueling much of the conflict.
Dungans have a reputation for being more business minded than
indigenous Kyrgyz people and this has led to an income differential in
many of the communities in which they live.
"Dungan families have always been better off. Their children, when
fighting or arguing with their Kyrgyz peers, used to tease them that
they are mainly poor. Many Kyrgyz work the fields belonging to Dungan
people, who are sometimes viewed as outsiders, so this resentment is
growing further," Asel Manasbaev, an ethnic Kyrgyz living in Iskra,
said.
"It is not a secret that Uzbeks, Uyghurs, Dungans are more
enterprising people than Kyrgyz," Deputy Prime Minister Adakhan
Madumarov told state television on 9 February.
"Why is it bad that we are working and earning money, we're
actually creating jobs here," Ayup, a 58-year-old Dungan, told IRIN
in Iskra. He added that problems in the village had been simmering for
half a decade, since poorer Kyrgyz replaced emigrating Russians in the
late 1990s.
But Dungans believe the new administration is doing nothing to check a
growing nationalism in the country that is affecting minorities.
After the wave of land grabs that followed the revolution in Kyrgyzstan
in March 2005, local ethnic Turks in the Novopavlovka village found
leaflets on their doors that said, "Down with Turks. Get out of our
land. We will burn you if you hesitate." During the power vacuum that
followed the ouster of former president Askar Akayev's regime, many
ethnic Russian businesses were targeted by looters.
Dungans feel they are under pressure and could face an uncertain future
if the new government chooses to play the ethnic card to boost support.
"We have never felt persecuted in Kyrgyzstan, but that could change
and there's plenty of concern," one member of the community said as
he prepared to fix new glass to the front of his battered shop in
Iskra's main street.
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