Uzbek president defends soldiers' actions
Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov claimed today that authorities had tried to negotiate a peaceful end to street protests, but that troops were forced to fire into demonstrators to put down an uprising.
Karimov told a news conference in the capital Tashkent that 10 government troops were killed in a day of violence in the eastern city and that “many more” protesters died.
Relatives of the victims angrily condemned the government for killing innocent civilians, with witnesses saying 200 to 300 people were shot dead.
Soldiers loyal to Karimov, who has maintained a tight control over the impoverished ex-Soviet nation, fired on thousands of protesters who had gathered in a revolt that began when armed men freed hundreds of prison inmates, including defendants in a controversial religious-extremism case.
Karimov, in his first public comments on the bloodshed, said authorities couldn not yield to protesters’ demands, which he said included freeing all their imprisoned comrades in the Fergana Valley region.
“To accept their terms would mean that we are setting the precedent that no other country in the world would accept,” said Karimov, who linked the protests to the banned radical Islamist party Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Meanwhile, hundreds of angry protesters gathered in Andijan, placing six bodies on display from among the scores that witnesses said were killed in fighting.
Demonstrators, some with tears in their eyes, angrily condemned the government for firing on women and children.
