Islam Karimov

Kyrgyz officials said May 22 they did not consider the Uzbeks at the camp to be refugees and would try to send them home.

The officer in charge of security, Col. Abdumajit Abdurakhmonov, said letting more Uzbeks cross the border could trigger a much bigger exodus from Uzbekistan than impoverished Kyrgyzstan could handle. "If we had let them all come, the number here would have been 5,000 instead of 500," he said.

Uzbek authorities had set up a camp to process the returnees and had claimed those without criminal records would be let go, but he expressed skepticism. "Personally, I feel that they treat them very cruelly there," he said.

The U.N. refugee agency has strongly urged Kyrgyzstan to provide shelter for all Uzbeks fleeing violence and promised assistance.

The two former Soviet states view each other with suspicion and, sometimes, open hostility. In June 1990, hundreds died in fighting between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. With memories of that violence still vivid and lacking much information about what happened in Andijan, most Kyrgyz feel little sympathy for the Uzbek refugees.

The Japan Times Weekly: May 28, 2005
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