This post offers two eyewitness accounts of the fighting in Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan on May 14, when organized provisional government supporters stopped two foreign journalists from photographing the scene.

David Trilling:

When the shooting started, Dalton Bennett and I were on the provisional government supporters’ end of Prospekt Lenina. About 200 meters separated the groups. Earlier, we had mingled on the Bakiyev side, on the main square in front of the governor’s office, but the hostile looks prompted us to hide our cameras and walk around the block, along a parallel street, to the men hoisting Ata-Meken flags in support of the provisional government. We thought we would be safer there.

Though the supporters of ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev surrounding the governor’s office had some guns, and a large number of Molotov Cocktails, I saw more guns on the provisional government side: hunting rifles and Kalashnikovs.

No one on either side wore a uniform.

A few minutes after we arrived, the two sides clashed: hurling rocks and shooting towards at each other. I am unsure who started the firing.

Split from Dalton by the panicked crowd, I photographed the clashes from within the crowd of provisional government supporters for about 45 minutes. The group – many wearing yellow armbands to differentiate themselves from Bakiyev supporters– was of mixed ethnicity while the Bakiyev supporters were entirely Kyrgyz.

During a lull, shortly before the shooting stopped and, somehow, the Bakiyev supporters melted away, I was surrounded by a group of angry men, including a prominent Uzbek community leader who had, the night before, instructed ethnic Uzbeks to come out and support the provisional government.

One poked me in the chest and screamed, “You have two seconds to give me your flash card [“flashka,” i.e. digital film]. One…” I was surrounded by his cohorts, some armed, and complied. I begged for it back, arguing that I had photographs of the other side and that I was there as an impartial observer. But the crowd was shouting that I would show the faces of the gunmen and demanded I leave.

These men were security services or criminal bosses (or both), I believe, who did not want the world to see the provisional government using force to take back Jalal-Abad.

Dalton Bennett:

As interim government and Bakiyev supporters clashed in downtown Jalal-Abad, a crowd of young men – provisional government supporters – gathered before a statue of Vladimir Lenin. Some were waving red Ata-Meken flags; others were armed with Kalashnikovs, hunting rifles and over-under shotguns.

Minutes after the shooting began, several men followed me, watching who and what I was photographing.

Caught in the chaos, I ran with the crowd towards a side street to seek cover. I soon found myself surrounded by men with yellow armbands. I lifted up my camera to take a picture of a young man clinching his teeth as fired his Kalashnikov towards the Bakiyev supporters. The young man’s gun jammed and someone shouted, pointed towards me, and signaled others.

I tried to run as the group rushed, grabbed my bag, arms and camera. Stumbling, I was tackled to the ground, protecting my face and guarding my camera. An unidentifiable man stood behind me speaking in English, demanding my camera’s flashcard (digital film) as several men held me on the ground. After being kicked and punched, I was promptly taken by a Kyrgyz man from Bishkek – a self-proclaimed Ata-Meken revolutionary who claimed he was in Jalal-Abad for a “party” – to a woman’s house a few hundred yards down the street.

These men were organized and they were there to prevent me from reporting. After 10 minutes, a driver arrived and the young man from Bishkek gripped my arm shoved me in the back of a car with the help of two others. I didn’t know where we were going, but they soon asked me where I was staying and dropped me at my hotel. Walking me to the door, the Ata-Meken member left me with an ambiguous warning: “We will be watching you. If you go out, you could be killed.”