It’s been less than a week since Kyrgyzstan’s most controversial mayor, Melis Myrzakmatov of Osh, resumed his duties after a poorly explained two-month hiatus, and already the city and its environs have been shaken by worries of land grabs and expropriation.
On November 7, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reported:
A group of ethnic Kyrgyz today occupied land belonging to ethnic Uzbeks in the villages of Kyzyl-Kyshtak and Ishkevan, just outside Osh. […] The group of some 500 Kyrgyz -- mainly from the city of Osh and the Nookat, Aravan, and Alai districts -- showed up in the villages in the morning with plans to divide the land into parcels.
By the next day, RFE/RL reported that police had arrested “at least 20 people,” but the number of demonstrators had grown to about a thousand, many of them activists from a group called Osh Sheiytteri (Martyrs of Osh): “They say they will not leave until the land is legally distributed among ethnic Kyrgyz.”
Southern Kyrgyzstan still simmers with tensions after June’s deadly clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. And the demands for reallocation of land along ethnic lines are eerily reminiscent of those that sparked modern Kyrgyzstan’s first round of bloodletting between the two communities 20 years ago. (That violence also began in Osh and spread to other parts of the country’s south.)
Meanwhile, on his first day back at work on November 3, Myrzakmatov reportedly complained that many of the homes destroyed in Osh in June – most of which belonged to ethnic Uzbeks – are being reconstructed with “violations of the city’s building codes and master plan.”
The same day, AKIpress cited First Deputy Mayor Taalai Sabirov as saying that some of the 620 transitional shelters completed in Osh with international aid money may have to be moved:
As noted by the first deputy mayor, the new homes have been built in the same spots where the damaged homes had been located. But, in accord with the city’s master plan, which was approved by the city council and is under consideration by the government, 60 houses are subject to relocation. The owners of these houses have been informed and warned.
Legal experts have said that kicking people off their property would violate existing national law, but it remains to be seen whether that stops Osh authorities. Bishkek has little real control in the south. Could this be a test?
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