Picking up the pieces
In June, violence broke out between ethnic groups in Southern Kyrgyzstan. Many hundreds of people were killed, and hundred’s of thousands were temporarily displaced.
Alan Cutting (International Partnerships Manager/ Central Asia Regional Manager) visited the area the following month, and reports on what he saw. Some names have been changed to protect identity.
We drove with Pastor Vadim through Zhamansor, one of the districts most impacted by the ethnic violence that ripped through the southern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh in June. Whichever way we turned, home after home was burned out. Women huddled together by the roadside, staring and talking to one another. White and blue 18 square metre UNHCR tents had arrived just this week, and were squeezed into gardens and onto courtyards of burned out homes. One middle aged man crouched by the road side rocking, cigarette in hand, and constantly, violently twitching.
We stopped and spoke with some of the women. “We were given food aid for a few days, but in the last few weeks we’ve been forgotten again” they said. “Can you give us some people to help us clean up? We don’t believe anyone wants to help us any more. All our documents have been burned. We went to the city to seek help, but we were beaten up badly and we had to run for our lives for fear of being killed. We were given one mattress and one tent and five blankets, for six people”.
Another woman told us that they’d created a district government to protect their rights and try to get passports. They were very respectful and pleasant to us. They just wanted us to hear their story. They didn’t appear to be angry, just sad; deeply sad, broken, defeated. And still afraid.
We drove on round the corner into Severnoye Street, where Vadim suddenly stopped the car, jumping out to give a man in his early forties a big hug in the street. “This is Azam! He’s my car mechanic – the best one in town” he told us. A small crowd gathered, and Vadim gave the young mums some pampers from the boot of his car. The mothers were extremely grateful and appreciative.
Azam invited us to climb through the charred gates of his burned out home. “We had fifteen of us living here,” he said, waiving his hand around the courtyards thirteen rooms. Apart from a UNICEF tent, only rubble and twisted metal remained. He showed us a burned saucepan, over which was a lid. He took off the lid. “These are the bones of my mother and my sister. We’re still finding them in the rubble. In this basement (only burned walls remained) I hid ten of my family. Seven of us survived. My brother draped himself over my mother and sister to shelter them, and he had burns all over his body. So he rushed across the road and jumped into the stream, then was taken to hospital. He should definitely have lived, but we were told he died overnight. We don’t know who took his life.”
Azam stopped for a moment to give us mineral water, each in turn from his one remaining cup. Yes, to offer hospitality to three complete strangers from another culture. “My father built this house in 1960. My mother was an invalid – this was her chair.” He gesticulated towards some twisted metal remains that were still identifiable as a wheelchair.
“The house took three days to burn. In this district, 286 homes were burned and at least 1000 died." His body language was unsettled, agitated, fitful. A woman had followed us in from the street. “This is my wife Oksana. Look at where she was beaten around the head. They poured petrol over her head but I dragged her into the house and hid her into the basement. That wound is 40 days old. She is a doctor, but because we were attending to my brother, she didn’t even get to go to hospital.” Irina held onto Oksana as she sobbed deeply. “We’re still so afraid” said her husband. “We need the Russian army to come, like they did in 1990. We need them again now.”
As we left Azam and the remains of his family, an old woman came hobbling up to greet us. “I hear you have some pampers. May I have some? They killed my daughter in law, and the baby is now ten weeks old.” We gave her some pampers; she thanked us, and bustled off down the road again, through some rubble, and disappeared behind another burned out gate.
Please continue to remember the people affected by the violence in Kyrgyzstan in your prayers.
Thank you to all those who gave towards our emergency relief work in Kyrgyzstan. To make a gift towards our Emergency Relief Fund, helping us respond in places like Kyrgyzstan, Niger and Haiti, please click here.
