TASHKENT —
Uzbekistan’s president arrived in a protest-rocked autonomous republic Saturday
and pledged that proposed constitutional amendments that would have weakened
the territory’s status will be scrapped.
اضافة اعلان
Authorities said
earlier on Saturday that they had arrested “organizers of mass riots” who
wanted to seize administrative buildings in the Republic of Karakalpakstan,
which witnessed rare protests over constitutional reform proposals.
A Friday
demonstration brought thousands onto the streets of the regional capital and
followed the publication of draft amendments to the Uzbek constitution that
would have removed the republic’s right to self-determination and brought it
further under central control.
The tightly
controlled government has made no mention of casualties, although Telegram
accounts have circulated footage that suggests fatalities occurred during the
police crackdown.
Internet access
has been restricted in the territory during the last week and at least one
private media outlet deleted an article about the changes to Karakalpakstan’s
status shortly after publishing it.
Spontaneous demonstrations are illegal in the
authoritarian ex-
Soviet republic and police said Friday that “order had been
restored” in the area taken over by the protest.
Nevertheless, the
demonstration marked arguably the biggest challenge yet to the rule of
authoritarian President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
The Uzbek leader
styles himself as a reformer but has seen the economic opening of his reign
undermined by successive global crises — the coronavirus pandemic and key trade
partner Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mirziyoyev’s press
service on Saturday said he had held a meeting with lawmakers of Karakalpakstan’s
parliament and that the articles of the constitution concerning the region
would remain unchanged “on the basis of ... the opinions stated by residents of
Karakalpakstan”.
The proposed
changes that had angered residents included one that removed the republic’s
constitutional right to secede from Uzbekistan via referendum.
The article dates
back to 1993 after the republic’s leadership made a push for greater separation
from Uzbekistan on the eve of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Uzbekistan is expected
to hold a referendum on a raft of amendments to the constitution in the coming
months.
Impoverished Karakalpakstan takes its name from the
Karakalpak people who are well represented in cities such as Nukus, where the
protest took place, but now constitute a minority in the western region of two
million people.
Karakalpakstan is
closely associated with the drying of the Aral Sea — one of the world’s great
man-made environmental catastrophes.
Once the world’s
fourth-largest lake, the Aral shrank massively due to Soviet agricultural
policies that saw rivers that fed into it diverted, largely to expand cotton
production.
Uzbekistan’s
neighbor Kazakhstan said Saturday that it was barring the passage of “people,
vehicles, and goods” through its border with the region at Uzbekistan’s
request.
Residents told AFP
on condition of anonymity that the airport in Nukus was not fully operational,
and that police and the military had sealed off the entrance into the city
center.
‘Split society’
A joint statement by Karakalpakstan’s police, parliament and cabinet said
that “provocateurs” had attempted “to seize state institutions, ... split
society, and destabilize the sociopolitical situation in Uzbekistan” during the
Friday protest.
“A group of
organizers of mass riots and people who actively resisted law enforcement
agencies have been detained. Investigative actions are underway against them,”
the Saturday statement said, blaming unrest on a “criminal group”.
With a total
population of 35 million people, Uzbekistan is Muslim-majority
Central Asia’s
most populous country.
Beyond changes to
the region’s status, Uzbekistan’s new constitution is also expected to
re-introduce seven-year terms for the presidency.
This amendment is
likely to benefit incumbent Mirziyoyev, 64, who has boasted of a “New
Uzbekistan” after pursuing reforms that reversed some of his hardline
predecessor Islam Karimov’s policies.
Karimov, whom
Mirziyoyev served as a prime minister, died in 2016.
He left a legacy that
included systematic forced labor in the cotton harvest, a bloody massacre of
protesters in 2005 and accounts of systematic torture including the boiling and
freezing of inmates.
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