Japan should push democracy in Central Asia.
In the Central Asian state of Uzbekistan, hundreds of citizens were reportedly killed and wounded during a government crackdown.
The government's announcement said armed rebels, apparently Islamic extremists, freed inmates by storming a prison in the eastern part of the country and then occupied a government building. According to the announcement, many ordinary citizens got caught up in the gunfire that ensued between rebels and the security force.
As only limited information has been made available, much remains unknown. Some news reports say the government troops fired machine guns randomly at the crowds that gathered around the government building, and that the death toll has reached 500. Many inhabitants rushed to the Kyrgyzstan border in an attempt to flee their country. That led to further disturbances in the border district.
The situation has reached a crisis level as the citizens' drive to protest the bloody repression by the government spread to wider areas.
The government said the riot was caused by armed rebels under the influence of international Islamic extremists. After Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union, there has been a spate of terrorist bombings believed to have been carried out by fundamentalist Islamic forces. The government of President Islam A. Karimov resorted to strong-arm tactics to clamp down on dissidents again and again.
The government characterizes the latest disturbance as another terrorist act and appears to be trying to win the understanding of the international community.
Obviously, however, the unrest has much to do with the resentment of the long-running authoritarian rule of President Karimov. Ever since he became the first secretary of the Communist Party in the republic in 1989, during the closing days of the Soviet Union, Karimov has been continuously in power.
Corruption and cronyism became rampant during his 16-year rule, and many in the country have not enjoyed the benefits of economic reform. Democratization has made little headway during those years, as has been shown by the government's control of the news media. Human rights organizations in foreign countries believe the Karimov government may be suppressing opposition forces by branding them Islamic extremists.
Knowledgeable sources say the latest uprising was triggered by strife over business interests in a provincial district between the government and local bigwigs. Apparently, there were also some large rallies to protest the government. It is hard to take at its face value the government's simplistic explanation that the latest clash was part of a fight against terror.
In some respects, the people's discontent with poverty in their day-to-day life and the high-handed rule by the government may well have converged with the drive for the restoration of Islam, and the government's oppressive modus operandi accelerated the growth of militant fundamentalism.
Not only Uzbekistan but also Kyrgyzstan, where President Askar Akayev was thrown out of office recently, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have all been beset by the same problem of a long-running rule by a despotic ruler. Basic institutions of democracy, such as freedom of the speech and fair elections, have not yet taken root in those countries. Such a state of affairs destabilizes the Central Asian region.
The situation is further complicated by the drive for the restoration of Islam, which was contained in the days of the Soviet Union.
Japan called for conducting ``Silk Road diplomacy'' in the 1990s and was poised to be aggressively engaged in affairs in Central Asian countries. It also offered huge amounts of official development assistance to the countries in the region. While its economic assistance is worthy in itself, Japan should go further in encouraging the advancement of democratization in those countries.
--The Asahi Shimbun, May 16(IHT/Asahi: May 17,2005)
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