Uzbeks Rally for Release of Local Islamic Leader

ANDIJON, Uzbekistan — Hundreds of demonstrators rallied Friday in the Uzbek border town of Korasuv, demanding the release of an Islamic leader and protesting the rumored death in police custody of another man arrested a day earlier.

With most journalists restricted from entering the troubled area, the situation overnight in Korasuv was unclear, but the rally reportedly ended in the evening without violence.

During the day, police were said to have formed a cordon around the square where the protest was being held; there were no reports of clashes.

“The protesters say that a wave of arrests swept the city the day before yesterday and yesterday,” Alexei Volosevich, a local journalist at the scene, reported Friday for the Moscow-based Ferghana.ru online news service. “One Dilmurod Mamadzhanov, born in 1962, a wrestler, was arrested. The protesters claim that they were told he had died of beating at the police station. According to unconfirmed reports, 23 people were arrested.”

Gafur Yuldashev, a reporter for U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who spoke by phone with a resident of Korasuv, said the protest continued at least until late afternoon. The person he spoke with estimated the number of protesters at 300, though Interfax news service quoted a resident as saying 2,000 had participated in the demonstraton.

The protesters were demanding the release of Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, a farmer turned Islamic leader, said Yuldashev, who recently visited Korasuv.

In interviews Wednesday, Rakhimov told journalists that residents had taken control of the town and would use it as a base to build an Islamic state.

Interfax said official reports indicated that the man rumored to have been killed or seriously injured had been sent to a jail in Andijon along with three other organizers of a weekend uprising in the town.

Local authorities and border guards fled Korasuv on May 14, when rioters burned buildings there, but reappeared in the predawn hours Thursday, according to numerous reports from Korasuv.

The revolt in the border town appeared to have a number of causes, including public anger that Uzbek authorities had in recent years made it extremely difficult to cross into neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

But the immediate trigger for the violence in the town was a series of clashes and protests May 13 in nearby Andijon, including a prison break, the takeover of a government building by armed militants, a protest by thousands of demonstrators and finally a bloody crackdown by troops.

The government placed the death toll in the town of Andijon at 169, although human rights activists and others said many more had been killed.

There was a small demonstration Friday in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, outside the office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, reported Ferghana.ru, which specializes in covering Uzbekistan. The protesters were demanding that the OSCE be more critical of the government of President Islam A. Karimov in response to the events in Andijon.

Among the placards held by protesters, the news agency reported, were “OSCE, Awake! Stop Being a Shame of Europe” and “We are Ashamed for Our Government.”

Meanwhile, international pressure grew on Karimov to allow an independent outside investigation of the events in Andijon.

Among those requesting an inquiry were United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, and representatives of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a statement saying it had asked the Uzbek government to grant it access to people who were arrested or wounded in the turmoil.

“The communique says many families do not know yet what happened to their relatives still listed as missing,” Itar-Tass, a Russian news agency, reported.

“Those people want indications on whether their near and dear ones have been killed, wounded, arrested, have left for other parts of the country or may be seeking refuge outside Uzbekistan.”