QED - Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Yesterday in my last post I wrote about the armed attack near Uzbek border.

I also presented two options for the follow up to these events. One of the two options was that Uzbekistan would have blamed some unknown extremist group coming from Kyrgyzstan for what had happened in its territory.

Border Service of Kyrgyzstan tightens security measures on border with Uzbekistan

The Border Service of Kyrgyzstan announced today that it has tightened security measures on borders. The Border Service of Kyrgyzstan confirmed information about the explosion that occurred in the night of May 25 and 26 in the Uzbek town of Khanabad, also known for hosting a US airbase (K2 or Camp Stronghold Freedom) vacated in 2005 after unrest in the area.

"According to the obtained information, the explosions are reported to have taken place at 02:00 in the town of Khanabad of the Republic of Uzbekistan on May 26," the Border Service of Kyrgyzstan said.

On the other side, Uzbekistan is claiming for clashes to have started in Kyrgyzstan.

No land for minors, women and disabled...

For all of you (probably none) who are wondering what happened to the poor 32 people arrested, tortured, prosecuted and sentenced for Nookat events, here you have the (un)happy ending.

Now, their only hope is with the High Commissioner for Human Rights and international community to intervene advocating on their behalf.

How to get robbed by police offers in a dark street in Bishkek

Sometimes things happen to you when you really don’t expect them.

Well, to be honest this was definitely not the case. I've been warned so many times about bad behavior of local police officers that when they stopped me I was already expecting something more than a standard passport control.

But let's start from the very beginning.

On April 20 I went out for dinner with a group of friends. We had a pleasant dinner in a “dirty-but-cheap-and-tasty” class Chinese Restaurant not far from my place. After dinner, me and a Spanish researcher – by the way, he’s writing a paper on political instability, which is the unofficial name for The Kyrgyz Republic – decided to come back home walking.

Half way to our home, while we were walking in a dark street, a car without any official sign on it rushed on the footpath right behind us and two police officers jumped out from it yelling us to stop. The two officers (wearing uniform, handcuffs and holster) asked us who we were, and if we had drugs or arms with us. We answer that no, we didn’t have anything like that with us and we were told to show our documents.

According to standard UN procedure, to avoid exactly this kind of situation all staff is required not to have the passport while walking around but just the accreditation card provided by the local Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is of course to avoid two main dangers: first of all law enforcement agencies don’t speak English at all, and this can originate some problem as they could not be able to check your data. Secondly (and most likely), they could think that seizing your passport is a good (and relatively safe) way to extort some money.

After having passed our documents to the third policeman who was still sitting in the car, the taller officer standing asked us something we didn’t really catch at very beginning. Then he moved to the backdoor of the car, opened it and repeated the same question. Roman (the Spanish guy) stepped back and refused firmly.

The officer was asking us to empty out our pockets and put all content on the back seat of their car.

After this request I had the first series of choices in front of me:

1. Call the DSS (Security Dept) on their mobile and let them talk with officers as to let the latter know that our Security Advisers were aware of their behavior;
2. Try to solve the situation without involving anyone else, try to calm down the officers and obey to their orders without allowing them to do whatever they want, eventually calling DSS in case of deteriorating situation.

After some bargaining we agreed to obey only if we were allowed to put the content on the bonnet of the car, and only one at a time.

To be honest, here we committed the first ingenuous mistake. As I was looking very carefully to what was happening to my friends, the third officer decided it was time to intervene, exit the car and started affably asking me useless questions.

Notwithstanding this, Roman won the day taking some big risk. When the taller was checking his belongings without any specific official utility, the second officer – a short, pudgy idiot – started aggressively grabbing random stuff asking obvious questions. Roman had very few som, but also a 50 euro banknote.

When the pudgy saw it, tried to stretch out his hand to catch them asking -what are those? Roman, who was standing right in between the short idiot and his target angrily rejected him with force and raged at him that they had to touch his belongings only one at a time. At that moment, I seriously thought we were close to end up the evening in the Police Dept.

Fortunately the situation slowed down and they finally decided Roman’s belongings were not so interesting, at the end of the day.

It was my turn.

The procedure was exactly the same: I was controlling the tall officer’s actions while the pudgy one was trying to catch everything to divert me from paying attention to his colleague and the “nice” one was diverting Roman from controlling us.

But in my case, something went the wrong way. Respect to Roman, I had more som and – even worse – my bank card. The pudgy idiot tried in vain to distract me from watching carefully his colleague, until he got to grab my bank card. At that point I had to pay attention to the damned asshole and the tall one managed to hide one of the three 500 som banknote I had with me.

I immediately regained control over my bank card, but it was too late: the game was over and it was not me the winner. They suddenly lost any interest in my belongings and said I was free to put them back into my pockets. As I took the banknotes I immediately saw one was missing, but there was nothing to do. Accusing them of theft after the fact would have only made my situation worse; I decided that 40 euro were not worthy a night in a Kyrgyz Police Dept, I swallowed my pride and put my stuff back into my pockets.

The hardest part was to stand the three assholes saying “you can go, ok? Everything is ok, right?” without yelling at them that no, it was not all right, that their mothers were to be charged for crime against humanity for giving birth to such a bunch of stupid assholes.


Annex

Lesson learned:

1. ALWAYS ask them to show their ID BEFORE doing anything by your side;
2. ALWAYS write down their names and post as to put them off and to eventually be able, later on, to sue them through DSS Advisers;
3. ALWAYS impede them to search you (we didn’t allow them to do it, but we were confirmed only later on that they are actually forbidden to do that);
4. ALWAYS demand them to provide a well-grounded reason for their request to empty out your pockets.
5. ALWAYS know by heart the quick code for calling DSS Advisers without having to look for their number on the phonebook.
   

For all who

For all who suffered, and are no more
For all who cried, and still do so
For all who used to sleep under a sky of bricks
For all who are waiting now under a blanket of stars

Thou, my prayer, fly sky high
Over their heads, above their hopes

Protect them from angry sun and sharp hail
From dirty snow and steel rain

Thou, my prayer, fly over pain and tears
where men and earth sob at once

Thinking about my shaken land

Tonight, a powerful quake (magnitude 6.3 Richter, 8-9 Mercalli) hit the center of Italy, not far from Rome. Abruzzi region and L'Aquila city in particular, that was mainly interested by the earthquake are now counting his losses both in terms of human life and artistic/historical patronage.

Up to this moment 40 people died (at least 5 of them were children) and 40 are missing.

A civil protection official told the BBC that 3,000 to 10,000 buildings may have been damaged only in L'Aquila, a medieval city founded in the 13th Century and rich of Baroque and Renaissance buildings. Italian journalist Paulo Pacitti told that the city centre had been hard hit.

Apparently not only civil buildings were damaged, but some churches, chapels and historical buildings collapsed as well. A legacy of the past of immeasurable value got lost in few seconds.

At the same time, many other small towns in the area are completely burned to the ground. Their buildings, much older and less subject to static measurements more common in bigger cities.

From time to time, I am giving a glance to the dozen of yellow daffodils I bought this morning on my way to the office from an old lady sitting on the wayside.

Today, I cannot avoid thinking yellow is the color of danger.

Introduction to local politics

That is to say: "Why I had to spend a Friday buried into my flat".


On Friday, 27th of March 2009 opposition called supporters to organize rallies all around Kyrgyzstan to ask for President Bakiev to resign.

Bakiev was elected President of the Kyrgyz Republic after Nationwide demonstrations in the spring of 2005 resulted in the bloodless Tulip Revolution and the ouster of President Askar Akayev, who had run the country since 1990.

Unfortunately, Bakiev failed to live up to his election promises to reform the country's constitution and transfer many of his presidential powers to parliament.

The political opposition organized demonstrations in Bishkek in April, May, and November 2006 resulting in the adoption of a new constitution that transferred some of the president's powers to parliament and the government.

In December 2006, the Kyrgyzstani parliament voted to adopt new amendments, restoring some of the presidential powers lost in the November 2006 constitutional change. By late-September 2007, both previous versions of the constitution were declared illegal, and the country reverted to the Akaev-era 2003 constitution, which was subsequently modified in a flawed referendum initiated by the President himself.

Bakiev then dissolved parliament, called for early elections, and gained control of the new parliament through his newly-created political party, Ak Jol, in December 2007 elections.

To be honest, there's is a lot to argue for.

Corruption is sky high (Kyrgyz Republic is apparently the 4th most corrupt State in the world), lawlessness is increasing day by day, judiciary is obeying to the government more than to the law, inflation is devastating spending power of the majority of citizens, while lack of adequate welfare is striking most vulnerable population. Finally, since 9/11 all Central Asian states readily adhered to the worldwide trend aimed to sacrifice Human Rights for State Security's sake; this obviously implied a relevant increase in abuses from law enforcement agencies and a general strengthening of their impunity.

This is the context that made opposition decide that time has come for the President to resign and call for new free presidential elections.

In UN this appointment raised immediately some concern. Officials present during 2006 rallies still remember when rumors wanting Bakiev to have had safe heaven in our offices brought part of the dissidents in front of the UN House asking for the President to come out and face their rage.

Of course the rumors were false, but the stones and bricks that crashed their windows were scarely real.

I spent the two days before D-day in Dostuk Hotel for the Regional Training on Adequate Housing and Forced Eviction, so I was not real-time updated about the frantic meetings and brainstorming that brought to the final decision about our presence in office on Friday, 27 of March.

To be honest, I was not especially worried about the situation. All kyrgyz friends and contacts of us seemed totally skeptical about some major disorder to happen, and the overall feeling that we perceived walking around could not have been more quiet.

At the opposite, the idea of receiving the order not to exit my flat and to stay totally alone, without Internet connection or TV for the whole day was much more annoying than the idea of a far possibility of being besieged for a while into the UN House.

The final decision from the Head of Agencies Meeting cought me when I went back to the office after the end of the last training day.

Due to major security concerns, all our Office but the Head of Agency and the National Program Officer was "invited not to come to the office the day after, and to strictly follow guidelines and directives from DSS".

Shit.

In the end, my day as 21st century hermit man passed by slowly and smoothly. That is to say that I had a quiet, boring day.

I infringed DSS rules only for a quick walk to the local market to buy some fresh vegetables and noodles. You can order me to stay 24 hours without internet and my whole life without Tv, but you cannot force me to stay one day at home alone without cooking. No way.




PS: FYI, nothing special happened on the 27th. Just 1000 people attended the rallies in Bishkek, and they never really moved from the area the were assigned to. In the rest of the country no more than 5-700 people organized rallies in different cities without any major problem occurring. Apparently, Bakiev decision to fix in a rush the date for next early Presidential elections, the uncomfortable location assigned for the gathering and the unpleasant weather contributed to deflate the tensions and to demotivate many. Now, everything is postponed to next July when Presidential election will take place.