In
June 2010, southern Kyrgyzstan erupted in violence
between the Uzbek minority and Kyrgyz majority.
Almost 500 people were killed, hundreds injured,
and many thousands left homeless in the Osh and
Jalal-Abad regions.
Most of the victims
were ethnic Uzbeks and many members of the
minority have since been tried and sentenced to
long prison
terms over the violence.
Critics have attacked the government's failure to
provide equal justice for the Uzbek minority.
One legacy of the violence - and the
lingering standoff between the two groups - has
been the place of the Uzbek language in southern
Kyrgyzstan.
Elmurad Kasym writes on
Registan that the Kyrgyz authorities seem bent on
removing Uzbek from public life altogether. He
points to the closure of Uzbek schools in the
south, as well as the shift of many of them to an
all-Kyrgyz curriculum.
As RFE/RL has
reported in the past, there has been a movement
toward more Uzbek children being educated in the
Kyrgyz language, as some parents believe that it's
in their children's interest in a Kyrgyz-majority
society. But as Kasym says:
The latest of such occurrences has
taken place in the town of Naukat in southern
Kyrgyzstan where seven Uzbek-language schools
chose Kyrgyz-language instruction. According to
the Akipress news agency, "local residents
requested" the move. Over the last two years,
authorities in such cases advanced similar
claims. But, for some mysterious reason, there
was no single case when a parent would object
such decision. At least, none was reported. It
is quite understandable that even if one does
not want to give up his constitutionally
guaranteed right to obtain education in his
native language, he better not voice that
opinion (which is, too, guaranteed by the
constitution).
And following
statements by Kyrgyz officials earlier this year,
some members of the Uzbek and Tajik minorities
fear for the future of any education in their
languages at all.
One Kyrgyz legislator
who led a campaign to end university exams in
Uzbek said: "Why are we portrayed as the enemy the
moment we call for Kyrgyz to be spoken? They
[other ethnic groups] live in Kyrgyzstan, and
their great-grandfathers lived in Kyrgyzstan. If
you live here, there's nothing wrong with speaking
Kyrgyz as a mark of respect. We should be
patriots."
Another aspect of the
disappearance of Uzbek, Kasym notes, is taking
place more concretely - in the names of schools,
mosques, and businesses, especially cafes and
restaurants. As Eurasianet notes, many of them
have since been taken over "by Kyrgyz owners and
now bear Kyrgyz names. In some cases, criminal
groups forced Uzbek owners to sell; in others,
Uzbeks fled in fear and their properties ended up
being seized."
Perhaps then it's
ironically fitting that a bell erected in Osh in
memory of the victims of the June 2010 violence
has inscriptions calling for peace in three
languages: Kyrgyz, Russian - and English.
Copyright (c) 2012, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
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