Posted by NEWS on 24/5/2005, 13:53:59 Uzbek President Islam Karimov was quick to label the Western mass media as “trustworthy,” and others, predominantly the Russian mass media, as the opposite. At a new conference last week in Tashkent, Karimov said he based his statement on the discrepancies in casualty figures cited by these mass media outlets in their reports on the violence in Andijan. Various news agencies and websites are quoting different figures for the number of people killed in the unrest, ranging from 700 to 1500. However, the Uzbek prosecutor general is sticking with the official line, saying that only 169 people were killed. Yet, the differences between Tashkent’s official version and the mass media reports pale in comparison to the figure of some 10,000 casualties on May 13 and 14 cited by a member of the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir party who is based in the divided border town of Kara-Suu, Kyrgyzstan, which is known as Korasuv in Uzbekistan. In an interview in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, Ayyub Mashrabov, 31, backed his allegations with his own and Hizb-ut-Tahrir’s “internal sources”, adding that Karimov staged the event to realize two objectives: “killing educated Muslims in Uzbek prisons” and “nullifying the idea of establishing a khilafah (caliphate) in Uzbek people’s minds”. According to Dilyor Jumaboyev, 34, another Hizb-ut-Tahrir activist, “Any man-made law will only harm man himself.” Mashrabov has warned the Kyrgyz authorities against doing “what Karimov has done, both throughout his rule and recently in Andijan.” Both Hizb-ut-Tahrir members have called on Kyrgyzstan’s Muslim and non-Muslim communities to aid the “refugee Uzbek brothers”. Independent journalist Almurad Kasym filed this report from Osh, Kyrgyzstan in the Fergana Valley bordering Uzbekistan.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir member claims Andijan massacre was staged by Uzbek authorities
OSH, Kyrgyzstan, May 22 (MNA) -– The recent events in Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan have reverberated throughout the world.
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