What Happened

GLEN HOWARD: Well, what happened was basically the demonstrations began after the people were released from prison, they gathered there it was an extremely volatile situation after they stormed the prison, releasing about 2,000 prisoners--

MARGARET WARNER: A lot more than the 23 businessmen.

GLEN HOWARD: Exactly. And what happened is many of these people after they had also gone to an armory and they seized large amounts of arms, about 300 Kalashnikovs and large amounts of ammunition. But what happened is that some of these people started mixing with the demonstrators.

MARGARET WARNER: Who had been will there a while, right?

GLEN HOWARD: They have been there demonstrating. President Karimov had flown out to the region; he had apparently met there the day before.

And what begins after that is still unclear. The problem with this unrest and the whole tragedy of what occurred is we're still trying to separate fact from fiction over what transpired.

Many human rights people were there, prominent western organizations were based in the region reported eyewitness reporting said that the Uzbeks who sent their special forces from the police started firing immediately.

MARGARET WARNER: On this crowd.

GLEN HOWARD: On this crowd. And then what responded -- what the Uzbeks came, countered to that is many of these demonstrators were armed, and so they were firing back.

And so with these demonstrations it became very, very difficult to separate what really transpired. But we do know that there were large amounts of casualties, we don't know exactly how many yet and we're still trying to understand the situation.

It's been complicated because the Uzbek government has not been fully transparent, forthcoming in trying to help western diplomats understand what happened there.

Glen Howard, Jamestown Foundation's president, speaking on PBS's Newshour on May 19.

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Just to be clear here, they're saying that the government troops were mutilating bodies before the people were even dead?

That's absolutely correct. And it was confirmed by several different people.

Who all saw this in the same hospital morgue?

Yes. It's only one hospital morgue, which is rather small apparently, I don't know, I've never been inside, but that's what the witnesses said, and they were saying that people were still breathing, they were still alive.

Do you have any reason to doubt what they say?

Well, actually no, because from what I gather, there were so many dead bodies and injured bodies lying down in the streets, and the government was absolutely desperate to get them out... they were absolutely desperate to get rid of them, and this might be the reason they acted in such a brutal way.


Former BBC Central Asia correspondent Shahida Tulaganova, replying to questions on BBC World Service Radio's The World Today (use the Radio Player on the 22.00 hours bulletin)