Samarkand may be showing itself to be the new hotbed of civil unrest after the Andijon massacre back in May. Protestors took the to streets after the government gave them only one week to clear out of their homes in preparation for a highway project. And more, the government offered them next to nothing in compensation. Another protest followed, as women demonstrated against the government’s intent to close a bazaar. There were unconfirmed protests in Samarkand back in June as well.

Two public protests broke out this weekend in the Uzbek city of Samarkand. On 20 August, demonstrators from the city outskirts blocked roads to protest the scheduled destruction of their houses. And yesterday, hundreds of merchants angrily protested a sudden decision to relocate the city’s main market. As RFE/RL reports, the Samarkand protests are the first in Uzbekistan since those that ended in a violent government crackdown in Andijon in May.

Prague, 22 August 2005 (RFE/RL) — The owners of some 100 homes from the village of Bogimaydon, on the outskirts of Samarkand, said authorities gave them only a week’s notice to leave their homes before they were destroyed in order to make room for a highway-extension project. They said the compensation they had been offered was far less than the market value of their homes.

In response, the residents blocked the village’s main road for several hours on 20 August, holding placards reading: “Don’t demolish an old house before building a new one.” It is a phrase familiar to the country’s authoritarian leader, Islam Karimov. He uses the expression often during speeches, and has also used it as the title of one of his numerous books.

In a voice mail message left with RFE/RL’s Tashkent bureau, a protester described the scene: “Several people who suffered a lot and were fed up took to the streets to say their houses were to be demolished. We blocked the road and were holding placards.”

Local human rights activists like Jamol Mirsaidov were said to be among the protesters. Protesters claimed Mirsaidov and other demonstrators were hurt when police used force to disperse the crowd. Uzbek officials have not commented on the protest.
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The protest in Bogimaydon was followed by another demonstration. Merchants — mainly women — from Samarkand’s biggest clothing market, Chuqurbozor, gathered yesterday to protest a decision by authorities to close the bazaar.

Demonstrators said the closure was announced yesterday — just a day before it was due to close.

Local police forces quickly blocked the area of the market where the protests took place. A BBC correspondent who was trying to get to the site was detained and held by police for several hours.

Eyewitnesses told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service the number of protesters may have risen as high as several hundred people.

The two protests are the first in Uzbekistan since the violent crackdown against peaceful demonstrations in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon last May. That violence reportedly led to the deaths of hundreds of unarmed protesters, including many women and children.

Nathan says that, “the protests and the decisions igniting them show that the Uzbek government????????s insistence on a self-serving explanation for Andijon makes continued protests inevitable,” which is entirely correct.

Karimov continues to tell the world that those behind the protests in Andijon were Islamic extremists; terrorists who wanted to create an Islamic caliphate in the country. This could not have been further from the truth. The protests started because of the trial of 23 young businessmen who helped make up the business core in impoverished Andijon. Accusations of Islamic extremism were false — Karimov simply feared their growing influence as job providers where the government was failing to achieve growth and opportunities for the people. The crowd grew and the protest turned into a rally to air grievances against the government.

By continuing to blame Islamic extremists where they don’t exist, and at the same time not fixing the real problem (economic stagnation due to government interference), unrest will continue to grow in Uzbekistan.

In this case, the government was once again stupid and rushed in its decision to serve people with notice of eviction and closing of the bizarre so close to the date of it actually happening. The article points out from correspondence that people would not have minded so much if they had been alerted a few months ahead of time and given just compensation for their homes. Now, because of the government, they don’t have time to find a new place to live and not enough money to afford a new home anyway. As for the bazaar workers, they were served with a notice of its closing only a day beforehand, meaning they will have no work and not enough time to find more.

The police have already put these protests down, but what will they do next? Start solving the problems so that people aren’t desperately irritated against the government anymore, or blame it on Islamic extremists while sustaining control by force? Karimov can’t do the latter forever. As Andijon and Samarkand are showing, people whose livelihoods are threatened due to government oppression are willing to stand up for themselves over and over again. The ball is now rolling, and Karimov’s days are numbered.