Airlift mounted as Soviet ethnic unrest spreads

Press, 12 June 1989, Page 11

Airlift mounted as Soviet ethnic unrest spreads

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Military planes have airlifted hundreds of frightened refugees out of the clutches of bloodthirsty mobs in the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan and authorities have formed vigilante groups to protect one city threatened by spreading ethnic unrest.

At least 500 people were plucked from the violence in which 80 people have been officially reported killed and more than 800 injured in the last week. Hundreds of houses and cars have been set ablaze in the carnage.

Some 11,000 refugees were already reported to be in special camps guarded by elite troops sent by the Kremlin.

The ethnic unrest, coming on top of continuing unrest between Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan, could turn out to be the worst rioting the Soviet Union has experienced for decades.

Military commanders, quoted in the Soviet press, have reported mobs armed with automatic weapons spreading out and “conquering” new districts. Local communist authorities drafted students and workers to defend the city of Andizhan as the gangs drew nearer. A commander of the

Interior Ministry troops sent to crush the violence said the mobs were moving towards the borders of Uzbekistan and were threatening neighbouring Tadhikistan. Newspapers have referred to pogroms and arson, of party and Government leaders being taken hostage, of police

headquarters being besieged and Government offices being set alight. As ethnic clashes between rival Muslim sects gave way to more general rioting and complete breakdown of law and order the press has referred to the mobs as bandits and said they were being stirred up by

local organised crime. Telephone links with the centres of unrest were down and the area remained closed to foreign correspondents. Most of the minority Meskhetians — just 15,000 of the region’s 1.8 million population dominated by Uzbeks — have now left their homes. The Meskhetians were deported to Central Asia from their homeland in south-west Georgia by Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, in 1944. Meanwhile the Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, has declared that the Kremlin’s policy of decentralising economic management to the Soviet Union’s 15 republics is to continue. He told the new Parliament that 18 of the 50 Moscow-based Ministries supervising the country’s industry would be abolished and their powers transferred to Ministries and local-government organisations in the republics.