Remaking Life in South Kyrgyzstan

by SamRatan1    March 23, 2011

Eight months after their lives were torn apart by ethnic violence, people in and around Osh and Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan are still struggling with the practicalities of rebuilding their homes as well as with the psychological trauma.

These pictures, taken in February 2011, show scenes from the daily lives of Uzbek and Kyrgyz families who lived through the clashes in the sprawling city of Osh.

An investigation into the violence over several days in June 2010 found that 426 deaths had been verified, of which 276 had been identified as Uzbek and 105 Kyrgyz, while 2,200 people sustained injuries.

Thousands of homes and businesses were looted and torched, apparently not on a random basis, but after they were selected because of the ethnicity of their owners. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR calculated that 2,000 private houses were damaged and 1,700 completely destroyed. The central market serving the whole of Osh was also devastated, and business has not yet recovered to where it was before the fighting broke out.

Report: Saule Mukhametrakhimova, Institute for War & Peace Reporting
 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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