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Kurds plan exodus from south Kazakstan
24.1.2008
By Elena Eliseeva in Shymkent (RCA No. 528) |
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A uneasy calm may now prevail between Kurds and
Kazaks after last autumn’s violence, but most Kurds
feel they have no option but to leave.
January 24, 2008
Fearing for their physical safety, many ethnic Kurds
say they plan to leave southern Kazakstan, as
reports of low-level violence against them continue.
Zara, an inhabitant of the southern city of Shymkent,
says her family and many other local Kurds plan to
sell up and leave following a spate of attacks on
the community last November.
“Of course we are afraid to leave - we have lived
here all our lives - but we are also afraid to
stay,” Zara told IWPR.
“We don’t know what is coming next. The newspapers
are writing bad things about us Kurds. If the
community elders say so, we will certainly leave.”
The trouble dates from the end of October, when a
Kurdish teenager from the village of Mayatas, in the
Tolebi district of South Kazakstan region,www.ekurd.net
was accused of sexually
assaulting a four-year-old Kazak boy.
After the latter’s father went to the police, locals
took the law into their own hands and started
burning and looting houses and beating up Kurds.
The violence then spilled over into other towns and
villages where to Kurds live.
Although attacks on people and property soon died
down, work to reconcile the communities and foster
greater tolerance have not yielded results.
Kurds in the South Kazakstan region interviewed by
IWPR say although the mass looting has not recurred,
small-scale incidents have continued.
“We have a bad feeling,” said one local from the
Tolebi district. “Things are not the same as
before.”
Official statistics suggest that there about 46,000
Kurds now living in Kazakstan, of whom 7,000 live in
the South Kazakstan administrative region.
The Kurds belong to a community deported wholesale
from Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1937, and from
Georgia in 1944. Like hundreds of thousands of
Chechens, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars and other
ethnic groups, they were deemed suspect by Stalin,
who ordered them to be shifted far into the interior
of the Soviet Union.
Kazim Nadirov, who heads the Kurdish National Centre
in Shymkent, said the conflict was now frozen rather
than resolved.
Nadirov said that when cross-community meetings were
arranged recently, Kurds found themselves being told
to leave the area.
“At all the meetings I took part in, there was only
one subject - leave, full stop,” he claimed. “Even
when the public prosecutor was sitting next to me in
those meetings... we were subjected to insults. I
pointed out that as we are full citizens,www.ekurd.net
they cannot say this and
that we are as entitled to protection as they were.
But that changed nothing.”
According to Nadirov, the majority of Kurds now have
no confidence in their future.
Local media reported that a complete reconciliation
between the communities had taken place following a
meeting of elders in Lenger, the administrative
centre of Tolebi district.
But members of the Kurdish community disagreed, some
describing the meeting as humiliating.
“They said from the platform, ‘The Kurds are begging
forgiveness, so we will forgive them,” said one
local Kurdish businessman. “But why should I ask to
be forgiven? I have never seen this teenager. How
can one blame a whole people for the crime of one
person?”
Nadirov said he believed most of the Kurds in South
Kazakstan region would be gone by spring, once they
looked at their options for resettling elsewhere.
Moreover, attacks on Kurdish families have not
stopped entirely, he said, adding that his cultural
centre has recorded about 30 cases of arson attacks
since the mass lootings of last year.
“Most involve arsonists setting fire to the winter
fodder set aside for the cattle,” Nadirov said.
“They burned more than 17 tons of hay belonging to
one family. That family owned 400 head of cattle,
but they had to sell them because without fodder,
the cattle would have died.”
Other Kurds report acts of intimidation designed to
make their lives impossible. One man aged 60 from
the village of Kok-Tobe in the Ordabas district said
he was the regular target of intimidation at the
market.
“When you take your sheep to the bazaar, the young
men come up to you with a buyer and say, ‘You will
sell your sheep to this buyer for 3,000 tenge each -
when each one should cost no less than 15,000 tenge
[around $120],” he said. “You can’t do anything
about it – you have to sell your livestock at that
price.”
Local authorities have made no official
pronouncements about the problem. When asked, they
have tended to blame the situation on “outside
interference”.
Sadu Bekenov, a member of the regional council for
South Kazakstan region, claimed certain groups –
which he did not identify - were exploiting the
situation to stir up ethnic tensions.
“You could say destructive forces have used this
recent criminal offence, in order to give it a
political tinge,” he said.“Someone is trying to
inflame ethnic conflict with the help of young
people who lack worldly experience and knowledge of
history.” According to Nadirov, the Kurds feel
abandoned and defenceless.
“It is difficult to be a nation without a homeland,”
he lamented. “If we had a country of our own with a
consulate in Kazakstan, would this happen? I’m sure
it wouldn’t. But there’s absolutely no one to stand
up for us.”
Elena Eliseeva is an IWPR contributor in Shymkent.
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