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Some government forces acted, knowingly or unwittingly, to
facilitate attacks on ethnic Uzbek neighborhoods in the violence in
southern Kyrgyzstan in June 2010, Human Rights Watch said in a new
report released today. Local law enforcement agencies also failed to
provide appropriate protection to the Uzbek community, Human Rights
Watch said.
The 91-page report "'Where is the Justice?': Interethnic Violence in Southern Kyrgyzstan and its Aftermath,"
also said that the government's investigation into the violence, which
left hundreds dead and thousands injured, has been marred with abuses,
while new ethnically motivated attacks are taking place in the south.
The authorities should thoroughly investigate government forces' role in
the violence and prosecute those responsible, Human Rights Watch said.
The report is based on more than 200 interviews with Kyrgyz and Uzbek
victims and witnesses, lawyers, human rights defenders, government
officials, and law enforcement personnel. The report also analyzes
satellite imagery and photographic, video, documentary, and forensic
evidence.
"It's clear that the massive ethnic violence posed colossal
challenges for Kyrgyz security forces," said Ole Solvang, emergencies
researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report.
"Yet we found that some of the security forces became part of the
problem rather than the solution."
The violence in southern Kyrgyzstan began on June 10, when a large
crowd of ethnic Uzbeks gathered in response to a minor fight between
Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in a casino in the center of Osh. Several violent
attacks during the night of June 10 against ethnic Kyrgyz and the
torching of several buildings enraged ethnic Kyrgyz from Osh and outside
villages, thousands of whom filed into the city. From early morning on
June 11 through June 14, crowds attacked Uzbek neighborhoods, whose
residents in some cases fought back. Mobs looted and torched Uzbek shops
and homes in Osh, Jalal-Abad, Bazar-Kurgan, and other southern towns -
in several areas burning entire neighborhoods to the ground.
At least 371 people, and possibly many more, were killed as a result
of the mayhem. Several thousand buildings, mainly belonging to ethnic
Uzbeks, were completely destroyed.
Witnesses from the destroyed neighborhoods consistently told Human
Rights Watch that men in camouflage uniforms on armored military
vehicles removed makeshift barricades erected by residents, giving the
mobs access to the neighborhoods. Often, witnesses said, armed men
followed the armored vehicles into the neighborhoods, shot at and chased
away remaining residents, and then let crowds loot and torch homes.
While the authorities claim that Kyrgyz mobs stole some weapons and
vehicles used in the attacks, this cannot completely account for the use
of military vehicles in the attacks, Human Rights Watch said.
Information gathered by Human Rights Watch indicates that in at least
some neighborhoods, government forces were in control of the vehicles.
It further shows that in some instances government forces that went to
the neighborhoods to disarm residents living there, either intentionally
or unintentionally gave cover to violent mobs carrying out attacks. An
additional question that requires investigation is whether they actively
participated in these attacks, and if so, to what extent.
Human Rights Watch said that while the authorities might have had
legitimate security reasons to enter Uzbek neighborhoods, they did not
uphold their obligation to ensure the safety of the residents in light
of the clear and imminent threat posed by the mobs.
"National and international inquiries need to find out just what the
government forces did and whether the authorities did everything they
could to protect people," Solvang said. "This is crucial both for
justice and to learn lessons about how to respond to any new outbreaks."
Human Rights Watch said that widespread violations have taken place
in the course of the Kyrgyz authorities' investigation into the June
violence, which now consists of more than 3,500 criminal cases.
The report documents large-scale "sweep" operations in Uzbek
neighborhoods, during which law enforcement officers beat and insulted
residents and looted their homes. During one operation, in the village
of Nariman, security forces injured 39 residents, two of whom
subsequently died.
The report also documents abusive search and seizure operations that
security forces have conducted daily in Osh's predominantly Uzbek
neighborhoods. Dozens of witnesses provided consistent accounts of how
security forces searched homes without identifying themselves,
presenting a warrant, or explaining the reasons; detained people
without warrants; refused to tell the families where detainees were
being taken; and, in some cases, beat detainees and planted evidence,
such as spent cartridges.
The authorities routinely denied detainees the right to a lawyer and
other rights, and subjected them to ill-treatment and torture in
custody. Human Rights Watch received information about torture and
ill-treatment of more than 60 detainees, at least one of whom died as a
result of injuries suffered in custody.
While Kyrgyz authorities have not released figures showing the ethnic
breakdown of the detainees and claim they have detained both Uzbek and
Kyrgyz suspects, information collected by Human Rights Watch indicates
that the majority of the detainees are ethnic Uzbeks.
In the course of its research in Kyrgyzstan, Human Rights Watch
raised the issue of arbitrary arrests and torture in detention with
Kyrgyz authorities, including the president and interior minister, as
well as local law enforcement officials.
To their credit, senior government officials in Bishkek made several
statements calling on local officials to halt the abuses, and in a media
interview in August, President Roza Otunbaeva also acknowledged that
some abuses had taken place. Yet in meetings with Human Rights Watch,
law enforcement officials in Osh variously dismissed allegations of
abuse and defended the practice.
"Those responsible for the heinous crimes against both Kyrgyz and
Uzbeks during the June violence should be prosecuted irrespective of
their ethnicity, title, or rank," Solvang said. "But there cannot be a
proper investigation unless the authorities respect Kyrgyz and
international laws, and there is no reason the Kyrgyz authorities can't
immediately put a stop to the abuses in custody."
Human Rights Watch said continued abuses fuel tensions in the already volatile situation.
On July 22, the member states of the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) agreed to deploy a small advisory police
group to southern Kyrgyzstan to assist the Kyrgyz authorities in
reducing ethnic tensions. Human Rights Watch called on the OSCE to
ensure that the force arrives quickly and works effectively. Human
Rights Watch also called on all interested governments and the United
Nations to support an international inquiry into the violence and its
aftermath.
"The June violence has left deep scars," Solvang said. "For those
scars to heal there needs to be justice for what happened and equal
protection for all ethnic communities."
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
"It's a five-alarm fire," one Kentucky soybean farmer said, describing the harmful effects of the president's tariffs.
As anticipated, US President Donald Trump's economic and immigration policies are harming American farmers' ability to earn a living—and testing the loyalty of one of the president's staunchest bases of support, according to reports published this week.
After Trump slapped 30% tariffs on Chinese imports in May, Beijing retaliated with measures including stopping all purchases of US soybeans. Before the trade war, a quarter of the soybeans—the nation's number one export crop—produced in the United States were exported to China. Trump's tariffs mean American soybean growers can't compete with countries like Brazil, the world's leading producer and exporter of the staple crop and itself the target of a 50% US tariff.
"We depend on the Chinese market. The reason we depend so much on this market is China consumes 61% of soybeans produced worldwide," Kentucky farmer Caleb Ragland, who is president of the American Soybean Association, told News Nation on Monday. "Right now, we have zero sold for this crop that’s starting to be harvested right now.”
Ragland continued:
It’s a five-alarm fire for our industry that 25% of our total sales is currently missing. And right now we are not competitive with Brazil due to the retaliatory tariffs that are in place. Our prices are about 20% higher, and that means that the Chinese are going elsewhere because they can find a better value.
And the American soybean farmers and their families are suffering. They are 500,000 of us that produce soybeans, and we desperately need markets, and we need opportunity and a leveled playing field.
“There’s an artificial barrier that is built with these tariffs that makes us not be competitive," Ragland added.
Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council executive director Stefan Maupin likened the tariffs to "death by a thousand cuts."
“We’re in a significant and desperate situation where... none of the crops that farmers grow right now return a profit,” Maupin told the Tennessee Lookout Monday. “They don’t even break even.”
Alan Meadows, a fifth-generation soybean farmer in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, said that “this has been a really tough year for us."
“It started off really good," Meadows said. "We were in the field in late March, which is early for us. But then the wheels came off, so to speak, pretty quick.”
It started with devastating flooding in April, followed by a drier-than-usual summer. Higher supply costs due to inflation and Trump's tariffs exacerbated the dire situation.
“So much of what has happened and what’s going on here is totally out of our control,” Meadows said. “We just want a free, fair, and open market where we can sell our goods... as competitively as anybody else around the world. And we do feel that we produce a superior product here in the United States, and we just need to have the markets.”
Farmers are desperate for help from the federal government. However, Congress has not passed a new Farm Bill—legislation authorizing funding for agriculture and food programs—since 2018, without which "we do not have a workable safety net program when things like this happen in our economy," according to Maupin.
Maupin added that farmers “have done everything right, they’ve managed their finances well, they have put in a good crop... but they cannot change the weather, they cannot change the economy, they cannot change the markets."
"The weather is in the control of a higher power," he added, "and the economy and the markets are in control of Washington, DC."
It's not just soybean farmers who are hurting. Tim Maxwell, a 65-year-old Iowa grain and hog farmer, told the BBC Sunday that "our yields, crops, and weather are pretty good—but our [interest from] markets right now is on a low."
Despite his troubles, Maxwell remains supportive of Trump, saying that he is "going to be patient," adding, "I believe in our president."
However, there is a limit to Maxwell's patience with Trump.
"We're giving him the chance to follow through with the tariffs, but there had better be results," he said. "I think we need to be seeing something in 18 months or less. We understand risk—and it had better pay off."
It's also not just Trump's economic policies that are putting farmers in a squeeze. The president's anti-immigrant crackdown has left many farmers without the labor they need to operate.
“The whole thing is screwed up,” John Painter, a Pennsylvania organic dairy farmer and three-time Trump voter, told Politico Monday. “We need people to do the jobs Americans are too spoiled to do.”
As Politico noted:
The US agricultural workforce fell by 155,000—about 7%—between March and July, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That tracks with Pew Research Center data that shows total immigrant labor fell by 750,000 from January through July. The labor shortage piles onto an ongoing economic crisis for farmers exacerbated by dwindling export markets that could leave them with crop surpluses.
“People don’t understand that if we don’t get more labor, our cows don’t get milked and our crops don’t get picked,” said Tim Wood, another Pennsylvania dairy farmer and a member of the state's Farm Bureau board of directors.
Charlie Porter, who heads the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau’s Ag Labor and Safety Committee, told Politico that “it’s a shame you have hard-working people who need labor, and a group of people who are willing to work, and they have to look over their shoulder like they’re criminals—they're not."
Painter also said that he is "very disappointed" by Trump's immigration policies.
“It’s not right, what they’re doing,” he said of the administration. “All of us, if we look back in history, including the president, we have somebody that came to this country for the American dream.”
"He wasn't a Groyper. He also wasn't Antifa," said journalist Ken Klippenstein, who obtained Tyler Robinson's Discord messages and spoke with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old suspect.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday challenged conflicting narratives circulating about Tyler Robinson by obtaining online chats and speaking with a childhood friend of the 22-year-old man accused of assassinating far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
Republican US President Donald Trump "and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing," Klippenstein wrote. "The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called nihilist violent extremist (NVE); meanwhile, the crackdown has already begun, as I reported yesterday. The country is practically ready to go to war."
While Kirk's fatal shooting last week during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University has been widely condemned as political violence, the unnamed childhood friend told Klippenstein: “I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part... That's the big thing, he just never really talked politics, which is why it's so frustrating.”
“Everyone who knew him liked him and he was always nice, a little quiet and kept to himself mostly but wasn't a recluse,” the friend said, describing Robinson as a fan of the outdoors, video games—including Helldivers 2, the apparent source of some inscriptions on bullet casings found by authorities—and guns.
“Obviously he's okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” according to the friend, who said that Robinson is bisexual and his family didn't know he was in a relationship with his transgender roommate.
Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Federal Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Dan Bongino have publicly identified his roommate and romantic partner as Lance Twiggs—and said that Twiggs is cooperating with authorities and did not know of Robinson's alleged plan to kill Kirk.
Robinson—who ultimately ended authorities' manhunt for the shooter by turning himself in—appeared virtually for his first court hearing on Tuesday. He faces multiple charges, including aggravated murder, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
As Newsweek reported Tuesday, prosecutors have allegedly obtained text messages in which Robinson admits to Twiggs that he killed Kirk and discusses having to leave behind a rifle, later retrieved by authorities. Robinson reportedly told his parents that he targeted the Turning Point USA leader because "there is too much evil and the guy spreads too much hate."
In the wake of Kirk's death, many of his critics have also acknowledged his incendiary commentary on a range of topics. Right-wing figures and officials, including key members of President Donald Trump's administration, have responded by launching what Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called “the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country’s modern history.”
As Klippenstein wrote:
The federal government, the Washington crowd, and corporate media (based in Washington and New York) see the country in wholly partisan terms, Republican versus Democrat, Red versus Blue, old media versus social media, liberal versus conservative, right versus left, straight versus gay, and on and on. Charlie Kirk’s assassination (in Utah!) should remind us of the actual diversity of the nation, and of the cost of polarization that demonizes the other side.
No one in Robinson’s group is cheering or justifying the murder in any of the messages I reviewed. They’re just struggling to understand what their friend did. But Washington has become obsessed with the Discord chat, convinced it’s some kind of headquarters for the murder and cauldron of radicalization and conspiracy. Today FBI Director [Kash] Patel vowed to investigate “anyone and everyone in that Discord chat.”
What I see is a bunch of young people shocked, horrified, and searching for answers, like the rest of the country.
At least one person on Capitol Hill quickly took note of the reporting. Sharing it on the social media platform X, Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said: "This is very interesting. The more that comes out the more this doesn't fit into any tidy narrative other than a young man who made a bad choice with a gun."
Other journalists praised Klippenstein on X, saying: "Hey look it's real journalism," and "At the moment Ken Klippenstein has done the best reporting I've seen anywhere on Tyler Robinson."
Journalist Roger Sollenberger wrote: "This is the most valuable and insightful reporting yet on Tyler Robinson—citing current actual friends and messages from a Discord group he was in. And it underscores how stupid and irresponsible the rush has been to assign him to a political aisle."
Appearing before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Patel said the FBI is interviewing more than 20 people who were part of a Discord group with Robinson.
Responding on X, Klippenstein said: "The members of Tyler Robinson's Discord are just as shocked and traumatized by what happened as anyone. That the FBI is treating them like conspirators is so cruel it's stomach-turning."
"This is the time where every American must stand proudly for free speech and our freedoms," said Rep. Ro Khanna.
US President Donald Trump and his administration have been signaling that they are planning to use the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as a justification to launch a broad campaign targeting their political opponents.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller on Monday singled out left-wing organizations that he baselessly alleged were promoting violence in the United States and he said that the full weight of the federal government would soon come down on them.
"We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people," said Miller.
Shortly after this, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on the podcast hosted by Miller's wife, Katie Miller, and vowed that the Justice Department would "go after" people who engage in "hate speech" against conservatives.
"There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society," Bondi said. "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech."
While many prominent conservatives denounced Bondi's remarks and reiterated that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Trump himself appeared to give her views his endorsement.
When asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl about Bondi's comments on Tuesday, the president signaled that he would favor prosecuting journalists on "hate speech" charges.
"We'll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly," Trump said in response to Karl's question. "You have a lot of hate in your heart."
Trump then pointed to the $16 million defamation settlement he agreed to with Disney after ABC News host George Stephanopoulos said on air last year that Trump had been found liable for raping journalist E. Jean Carroll, when in fact the jury had technically only found Trump liable for sexually abusing her.
"ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech," Trump said. "Your company paid me $16 million for a former a hate speech, right? So maybe they'll have to go after you."
These development have caused widespread alarm among some Democratic politicians.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) posted a video on social media in which he warned that Trump and his administration were engaging in "the biggest assault on the First Amendment in our country's modern history."
He then pointed to statements made by Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and Bondi, and he encouraged his supporters to be willing to confront dangers to American liberty.
"This is the time where every American must stand proudly for free speech and our freedoms," he said.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), after posting the video of Trump threatening to "go after" ABC News' Karl, argued that Trump's actions made it impossible for him to vote in favor of continuing to fund the federal government.
"How can we fund this?" he asked. "I am being asked this week to fund a government that locks up a reporter Trump doesn’t like. This isn’t a close call folks."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has become the target of a censure resolution by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) amid false claims that she did not condemn the Kirk assassination, hit back at Republicans for being hypocrites on free speech.
"Nancy Mace is trying to censure me over comments I never said," she said. "Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any. Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for governor."