HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS DOCUMENT THE ANDIJAN MASSACRE AND COVER-UP
The 73-page Human Rights Watch Report, titled Burying The Truth: Uzbekistan Rewrites the Story of the Andijan Massacre, uses eyewitness accounts to reconstruct what happened May 12-13 in Andijan, placing the events within the larger context of socio-economic discontent. The report probes the antecedents of the massacre, showing how the arrests in 2004 of 23 local entrepreneurs served as the catalyst for subsequent events.
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The Amnesty International report, titled Lifting the Siege on the Truth about Andijan, takes a close look at the Akromiya organization, and questions the government’s claim that the group was radical in nature and working to overthrow the government. “The true nature of the Akromiya group, and the extent to which the 23 men were involved in it, if at all, remains somewhat unclear, although they all deny any involvement in religious extremism,” the report says. Three of the 23 entrepreneurs who were arrested in 2004 and tried earlier this year now are among the 15 accused ringleaders whose trial opened in Tashkent on September 20.
via OneWorld.net and Jim Lobe