Demand that international aid to Kyrgyzstan be dispensed only to organizations that ensure human rights
- Target:
- The U.S. Government, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
- Region:
- International
- Website:
- helptheuzbeks.blogspot.com
Following the June 2010 ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan, thousands of homes and businesses throughout the country, but particularly in the city of Osh were destroyed.
Predominantly, the affected houses were owned by ethnic Uzbeks. In response to the widespread destruction, the international donor community has pledged $1.1 billion to help Kyrgyzstan rebuild, with $350 million allotted for the rebuilding of homes in Jalal-Abad and Osh. However, Kyrgyzstan, and particular those officials linked with the former President Bakiyev (such as the current mayor of Osh, Myrzakmatov), has a poor track record with regard to the effective and appropriate use for international aid funds.
In particular, there is reason to believe that Mayor Myrzakmatov’s plans to rebuild amount to an ethnic cleansing of Uzbeks from the city of Osh. It is therefore unconscionable that international, and specifically U.S. funds be used to further Mayor Myrzakmatov’s nationalist plans. The United States’ government must insist that the aid funds be dispensed in accordance with both the principles enshrined in the U.S. constitution and international human rights standards.
We, the undersigned, demand in the interest of fairness that the aid pledged by the USA to Kyrgyztan be given only to NGO’s or other organizations that ensure that the funds will be used for rebuilding houses destroyed in the recent outbreaks of violence in Kyrgyztan in their traditional style, and that said organizations dispense those fund irrespective of ethnicity.
Currently, these funds are distributed through the mayor’s office, whose master plan for use of the funds includes removal of all the houses that were burned to make way for high rise apartments. Not only is this plan bound to aggravate ethnic tensions in Kyrgyztan, but it is eminently unfair to those Kyrgyz citizens, most of which are ethnic Uzbeks, whose livelihoods have already been destroyed by the violence they have endured. Under Mayor Myrzakmatov’s plan, these victims who would have to face insult in addition to injury, as they would be forced to relocate to the suburbs and/or abandon their traditional style of living.
The only people bound to benefit from Mayor Myrzakmatov’s plan are wealthy Kyrgyz developers and the Osh city government that generously gives away land that is not theirs in the first place. The true victims, however, regardless of whether they are ethnic Kyrgyz or Uzbeks, whose livelihoods were destroyed by the recent violence, can only stand to lose the last thing they have left at this point, their land. Effectively, Mayor Myrzakmatov’s plan amounts to an ethnic cleansing of the city of Osh.
Thus the principles of liberty, justice, and equality enshrined in the U.S. Constitution demand that American aid monies be used only in accordance with and support of those principles. This means that U.S. funds must not be used to support the dubious plans of a mayor who may even have played a part in organizing the recent violence, but should instead be given to organizations that truly benefit the victims of said violence.
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The Demand that international aid to Kyrgyzstan be dispensed only to organizations that ensure human rights petition to The U.S. Government, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was written by Plight Uzbeks and is in the category Human Rights at GoPetition.