Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan–An opposition coalition in Kyrgyzstan proclaimed an interim government Thursday in the wake of clashes that left dozens dead nationwide, and said it would rule for six months before calling new elections.
Opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva said she would head the interim government, and that the parliament was dissolved. She said the new government controlled four of Kyrgyzstan’s seven provinces in the Central Asian nation, which is home to a key US military base that the opposition has said it wants to close.
Otunbayeva urged President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to resign after he fled the capital amid violent clashes that started on Tuesday. Thousands of protesters have clashed with security forces throughout the country, driving out local governments and on Thursday seizing government headquarters in the capital.
"His business in Kyrgyzstan is finished," she said, adding that Bakiyev has fled for the central Jalal-Abad region, where he is trying to consolidate his supporters.
Since coming to power in 2005 amid similar street protests known as the Tulip Revolution, Bakiyev had ensured a measure of stability in the country of five million people, but the opposition said he did so at the expense of democratic standards while enriching himself and his family.
He gave his relatives, including his son, top government and economic posts and faced the same accusations of corruption and cronyism that led to the ouster of his predecessor, Askar Akayev.
Otunbayeva blamed Bakiyev for the violent clashes.
"Yesterday’s events were a response to aggression, tyranny and a crackdown on dissenters," she said. "All the people who have been killed and who got wounds are the victims of this regime."
The Health Ministry said 68 people have been killed and 400 people hospitalized in clashes nationwide.
In the past two years, authorities have clamped down on the media, and opposition activists say they have routinely been subjected to physical intimidation and targeted by politically motivated criminal investigations.
Kyrgyzstan hosts a key US military base that serves as an essential transit point for supplies to the military operations in nearby Afghanistan. The opposition has called for the closure of the air base at the Manas airport outside the capital.
In Bishkek, most of the government buildings, as well as Bakiyev’s houses, have been looted, and two major markets were burned down.
A paper portrait of Bakiyev put up at the government headquarters was smeared with red paint. Obscenities directed at him were written in black spray paint on buildings nearby.
Residents of Bishkek nervously went about their business on a clear spring morning, the snowcapped mountains visible in the distance. There was no sign of the regular police on the streets.
Like its neighbors Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan has remained impoverished since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and has a history of stifling democratic institutions and human rights.
Kyrgyzstan is a predominantly Muslim country, but just as in Soviet times, it has remained secular. There has been little fear of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism as in other mostly Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union.
