The Republic of Tea

Dozens of people have been killed in the Eastern Uzbekistan city of Andizhan, where townspeople have a staged an armed protest against state oppression, and disappearances. I get “The News” which is a major Pakistani daily. The story was on page 8 in a smallish article that claimed 9 people had died. That however was based on a claim by Uzbek television. But virtually every other paper is reporting the death toll in the dozens (at least).

The LA Times included a first person account of the brutalities:

"I was on the ground next to a building across the square from the soldiers," she wrote. "When I raised my head, I saw the body of a teenage boy a few yards away, face down, a wound in his temple. I ran to a safer place, inside a closed school courtyard, and from then on I could only picture the ensuing carnage from the sound of heavy gunfire and the screams of wounded and petrified protesters."

Karimov is a crucial ally to the United States in its War on Terror:

In recent years, the government of President Islam A. Karimov has arrested thousands of alleged Islamic radicals. It defends the actions as part of a battle against terrorism aimed at preserving Uzbekistan as a secular society. Critics, including human rights activists, say authorities have triggered a backlash by brutally suppressing people guilty of nothing more than fundamentalist religious beliefs.The United States maintains a military base in Uzbekistan that is used to support operations in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration considers this Central Asian country an important ally. Washington has criticized it for rights abuses, although not as strongly as activists think it should.

The US reaction to the incident is typical of its attitude towards brutal secular regimes facing Islamic oppositions. That is an attitude of “concern” rather then outrage. Their official statement was: "We urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time," he said. "The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence."

Despite all this there are still people who are drunk with the idea of secularism as a means to end ideologically motivated fighting. They fail to realize that secularism is itself a bankrupt ideology with a terrible inferiority-complex. All of the most recent state-sponsored acts of violence have been committed in the name of preserving secularism. And virtually all have been given financial support and political cover by the US led war on terror.