| Global update |
Government fails 'ordinary people'
BY KATHY GANNON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DARDOI, Kyrgyzstan — Jumatai
is 8 and looks much younger. He
can’t walk. He can’t close his
mouth, so he can only eat mashed
food. The state should have treated
his disability, his grandmother says,
but instead it turned its back on or
dinary people.
Across Kyrgyzstan, frustrations
such as these fused into the street
protests that climaxed last week
with crowds storming the presiden
tial office building and driving out
Askar Akayev.
“The government made such a
mess of things,” said Aiymkan Baita
sheva, the grandmother. “I wish that
just once Akayev would have driven
past here. Right now I am feeling so
much anger. What can 1 do?”
The family lives in Dardoi, an im
poverished market town just a
15-minute drive from the presi
dent’s office. The family’s unheated
home, with no gas or running water,
is typical of conditions on the out
skirts of Bishkek, the capital, where
thousands migrated from the coun
tryside hoping to cash in on post
Soviet capitalism but instead live
in slums.
Before 1990, when Kyrgyzstan was
still a communist republic, it offered
free health care and housing, and even
then it was one of the poorest Soviet
regions, with 32 percent of its people
living in poverty. Today the U.N. De
velopment Program estimates that
about 44 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s 5 mil
lion people live in poverty.
The poor blame Akayev, who
came to power in the Soviet era, for
corruption, the collapse of the com
munist social safety net and the rise
of cutthroat capitalism. They have
seen Bishkek fill up with cell phones,
Mercedes-Benz showrooms and ads
for Versace sunglasses, while Baita
sheva’s 11-year-old granddaughter is
n’t in school because the family can’t
afford the $16 enrollment fee or the
transport costs.
Baitasheva, her two daughters
and seven grandchildren live on
about $170 a month. The daughters
get up at 3 a.m. to sell cigarettes,
chewing gum and toys at a nearby
market and bring home about $2.50
a day. A son-in-law earns about
$100 a month as a trucker and isn’t
home much. A quart of milk costs
about 60 cents, a piece of flat bread
25 cents. Rent on the family’s barely
furnished two-room hovel is about
$40 a month.
Baitasheva says it cost her $75 to be
treated by a doctor for a heart ailment.
The children spend the day on
the thinly matted floor, wrapped in
blankets, hands ice cold. Water is
fetched from a pump outdoors in
the snow.
The grandmother said she tried to
get the boy into a home for handi
capped children near Bishkek but
was told to take him south to her
home town, Jalal-Abad, in the poor
est part of the country. Months later,
Jalal-Abad became a bastion of the
protests that brought down Akayev.
His temporary replacement, Kurman
bek Bakiyev, is from Jalal-Abad, but
Baitasheva isn’t reassured.
“I am still afraid because even now
1 don’t know for sure if Bakiyev is in
charge or whether Akayev will come
back,” she said.
Venera Kojemkylova, 15, lives next
door, crammed with her mother, un
cles, aunts and cousins in a three
room house of mud and straw.
Kojemkylova’s father died when
she was 4. Her mother, Anara, oper
ates a fast-food stall in the market,
bringing home $5 a day.
Venera Kojemkylova warmed her
self with an electric hot plate while
her aunt, Nurkyz, shoved coal into a
heater, her head hidden beneath a
Kyrgyzstan in perspective
The Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan achieved independence
in 1991. Regional clans and the tensions that exist between them
weigh heavily on the country's politics.
► Area: 79,400 square miles
► Population: 5,081,429 (’04 est.)
► Ethnic groups: Kyrgyz 64.9%,
Uzbek 13.8%, Russian 12.5%,
Dungan 1.1%, Ukrainian 1%,
Uygur 1%, other 5.7% (1999)
► Religions: Muslim 75%,
Russian Orthodox 20%,
other 5%
► Industrial exports: gold, mercury,
uranium, natural gas, electricity
► Age structure:
0-14 years 32.3%
15-64 years 61.6%
65 years and over 6.1%
Gross domestic product
in billions
$1.6 $17
$1.2
1999
2002
2003
KAZAKHSTAN
L TALAS
fy' \ .
^ J \
, y °Tashkenr H Jalal-Abad
Vi \ UZBEK, y
f b'-'—j—
Bishkek
'^ BISHKEK •®
r
Dushanbe TAJIKISTAN
O
SOURCES: ESRI, CIA World Fact Book
KYRGYZSTAN
CHINA
0 100 mi
100 km
AP
broad scarf.
“This is our only heat. For us life is
very difficult. Sometimes 1 wonder
how 1 will feed my family,” Anara
said. “I don’t know how this new
government will do anything for us.
No one did anything before. I just
want the new government to take
care of ordinary people, people like
us. We are the poorest of our people. ”
Erkin Moldaliyev, who sells used
clothes at the Dardoi market, was
among the demonstrators who forced
Akayev to flee to Russia. Echoing a
complaint heard widely across the
country, he said Akayev was corrupt.
“He and his family took every
thing. They kept everything and left
nothing for the people," he said.
He was cautiously hopeful.
“We hope the new government
will be different and that everything
will be transparent,” he said. “But we
don’t know for sure because some of
the same people are there and we
hope that we have not exchanged
one set of bad people for another set
of bad people. ”
Sharon's Gaza Strip
pullout plan goes
to Supreme Court
BY RAVI NESSMAN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM — Israel’s parliament
on Monday rejected a last-ditch at
tempt to torpedo Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from
the Gaza Strip, vetoing a proposed
national referendum. The plan now
goes to the nation’s Supreme Court.
Demoralized by the defeat, set
tlers said they would move their
fight into the streets, promising to
bring 100,000 protesters to the set
tlements slated for evacuation to
prevent the withdrawal.
They also pinned their hopes
on the Supreme Court, which
agreed Monday to hear a chal
lenge to the law providing the
legal framework for the withdraw
al from the entire Gaza Strip and
four West Bank settlements.
Approval of a referendum would
have almost certainly delayed the
withdrawal, scheduled for this sum
mer, and could have brought down
Sharon’s government and forced
new elections. Sharon has repeatedly
rejected calls for a national vote as a
stalling tactic. Opinion polls show a
large majority of Israelis back the
withdrawal plan.
After a debate by angry law
makers, the Knessetdefeated the
referendum proposal 72-39.
“This is a dramatic statement of
the Israeli parliament that disen
gagement is going to be carried
out as planned,” Vice Premier
Ehud Olmert said.
Settlers, thousands of whom
protested near the Knesset, said the
vote would split Israeli society. The
government missed a chance to “pre
vent a violent confrontation and civil
war,” the Settlers Council said.
The vote exposed the deep divi
sions in Likud, a hawkish party filled
with settlers and their allies that was
stunned by Sharon’s sudden reversal
last year of his longtime policy of
backing settlement building. Sharon
says the pullout will help Israel hang
on to parts of the West Bank.
Only 13 of Likud’s 40 legislators
voted against the referendum, forc
ing Sharon to rely on the support of
dovish parties and Arab legislators.
The disengagement plan repeated
ly has won Knesset votes. In what
will likely be its final legislative test,
Sharon must get his budget passed
by Thursday, a near certainty after
the opposition Shinui Party agreed to
support the spending plan.
The Supreme Court hearing was
set for April 8 before an expanded
panel of 11 judges, the Courts Ad
ministration said.
Israeli legal analyst Moshe Negbi
said the court decided to hear the
case to show that justice was being
done, but it was highly unlikely to
strike down the law.
John Paul II misses
post-Easter blessing
because of illness
BY NICOLE WINFIELD
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul
II skipped another beloved tradition
Monday — a post-Easter blessing
from his window — ending the East
er holiday as silently as he began it.
A few hundred people had gath
ered in St. Peter’s Square in hopes
that John Paul would appear as he
has on each Easter Monday of his 26
year pontificate, and Vatican TV cam
eras zoomed in on his third-floor
window around noon.
But the curtains remained closed
as the 84-year-old pope continued
recovering from Feb. 24 surgery to
insert a tube in his throat to help
him breathe.
“Despite the regret, we’re happy be
cause it’s good that he continues his
convalescence without strain,” said
the Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of
programming at Radio Vatican.
John Paul’s appearance on Easter
Sunday, when he tried but failed to
speak, was still on the minds of many
at the Vatican, a dramatic end to a
Holy Week in which the pope’s suf
fering was clearly evident.
John Paul had come to his studio
window at the end of Easter Mass to
bless the tens of thousands of peo
ple in the square below. Aides read
ied a microphone, and he tapped it
as if preparing to speak. But after
uttering a few unintelligible sounds,
he made the sign of the cross with
his hand and the microphone was
taken away.
Many in the crowd cried and oth
ers quietly applauded in apprecia
tion of the pope’s efforts to speak
to them.
Vatican Radio said Monday it would
be difficult to ever forget the pope’s
pained “Urbi et Orbi” blessing and that
it would “remain in the history of the
church and humanity."
“This silence, full of emotion and
desire to speak beyond the physical
ability to communicate, spoke to us
perhaps as never before the univer
sal language of love,” Lombardi
said. “For us it was enough. We un
derstood what the pope wanted to
say, and how much he wanted to
bless us.”
John Paul last spoke to the public
on March 13, shortly before he was
discharged from the hospital for a
second time in a month. In addition
to the breathing tube, John Paul suf
fers from Parkinson’s disease, which
makes it difficult for him to talk.
He followed the Holy Week cere
monies by television from his apart
ment. He also appeared via live
video hookup to the faithful mark
ing Good Friday at Rome’s Colosse
um. But he never spoke. The pope
has not confirmed public appear
ances for several months, and Vati
can officials have stressed that this
is a time of recovery.
Dus:
^.MOO CAh ^
SPAGHETTI
A garlic bread
$35°
Every Tuesday
PIZZA
PETE’S
2506 Willakenzie 344-0998
SI94/C P/c17a
2673 Willamette 484-0996
27M and Willamette
>••••<
WDW HALL
★ all shows are all ages it
it www.wowhall.DPg ★ BBn.2n4B ★
Advertise in the ODE classifieds.
Call 346-4343
or place your ad online at
www.dailyemerald.com