Kyrgyzstan / Uzbekistan

Rape, Torture in Kyrgyzstan
News24.com, June 15, 2010
"Struck mute by shock after a brutal gang rape, three sisters -- refugees from the violence in Kyrgyzstan -- sobbed wildly as a doctor narrated the horror they had endured. From their broken stories, doctor Mukaddas Majidova said the girls, aged between 16 and 23, had been raped in front of each other by a mob of ethnic Kyrgyz men and were rendered speechless by the trauma. 'These girls were raped recently and by a lot of men and for several hours, according to their injuries,' she said. Majidova and other doctors in eastern Uzbekistan's Andijan border region are struggling to treat the flood of tens of thousands of terror-stricken refugees fleeing five days of bloody clashes in Kyrgyzstan. Every new patient told a horrifying story, they said. 'We treated today a 28-year-old man who was tortured. He had signs of knife wounds on his neck, burned skin from scalding water and had been shot. We took out the bullet,' said Kozim Mahkamov, a doctor at the hospital in Andijan city. Uzbekistan has issued an urgent plea for international aid to cope with estimates of up to 100 000 refugees now inside the country as it strives to cope with the escalating humanitarian catastrophe. The Central Asian state shut its border to all but wounded refugees on Monday, leaving thousands marooned on the Kyrgyz side. [...]"