Abduction

Yesterday, we had just finished an afternoon of visits to yet another destroyed mahalla. Our souls were weary of the stories. We had an evening meeting scheduled so decided to stop at a tea house to drink choy, debrief a bit, and rest. Just as we were filing through the door, our colleague received a phone call from another foreigner in town. Another abduction was in progress, could he come at once? Usually we are on foot, but someone with a car had joined us, so the two of them sped toward the address in a still-intact area of town, hoping simply their presence would help.

They were too late. A crowd of twenty plus women huddled on the street, weeping and in shock. Just a few minutes previous, some people had come, broken into one of the walled hovlis and abducted a man in his 50s. The ransom: $70,000.

Maybe a few of you have this kind of money available, but Uzbeks don't. Until they find money, the people abducting will torture their victim to get the relatives to try to scrape the money together from somewhere. Who is doing the abducting? We aren't certain who, but are certain that it is done with the approval of the police and hear of cases that it is the police. It was hard to sleep last night. Just yesterday, Sue and Elaine spent time with a woman who leaves her burnt-out yard in the evening to sleep at her daughter's house, but she said recently, she can't sleep there either because in the nearby police station, they hear men's voices pleading for the torture to stop.

View of downtown Osh

Maybe this man in his 50s was taken there or to another place. We're sure he didn't get a good night's rest. Hopefully this morning he is still alive.

This story is tragic enough but it is repeated many times each day in this city. The city mayor is not only supportive of this treatment of Uzbeks, but is probably encouraging it...