In 1999, just after I went to the university where I worked in Tahskent, Uzbekistan, the large concrete building I was in shook several times - I was not sure what had happened, but imagined it to be an earthquake. Uzbekistan sits on less-than-solid ground, and in fact my apartment was situated directly on the epicenter of the 1966 earthquake - which destroyed the city. I left the concrete building I was and saw growing police presence in the streets. Many people simply sat in the road side tea stands eating plov, drinking their tea, and watching the numbers of armed police increase dramatically. Directly across the street from our university was the Olij Majlis - the Uzbek Parliament - and given that I did not think it was possible to increase the sense of police presence already on the streets - and this was being proven wrong as I watched - I guessed that something else was happening. I walked with a student into the city center.
On the way I came across a key intersection in the center with several tanks lined up and ready to drive in. Theoretically. It was, otherwise, a hot and beautiful day and on top of the tanks sat the drivers - calm, bored looking, smoking cigarettes. I asked one of them what was going on and he said he did not know. I was actually able to just walk up to the tanks and speak generally with the military people on them. I wished I had had my camera - maybe it was better I did not. Eventually the guy said basically that it was a nice day, he was paid poorly, and he just wanted to go home. He did not feel like driving this tank.
In the city center itself, I saw what was left after several simultaneous car bombs were set off near the main government administration buildings - glass was everywhere, files were blowing around on the ground, and there was an amazingly large number of people looking and trying to figure out what had just happened. Every single window of the administration buildings had been blown out.
On the corner in front of me was a policeman, who was yelling at people to go home, "Nothing happened here. Go home"
This year I witnessed the protests happening in and around parts of Ukraine, in particular in Odessa, where both Blue revolutionary movements and Orange were visable and peacefully coexisting all over the city - only one color was visible, however, in the "Western Free Press."
Now I see on the news pictures of Bishkek - and see places where I used to work, live, and walk - now amidst protests and opposition.
Somehow I think that in the Post 1991 period, democracies were believed to be simply voting systems - people vote - and it was somehow fogotten that democracies are more complicated than voting. There has to be a choice, the choices have to be real, and this means that there have to be choices of government other than those who have power. There are a lot of factors to blame in these protests, but one of them to my mind is the disrespect for opposition and the voices of those who support the opposition. For too long the opposition groups, which are necessary to any well-functioning democracy, have not been able to have much real impact on policies in many of the former Soviet republics. Democracy in Central Asia has not been sitting on stable ground.
Fortunately, some of the people emailing me from Kyrghyzstan and elsewhere have been sending in pictures and agreed that I could place them on the web for people to see.
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