Civil unrest

The Kyrgyz government was struggling to maintain power on Wednesday after protests in the Central Asian state turned violent. Dozens of people were reported dead and many more injured in clashes between protestors and police.

The country's interior minister Moldomussa Kongantiyev was also reported to have died en route to hospital, according to Russian news agency Interfax. He was believed to have been beaten up by a group of protestors.

The Kyrgyz government has declared a nationwide state of emergency and vowed to "severely" crush the protests.

A grouping of the country's opposition parties, known as the Umbrella Opposition Movement, demanded that Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev remove relatives and cronies from key government positions and take steps to tackle state corruption.

Politics of individuals

Since Kyrgyzstan became an independent state in 1991 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, its transition to becoming a democratic state has been rough. From its independence until 2005, Kyrgyzstan was run by President Askar Akaev.

During Akaev's rule, the list of complaints against him included poverty, inequality, corruption, unjust courts, and the persecution of opposition leaders.

"Politics in Kyrgyzstan tend to be about individuals and groups rather than about ideologies and interests," Dr. John Anderson, an expert on Central Asia from St. Andrews University in Scotland, told Deutsche Welle. "People do not necessarily represent anyone besides themselves and a small group, and there is a tendency to reward family and friends."

Anderson said President Akaev's rule started off fairly, but allegations of corruption continued to grow until he was finally ousted from power in 2005 by a national opposition movement known as the "Tulip Revolution". This was when Kurmanbek Bakiev, Kyrgyzstan's current president, took office.

Hopes crushed

When Bakiev became the president of Kyrgyzstan, the public was optimistic that he would be a different kind of leader. But according to Andrea Berg, a Central Asia analyst with Human Rights Watch, Bakiev did not turn out to be what voters had hoped for.

"Unfortunately he followed the same path as President Akaev," Berg told Deutsche Welle. "He and his family accumulated more and more powers in their hands and they forced opposition leaders out of the country."

Berg added that Kyrgyzstan had an image in Central Asia as an island of democracy in the region, but that in recent years this image had been tarnished.

Kyrgyzstan remains an important location for Russia, China, and the United States. China maintains various economic ties with the country, while the US and Russia both have military bases on its soil. But despite the presence of the world's three largest powers, Berg said the current political unrest is purely a domestic issue.

"This is more an internal problem and an internal competition for power," said Berg. "I wouldn't say that one can blame Russia or China or the US."

Author: Matthew Kang
Editor: Rob Turner