Kyrgyz protester: “The Jews are Kaput”

Freelance reporter Ben Judah has just filed an absolutley gripping and powerful first-hand account of this week’s events in Kyrgyzstan for FP. Here’s one brief excerpt:

Hundreds of men are on the move. Their eyes have turned to glares. Men enter this mob as shopkeepers, drivers or factory workers — only to lose themselves in the surge. They are moving as one body, copying each other as they pick up the rhythmic chants and grab rocks to hurl at police. A man in a gas mask is waving an AK-47. All work has stopped. Shop fronts are being boarded up. Society is dissolving. The grief of a people who have seen their quality of life slide continuously since the fall of the Soviet Union is turning into a frenzy born of despair.

Judah also notes a disturbing undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the crowd:

A placard hangs in a prominent spot on the building. Black-painted words, in Russian so that foreigners like me can read them. "Dirty Jews and all those like Maxim Bakiyev [President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s son] have no place in Kyrgyzstan." "We captured the building … Lots of people died, but now we are in control." The older man waves his laminated membership card of an opposition party in my face and grins at the placard. "The Jews are Kaput. … The Jews are already gone." A smoker chides in from the left. "The Jews were around the president and his gangster son Maxim. They were taking over our economy, with banks and capital. They have fled."

The whole piece is an absolute must-read.