ALMATY (Dispatches) -- Eighteen people were killed and 243 wounded during unrest in Uzbekistan’s autonomous province of Karakalpakstan which broke out last week over plans to curtail its autonomy, Uzbek authorities said on Monday.
Security forces detained 516 people while dispersing the protesters last Friday but have now released many of them, the national guard press office told a briefing.
On Saturday President Shavkat Mirziyoyev dropped plans to amend articles of the constitution concerning Karakalpakstan’s autonomy and its right to secede. He also declared a month-long state of emergency in the northwestern province.
Official reports said protesters had marched through the provincial capital of Nukus last Friday and tried to seize local government buildings, triggering the worst bout of violence in almost two decades in the Central Asian nation of 34 million.
Karakalpakstan, situated on the shores of the Aral Sea which has for decades been a site of environmental disaster, is home to Karakalpaks, an ethnic minority group whose language is closer to Kazakh than Uzbek.
Mirziyoyev spoke on Monday to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan which is home to the largest Karakalpak diaspora abroad. Tokayev’s office said he welcomed Tashkent’s measures to ensure stability in Karakalpakstan.
The clashes pose the most significant challenge yet to the 64-year-old’s rule since he rose to power from the post of prime minister in 2016, when his long-serving mentor Islam Karimov died.
On Sunday, Mirziyoyev made his second visit to Karakalpakstan in two days. He accused protest organizers of “hiding behind false slogans” and trying to “seize the buildings of local government bodies”.
Uzbekistan’s parliament has voted to extend a period of public discussion on the draft constitutional law for another 10 days - until July 15, lawmaker Bobur Bekmurodov wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The autonomous republic’s constitutional right to break away from Uzbekistan is a legacy of an agreement struck between Karakalpakstan and the central government in Tashkent after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
One amendment set to remain in the draft document will allow presidents to run for seven-year terms, directly benefitting Mirziyoyev, who crushed token opponents to secure a second five-year term in October 2021.