Around 5,000 supporters of the Kyrgyz nationalist opposition Tuesday held their third rally in two months in the restive south of the country demanding the government’s ouster.
The series of peaceful demonstrations in the ethnically-mixed and deeply impoverished region of the mountainous Central Asian state represents a nagging concern for the recently elected government of President Almazbek Atambayev.
The protests began on March 1 in the flashpoint city of Osh from where the ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev — an ethnic Kyrgyz representing a hate figure for the large Uzbek minority — draws his support.
The ethnic Kyrgyz who gathered in Jalalabad on Tuesday were members of the main nationalist Ata Zhurt party as well as a group called Butun Kyrgyzstan.
“I am being accused of plotting to stage a third revolution and to seize power,” Ata Zhurt’s parliament group leader Kamchybek Tashiyev told the rally. “But I have no such plans. If I did, I would have done it a long time ago,” the private K-News network quoted Tashiyev as saying.