Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, special envoy of Chinese President Xi Jinping, attended Saturday the funeral of late Uzbek President Islam Karimov in his home city of Samarkand.
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Several opposition news outlets based overseas claimed that Karimov died some time prior to the announcement of his demise, with the government holding back the news in a manner reminiscent of the silence surrounding the deaths of Communist Party bosses during the Soviet era. “Al-Fatihah”, he said on Twitter.
Neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan sent their prime ministers to the funeral.
The veteran leader had run the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation since 1989 and almost half of its 32 million citizens were born after he came to power.
People hold flowers as they gather along the road to watch the funeral procession of President Islam Karimov in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016.
“What are we going to do without you?” a weeping mourner shouted.
“I still can’t believe it happened. Don’t know what happens now, I am lost”.
“The death of Islam Karimov may open a pretty risky period of unpredictability and uncertainty in Uzbekistan”, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Tass news agency.
Unrest would have repercussions for Russian Federation, the regional power and home to hundreds of thousands of Uzbek migrant workers, and for the US-allied government in Afghanistan.
Rights groups – which have long accused Karimov’s regime of the most heinous abuses including torture and forced labour in the lucrative cotton industry – said his time in power had been a catastrophe for Uzbekistan.
Karimov, the former communist boss, ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years at the center of a tight inner circle and ruthlessly applied the country’s security and intelligence forces to keep a firm lid on dissent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to Yuldashev, saying Karimov’s death was a “heavy loss for Uzbekistan”.
In addition, Medvedev acknowledged that Karimov made great efforts to turn Uzbekistan into a strong State and to achieve peaceful development.
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While other newly-independent Soviet republics were convulsed by wars, economic upheaval and political turmoil, life for people in Uzbekistan stayed largely stable, safe and predictable – a state of affairs that Karimov’s supporters touted as his great achievement.
