uzbekistan

If you aren't aware of this, you might want to be. An insane government shooting at its people (including kids) ostensibly for protection against "Islamic Extremists" (the new catch-all reason to justify anything, it seems). I'm going to blockquote a bunch of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty's summary. "Akramiya" is a group of businessmen that were accused (not proven) to be linked to an Islamic extremist group. This was most likely an accusation trumped up out of fear of the businessmen getting too powerful.

At around midnight on 12 May, a group of approximately 100 relatives and supporters of the accused businessmen attacked a military garrison and a prison in Andijon, seizing weapons and freeing up to 4,000 prisoners, including the Akramiya defendants. [...] a protest meeting soon drew thousands of residents to the city's center. [...] Sharipjon Shakirov, who had served a four-year prison term for membership in Akramiya, told RFE/RL from the regional-administration building in Andijon on 13 May that the protesters' only demand was that the authorities release "people who were imprisoned on slander, including Akram Yuldoshev." Shakirov, 30, was shot and killed later in the day. In the early evening, government forces opened fire on the demonstrators and stormed the occupied building. Correspondents for IWPR and fergana.ru described horrific scenes, as guns mounted on armored personnel carriers fired at the terrified crowds. Evening brought heavy rain, uneasy calm, and uncertainty over the fate of the armed insurgents in the regional-administration building. Reports of sporadic gunfire continued through morning, until fergana.ru finally reported on 14 May that insurgents had left the building accompanied by soldiers. The only official report on casualties, issued before the escalation in early evening, listed nine dead and 34 wounded. But Reuters, the BBC, and fergana.ru all reported that dozens of protesters had been killed. The BBC later said that some Andijon residents put the possible death toll in the hundreds, a claim that was also backed by what Andijon residents were telling RFE/RL correspondents in the besieged city. Fergana.ru's correspondent reported that he personally counted 30 bodies heaped on the ground outside a movie theater. He quoted eyewitnesses as saying that "hundreds of unarmed peaceful residents were struck by automatic-weapons fire. At first, they shot them from machine guns mounted on their vehicles, and then soldiers followed on foot mercilessly finishing off the wounded, including women and children." [...] In 1982, Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad ended a confrontation in the city of Hama between his government and the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood by turning his army loose on the city. Thousands were killed. The brutal crackdown evoked a muted international response, for its purported target was an Islamic extremist group, and al-Assad, having established a fearsome reputation for himself at home, ruled undisturbed until his death in 2000. [... The] logic behind President Karimov's actions appears similar -- to crack the whip and cow any would-be challengers. The purported peril of religious extremism is a key plank in this strategy, and Karimov has consistently sought to justify his tough policies with the need to defend Uzbekistan from an imminent Islamist threat. But the evidence does not seem to support such a view of the bloodshed in Andijon. For one, the "Islamist" link to the Akramiya defendants is tenuous, relying on Akram Yuldoshev's onetime membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. More importantly, none of the statements attributed to protesters in credible reports conformed to Islamist models in form or content. In fact, several reports noted that protesters focused on such pressing economic issues as poverty and unemployment, taking pains to distance themselves from any hint of religious extremism. Finally, as Shakirov confirmed to RFE/RL's Uzbek Service before being killed, the insurgents appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to act as a mediator, an unlikely choice for committed Islamists. But at the core of the Hama strategy lies a different variety of extremism -- extreme force to demonstrate the utter futility of resistance. The result is a political arena in which force becomes the ultimate arbiter of disputes. And since this force must eventually be administered in the form of violent actions, it not only leaves losses in its wake, but also brings with it the possibility of equally violent reactions.

Here is RFE/RL's ongoing coverage of the event.