[ad_1]
Protesters have entered the government building where the parliament and presidential office are located, local media report.
An eyewitness claims that some 2,000 people entered the building’s door singing the national anthem. The images show protesters walking around the main building.
They then entered the national security committee building, where the former president is serving an eleven-year prison sentence for corruption.
An activist told the AFP news agency that Atambayev was released without “violence or weapons”, and that local personnel made no attempt to arrest them.
At least 120 people, including an opposition leader, were injured in clashes between protesters and police in the capital Bishkek after Sunday’s elections, according to health officials. About half of the injured are said to be police officers.
The election results showed that the establishment was headed for victory in the former Soviet Republic. Parties close to Kyrgyzstan’s pro-Russian President Sooronbai Jeenbekov won parliamentary elections on Sunday in the mountainous region of Central Asia, where the Birimdik party, led by the president’s brother, received roughly one in four votes.
Kyrgyzstan is one of the five former Soviet Central Asian republics and borders China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The country became independent in the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The country is about half the size of Sweden and has just over five million inhabitants. The capital is Bishkek with about 800,000 inhabitants.
Just over two-thirds of the inhabitants are Kyrgyz, 15% are Uzbeks and 10% are Russian. The inhabitants live mainly in three areas: in the plain around the capital Bishkek in the northwest, around Issyk-Kul lake in the northeast, and in the Fergana valley in the southwest.
The economy depends on the income of Kyrgyz émigrés and the Kumtor gold mine, which accounts for 10 percent of GDP.
Politics is characterized by contradictions between the clans of the south-west and north of the country. Tensions between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the Fergana Valley culminated in 2010 violence that claimed hundreds of lives and forced authoritarian President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to flee.
Since then, the country has been governed by a series of multi-party coalitions dominated by Social Democrats and democracy has gradually strengthened. However, development is held back by corruption and organized crime.
Sources: Foreign Policy Institute / Landguiden
[ad_2]
