Kyrgyzstan: Incident in Batken Highlights Cross-border Ethnic Tensions · Global Voices
Alexander Sodiqov

Passions flew high in the southwestern Kyrgyz city of Batken last week after local residents took a group of Tajik citizens hostage in an attempt to force the release of three locals detained in Tajikistan on smuggling charges. As Matthew Kupfer writes on Registan.net, “such events certainly aren’t helping interethnic relations within Kyrgyzstan. And, they can potentially lead to worse incidents.”