Document said to shed light on bloody Uzbek uprising

WASHINGTON -- It could be the last message the world ever hears from one of the businessmen behind the uprising in Andijan, Uzbekistan: a blood-encrusted, handwritten statement its caretakers say was found on the floor of the government building the protesters took over May 12.

''Dear fellowcountryman," it begins, according to a copy obtained by the Globe. ''If we do not demand our own rights, no one will grant them to us. . . . Let the representatives of the president come. Let him hear our pain. They liken us to sheep or fish, yet we are human beings."

The handwritten statement, carried to Washington D.C., by two journalists, catalogues a list of grievances of 23 business leaders who were behind the uprising, which prompted a government crackdown on May 13.

The origin of the statement could not be independently verified nor its author identified. But if authentic, its arrival in Washington is a tiny victory for ordinary citizens in the ongoing battle with the Uzbek government over who can tell the story of what happened on May 13.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has begun arresting human rights activists and journalists who interviewed survivors in Andijan, according to press reports and Human Rights Watch, which called the move ''a transparent attempt to hide the truth." Karimov has arranged for government-escorted tours of the town in which visitors hear the state-sanctioned version of events: that foreign-led Islamic extremists bent on overthrowing the government were behind the jailbreak, according to press reports from journalists who took the tour and US officials who were briefed on it.

But the survivors of the May 13 crackdown have struggled to tell their own story of what happened, at times risking imprisonment to do so.

Qobil Parpiyev, a leader of the uprisings, gave an interview from his hiding place in exile to the Uzbek website Ferghana.ru, denying links to terrorism.

Others, too, smuggled bits of their story to the outside world, according to freelance German reporter Marcus Bensmann and Uzbek reporter Galima Bukharbaeva of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, who spoke two weeks ago at a panel on Capitol Hill arranged by US Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy.

Bensmann said an employee at the town morgue gave him copies of three death certificates shortly before he fled the town. The death certificate of one 33-year-old man, stamped by the Ministry of Health, says he died because of ''shooting and all his internal organs, stomach, chest, and heart were really wounded."

Three other town residents penned a description of their neighbor's death in a statement they signed with their home addresses, according to a copy provided by Bensmann. But most compelling was the blood-smeared statement, apparently written by one of the accused businessmen, that Bukharbaeva carried in her bag, tucked safely into the folds of the jacket of her airline ticket.

At the panel, Bukharbaeva described how the statement had been given to her by another journalist who had walked into the governor's office after the shooting. During her presentation she showed Delahunt a notebook that had been in her backpack as she ran from the tanks to show how it had been pierced by a bullet.