NEAR the turquoise domes of Samarkand on the Silk Road, well-wishers stream past an elaborate grave covered in fresh flowers. They bow their heads reverently as a grey-bearded mullah dressed in a traditional Uzbek robe and skullcap intones a prayer, before placing chrysanthemums on the tomb and filing out solemnly. The person buried here is no holy man or khan (even if he sometimes behaved like one): it is Islam Karimov, the strongman who ran Uzbekistan for 27 years until his death from a stroke in September.
For his many critics, Mr Karimov was a brutal despot who presided over rife human-rights abuses, including the slaughter of protesters by security forces in the city of Andijan in 2005. But for many of his 30m citizens, his death has left a gaping hole. “He was our grandfather,” sighs Abdumajid, a petrol-station attendant in the capital, Tashkent (nervous of speaking about politics, he gave only his first name). “Now he’s gone,” laments the young man who, at 25, is the same age as his country and has never known another leader.
And yet the death of the 78-year-old president does not feel like the end of an era. This week voters elected a successor,...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2hdfn59
EmoticonEmoticon