Context
Eighteen people were killed and 243 wounded during unrest in Uzbekistan's autonomous province of Karakalpakstan which broke out over plans to curtail its autonomy.
Who are the Karakalpaks?
- The name Karakalpakstan is derived from the Karakalpak people, an ethnic minority group of around 2 million.
- Karakalpak translates to ‘black hat’, referring to their traditional headgear.
- The Karakalpaks consider themselves to be a distinct cultural group in Uzbekistan.
- Their Turkic language – Karakalpak – is closely related to Kazak and is one of the 7 languages of instruction in Uzbekistan’s public schools.
- Their separate language is a crucial aspect of their cultural identity.
- In their genealogical narrative, the Karakalpaks claim to share a common point of origin with the neighbouring Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Turkmen, but believe that over time they diverged from the others.
- This narrative marks the Karakalpaks as culturally separate from their neighbouring groups.
Background
- The Karakalpak people settled around the Amu Darya (a river that feeds into the Aral Sea) in the 18th century.
- By 1873, they partly came under Russian rule and by 1920 were completely incorporated into the Soviet Union.
- Their region, Karakalpakstan, was an autonomous area within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russia during 1917-1922), before it was made a part of Uzbekistan as the Karakalpak Autonomous Socialist Republic (ASSR) in 1936.
- When Uzbekistan declared its independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991, Karakalpak ASSR was re-established as the Republic of Karakalpakstan in December of the same year.
- Karakalpakstan was formally recognized as an autonomous republic in Uzbekistan’s constitution of 1992, and has the right to secede from on the basis of a nation-wide referendum.
