KARAKALPAKS

Description

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Context: At least 18 people were killed during government crackdown on protests in Uzbekistan’s autonomous province of Karakalpakstan. The protests had broken out in response to the government’s plan to restrict the region’s long-held 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

What is the region’s history?

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.

Why triggered the recent protests?

Violent protests broke out in the impoverished Karakalpakstan after President Shavkat Mirziyoev, who has been in power since 2016, published a draft amendment to the Uzbek constitution, which removed the region’s right to secede Uzbekistan by a referendum.
An environmental crisis, and the health and economic troubles it brought in its wake, has made Karakalpakstan an impoverished region and invoked a sense of neglect among the Karakalpak people.
At one point in time, Karakalpakstan was one of the most fertile provinces in Uzbekistan, due to its location next to the Aral Sea.
However, the once 4th largest saline lake in the world, has been steadily shrinking and reducing the arable land in the province.
The Karakalpaks, who live south of the Aral Sea also face serious health problems, such as increased rates of throat cancer, kidney problems and the highest infant mortality rate in the world.
This is because the fertilisers and pesticides that were used for cotton farming saturated the surrounding land and were carried across the region by wind blowing across the exposed seabed.