How extraordinary to be an eyewitness to the peaceful overthrow of a standing government that began and ended on the same momentous day. Second prize: To be transported to such an event by a journalist who fills his account with drama, color, dialogue and the absurdities of human behavior.
Most big newspapers today report on the takeover of the government of Kyrgyzstan, the third successful popular revolt in a former Soviet republic in 16 months. Reading those reports is an eye-opening exercise in Compare & Contrast.
The New York Times’ Christopher Pala, writing from Bishkek, notes that President Askar Akayev and his family fled the Kyrgyz capital as crowds seized control of the presidential palace and began looting it.
The Washington Post‘s Karl Vick and Peter Finn write that protesters met little resistance from security forces.
And the Los Angeles Times’ Kim Murphy and David Holley report that early today, parliament approved opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev as prime minister.
But for a vivid account of the events as they unfolded minute by minute, you have to turn to the Wall Street Journal‘s Philip Shiskin (with additional reporting by Alan Cullison, Neil King and Guy Chazan). Sadly, a subscription is required. But we’ll give you some of the flavor.
Shiskin sets the stage thusly:
The day began here with deceptive calm. At 9 a.m., protesters started gathering near a hospital treating drug addiction and alcoholism on the edge of town. Inside, Dr. Jenishbek Nazaraliev, a prominent critic of the regime, sat in his office with an assault rifle propped against the wall. “We must administer shock and stress for the unification of the nation,” he said, using medical terminology.
Shortly thereafter, Shiskin writes, the protestors, numbering in the thousands, marched 40 minutes to the entrance of the government building (known as the White House) where first the ranks of helmeted police, then those of fearful soldiers retreated in the face of a crowd armed only with sticks and stones. Next thing you knew, the protestors commanded the presidential palace:
The startlingly fast regime change plunged this Central Asian capital into a volatile blend of chaos and euphoria, surprising the protesters themselves; some were celebrating on the seventh floor of the presidential palace here, sitting in President Askar Akayev’s chair, drinking wine from his kitchen and wearing his ties. …
[I]nside Mr. Akayev’s well-appointed office with inlaid parquet, protesters took turns having their pictures taken on his chair. “Would you like some wine?” asked a young man, holding two bottles. A member of the presidential administration who stayed after his colleagues fled said the police and the army were under specific orders not to open fire. “We have enough bullets here to kill thousands,” said Evgenii Razinkin, a military guard posted outside Mr. Akayev’s office. “But we gave our oath to the people, to the constitution, not to the president.”
The massive retreat of the police from the streets lured out the looters. In Beta Stores, a popular supermarket selling everything from food to Turkish carpets to ovens, hundreds of looters broke windows and carried handfuls of goods amid a smell of spilled detergent and crushed-up cookies. “Would you like to buy some panties, wholesale?” a man holding a pile of underwear asked. Inside, Maksud Mambekov and his friends tried in vain to stop the looting. “We never thought it would come to this,” he said. “All we wanted is for Akayev to resign.”
Pala of the New York Times also offers some of the drama inside the government building:
A senior civil servant in a blue suit and tie stood in a corner of the office. “The president was here until the crowds gathered,” he said. “Tell the world that when he left, he gave orders that no weapons should be used, even though there are plenty in the cellar.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Holley reported from Bishkek and Murphy from Moscow, and the paper appeared to rely heavily on phone interviews and second-hand accounts for its descriptions of the evolving protest:
“The situation in Bishkek … has gotten much hotter since daytime, and we now have to do something to calm the people down as quickly as possible,” Roza Otunbayeva, a former Kyrgyz diplomat and opposition leader, said in a telephone interview Thursday night. “So wide is the abyss between the rich and the poor in Kyrgyzstan that ordinary people simply cannot control their rage anymore.”
Although the Washington Post story carries a Bishkek dateline, the paper notes that Finn reported the story from the Czech Republic and Vick from Washington.
You have to go with the report that you have (as Donald Rumsfeld might put it), but from that distance, no one is going to encounter — let alone immortalize — a revolution’s panty scalper.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.