By Katherine Bujalska, Artes Mundi Live Guide
It was reported last week that as many as 100 people in Kyrgyzstan have been killed after the Government was overthrown and a bloody massacre ensued. Hundreds are injured and hospitals are not coping. It was rumored that the Kyrgyz leader Mr Bakiyev fled the country in a small aircraft while the police opened fire on protesters in the country's capital Bishkek.
From my comfy, sheltered viewpoint, I can only speculate upon why this devastating situation has erupted now. Has the virtual blanket of poverty which settled over the country back in the early 1990s, when the Soviet empire fell, finally caused the country to reach its critical breaking point? Or is it in part due to the ongoing friction generated by the presence of both American and Russian airbases within the Kyrgyz borders, meaning more political play afoot than meets the media eye?
A month ago I would have read these reports and perhaps not speculated. I doubt I would have really, truly been that concerned, not being able to pinpoint Kyrgyzstan on a map and not really being able to draw a connecting line between my life and their lives.
Last week I sat and watched 'A New Silk Road, Algorithm of Survival and Hope', with a five year old child and his family. We talked about the children in the film playing football and how they were just like our families over here. We discussed how some of our clothes had labels on them which said 'made in China' and they may have been packed - touched even! by the workers in the film. Those people became people we could relate to.
Watching and re-watching that film, their actions and even their body language has become so familiar to me that I have begun to regard those people as friends...I know them!
I hope and pray, as I know the rest of the Artes Mundi team do too, that the people of Kyrgyzstan and especially our dear friends the artists Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev get through this volatile situation as safely as they can, and the outcome for them is bright.
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