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Text File  |  1992-09-03  |  770b  |  19 lines
  1. Member of a community of Turkish descent who
  2. formerly inhabited Meskhetia, USSR, on the
  3. Turkish-Soviet border. They were deported by
  4. Stalin 1944 to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and
  5. have campaigned since then for a return to
  6. their homeland. In June 1989 at least 70 were
  7. killed in pogroms directed against their
  8. community in the Ferghana Valley of
  9. Uzbekistan by the native Uzbeks. Stalin
  10. distrusted the Meskhetians' potentially
  11. pro-Turk leanings; an estimated 30,000-50,000
  12. of the 200,000 deported died in the process.
  13. In 1989 34,000 of the 160,000 living in
  14. Uzbekistan were evacuated after the pogroms,
  15. which resulted from the refusal of the
  16. Meskhetians, who are mostly Shia Muslims, to
  17. join with the predominantly Sunni Muslim
  18. Uzbeks in an anti-Soviet pan-Islamic front.
  19.