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Kyrgyzstan: After the Coup

May 10, 2010 | Pulitzer Center
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A poster in Bakiyev’s hometown of Jalalabad shows Russian President Dmitry Medvedev shaking hands with Kyrgyzstan’s president. The reality is different: The Kremlin intensely disliked Bakiyev deeming him untrustworthy, and quickly turned on him after the revolution.

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Flanked by armed guards, ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev steps out to address supporters in his ancestral village in Southern Kyrgyzstan. Within hours, he will sign a handwritten resignation note and leave the country.

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Roza Otunbayeva, Kyrgyzstan’s interim leader, talks to one of the victims of the revolution, recovering in his hospital bed. Almazbek Akchekeyev, a police officer, lost both legs in a grenade explosion on April 7.

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Imels Baitikov, Kyrgyzstan’s top vascular surgeon, treated many of the victims at the National Hospital, a spread-out collection of buildings in downtown Bishkek. “These are just regular people dying, not military, this is hard,” he said.

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Photos of some of the 85 people killed during the revolution hang on fence in front of the presidential palace.

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A spot marked with rocks and flowers shows where a protester got shot to death during the storming of the presidential palace, seen in the background.

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An unemployed former police major, Aftandil Khadyrkulov was shot in the neck on April 8. Khadyrkulov, 44, emerged unharmed from the April 7 revolution, but says he was shot by police the next day as he roamed the streets of Bishkek with a crowd of protesters.

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Azat Tolegunov, 21, was wounded in a grenade explosion during the storming of the presidential palace on April 7. He wanted to help a man shot in the stomach. But when he approached the victim, a grenade went off, ripping chunks of flesh and ligament from one of his legs.

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Kyrzyzstan’s “statue of liberty” graces Bishkek’s central square near the site of the bloody uprising on April 7

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Kyrgyzstan’s presidential palace, known as the White House, was the target of two revolutions in the space of five years.

On April 7, some 85 people were killed during the storm of the presidential palace in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Many more got wounded. Later that month, the victims recuperated in Bishkek's hospitals, while the interim government tried to consolidate power. In the meantime, the ousted president lingered in his ancestral village in the South of the country.