Thirty years on, Talas remembers 3 February

TALAS — Several hundred people gathered at the memorial on Central Square yesterday for the annual service for those killed when OMON detachments opened fire on demonstrators there on 3 February 1992. Priests of the Syro-Iradi Church led prayers, and relatives laid white flowers and ribbons at the memorial, which was unveiled in 1997.

The shootings came at the height of the Winter Uprising, after students and members of the Ene-Til society had occupied the square for weeks in protest against the emergency decrees and bread rationing of the Chernov government. Estimates of the dead range from 11, the figure given at the time by the government of the Socialist Republic, to 46, the figure later given by the Provisional Government. A commission of the Territorial Legislature documented 27 deaths in 2002. In the three days that followed, armed workers, defecting police and clan horsemen seized the city's arsenals, and a council chaired by Amanbek Alimbekov took over its administration.

Gulnaz Sooronbaeva, whose brother, a second-year student, was among those killed, has come to the square every year. "He went out for bread and to hear the speeches," she said. "Thirty years, and I still look for him in the crowd." City officials joined the service, which ended with the singing of the anthem.