a new spin

Last night I was talking with the head of a local film studio in his office. It was just a casual conversation. The room was warm and lit by fluorescent lighting. A mosquito was buzzing around my head. One of his friends enters the room and offers a cigarette. I politely decline. Then he asks what I had heard about Andijan and the phone. I eventually realize he isn't saying phone, but fund when he adds the name Soros to the sentence. He asks me if I had heard that the Soros Fund had given money to the people in Andijan to protest. I said no, I hadn't heard.

I was a little confused by the question until I looked into it a little. Later I found out that it had been announced in the local press that Soros had funded the recent uprising. So I started looking more into the local press reports. It is interesting to see how the facts are presented. They took all of the international calls for investigations and turned them around by saying that the internal investigation was not complete and that OSCE and the UN are both here and "their colleagues can visit the site and speak with people." (full article) They are using the presence of these organizations in Uzbekistan to show their willingness to work with the international community and show they have nothing to hide. These organizations really can't do much here, though, and are basically being used as pawns in a game of political chess.