Dear editorial-board! Having got convinced how many good materials of Your newspaper are devoted to friendship and good neighborly relations and how objective and dispassionate your correspondents write about frontier problems I made up my mind to appeal to the heads of Central Asian states through "Varorud".
Dear presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev, Askar Akayev, Emomali Rahmonov and Islam Karimov!
The peoples of Central Asia lived in friendship and cooperation from times immemorial, they have been living in peace and concord up to nowadays. Not only historically formed rites and customs, unity of religion and borders united them making their relations closer; fraternity and kindred spirit reigned over these lands. And all of You dwelt much on it in Your orations. Fortunately, thanks to the wise policy pursued by each of You today we see a versatile development of friendly relations, commercial-economic cooperation of our countries, activization of cultural organizations. The peoples appreciate especially Your merits, as worthy sons of the epoch, in establishment of peace and benefit in the region. Today Central Asia is avowed to be the land of peace and friendship, unity and reconciliation. Everyone of You aspires to consolidate democracy in the society of Your own, develop economy, improve social state of Your people. We see it for ourselves.
However, some events taking place on the Tajik-Uzbek, Uzbek-Kyrgyz and Uzbek-Kazakh borders become a subject of serious troubles. And I am sure not to be alone to appeal to You on behalf of our compatriots, relatives and friends living in all our states which constituted the great Soviet Union, we apply to You with a request.
For example, Tajiks and Uzbeks are representatives of the ancientest civilizations. They differ only by languages, there are no other distinctions among them, they are like similar fruits on one and the same tree. Thereupon, the enforcement of "visa system" between them, native congenial peoples, seems unreasonable in the eyes of the world community. Moreover, Sughd viloyat residents have to go for this visa to Dushanbe and those subjected to taunts and humiliations as checkpoints being extorted of money. And what is done with bridges built by our fathers? They are destroyed under the pretext of quarantine and mythical epidemics. It eventuates into interruption of traditional commercial, wedding, friendly relations between native peoples - Kazakhs, Kyrgyzes, Uzbeks. There is no need to mention once more about the torments of Tajik citizens crossing Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan territories. Your services can't help inform You adequately. Only they conceal one thing - acting allegedly on Your behalf, i.e. "that is the policy of ours!" That's what they imply.
Instead of laying new roads and building new bridges, which would lead to neighbors Your officials erect additional bars as if peoples themselves bewared each other. Instead of the traditional greetings "Khoosh omaded! - Khoosh kelibsiz!" which sounded on the borders for centuries we hear mine explosions and get to know about the increasing number of victims.
The first explosion on the Tajik-Uzbek border was heard in August 2000 yet. These are primarily the inhabitants of the bordering areas of Sughd viloyat - Panjakent, Shahristan, Asht, Isfara - who fall victims to mines. Since then mine explosions carried away the lives of over 60 innocent people, the same quantum was converted into invalids for the rest of their lifetime. It is worth mentioning that there are innocent citizens of Uzbekistan among the victims as well.
Therefore we make an appeal to all of You - to pay special attention to this issue under the angle of wisdom and humanism. Let the roads be opened for the sake of friendship and economical-cultural efflorescence of our region. If you are alone you won't become either rich or happy. The economic development of our countries depends in much on unity, friendship and fraternity between our peoples.