Hoor Mehtab, a Pakistani medical student in Kyrgyzstan, was among the first students to return to Pakistan following Kyrgyzstani mob attacks on foreign students, including Pakistanis and Indians, in various Bishkek universities and hostels May 17.
Mehteb said she and others were dining in a cafe serving Pakistani food when they received messages from classmates at their hostel that a mob had attacked the hostel and Avicenna International Medical University where they were students.
Mehteb said the cafe owner offered her and 59 other Pakistani and Indian students refuge in the basement, where they stayed for 14 hours.
“It was suffocating,” she told VOA.
Mehtab was among nearly 4,000 Pakistani students who left their studies in Bishkek and returned to Pakistan after the violence, which lasted for several hours over May 17 and 18.
Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry said in a statement on its website the day after the attack that the violence was triggered by the appearance of a social media video purportedly showing a group of “persons of Asian appearance,” said by eyewitnesses to be Egyptians, harassing foreign students on the night of May 13. The statement said the police charged four foreign students with hooliganism and detained them. Police did not release the students’ identities.
Kyrgyz Deputy Education Minister Rasul Abazbek, speaking to reporters Monday in Bishkek, called the mass attacks on Pakistani and Indian students “shameful.”
“We must not lose this reputation to be hub of education,” Abazbek said.
Parents of students who are still in Bishkek say they are worried about the safety of their sons and daughters.
“My family is worried. I have to borrow $320 to send it to my daughter and son to buy air tickets so they can come back home,” Sardar Asif Ali, a Pakistani father in Mardan city, in Pakistan’s northwest, told VOA.
According to official estimates, there are 11,000 Pakistanis in Kyrgyzstan, mostly students.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar was in Bishkek this week to ensure the safety of the Pakistani students. At a press briefing Wednesday in Islamabad, Dar said about 4,000 Pakistanis are expected to return from Kyrgyzstan.
Pakistan has launched special flights to repatriate its citizens. A flight arranged by the Pakistani government arrived at Bacha Khan International Airport in the northwestern city of Peshawar early Wednesday, carrying 200 students from Bishkek.
Among them was Azra Alam, a Pakistani student in her third year of medical studies in Bishkek.
“We were stuck in our rooms for six days and scared every minute,” she told VOA. She said she is uncertain about her future studies at Bishkek.
Medical schools in the former Soviet republics are popular among South Asian students because of lower costs, proximity and lower qualification requirements. Students and parents say the cost for a year of tuition for a medical school in Kyrgyzstan is roughly $3,000.
This story originated in VOA’s Deewa service with contributions by Urdu Service. Some information for this report came from Reuters.
