It appears Sunshine Coalition is under the cosh again. Orifjan Oydin, a Turkish businessman and the husband of one of the party’s leaders, Nigara Khidayatova, was reportedly shot and killed in Kazakhstan because of his wife’s political activities. (Moscow Times/Reuters.)

On 28 November Oydin was shot by unknown assailants in the southern Kazakhstani town of Sary Agash, just across the border from the Uzbekistani capital of Tashkent. He died in hospital last Thursday (8 December). Oydin was living in Kazakhstan after being expelled from Uzbekistan in May. Meanwhile, Sanjar Umarov, arrested in November, remains in the clink.

However, what really piques my interest is that the Moscow Times reports that Oydin’s father was:

“[an] ethnic Uzbek whose father fought against communism in Central Asia in the 1930s and was forced to flee to Afghanistan and then Turkey.”

By my reckoning, that must make Oydin’s father a basmachi, or qorbashi. It should be explained that basmachi is a perjorative Russian-derived term whilst qorbashi, at least according to my current light bedtime reading, Edward Allworth’s The Modern Uzbeks, was the preferred name of these anti-soviet rebels.