BISHKEK -- Pakistani students are continuing to leave Kyrgyzstan following last weekend's violent mob attacks targeting university students from the South Asian nation who were studying in Bishkek.
Eight charter flights from Bishkek to the Pakistani cities of Islamabad, Lahore, and Peshawar took hundreds more students from the Central Asian nation's capital on May 21.
A day earlier, Kyrgyz officials confirmed that about 1,200 Pakistani students had left the country after the May 18 violence, which was triggered by the appearance on social media of a video purportedly showing a group of "people of Asian appearance" harassing foreign students on the night of May 13.
The group then pursued the students to their dormitory, where at least one foreigner was assaulted by several men and dragged along the floor.
Kyrgyzstan’s Health Ministry said on May 20 that more than 40 people were injured during the violence, some of whom were taken to hospital.
On May 21, Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry said Pakistani Foreign Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar, who is currently attending a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s foreign ministers in neighboring Kazakhstan, will visit Kyrgyzstan and meet with Kyrgyz officials to discuss the situation faced by Pakistani students in Bishkek.
The Interior Ministry said on May 21 that police detained a fourth Kyrgyz man suspected of being involved in the initial attack on foreign students. The ministry said earlier that four foreign nationals had also been detained on hooliganism charges.
The Kyrgyz government has vowed to pursue those responsible for the violence and rejected what it said were "insinuations aimed at inciting intolerance toward foreign students."
Still, it appeared to lay the blame for the violence on illegal migrants, saying authorities had been taking "decisive measures to suppress illegal migration and expel undesirable persons from Kyrgyzstan."
Just three days before the violence, Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security detained 28 Pakistani nationals for "working illegally" in a sewing shop in Bishkek.
The same day, Bishkek city police shut down delivery services conducted by more than 400 foreign students, mostly from Pakistan, on motorcycles and scooters, citing traffic safety concerns.
Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said on May 21 that six Pakistani nationals were detained overnight while trying to illegally enter Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan.
