The people of violence-wracked Kyrgyzstan voted Sunday on a new constitution just weeks after deadly ethnic purges — a vote that the interim government hopes will legitimize the power it seized in April.
The Central Asian nation was on high security alert for the vote, deploying almost 8,000 police officers and an equal number of defense volunteers to keep the peace after rampages that killed hundreds of ethnic Uzbeks.
Voting in the southern city of Osh, where entire Uzbek neighborhoods were burned to the ground earlier this month during attacks by ethnic Kyrgyz, interim President Roza Otunbayeva said the vote was proof of her country's strength.
By: Brant
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