Editorial comment: When encouraging people to join the New Eurasia Kyrgyzstan Blog Team, I asked people to think about what made them interested in blogging - what issues matter to them, what do they want to say? Shirin’s article below was her reply to these questions and, based on the views I’ve heard from many people here over the last couple of months, echo the opinions of many people. So, read on and if you’ve got something to add, or if you agree or disagree, then post a comment - or, even better, join the blog team and share your views. Over to Shirin.

It was very difficult for me to choose the subject of my essay.But according to my future specialization I chose the relations of students to the last events in Kyrgyzstan on the 24th of March.

All reporters wrote about that events but not everyone of them knew what really was happening here. That is why I decided that it would be interesting to write about it because I also was there that night and saw everything. From 8 pm till 2 am I tried to understand what happened. I think that time a lot of people lost themselves. Some people began to run to the different sides then destroy the shops but others tried to stop them. That was during the whole night. In the morning only a few shops were OK but Bishkek was like a derelict or disrupted town.

The next day all cities of Kyrgyzstan had the same picture. Citizens lost their hope in the future. It was the shock for everyone especially for teenagers and students. Nobody cant believe that we have done the “revolution”. But we did.

The question is: “Was it revolution or just a rebellion?” Good question, but who can give the answer? Rebels? Who were that rebels? Of course, teenagers including students. That is why students are also interested in this problem. Of course it was really unexpected incident. Nobody knew that it would take such turn. From the beginning it was just peaceful demonstrations but suddenly… The next day students took part in the other demonstrations but only some of them knew why they were there. There were more than 500 students. When asked why did they stay there, what their goal was and who asked them to take part, they themselves didn’t know. They only said that they wanted to have peaceful country and good government which can help to decide their problems.

I think we must prevent a similar incident. We have to think about future of our youth. We should try to explain to them not to repeat the same mistake. We must speak out so that it does not happen again, so that young people are not exploited for others’ gain.