To Uzbek officials
A poem by Rahmat Qurbon
What have you done for our nation?
Tell us, what is your creation?
Here we are, moving the Navoiy Museum,
As though we could erase his name.
Walls may vanish, stones may crumble,
His immortal voice remains the same.
We built Jasliq Prison,
Where mercy never came.
We struck the prisoners on the head,
And justice died in shame.
We shed blood in Andijan,
Where countless people fell.
The bullets spoke far louder
Than any truth could tell.
We sold the lands of schools away,
And robbed our youth of light.
We fired at tomorrow’s dreams
In broad and open sight.
Because of our own policies,
Millions fled abroad.
They searched for bread in foreign lands,
Far from the home they loved.
So many died in loneliness,
Their final tears unseen.
A bitter price our people paid
For all that might have been.
We crippled education,
We darkened every heart.
We raised a generation
From its own roots torn apart.
A nation full of mankurts,
With memory stripped away,
Whose language, soul and heritage
Were stolen day by day.
Teachers gathered cotton bolls
Instead of shaping minds.
Doctors picked the cotton fields,
Leaving healing far behind.
The farmer’s money in the bank
We claimed it as our own.
The hand that held the faithful hoe
We crushed beneath our throne.
The farmer who refused to share
Was summoned by command.
We seized his fields,
We broke his will,
We stole his cherished land.
We shamed his mother in the square,
We blackened his good name.
We dragged his honour through the dust,
And left his life in flames.
From poisoned medicines we brought,
So many infants died.
Before they learned to speak or smile,
Their hopes were crucified.
We filled the kindergartens
With rotten meat and worms.
We fed decay to little ones
As though such things were the norm.
We cut the trees that gave us shade,
We shot the wild and rare.
We robbed the land that nourished us,
Yet claimed we truly cared.
The Uzbek people never prospered,
Their pockets stayed unfilled.
While honest labour starved to death,
Our palaces we built.
We sold the working factories,
Their iron and bricks were gone.
Scattered to the four winds,
Before another dawn.
We cut the blooming orchard trees,
We blocked the rivers’ flow.
We took the little that the poor
Had struggled long to sow.
We stole the people’s treasury,
Our greed knew not defeat.
We took our bribes with smiling hands,
Then built our grand retreats.
Here we are…
Here we are…
Here we are…
Heroes, so we claim…
But tell us now:
What have YOU done for your Motherland?
Nothing…
Except betray your own people in her name.
(Translated into English by A’zam Obid)
