Heroic Bishkek blogger

A 24-year-old Bishkek resident who maintains a LiveJournal blog under the nic Morrire (her real name seems to be Elena, judging from some of the comments) has become a key source of information for people following the events of the last couple of days there. This woman took the photos which were later posted on Fergana.ru (and to which I linked, after finding the link at Registan.net). Her original post with the photos (they are no longer there, presumably she took them down) has a poignant intro (my translation):

My city died last night. My city is dead. May those who planned - yes! yes! PLANNED - the night's looting be cursed. I hate you.

On her blog you will find a blow-by-blow account of the events - both a timeline (which also made it on to Fergana.ru) and a post on the aftermath detailing which stores et al. were destroyed and which survived the looting. It's all in Russian, though.

A couple of the posts have hundreds of comments, many of them from people who used to live in Bishkek and still have relatives there, inquiring about the state of affairs in the Kyrgyz capital. Apparently (according to one of the comments), Elena's blog was quoted on the NTV evening news in Russia, and they ran some of her photos.

She also linked to a page with some slow-loading photos that has a link to a 4-minute video clip of people trying to defend one of the Bishkek department stores. I didn't try to watch the video - don't think my home internet connection could handle that - but it may be worth checking out.

She hasn't posted since Thursday morning, so I guess either all of the photography and blogging tired her out, or she's now no longer reporting for free. More power to her if she got a paying gig out of this.

I am not a big believer in the idea that blogs will replace the mainstream media, but in a crisis situation like this, the ability to leave comments and receive replies in an open forum is very valuable. Clearly this blogger was able to capture some reportorial material documenting the events in Bishkek which the MSM were unable to get any other way, though it no doubt took more courage than navigating to the LiveJournal site - she was at the demonstrations by the "White House" for the duration.

Thanks to Norvezhskii Lesnoi, who maintains the blog that's always the front page of the Bolshoi Gorod website, for directing me to this amazing Bishkek blog.