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"BBC accounts of an uprising in the Uzbek town of Andijan earlier this year - when government troops opened fire on protesters - have resulted in the closure of the BBC bureau in the capital, Tashkent. There is a recording we made from Andijan so chilling that people cannot speak while it is playing. It is an open line to the mobile phone of one of the demonstrators. You can hear a wall of automatic gunfire, like siege fire, and among it people muttering their last prayers: 'Allah-u Akbar, Allah-u Akbar - God is great.' As the shooting grows louder and louder, the voices become thinner until, after more than an hour there is a click, and silence. The man with the phone was killed. This recording and many, many others from Andijan are the reason why we have been forced to leave Uzbekistan." From BBC News, Monica Whitlock November 5, 2005