Eyewitness: Kyrgyzstan protest

Edil Baisaloff is the leader of the opposition NGO Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society in Kyrgyzstan. He was also head of the independent monitoring body for the Kyrgyz elections.

The rally began peacefully

He talked to the BBC News website about what happened at Thursday's mass opposition rally in Bishkek.

I am in the central square. People are saying 'freedom, liberty.' Now they are celebrating but half an hour ago it was quite tense.

The opposition wanted to hold a peaceful rally but the police broke up the rally and they used a lot of violence. People got beaten up badly. Afterwards the crowd really was provoked. The main government building was overrun and people are inside.

The people were chanting 'justice', they were chanting 'liberty', they were demanding a review of the elections

There are women, men, young, old, various ethnicities, and some of them clearly very well off. Some of them came from the rural areas.

Usually people wear orange, pink, but today for the first time, they were all wearing multi-coloured, silk scarves - rainbow colours. This is very symbolic because various political factions - each of them has their own colour - yellow, pink, red, blue, green.

Tulips

Today it was a very special rally. Many of the women had tulips in their hands because tulips show it's a peaceful rally. Kyrgyzstan is a country where tulips were originally [exported] to Europe.

The people were chanting 'justice', they were chanting 'liberty', they were demanding a review of the elections.

There are at least 20,000 people altogether - about 200-300 got inside the presidential palace. They were throwing out papers and portraits.

The opposition leaders eventually asked the protesters to leave the building because the situation was not controllable.

The leaders of the opposition have entered into the talks with the remaining government officials.

Now [President] Akayev must go. He needs to resign and we need to establish conditions for free and fair presidential elections.