(Sabah Newspaper, 15 January 2015)
Kirzbekistan Welcomes You!
A typo in the New York Times resulted in mixing up the names
of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to create "Kirzbekistan", and
spawned a phenomenon in social media. The imagined country
then began to take on a life of its own.
An article in the paper about climber Tommy Caldwell related his
experiences in Kyrgyzistan but spelled it as "Kirzbekistan". The
typo was corrected the following day but before the correction a
Twitter account was opened for Kirzbekistan and attracted 2,500
followers in a short time. The jokes then started coming non-stop.
There was a cry for Kirzbekistan to participate in the 2015 Eurovision
contest and a call for the Kirzbek people to rise up in resistance. It
wasn't long before Kirzbekistan appeared on the website
"nationstates.net", where internet users can make up countries and
give them flags, currency and national anthems.
The flags of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were combined to make a
flag for Kirzbekistan, whose slogan became "We're here". The
form of government was listed as "authoritarian democracy" and
Kirzbekistan's population was pegged at 12 million. The general
comment about the new nation: "Other than having the right to vote,
Kirzbeks have been deprived of just about everything else."
How do you get there? As Capt. Kirk once said: "Thata way"
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