Aug. 5 (The Bulletin) — In a move designed to dispel rumours swirling around the internet that Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had died, Turkmenistan’s state TV published a video of him driving a rally car around a flaming crater in the desert. Mr Berdymukhamedov has cultivated something of an action-man reputation, releasing videos of himself leading gym workouts and firing range practice with the army.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 5 (The Bulletin) — Residents of a Kyrgyz village clashed with Chinese workers at a nearby Chinese-owned gold mine in the east of the country. Reports said that at least 20 people were injured in the fighting. Tension between the gold mine and locals has been rising since the start of July after the death of villagers’ livestock. Farmers blamed the gold mine for polluting the environment. Anti-China sentiment, though, is growing in Kyrgyzstan.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 7 (The Bulletin) — Georgia’s foreign ministry sent a protest note to Russia after a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Abkhazian leader Raul Khajimba ahead of the 11th anniversary of a war between Georgia and Russia. Abkhazia is one of two breakaway states in Georgia. The other is North Ossetia. They broke away in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and are effectively Russian vassal states. Only Russia and a handful of other allies recognise Abkhazia and North Ossetia’s independence claims
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 2 (The Bulletin) — The Tajik government said that it setting up a special agency to raise money for its headline Rogun Dam project. In an interview with the Asia-Plus website, finance minister Faiziddin Kahhorzoda said that Tajikistan was looking for grants to pay for the rest of the $3.9b project rather than raising more debt. In 2017 it sold Eurobonds worth $500m to fund the dam.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
July 24 (The Bulletin) — An Azerbaijani MIG-29 fighter-jet crashed into the Caspian Sea on a training exercise, media reported. Azerbaijan’s government has asked for help from Russia and Turkey to locate the crash wreckage and the body of the dead pilot.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 2 (The Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a $415m grant to build a major section of a new north-south highway across Georgia. The 23km Kvesheti-Kobi Road is part of a series of upgrades to infrastructure in Georgia that the government has highlighted as a priority.
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— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
> Kazakhstan and Georgia need to treat the disadvantaged with more respect to truly develop, writes James Kilner
The Human Rights Watch report on how state-run institutions treat physically and mentally disabled children in their care makes for particularly grim reading.
It cites children, the loud and less obedient ones, as saying that they are often chained to their beds and drugged into a dreamless sleep that can last 24 hours. They are beaten; made to feel like unwanted prisoners, rather than disabled children. When they reach adulthood, they transfer to an adult version of their children’s institution, thus ensuring a life sentence.
There is often no escape.
The report also pointedly says that of the 2,000 disabled children in the 19 state-run institutions, most are not orphaned. Reading between the lines, it is easier for the Kazakh government to take these children out of society than deal with them in a more humane way.
And this is the real shame in it all. A society that can’t treat the disadvantaged with respect will always be held back. This goes for the poor too.
Last week a 16-year-old boy in Tbilisi fell down a liftshaft on the construction site that he was working on. He had been working on the 14th-floor of the building.
Media said that the boy had come from a poor background and that he had spent much of his early teenage years working jobs to support his mother in his town in regional Georgia. The construction job that killed him was just an extension of this way-of-life.
According to Georgian law, the boy was legally allowed to work aged 16 but he wasn’t allowed do hard manual labour until he was 18-years-old.
The dead boy has also become a statistic, one of several construction workers to die in Tbilisi this year. The Georgian government has allowed poor migrants from the regions to risk their lives on poorly regulated construction sites in Tbilisi for too long.
Both Kazakhstan and Georgia have aspirations to be taken seriously as developed countries but it is not enough to build glitzy airports, five-star hotels and successful sports teams. The true test of a country’s development is how they treat their least advantaged. By this measure, both Kazakhstan and Georgia must try harder.
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— This story was first published in issue 417 of the weekly Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
ALMATY/July 22 (The Bulletin) — Free speech groups accused Kazakh telecoms provider Kcell of trying to strong-arm its customers into installing a piece of spyware that will allow the authorities to snoop on their internet activity.
Kcell responded by saying that the software was not mandatory and that it was designed to protect the end user rather than spy on them.
Internet users in Kazakhstan, though, have said that when they avoided installing the software they
have been redirected to webpages telling them that the internet will be limited without the extra Kcell software.
Advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York, Courtney Radsch, said: “Authorities in Kazakhstan have a long history of jailing, censoring, and harassing journalists, and this effort to protect citizens from ‘dangerous content’ should be viewed with the utmost scepticism.”
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— This story was first published in issue 417 of the weekly Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
BISHKEK/July 24 (The Bulletin) — Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened in a standoff in Kyrgyzstan between a former and current president that had threatened to destabilise the country.
Although he had barricaded himself into his residence outside Bishkek, refusing to submit to an arrest warrant over corruption charges, former Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev was allowed to fly to Moscow by the Krygyz authorities for a meeting with Mr Putin, highlighting just how much clout Russia has in domestic Kyrgyz affairs.
He flew to Moscow from the Russian air base at Kant, near Bishkek, on a specially chartered Sukhoi Superjet 100 operated by Rusjet.
After their meeting, Mr Putin told journalists that he stepped in because he didn’t want any more internal conflict in Kyrgyzstan.
“Kyrgyzstan has already experienced several serious internal political upheavals, specifically, there were two upheavals at least. And this should stop, to my mind, for the sake of the Kyrgyz people,” he said. “The country is in need of political stability and everyone should unite around the sitting President and help him in developing the state.”
Violent revolutions in 2005 and 2010 overthrew two presidents in Kyrgyzstan. In 2005, Kyrgyzstan’s first post-Soviet leader Askar Akayev was given asylum in Russia. Five years later his successor, Kurmanbek Bakiyev was also overthrown and Russia organised for him to go into exile in Belarus.
After landing back in Kyrgyzstan, Mr Atambayev, Kyrgyz president from 2011-17, said Mr Putin didn’t want to see President Sooronbai Jeenbekov targeting his opponents.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin intends to talk about this with Sooronbai Jeenbekov,” he said.
The Kyrgyz government has not commented.
Mr Atambayev has clashed his former protege and handpicked successor Jeenbekov since handing over the presidency to him. He has seen several of his allies and former senior government members arrested on corruption charges and last month Parliament withdrew his immunity from prosecution.
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— This story was first published in issue 417 of the weekly Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
TBILISI/July 24 (The Bulletin) — Prosecutors in Georgia charged the chairman and deputy chairman of TBC Bank, the country’s biggest bank, with money laundering.
Mamuka Khazaradze, founder of TBC Bank and chairman of the corporation that owns the bank, and deputy chairman Badri Japaridze denied the charges and said that they were politically motivated.
Prosecutors have been investigating the two men since August last year over payments made through TBC Bank in 2007 and 2008.
They said that there was now enough evidence to charge them with laundering $16.6m “followed by a gain of particular large amounts of income”.
On the London Stock Exchange, TBC’s shares fell more than 11% to a five-month low.
In response, TBC Bank said that Mr Khazaradze and Mr Japaridze had resigned from TBC Bank Group PLC, the company that owns TBC Bank.
Mr Khazaradze had also quit as chairman of the banking unit earlier this year, when news of the investigation became public.
“The Board has full confidence in the integrity of Mr Khazaradze and Mr Japaridze and looks forward to the gentlemen quickly and fully clearing their names of any claims, including alleged money laundering,” TBC said in a statement.
The outspoken Mr Khazaradze, one of Georgia’s most recognisable businessmen, is known to have clashed with Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest man in Georgia and the power behind the Georgian Dream Coalition government. He has also threatened to go into politics against Mr Ivanishvili and his supporters have said that the money laundering charges are a form of punishment.
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— This story was first published in issue 417 of the weekly Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin on July 25 2019