Category Archives: Uncategorised

Telia writes down Ucell, Uzbek subsidiary

JULY 14 2017 (The Bulletin) — Telia, the Swedish-Finnish telecoms company, said that it had written off the value of Ucell, its Uzbek subsidiary, by 2b Swedish krona ($245m) to 1.3b krona ($160m) because of currency and regulatory risks. It wants to sell out of Central Asia after a corruption row focused on its Uzbekistan unit. Earlier this year it sold its majority stake in Tajikistan’s Tcell to the Aga Khan. It appears to be having more difficulty offloading Ucell and its majority stakes in Kazakhstan’s Kcell, Azerbaijan’s Azercell and Georgia’s Geocell.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Uzbek officials consider easing cafe curfew

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TASHKENT, JULY 20 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek officials said they would consider softening restrictions on cafe and restaurant opening times, a curfew blamed for stunting the development of Uzbekistan’s nightlife.

Although officials didn’t give any details, cafe owners and staff welcomed the news as another step towards opening up Uzbekistan since the death last year of President Islam Karimov. A waitress who works at a small summer cafe in Tashkent told a Bulletin correspondent that she currently closes the cafe when it is still full of customers.

“We have to close at a very time when we have a good flow of clients,” she said.

Local bars and restaurants in Tashkent are, officially at least, only allowed to open until 11pm, cutting the evenings short. In neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, restaurants and cafes stay open late.

Not that the rules are applied evenly, an employee at another Tashkent restaurant explained.

“If you have money and powerful contacts you can freely serve the clients at any time of the day. All you have to do is to please the police and other officials,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Armenia accuses Kremlin of imperiallism

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JULY 12 2017 (The Bulletin) — Armenian lawmakers accused the Kremlin of outdated imperialism after its parliament passed a law which said that citizens of other Eurasian Union countries — Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia — could only work as commercial drivers in Russia if their countries recognised Russian as an official language. The only Eurasian Union country that doesn’t is Armenia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Tajikistan sets up fashion commission

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JULY 21 2017 (The Bulletin) — Concerned about so-called ‘Alien’ clothing, the Tajik government has set up a special commission to persuade ordinary Tajiks to dress in traditional clothes, media reported. Officials in Tajikistan are worried about the spread of extremist Islam and have waged various campaigns against beards that they consider to be too long and also against women’s clothes considered to be too conservative, such as the hijab.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

EU promises to help Uzbekistan

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — At their first high-level meeting with Uzbek officials since the death of Islam Karimov in September, EU officials praised the reform path that the country has taken over the past 10 months and promised to help reform Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector with a 21.5m euro grant to water research institutes. Karimov was considered an autocrat who refused to relax his grip on both power and the lives of ordinary people. Since his death, Uzbekistan has reformed various laws and increased personal freedoms.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Azerbaijan jails blogger

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JULY 20 2017 (The Bulletin) — A court in Baku sentenced Russian- Israeli travel blogger Alexander Lapshin to three years in prison for illegally entering Nagorno-Karabakh in 2011 and 2012 and for criticising Azerbaijan’s continued claim over the Armenian rebel-controlled area. The severity of the sentence surprised onlookers who had expected Lapshin to be freed under an amnesty. Belarus extradited Lapshin to Azerbaijan in February.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Marches confront in Georgia

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JULY 23 2017 (The Bulletin) — Pro-European and far-right marches both protested through Tbilisi, culminating in a face-off that officials had worried could lead to violence. Although eggs and bottles of water were thrown, there were no reports of serious violence.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Ukraine strips former Georgian president Saakashvili of citizenship

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TBILISI, JULY 26 2017 (The Bulletin) — Ukraine stripped former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili of his citizenship, leaving the man once feted by US President George W. Bush as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union effectively stateless.

Mr Saakashvili, 49, may now be forced to seek asylum in the United States, where he is thought to have friends, and where he fled to in 2013 after leaving the Georgian Presidential Palace at the end of his second and final term in office.

Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko, who returned from a trip to Georgia earlier in July, had once considered Mr Saakashvili as an ally against Russia and in May 2015 gave him a Ukrainian passport and made him the governor of the Odessa region. But the quarrelsome Mr Saakashvili fell out with his Ukrainian hosts and resigned in November last year to set up a new political party.

Ukrainian migration was coy on why Saakashvili had had his passport taken from him.

“According to the constitution of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine takes decisions on losses of Ukrainian citizenship based on the conclusions of the citizenship commission,” it said in a statement.

Mr Saakashvili shot to power in Georgia in 2003 through a peaceful revolution that ushered in his pro- Western government. In 2008, though, he lost credibility with Western allies and with domestic voters after he triggered a war with Russia.

In a Facebook message, Mr Saakashvili said that he was currently outside Ukraine and that he would fight attempts to block him from returning to Ukraine.

“Now there is an attempt under way to force me to become a refugee,” he said. “This will not happen!”

Since 2012, his United National Movement party that once dominated Georgian politics has been humiliated, losing two parliamentary elections heavily, a presidential election and most municipality councils. The Georgian authorities want to try Mr Saakashvili for various financial crimes, allegations he has denied.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Kazakhstan’s GDP rises

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JULY 23 2017 (The Bulletin) — Spurred on by an increase in mining and metals output, Kazakhstan’s economy grew by 4.1% in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2016, economy minister Timur Suleimenov said. The Kazakh government has been desperate to present a rising GDP number after three years of stagnation following a collapse in oil prices in 2014 and a recession in Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Kazakh court convicts labour union leader

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JULY 26 2017 (The Bulletin) — A court in Kazakhstan convicted labour union leader Larisa Kharkova of abuse of office, sentenced her to 400 hours of community service and banned her from holding public office for five years. The authorities in Kazakhstan have been cracking down on what they see as troublesome unions. Human Rights Watch said it was “another nail in the coffin of the independent trade union movement in Kazakhstan”.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)