NOV. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a televised show, Olim Sulaimanov, director of a small trading company in Uzbekistan, explained how his company had been raided by Uzbek police, Eurasianet reported. Mr Sulaimanov, whose company exports fruits and vegetables to Russia, appealed to acting-President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to unfreeze his company’s assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A fire in a residential building near the Almaty Towers complex killed seven people, mostly Kazakh university students. Investigators said that the likely causes of the fire were either a fault during ongoing construction works or an electrical short-circuit. One welder and six students died in the accident. The Almaty Towers complex is located near the circus in the western part of the city.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan authorities have floated the prospect of renaming Kattakurgan, a city near Samarkand, after Islam Karimov, the local service of Russia’s Sputnik News said. Rumours about the possible renaming circulated among Kattakurgan residents, according to Sputnik. Karimov, Uzbekistan’s only post-Soviet president, died in September.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US-based Freedom House accused the Azerbaijani government of harassing two lawyers who have represented a number of clients that it said were later imprisoned for political reasons. Robert Herman, a Freedom House vice president said that Azerbaijan “should end its campaign of innuendo and threats against Elchin Sadiqov and Fariz Namazli, two of the few lawyers in the country who dare to represent political prisoners and bring attention to government wrongdoing.”
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A source in SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, said that the company will supply Egyptian refineries with 2m barrels of oil annually, the Amwal Al Ghad magazine reported. Last week, Egypt and Azerbaijan agreed on a supply contract after Saudi Aramco said it would halt shipments to Egypt indefinitely.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan completed an 8.3km extension of a railway line to the Iranian border, a vital component of the North-South Transport Corridor that will link India with Europe and Russia. Media reported that the rail link was due to open next year. This is the only rail link between Azerbaijan and Iran. Relations between the two countries have much improved over the past couple of years, mainly due to the relative moderate Hassan Rouhani being elected in 2013 as Iranian leader and the lifting of most of the sanctions hanging over Iran. The North-South Transport Corridor is being developed to cut transport costs and is considered vital to boosting regional trade.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — SOCAR Turkey Enerji, the Turkish subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state owned energy company, said it wants to build a new chemical industrial park in Turkey. SOCAR Turkey Enerji and SOCAR Turkey Petrokimiya already own a controlling stake in Petkim, a petrochemical complex in Izmir, western Turkey.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — An influential European Parliament committee backed a textile trade deal with Uzbekistan that had been moth- balled in 2011 on concerns over the use of child labour.
The vote is a triumph for Uzbekistan and acting-president Shavkat Mirziyoyev as it bestows credibility on the Uzbek cotton sector after years of negative headlines and boycotts by international clothing companies.
The Committee on International Trade will now recommend at a full European Parliament vote in December that a trade deal is made with Uzbekistan.
Reuters quoted Maria Arena, one of the MPs on the committee, as saying that Uzbekistan had improved its labour rights over the past few years.
“The progress made by the Uzbek authorities allows us to move forward and include textiles in our partnership agreement. But we will remain extremely vigilant,” she was quoted as saying.
Last year the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) monitored the Uzbek cotton harvest. It said in a report that there had been major improvements in the way labour was organised and although it was still commonplace for government workers to leave their jobs to pick cotton during the harvest, the use of child labour was far reduced.
Human rights groups, though, were adamant that the European Parliament needed to set an example and avoid a deal with Uzbekistan. In an open letter to the committee sent three days before its meeting, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said that it was because of the European Parliament’s rejection of a trade deal in 2011 that Uzbekistan agreed to open up to UN monitors. It also said that the scenario in Uzbekistan wasn’t as positive as the committee made out.
“We were pleased to note that as a result of international pressure since 2013 children have not been forced to pick cotton on a nationwide scale, and child labour has effectively declined. Yet, local officials reportedly still resort to forced child labour out of a need to fulfil their quotas,” HRW said in its letter.
“Since 2014 we have received steady reports of extortion linked to the cotton harvest.”
Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s most important commodities. For Mr Mirziyoyev, the timing of the recommendation is also important. He faces a presidential election next month.
He is certain to win this election and become the second post-Soviet president of Uzbekistan after Islam Karimov who died in September, but he still needs to win over popular support. Backing from the European Parliament that child labour is reducing in Uzbekistan and a trade deal can now be made will strengthen his position.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
TBILISI, NOV. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Governments across Central Asia and the South Caucasus welcomed Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential election on Nov. 4 and heralded it as an opportunity for the US to increase its engagement in the region.
Analysts have said that under President Barack Obama, the US’ interest in Central Asia and the South Caucasus has dropped. Both President Obama’s Secretary of States, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, visited the South Caucasus and Central Asia but since the US and NATO pulled most of its forces out of neighbouring Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, its interest has waned.
The only US president to have visited the region was George W. Bush in May 2005. He visited Tbilisi when Mikheil Saakashvili was president. Georgia is the US’ biggest ally in the region, sending its army to fight in both Iraq and Afghanistan and Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili welcomed Mr Trump’s win.
“I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to Donald J. Trump on his victory in the presidential elections,” he said. “American people voted for change, oriented on making US even stronger.”
His sentiments were echoed by other regional leaders but reaction on the street was less clear cut. In Almaty Aidana Omarova, a university lecturer, said she was appalled that Mr Trump had won the election.
“I cannot even imagine how such a sexist, racist and rude person can lead the US,” she said.
In Tbilisi Nana, a lawyer, was worried. “He wants to improve relations with Russia, that’s not very good for Georgia, in case we need support from the US,” she said. “Secondly he was extremely negative about immigrants and I know there are lots of Georgians who work in America and send money to their families.”
But in Dushanbe, Jakhongir, 29, a website developer, had a different viewpoint. He said the US election had been a great democratic exercise.
“I wish we could have such interesting elections debates here in Tajikistan, too,” he said. “Let’s see how Trump will behave, I think he will be more restrained in his words and actions now.”
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)
NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Kyrgyzstan to be free of malaria, marking the culmination of a 15 year plan to eradicate the disease. Kyrgyzstan had been free of Malaria from the mid- 1960s until the late 1980s and 1990s when migrant workers brought it back into the country from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)