SEPT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan is gearing up for its cotton harvest season by preparing the forced mobilisation of hundreds of students, teacher and medical staff, media reported. Cotton is a lucrative export for Uzbekistan. It has previously drawn international condemnation for using children to pick cotton.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tajik government warned the Islamic Renaissance Party, the last remaining opposition parties, that it is now operating illegally because it was no longer active in enough cities to merit being called a political party.
Analysts said that this was another attempt by the government to disband one of its biggest critics.
In a statement published by the state news agency Khovar, the justice ministry said: “The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan is no longer a republican party.”
Officials said that according to the law, a republican party must have representative cells in most cities and district.
The statement says that the IRPT has cut its activities in 58 cities and districts, and cannot be considered an all-republican party able to hold a national congress.
The Tajik justice ministry gave IRPT 10 days to respond to the statement.
IRPT plans to hold a congress on Sept. 15 to choose new leaders to replace its self-exiled leader.
Mahmadali Hait, the deputy head of IRPT, told local media that the party is going to answer the government’s statement soon.
“Our answer to the justice ministry is almost ready, but we can disclose it only after the ministry receives our answer,” he said.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – According to reports from Turkmenistan the government has banned the import of cars with engines below 1,300cc. Since 2010, Turkmenistan has banned the import of cars with engines above 3,500cc.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh State Revenue Committee plans to introduce a new tax on the use of underground water, a levy soft drinks manufacturers said will make production unprofitable. The new tax of 1,982 tenge ($8) per cubic metre of extracted water is a 200-fold increase on the previous tax, Aliya Mamytbayeva, director of the Association of Soft Drink Manufacturers, told vlast.kz.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1/3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Highlighting just how important China has become to Central Asia, four out of five of the region’s leaders travelled to Beijing to watch a military parade designed to mark the 70th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan in World War II.
Trips to Beijing have become a regular part of the diplomatic land- scape for the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. China now regards the region almost as its personal backyard, seemingly striking bilateral deals and agreements through the Shanghai Cooperation OrganisatPion (SCO) at will.
And this week appears to have been no different. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Beijing a few days early to sign off on a handful of deals. On his website, akorda.kz, Mr Nazarbayev said that the deals, spanning a range of sectors, had been worth $23b.
“We have actively cooperated with China for more than 20 years, mainly in the energy sector and in extracting other raw materials,” he said.
“Yesterday during our constructive talks with President Xi Jinping we agreed to create 45 joint facilities, and agreements were signed on 25 of them worth a total of $23b.”
The details of these deals were vague but they covered a range of sectors from tourism to hydropower.
Mr Nazarbayev also congratulated Chinese President Xi on winning the 2022 Winter Olympic Games for Beijing in July ahead of Almaty.
Following on a few days behind him were the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Only Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan’s president, was missing. Also present were other leaders from neighbouring countries including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye.
With an economic downturn linked to Russia and a collapse in the price of oil, China has become an even more important driver of economic development in Central Asia and the SouthCaucasus.
At the end of last month, Kyrgyzstan officially opened a new power line funded by China that will improve electricity transit from the south of the country, where its hydro- power stations are sited, to the north and when Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov flew into Beijing its official media said bilateral trade had tripled in six years to around $5b.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan inaugurated a 450km-long electricity line that the government said would secure an independent power supply.
Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev called it a “historic event,” as it would release Kyrgyzstan from depending on neighbouring countries for the transit of its own power.
“Everyone knows that electricity from the Toktogul dam was transmitted through Uzbekistan. We have paid millions of US dollars for that,” President Atambayev said.
The Datka-Kemin power line links the south of the country to the north, avoiding Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
The old Soviet-era power grid forced Kyrgyz-generated power in the south to enter the territory of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan before re-entering Kyrgyzstan. This added costs of around $9m, according to the latest estimates, without accounting for the loss of electricity from covering the extra distance.
“Thanks to Datka-Kemin PTL, Kyrgyzstan can annually save around $8-9m,” the Chairman of National Electric Network of Kyrgyzstan Bekbo Mamatbekov said in an interview for 24.kg.
Kyryzstan paid for the power line with a $390 loan from the Import- Export Bank of China. Construction took three years.
Over the past few months, the Kyrgyz government has been forced to increase electricity prices due to a regional economic downturn. The Datka-Kemin power line should reduce utility bills for the population.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – FC Astana became the first Kazakh football team to qualify for the group stages of the UEFA Champions League by beating the more fancied Apoel Nicosia 2-1 on aggregate during a two-leg qualifying match. FC Astana scored with 6 minutes remaining of normal time in the second match in Nicosia.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary-General and Georgian Prime Minister Irakly Garibashvili opened a NATO training base outside Tbilisi, a move that Russia has said it would interpret as antagonistic. Georgia wants to join NATO but, although relations have become closer, NATO has rebuffed its membership so far.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Reports from Uzbekistan said that Marinika Babanazarova, the curator and de facto defender of the world famous Savitsky Collection in Nukus, Uzbekistan, has been sacked.
Ms Babanazarova has held the job for over 30 years. She took over from Igor Savitsky himself and considered it her duty to keep the collection together despite pressure to split it up.
She confirmed to the New York Times that she had been sacked. Earlier reports said that the Uzbek authorities had fired her for stealing pictures and making forgeries, accusations she denied.
Relations between Ms Babanazarova and the Uzbek authorities have generally been strained. In 2011, they blocked her from travelling to New York to see the premiere of a film about the collection.
Savitsky was a Soviet archaeologist and painter who collected, often at great personal risk, banned avant-garde art. He travelled across the Soviet Union to collect the art, from dissident artists or from their relatives, and bring it back to his base in the remote city of Nukus in western Uzbekistan. There he was able to avoid the attention of the authorities.
The collection of roughly 90,000 pieces only achieved international fame after his death and the subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. It has also put Nukus, a scruffy town once classed as a secret because of its chemical weapons production, on the international art trail.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
AUG. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov travelled to Kabul to meet with Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, an important signifier that he wants to play a greater role in improving his neighbour’s stability. Turkmenistan has developed a handful of high profile projects with Afghanistan, including the TAPI pipeline that will pump gas to India.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)