Category Archives: Uncategorised

Azerbaijan jails opposition leaders

MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a decision that provoked international condemnation from human rights groups, a court in Azerbaijan sent two opposition leaders to jail for organising illegal demonstration.

Human rights groups accused the court of being politically motivated, a charge they have used against Azerbaijan’s judiciary often over the last few years.

The US State Department backs up this analysis. Earlier this year in its annual global human rights assessment, it said that the authorities were increasingly persecuting opposition groups.

A court spokesman said that Tofig Yagublu, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party, and Ilgar Mammadov, leader of the Republican Alternative human rights group, were sentenced to five and seven years in prison.

Police arrested them in February 2013 and accused them of organising unrest in the town of Ismailli in January 2013. The unrest in Ismailli, 200km northwest of Baku, was the worst during President Ilham Aliyev’s 11 years in power.

Giorgi Gogia, senior researcher in the South Caucasus for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote a withering analysis of the verdicts.

“Another day, another imprisonment of prominent government critics in Azerbaijan,” he said.

“Instead of looking into the underlying causes of such an expression of mass rage and there are many, starting with astounding government corruption the authorities decided to find convenient scapegoats who fit the false narrative of critics-as-enemies.”

ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Georgian president visits troops in Afghanistan

MARCH 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili made a surprise trip to visit Georgian soldiers in Afghanistan. Keen to boost its Western-leaning credentials, Georgia has been an enthusiastic supporter of NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. It has also pledged to help Afghanistan rebuild.

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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Kazakh factory threatens job cuts

MARCH 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — PromMashKomplekt, a plant in northern Kazakhstan that manufactures wheels for trains, has said it may have to make redundant 540 employees because of a contract row with a subsidiary of Temir Zholy, the Kazakh national railway, media reported. The row highlights the relatively precarious state of Kazakh industry.

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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Swiss authorities investigate Uzbek president’s daughter

MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss investigators said they had started investigating Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, for money laundering. They had previously been investigating four people linked to Ms Karimova. Ms Karimova is reportedly currently under house arrest in Tashkent.

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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Tension mounts on the Tajik-Afghan border

MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — With NATO’s mission in Afghanistan winding down, tension is rising on the Tajik-Afghan border. Quoting Afghan officials, media said Tajik border guards shot dead two fishermen they thought were Taliban fighters or smugglers.

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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Azerbaijan boosts arms import

MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Between 2009 and 2013 Azerbaijan increased by nearly four times the amount of arms it imported, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported. Azerbaijan has been spending profits from energy sales on re-arming. It is still officially at war with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

NATO beckons Georgia

MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s annexation of Crimea has, seemingly, changed the world order. Commentators have been discussing a new Cold War and the return of the East-West standoff. Russia’s swift, aggressive action in Crimea has scared the West.

Ironically, one country which may stand to benefit from the Crimea issue is Georgia — which Russia invaded in 2008.

Georgia is the most pro-Western of the former Soviet states of Central Asia and the South Caucasus and it has lobbied hard for membership to NATO and the EU.

But while these Western clubs have welcomed Georgia’s eagerness, they have also sounded caution while its vibrant political system went through the motions of picking a new leader.

Georgia survived the trauma of picking new leaders in 2012 and 2013, underlining its stability and credibility as a democratic nation. If this has endeared Georgia to the West, Russian action in Crimea may have nudged it even further into their arms.

Prominent commentators are now calling for Georgia to be given full membership status of NATO and the EU.

The Russian newspaper Kommersant quoted sources at NATO’s HQ in Brussels and the US State Department.

“If Russia announces annexation of the Crimea, the issue of granting Georgia a MAP (membership action plan) can be considered virtually a foregone conclusion,” Kommersant quoted an unnamed source in the US State Department as saying.

Crimea is now part of Russia. Perhaps it won’t be long before Georgia is finally part of NATO.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

US probe into Uzbekistan-linked companies

MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan is fast becoming a pariah state for businesses.

The US authorities opened corruption investigations into business conducted by Russia’s Vimpelom and Swedish-Finnish TeliaSonera in Uzbekistan, shortly after Swiss authorities announced they were looking into money laundering allegations against Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek president Isam Karimov.

It’s not a pretty picture. Vimpelcom and TeliaSonera also have registered offices in the Netherlands, where the authorities have also launched investigations.

The trigger for these problems was a $330m deal that TeliaSonera struck with Gibraltar-registered Takilant to buy a 3G licence in 2007. Takilant was officially owned by Gayane Avakyan, an associate of Ms Karimova.

A Swedish investigation has been looking into whether this payment was actually a bribe to the Karimov family. Mr Karimov and his family have run Uzbekistan as their personal fiefdom since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. They may also have had personal stakes in Uzbekistan’s big businesses.

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

EBRD issues Eurobond in Georgian lari

MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to give Georgia’s currency a boost, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) issued its first debt in lari. The 2-year bonds were worth 50m lari ($29m). The placement appears to follow an EBRD strategy. Last month it issued 1-year bonds worth 2b Armenian drams ($5m).

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Turkmen MPs pass corruption bill

MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s parliament voted in a new anticorruption law, although in reality it is little more than window dressing.

The law basically states that civil servants are restricted from private business and opening foreign bank accounts. The thinking is, it seems, that government officials are prone to corruption temptations. Perhaps by banning officials from private business, the government hopes to look pro-active in defeating corruption.

It has a long way to go. Corruption is rife in Turkmenistan, as the US-based Heritage Foundation noted in its global report on economies in 2014.

“Corruption is widespread, with public officials often forced to bribe their way into their positions,” the Heritage Foundation wrote on Turkmenistan.

Out of the 178 countries it ranked, the Heritage Foundation placed Turkmenistan at the bottom for both “property rights” and “freedom from corruption”.

Passing legislation is one thing but acting on it is another.

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)