Tag Archives: human rights

Court in Kazakhstan imprisons critical journalist

ALMATY, MAY 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Almaty sentenced Guzyal Baidalinova, owner and editor of the Nakanune.kz website which is critical of the Kazakh government, to 1-1⁄2 years in jail for libel against Kazkommertsbank.

Baidalinova’s supporters said that the charges against her are politically motivated and show that the authorities in Kazakhstan have little regard for freedom of the press. In a separate case, charges against Seitkazy Matayev, head of the Journalists Union and a former press chief for President Nursultan Nazarbayev were reduced from embezzlement and tax evasion to abuse of trust. He has denied the charges.

The authorities in Kazakhstan have been cracking down on journalists as an economic downturn worsens and ordinary Kazakhs start become increasingly frustrated with their plight.

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(News report from Issue No. 282, published on May 27 2016)

UN condemns clampdown in Kazakhstan

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned what it said was the Kazakh authorities crackdown on protests against proposed amendments to the land code. “The government must immediately end all forms of persecution and take effective measures to protect civil society,” it said. The protests forced Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev to delay planned changes to the land code. Mobile recordings of the protests showed police clashing with demonstrators.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyzstan scraps law that threatened to curtail NGOs

BISHKEK, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rights campaigners in Kyrgyzstan were celebrating an unexpected victory over a proposed law that would have imposed restrictions on local NGOs with links to foreign funding and influences.

In a sign of the growing maturity of Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary democracy, Kyrgyz lawmakers voted 65 to 46 against introducing a law that was supposedly based on Russia’s so-called foreign agents law. This would have meant that NGOs receiving funding from abroad would have had to register with a special database and agree to increased oversight.

Mihra Rittmann, the Human Rights Watch Kyrgyzstan researcher, said that Russia had used its own version of the law to carry out intrusive searches that have forced some NGOs to close.

“This is an important decision by Kyrgyzstan’s parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh,” she wrote. “Kyrgyzstan is Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy and today’s rejection of the bill is a reminder of the positive role the Jogorku Kenesh can play in upholding Kyrgyzstan’s human rights commitments.”

Even before the vote on Thursday, the bill had been watered down taking out some of the more controversial wording, such as references to foreign agents with its undertone of espionage.

Still, seeing off the bill altogether is a victory for more liberal, Western- minded Kyrgyz who had worried about the expanding influence of Russia in Kyrgyzstan and the wider region in general.

Zhanar Akayev, an MP for the ruling Social Democratic Party, explained that economics had also played a role in defeating the bill.

“Many international organisations expressed their concern,” he was quoted by media as saying. “We get financial assistance from them in many fields, including healthcare, education, and agriculture, among others. We need this money.”

And this view was largely reflected outside parliament too.

Galina, 25, said she was relieved the bill had been voted down.

“Overall I think that the less the number of laws and regulations, the better it is,” she said. “I was afraid, that the state would use this law for its own purposes.”

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Tajik government tightens NGO laws

APRIL 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Tajik government passed a law that forces NGOs to report to the authorities any grants received in the past 10 days. In mid- 2015, Tajikistan amended its law on NGOs with the stated objective of tracking funding for potential terrorist activity. There has been a general move in Central Asia towards tightening regulations of funding for NGOs. The authorities have said that is to crackdown on extremists and criminals, but others have said this is aimed at reducing foreign influence over NGOs and curtailing their independence.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Kyrgyzstan says to reconsider Askarov verdict

APRIL 25 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court said it would consider revising a life sentence levied against Azimzhan Askarov, a civil activist, for inciting ethnic hatred, less than a week after the US had highlighted his case in its annual report on human rights around the world.

Last week, also, the UN’s Human Rights Committee called on Kyrgyzstan to release Askarov. The UN expert committee said Askarov “had been arbitrarily detained, held in inhumane conditions, tortured and mistreated, and prevented from adequately preparing his trial defence.”

Police arrested Mr Askarov in the aftermath of clashes in 2010 that toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s government. He was then cited as one of the organisers of the clashes.

The Supreme Court’s chair- woman, Ainash Tokbayeva, said the UN’s statement was enough to consider a revision of the ruling.

“Our Constitution obliges us to take measures to protect the rights and freedoms of Azimzhan Askarov in connection with the UN Committee on Human Rights’s findings,” media quoted her as saying.

“The Committee’s decision is the basis for the Supreme Court’s reconsideration of the criminal case.”

The UN criticism came just days after the US published a human rights report that slammed Kyrgyzstan as a country where police brutality and minority harassment were commonplace.

This triggered a sharp response from the Kyrgyz ministry of foreign affairs which called the US report hypocritical and politically motivated.

The row has damaged Kyrgyzstan-US relations. Any move to reduce or relax Askarov’s prison sentence would be viewed as an olive branch of sorts.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Tajik conscript dies after alleged hazing

APRIL 22 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — A 22-year-old Tajik army recruit has died after an alleged beating from more senior soldiers, media reported, highlighting what it said was a degrading Soviet-era culture of bullying and hazing in Tajikistan’s military.

Bakhtiyor Kurmonmadov died on April 19, five days after signing up to join the army.

His relatives said that there were bruises all over Kurmonmadov’s body. This was contested by an official report which said he died from a heart attack during an exercise.

To many, Kurmonmadov’s death was an indication of just how institutionalised bullying is in the Tajik army.

The system of informal beatings and bullying of young recruits by more senior soldiers even has a name, ‘dedovshina’ which literally means ‘grandfatherism’.

It’s a system that is spread across the armies of the former Soviet Union. A handful of recruits are killed or badly injured every year.

Last month, another conscript in Kurmonmadov’s unit was taken to hospital after a severe beating from older soldiers.

Amridin is a 24-year-old graduate,who was conscripted into the Tajik army two-years-ago. He described to a Conway Bulletin correspondent how he ended up in the army and severity of his treatment there.

“I was literally kidnapped in the streets and sent to the army. When we were new recruits, older soldiers beat, tortured, and harassed us in whatever way they wanted,” he said. “You cannot avoid getting beaten up because beating new conscripts is like an unwritten rule in the army.”

He coughed and complained about his health. He said that some of his colleagues had been beaten so badly that they would now be no use on a battlefield.

“If it continues in this way, we cannot defend our country if an enemy attacks us,” he said.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Kazakh President signs castration law

APRIL 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazrabayev has signed into law chemical castration for paedophiles, media reported. The law was passed by parliament earlier this year and immediately attracted criticism from human rights campaigners who said that is was barbaric.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Azerbaijan piles pressure on opposition journalists

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in Azerbaijan appear to have reversed a softening of a crackdown on human rights activists and the media.

Meydan TV, an opposition news agency, said that prosecutors had opened new criminal investigation on alleged illegal business activities involving 15 of its journalists, who have been told they cannot leave the country.

The action disappointed civil rights groups who had, only last week, been applauding the Azerbaijani leadership for allowing Leyla and Arif Yunus to leave Baku for the Netherlands. The two human rights activists had been released from prison at the end of last year. They were imprisoned on various charges, including espionage, which their supporters said had been fabricated.

Nina Ognianova, Europe and Central Asia coordinator at the lobby group the Committee to Protect Journalist, said: “We call on officials in Azerbaijan to immediately cease the witch hunt of contributors to the online broadcaster Meydan TV.”

The day after Meydan TV said that prosecutors had opened new cases against 15 journalists, Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court upheld a six year sentence against Murad Adilov, a member of the opposition Popular Front Party arrested in May last year on charges of drug possession.

Relations between the West and Azerbaijan have been strained over the past three years while Azerbaijani officials have increasingly clamped down on the opposition.

It’s become something of a diplomatic quagmire.

Europe needs Azerbaijani gas and the US wants a stable Azerbaijan as an ally to undermine Russia’s dominance in the region. Both, though, loathe Azerbaijan’s recent human rights record.

As for Azerbaijan, the authorities appear to want to be able to crack- down on troublesome opposition activists, journalists and civil rights workers but they also need Europe to help it extract its oil and gas and also to act as a major energy client.

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(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Leyla and Arif Yunus leave Azerbaijan for asylum in the Netherlands

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an apparent softening of their hardline stance on dissidents, the Azerbaijani authorities allowed human rights activist Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif Yunus to leave the country to seek urgent medical care in Amsterdam.

The Yunuses, increasingly frail after spending more than a year in prison, will also be able to claim political asylum in the Netherlands, effectively allowing Azerbaijan to back out of an increasingly difficult stand-off with the West over the two human rights campaigners’ imprisonment.

Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders welcomed their arrival and said it showed that international pressure to release human rights activists can pay off.

“Leyla and Arif have put their own happiness and safety on the line in their struggle for democracy and human rights,” he said. “In cases like these, silent diplomacy definitely gets results.”

Dinara Yunus, their daughter, lives in the Netherlands.

Arif Yunus was arrested in July 2014, just days after Leyla. Both were first charged with treason. Prosecutors later added financial crimes to the list of accusations.

Both denied the charges and said that they were politically motivated and part of a wider campaign against critics of the government. They were freed in December 2015 due to worsening health conditions.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

United States and Kyrgyzstan argue over rights

APRIL 22 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan accused the United States of hypocrisy after the State Department said in a global human rights report that police brutality was commonplace and that the country’s minorities — ethnic, sexual and religious — were often harassed (April 21).

The US’ annual reports stirs indignation from countries who consider Washington’s criticism to be unjustified grand-standing but Kyrgyzstan’s reaction was especially sharp.

The Kyrgyz ministry of foreign affairs called the report politically motivated, unjustified and a form of geopolitical blackmail.

“The United States of America was pretty comfortable with previous authorities, who used to chase and burn the opposition, killed journalists and robbed the country,” it said in a statement on its website in a reference to the ousted regime of Kurmanbek Bakiyev. He was overthrown in a violent revolution in 2010.

It then pointed out the US’ human rights failings, including racial discrimination, police abuse and torture at the now closed Guantanamo detention centre.

The row between Kyrgyzstan and the US over human rights is rooted in the US’ recognition of Azimzhan Askarov, an ethnic Uzbek arrested and imprisoned in 2010 while he was investigating alleged police brutality, as a political prisoner.

The US has awarded him a human rights prize and called for his release.

In Bishkek, opinion was divided over the US’ criticism.

Some, like Shamima, a 23-year-old student, said Kyrgyzstan had swung towards Russia over human rights. She said that women’s rights were also weak in Kyrgyzstan.

“Official statistics says that up to 30 young women are being stolen every day through bride kidnapping, and the state does little to protect social minorities, such as sexual and other minorities,” she said.

But others defended the Kyrgyz government.

“Americans should not intervene into affairs of other countries. Whenever Russia does it, everybody points at it. But why then does the US keep intervening?” said 53-year-old Yuri.

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(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)