Tag Archives: human rights

SPA nominates Azerbaijan’s first lady for a rights prize

OCT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Swedish Peace Agency, an obscure human rights group based in Gothenburg, has nominated Mehriban Aliyeva, wife of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, for a human rights prize for promoting women’s rights. Human rights groups have criticised Azerbaijan this year for clamping down on human rights.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Turkmenistan evicts for Games

OCT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has forcibly evicted around 50,000 people from their homes in and around Ashgabat ahead of the 2017 Asian Indoors and Martial Arts Games, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report.

Researchers at Amnesty studied satellite images which they said showed evictions and demolitions between March 2014 and April 2015 in two Ashgabat neighbourhoods.

Ashgabat will host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, a relatively minor Olympic event. It wants to impress visitors with a $2 Olympic Village and an extensive PR campaign on its readiness to open up to the world after decades of isolation.

Denis Krivosheev of Amnesty International said: “Instead of using the Games as an opportunity to clean up Turkmenistan’s human rights record, local authorities there have only succeeded in worsening living conditions for residents.”

Amnesty’s allegation, which the authorities have not refuted, will irritate the Turkmen government and further damage its image, just as it is trying to show the world a softer and more open side.

Analysis focused on Choganly and Shor, two so-called “dacha neighbourhoods” designated for holiday houses. More recently, though, Amnesty International said evictions were taking place in a suburb of Ashagbat too.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Azerbaijan gears up for parliamentary election

OCT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is gearing up for a parliamentary election this Sunday, a vote tarnished by the withdrawal of Europe’s main democracy monitoring group and by accusations of a clampdown on human rights.

Relations between the West and Azerbaijan have been increasingly strained this year over Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s crackdown on the media and opposition activists. The West has accused him of holding human rights in scant regard; Mr Aliyev has responded by accusing the West of trying to plot a coup.

And in the build up to the election, the row continued to be played out in public.

Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said civil rights in Azerbaijan were operating under a dark cloud.

“Human rights activists, journalists and national electoral observers have been muzzled using repressive legislation, jailed on trumped-up charges or forced to escape into exile,” he wrote in an opinion article for politico.eu. “Under these circumstances, it is impossible to hold any meaningful debate about the election or to ensure its accountability.”

ODHIR, the organisation that runs Europe’s main vote monitoring operation withdrew its team from Azerbaijan’s election because it said that the Azerbaijani authorities had only agreed to allow it to send half the monitors it needed.

European vote monitors have never judged an election in Azerbaijan to be free and fair and the 125- member parliament is generally viewed as a rubber-stamping operation for President Aliyev.

In 2010, Mr Aliyev’s Yeni Azerbaijan party won 72 seats. Independent MPs, who mainly supported Yeni Azerbaijan won 48 seats, giving Mr Aliyev a massive majority.

More of the same is expected on Sunday.

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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Criticism of Kazakhstan’s draft NGO law builds up

OCT. 21 2015, ASTANA (The Conway Bulletin) — International human rights groups criticised Kazakhstan’s draft bill on NGOs as an attempt to seriously restrict civil society’s activities.

The new bill would hand the government control of foreign grants and also restrict the operational sphere of NGOs.

Dunja Mijatovic, OSCE representative on freedom of the media, said: “Introducing legislation that would put NGOs under strict governmental supervision, including the control of foreign grants, is worrying for civil society actors in general”.

The OSCE is Europe’s intergovernmental democracy watchdog.

The government has said that it needs clearer oversight over how NGOs operate in the country. Its detractors, though, have said it is far too similar to a bill introduced by Russia a few years ago.

Gulmira Birzhanova, a lawyer and expert in national and international media law, who works in the Legal Media Center NGO in Astana, said the bill contradicted basic constitutional rights.

“The proposed legislation violates freedom of assembly as stated in our Constitution,” Ms Birzhanova told the Bulletin in an interview.

Under the new law, the ministry of culture and sports will be in charge of assigning funds, which Ms Birzhanova said would hand it the ultimate control over NGOs’ operations.

“The ministry will act as a central operator that will distribute finances and grants to NGOs no matter if they receive it from the governmental budget or from international sources,” she said. “This creates a thorny situation because NGOs are often engaged in disputes against the government.”

Analysts have said that despite the criticism of the bill, the Kazakh parliament may be looking to turn it into law by the end of the year.

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