JAN. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan extended the pre-trial detention of journalist Khadija Ismayilova, prompting criticism from Europe’s democracy watchdog, the OSCE. Ms Ismayilova is a critic of the government. She is accused of coaxing another journalist into suicide.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
JAN. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police detained several journalists as they left their homes to travel to an unauthorised protest against the closure of the Adam Bol news magazine, media reported quoting associates of the journalists. The UN also said that the freedom to protest in Kazakhstan has worsened recently.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
>>US says that the vehicles are non-lethal>>
JAN. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US Defence Department started delivering to Uzbekistan 300 vehicles designed to withstand ambushes and mines, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia, Daniel Rosenblum, told the Voice of America’s Uzbek language service.
This is controversial because it appears to go beyond a previous deal made between Washington and Tashkent which said that the United States would deliver non-lethal military equipment to Uzbekistan in exchange for help in withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan.
Ambush-resistant vehicles are, technically, non-lethal but these troop carriers can be mounted with machine-guns and are designed to be used during combat operations.
Uzbekistan has a dubious human rights record and activists have complained heavily about the US’ deal with Uzbekistan. Still, realpolitik meant that the US had to turn to Uzbekistan for help in extracting its kit from Afghanistan. Uzbekistan’s Soviet-era railway system is the quickest and safest way out of the country.
In the interview with Voice of America, Mr Rosenblum said Uzbekistan needed the vehicles to fight Islamic extremist groups and also for counter-narcotic operations.
“We consider them (the vehicles) to be non-lethal. They are intended to protect personnel, crews and passengers in areas that there might be explosive devices, mines, so on,” he said.
“Under those circumstances and for the purposes of counterterrorism and counter-narcotics, we thought that it was a legitimate request and decided to fulfil it.”
Technically Mr Rosenblum may be right. In reality, though, the line between so-called lethal and non-lethal equipment is becoming more blurred with this latest deal.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
JAN. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Students in Uzbekistan are being forced into signing petitions supporting the presidential candidature of Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, the Uzbek arm of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Mr Karimov has said he is going to stand for another term as president in an election in March.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)
JAN. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Masked attackers beat a high-profile civil rights activist Vilen Gabrielian in Yerevan with wooden clubs, media reported. Mr Gabrielian was hospitalised after the attack with head injuries. One of his colleagues said that the attack was linked to his work The authorities have not confirmed this.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
JAN. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human rights groups challenged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to confront Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev over his crack down on free media and civil liberties when he flies into Berlin for talks on Jan. 21. The authorities in Azerbaijan have locked up several anti-government activists.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tajikistan sentenced one of the country’s most prominent lawyers to nine years in jail for bribery and fraud.
Supporters of Sukhrat Kudratov, the jailed lawyer, said that his real crime was to defend opposition activist and former government official Zaid Saidov in 2013. Saidov was jailed for corruption as well as polygamy.
Certainly the case against Kudratov seems weak and the punishment meted out excessive.
On twitter, Steve Swerdlow of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said: “Jailing of Shurat Kudratov is a serious setback for the freedom of expression and the independent legal profession in Tajikistan.”
As well as being a high profile lawyer prepared to take on human rights cases that others would ignore, Kudratov was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, an opposition party. His name was on their list of candidates for a parliamentary election in March.
Human rights and democracy groups have long criticised Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon for his authoritarian policies. He has been Tajik president since the end of a civil war in the mid-1990s.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The new Mrs Clooney, wife of Hollywood superstar George, is adding a dash of glamour to a case going through the European Court of Human Rights involving Armenia. Amal Clooney has agreed to represent Armenia as it challenges an appeal against a Turkish politician who denied an alleged genocide against Armenia in 1915.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015
>>US criticises yet another crackdown on civil liberties>>
DEC. 28 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan continued its crackdown on the media in the run up to New Year when it raided the office of US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Officials pulled RFE/RL off the air and detained a handful of its journalists. They said that the raid was
part of a criminal investigation although they refused to elaborate.
Earlier in December Azerbaijani officials arrested an employee of the local language RFE/RL service for allegedly working for a foreign security service. Also, one of the radio station’s star journalists, Khadija Ismayilova, is currently being held in pre-trial detention. She is accused of coaxing a man into suicide.
For the past couple of years, the authorities in Azerbaijan have been mounting an increasingly aggressive
campaign against the remnants of its free-speaking media and other more liberal minded sections of its civil society. Newspaper editors have been imprisoned, anti-government activists locked up and NGOs backed by Western powers threatened.
And this belligerent attitude towards Western values has now severely strained relations with the US and Europe.
The US issued a strongly worded statement criticising the raid on RFE/RL.
In 2014 the US also withdrew its long-running Peace Corps programme. Although this was described as routine, observers said it was likely linked to worsening relations.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Baku arrested Khadija Ismayilova, one of Azerbaijan’s most prominent investigative journalists, and sent her to two months pre-trial detention.
Ms Ismayilova is accused of goading another journalist into committing suicide. She and her supporters have denied the charges.
Ms Ismayilova has a high profile in Azerbaijan for several reasons. She hosts a radio show for the local language station of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, she is a vocal critic of the government and has published various articles alleging corruption against the authorities and she was also at the centre of what she described as a sex sting nearly three years ago.
In the sex sting, videos of her having sex where posted online. They had been taken from inside her house. She again accused the authorities of trying to frame her.
Europe and the United States have voiced their concerns, increasingly loudly, about a freedom of speech clampdown in Azerbaijan. The charges against Ms Ismayilova are another indication of this, they said.
And on the streets of Baku, the atmosphere was tense. People were, generally, afraid to discuss the case.
If they did discuss it, they were clear that they thought Ms Ismayilova’s criticism of the authorities had been the trigger for her detention.
Rauf, 24, the owner of a small business, told a Conway Bulletin correspondent: “Certainly it’s because of her steady critical position against government officials.”
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)