Tag Archives: human rights

Kyrgyzstan threatens NGOs

OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Barely a week after Kyrgyzstan’s parliament passed a first reading of a law banning the promotion of gay propaganda, more proposals restricting civil rights have surfaced.

Media reported that Kyrgyzstan wants to restrict NGOs receiving financial support from overseas, forcing groups to submit to tighter auditing and control.

Perhaps most importantly the law is similar to one brought in by Russia in 2012. The anti-gay law was also similar to a law introduced in Russia underlining the increased influence that Russia has over Kyrgyzstan.

The London-based lobby group Institute for War and Peace Reporting wrote: “Many Kyrgyz groups work on civil and political rights, democracy-building, and corruption, and could soon find themselves as beleaguered as their Russian counterparts.”

Kyrgyz officials have defended the new law as essential to monitor groups that could potentially be used to undermine Kyrgyz democracy.

Perhaps, although, similarly to the anti-gay law, the real reason could be Kyrgyzstan’s need to cosy up to Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)

Croatia minister travels to Turkmenistan

OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Croatia’s foreign minister Vesna Pusic began a tour of Central Asia with a stopover in Ashgabat, a rare visit to Turkmenistan by a senior member of a European Union government.

Ms Pusic was on a sales pitch to win more ship-building contracts for the yards in Croatia but the trip was also important symbolically. The more high-ranking visits by officials from Turkmenistan, the more the country enters the mainstream.

Such a visit would practically have been unthinkable under Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov. But Mr Berdymukhamedov has opened up the country and turned it into a regional energy superpower with all the wealth that goes with it.

For Turkmenistan, Croatia’s interest confers a sort of respectability and gives it an ally within the EU. Human rights activists still describe Turkmenistan as one of the most repressive countries in the world with no free media.

Media reports were also candid on what Croatia had, apparently, offered Turkmen officials as a sweetener for contracts — visa free travel for Turkmens holding diplomatic passports and other special passports.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)

Uzbekistan shows propaganda in movies

OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas have been showing a carefully scripted film depicting how the life of the ordinary peasant is happier than those people seeking to emulate Western values in the city, the eurasianet.org website reported. Human rights workers accuse Uzbek officials of using propaganda to control people.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)

Tajikistan grants mass amnesty

OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Playing the role of the great benevolent master, Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon granted amnesty to 10,000 prisoners in Tajikistan to mark the 20th anniversary of the country’s constitution. Mr Rakhmon, president since the mid-1990s, regularly uses amnesties to relieve over-crowding in prisons which human rights groups criticise.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)

Azerbaijan needs a transparency compliance check

OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a sort of best-practise benchmark for countries heavily involved in mining or oil production, told Azerbaijan that it needs to undergo a compliance check five months earlier than planned.

EITI chief Clare Short, a former British minister, said that concerns over Azerbaijan’s recent crackdown on civil society had triggered the compliance check.

“The situation facing civil society in Azerbaijan is clearly problematic,” Ms Short wrote in a statement.

“The Board discussed the findings of the fact finding mission and expressed deep concern. The Board hopes that Azerbaijan will open up more space for civil society to make its essential contribution to the EITI as laid down in our Standard.”

International pressure has been increasing on Azerbaijan over its treatment of opposition activists and human rights defenders. The EITI’s statement will be particularly irritating to Azerbaijan, though, as it has previously touted its links to EITI as evidence of its good intentions.

Being ordered to undergo a compliance check before 2015 will be publicly humiliating.

And there is some evidence that the pressure on Azerbaijan is beginning to tell. On Oct. 17, President Ilham Aliyev released four opposition activists as part of a wider amnesty.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)

Petition to free prisoners in Uzbekistan

OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – London-based Amnesty International said it had present a petition with 200,000 signatures calling for the release of dozens of so-called prisoners of conscience in Uzbekistan. Human rights activists say Uzbekistan has one of the worst records in the world.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)

Tesco ditches Uzbek cotton

OCT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tesco, the world’s second largest retailer, has signed up to an agreement not to buy cotton from Uzbekistan because of concerns over its use of child labour to pick it, media reported.

The timing will particularly hurt Uzbekistan as Tesco’s move comes on the eve of the annual Uzbekistan cotton trade show on Oct. 14. This set piece event is supposed to showcase Uzbek cotton — one of the country’s biggest exports.

The problem for Uzbekistan is that its use of deploying school children, teachers and doctors to harvest the cotton has made buying it taboo.

“Markets for Uzbek cotton sourced with forced labour continue to diminish as consumers become more aware of the egregious human rights violations that occur during the Uzbek cotton harvest, with over 4m Uzbek citizens forced to pick cotton under threat of penalty,” the advocacy group Responsible Source Network (RSN) said on its website after announcing that Tesco had agreed to support it.

To an extent, RSN is correct. More and more Western retailers are looking to stop buying clothes made with Uzbek cotton. Uzbekistan last year also allowed the United Nation’s International Labour organisation (ILO) to tour the country at harvest season and inspect reports of child labour.

It’s likely, campaigners have said, that child labour is still used in Uzbekistan but this has been reduced over the past few years.

And, there is a flip side. With Western companies trying to stop using Uzbek cotton, Uzbekistan has looked east to potential clients who are less squeamish about human rights. Bangladesh has become a key importer of Uzbek cotton.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)

Azerbaijan’s human rights makes F1 controversial

OCT. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s inaugural Formula 1 race in 2016 will take place through the streets of Baku, Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone said.The race is controversial because of Azerbaijan’s crackdown on human rights. For Azerbaijan, though, it represents a great PR coup.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Uzbek President to visit Czech Rep

OCT. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek president Islam Karimov will visit Prague next year, the head of the Czech presidential administration told media. Mr Karimov had cancelled a trip to Prague earlier this year after Czech ministers, worried about Uzbekistan’s human rights record, refused to meet him.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Torture persists in Uzbek prisons

SEPT. 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Torture in Uzbek prisons is still endemic, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a new report. Out of 44 former and current prisoners interviewed for the report, HRW said that 29 were tortured. Uzbekistan has said it is eliminating torture from its prisons and that officers who beat inmates are prosecuted.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)