JUNE 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Uzbekistan fined Said Abdurakhimov, a local journalist who reports critical stories, roughly $4,000 for supposedly spreading panic and working without the correct accreditation. The police detained Mr Abdurakhimov after he reported on the demolition of homes to build a new motorway.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)
JULY 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in the Netherlands arrested Giorgi Dgebuadze, Georgia’s former military police chief, over a year after the Georgian authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. The Georgian Prosecutor- General wants to try Mr Dgebuadze for instigating a system of torture during his time in charge of the military police.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)
JUNE 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Baku’s newly built Heydar Aliyev Centre, likened to a whirl of whipped cream, won the prestigious British Design Museum’s “Design of the Year” award for its iconic shape and feel.
The award is a triumph for Baku on a civic scale. It has worked hard to transform itself into a modern city. Millions of dollars of oil cash has been spent on beautifying the city and this means building iconic structures.
The Heydar Aliyev building is just one example of the city’s ambitious rebuilding project — others include the three feline 190m-high Flame Towers and the sparkling Crystal Hall that hosted the 2012 Eurovision contest — and its curves certainly leave an impression.
“It is an intoxicatingly beautiful building by the most brilliant architect at the height of her office’s powers,” the Guardian quoted juror Piers Gough, of CZWG Architects, as saying.
“It is as pure and sexy as Marilyn’s blown skirt.”
But as with most of Baku’s architectural accolades, and it has attracted a reasonable bag, they come with criticism of Azerbaijan’s human rights record.
Human Rights Watch and other lobby groups criticised the Design Museum for honouring a country whose record on free speech has been worsening. They said that Dame Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born Britain-based architect of the museum, should use her award to promote human rights.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)
JUNE 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media lobby group Reporters Without Borders accused Azerbaijan of sentencing opposition newspaper editor Hilal Mammadov to five years in jail on trumped-up charges of drug trafficking, inciting hatred and treason. Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court had the day before upheld a sentenced passed in September 2013 against Mammadov.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on July 2 2014)
JUNE 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani opposition activists protested outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg during a speech by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The protesters wore red T-shirts with pictures of different people in Azerbaijani jails who they say have been jailed for political reasons.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s parliament has, apparently, rejected the option of bringing in juries for some trials, media reported.
The authorities has been mulling over the idea but in the end decided against the notion because juries couldn’t be expected to understand the complexities of the law.
“Jurors are mainly people who do not have a law education and, therefore, often they cannot make legal judgments,” the eurasianet.orf website quoted Ali Huseynli, an MP for the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, as saying.
Opponents of the government said that it simply didn’t want to relax its iron grip on the law courts.
They said, with thinly disguised sarcasm, that the courts have served them so well recently. Many opposition activists accuse Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev of using the courts to lock up his enemies.
The former Soviet states are, generally, not keen on juries. The big regional exception is Georgia. They introduced jury service in 2011 but only on some murder cases and only when both the prosecution and the defence agreed to it.
Instead a judge decides on cases, opening the system up to corruption, campaigners have said. This may change but clearly not for some time to come.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Reports on the internet have surfaced which suggest that unrest may be brewing in Karakalpakstan, the remote western region of Uzbekistan. Karakalpakstan is officially an autonomous republic although in practice this mean little. Reports said protesters demonstrating at job cuts at a gas processing plant had been arrested.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik officials arrested Alexander Sodiqov, a 31-year old Tajik academic affiliated to the University of Toronto in Canada, and accused him of spying.
Mr Sodiqov was carrying out research in the Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) when Tajik security agents detained him.
Tajik officials are traditionally jittery about anyone asking awkward questions in GBAO, where Dushanbe’s authority is weak. Badakhshanis fought against government forces during a five-year civil war in the mid-1990s that President Emomali Rakhmon, eventually won.
Ever since, though, peace has been fragile. In July 2012, around 50 people died in fighting when the authorities tried to arrest a local chief who they accused of drug trafficking. Earlier this year more violence killed three people in Khorog, the regional capital and the scene of Mr Sodiqov.
Human rights groups and the British and Canadian governments have all said they are concerned about Mr Sodiqov’s well-being.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US-based lobby group Freedom House rated Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as having the worst democratic framework in its ranking of 29 countries in eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union. Human rights group often complain about a lack of democracy and entrenched corruption in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)
JUNE 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank agreed to give Uzbekistan a $260m loan to improve irrigation in its agriculture, media reported, angering human rights activists who accuse Uzbekistan of using child labour to pick cotton. Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest exports although many Western fashion brands refuse to use it in their clothing.
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(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)