APRIL 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch accused Kyrgyzstan of backsliding on rights and freedom of speech. It said that in the last few months the Kyrgyz authorities had drafted a bill that would criminalise spreading information about homosexuality and had banned several peaceful protests in central Bishkek.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Under new rules designed to quash Islamic radicals, internet cafes in Uzbekistan will have to install surveillance cameras. The order was signed into law on March 19. Uzbekistan has increased surveillance generally, angering human rights campaigners.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Turkmen authorities opened an all-women prison, the Central Asia Online website reported quoting a prison official. The prison will hold 850 women and include a 30-bed maternity ward. Soviet-era prisons in Central Asia are regarded as some of the harshest in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The media lobby group Reporters Without Borders (RWB) criticised Azerbaijan for sending to prison journalist Tofig Yagublu for inciting anti-government rioting in the northern city of Ismaylli in January 2013. RWB said the authorities in Azerbaijan are increasingly cracking down on opposition journalists.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a decision that provoked international condemnation from human rights groups, a court in Azerbaijan sent two opposition leaders to jail for organising illegal demonstration.
Human rights groups accused the court of being politically motivated, a charge they have used against Azerbaijan’s judiciary often over the last few years.
The US State Department backs up this analysis. Earlier this year in its annual global human rights assessment, it said that the authorities were increasingly persecuting opposition groups.
A court spokesman said that Tofig Yagublu, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party, and Ilgar Mammadov, leader of the Republican Alternative human rights group, were sentenced to five and seven years in prison.
Police arrested them in February 2013 and accused them of organising unrest in the town of Ismailli in January 2013. The unrest in Ismailli, 200km northwest of Baku, was the worst during President Ilham Aliyev’s 11 years in power.
Giorgi Gogia, senior researcher in the South Caucasus for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote a withering analysis of the verdicts.
“Another day, another imprisonment of prominent government critics in Azerbaijan,” he said.
“Instead of looking into the underlying causes of such an expression of mass rage and there are many, starting with astounding government corruption the authorities decided to find convenient scapegoats who fit the false narrative of critics-as-enemies.”
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A religious council in Kyrgyzstan appointed Maksat Hajji Toktomushev as its seventh grand mufti in four years. Toktomushev is best known for issuing a fatwa against same-sex relations in January. His election highlights the issue of human rights in Kyrgyzstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
FEB. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan rejected criticism from human rights groups that it violates the right to religious freedom, media reported. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has previously reported that Uzbekistan has arrested more than 200 people since 2012 on religionr-elated charges.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was concerned about the Azerbaijani authorities’ harassment of journalist Khadija Ismayilova. Last week, officials in Azerbaijan accused Ms Ismayilova of passing documents on prominent Azerbaijanis to US officials. She has previously uncovered government corruption.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Highlighting homophobia in Central Asia, a man who recently described his life as a homosexual for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was beaten up and stab. The man said that the attack was directly linked to the interview. Tajikistan has decriminalised homosexuality although prejudice is still rife.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)
FEB. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — After weeks of pressure it was Uzbek officials who, officially at least, cancelled a planned trip by President Islam Karimov, to Prague planned for Feb. 20-22.
Human rights activists had urged Czech president Milos Zeman to cancel the trip before Mr Karimov.
They argued that Mr Karimov’s human rights abuses were too deep to be overlooked but Mr Zeman had refused to back down. He said the invitation was a reciprocal deal because the Czech Republic’s president in 2004 had travelled to Tashkent at Mr Karimov’s invitation.
A trip to the EU would have been something of a coup for Mr Karimov. He has tried to reintegrate back into the international community since they turned their backs on him after soldiers allegedly shot hundreds of demonstrators in a town in eastern Uzbekistan in 2005.
Since then, though, NATO countries have wooed Mr Karimov to help extract their military kit from neighbouring Afghanistan. In 2011, Mr Karimov visited NATO and EU headquarters in Brussels and in 2013 he visited Latvia, then the rotating head of the EU.
But, while Mr Zeman couldn’t be deterred from meeting Mr Karimov, Czech government ministers could. What appears to have tipped Uzbek officials into cancelling the trip was various Czech ministers pulling out of meetings leaving Mr Karimov with nobody, other than Mr Zeman, to meet.
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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)