Tag Archives: human rights

Azerbaijan accuses the US of spying

FEB. 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) –Azerbaijan accused the United States of spying after two US officials visited a high-profile Azerbaijani opposition journalist.

Khadija Ismayilova, a journalist for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said the authorities had accused her of giving dossiers on opposition politicians and other prominent figures to US government officials masquerading as US senators.

The accusations are important for a handful of reasons.

Firstly, it betrays Azerbaijan’s nervousness and paranoia. The US is meant to be an increasingly close post-Soviet ally and yet here it is accused of spying. The United States denied accusations that it had been spying on Azerbaijan.

Secondly, the accusations also have the tinge of a vendetta. The authorities in Azerbaijan dislike Ms Ismayilova and her work.

Ms Ismayilova is a relatively widely known investigative journalist who has revealed alleged corrupt government schemes. In 2012, video and pictures of Ms Ismayilova having sex appeared on the internet. They were taken with a camera secretly installed in her home. She accused the authorities of blackmail and intimidation.

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(News report from Issue No. 172, published on Feb. 19 2014)

HRW criticises Tajikistan

FEB. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York based-Human Rights Watch criticised the Tajik authorities for sentencing 26-year-old Zaid Saidov to prison after he had formed a new political party. HRW said that Saidov was found guilty of five criminal charges on Dec. 25 2013 and accused the Tajik authorities of crudely harassing their opponents.

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(News report from Issue No. 171, published on Feb. 12 2014)

Azerbaijan’s president attacks opponents

FEB. 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Usually Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, prefers to stand above everyday politics. It’s too dirty, too grubby for the president to become involved with.

Last year he hardly campaigned during a presidential election.

At an economic forum, though, in Baku, Mr Akuyev allowed himself to attack his opponents. The US government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio liberty reported that Mr Aliyev had said that October’s presidential election meant “the end of the opposition, the top of its shame.”

Certainly, the opposition collation performed poorly in the election. Its campaign was disorganised and characterised by a lack of leadership but it’s unclear what exactly would have provoked Mr Aliyev into the outburst.

It’s also unclear what he has to gain from it.

Since the election, the authorities in Azerbaijan have continued to hound Mr Aliyev’s opponents, often arresting them on charges which human rights groups have said have been fabricated.

Mr Aliyev may have been trying to defend the authorities’ actions. He said that “those who receive grants from abroad have no place in Azerbaijani politics.”

The reference is clear. Mr Aliyev was accusing his opponents of being influenced by foreign agents. It looks as if Azerbaijan’s politics is going to get tougher still.

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(News report from Issue No. 171, published on Feb. 12 2014)

Activists accuse Kazakh authorities

FEB. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Media groups accused the Kazakh authorities of bias after Police arrested four bloggers who had protested against perceived favouritism shown by Almaty mayor’s Akhmetzhan Yessimov. Three of the bloggers were arrested protesting outside a restaurant where Mr Yessimov was dining with favoured bloggers and another was arrested six days later.

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(News report from Issue No. 171, published on Feb. 12 2014)

Czech presidents defends Uzbekistan

FEB. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The row over a scheduled visit to Prague by Uzbek president Islam Karimov has intensified.

The day after receiving a letter signed by a group of human rights activists calling for the visit to be cancelled, Czech President Milos Zeman posted a response on the internet. And he didn’t pull any punches.

He accused human rights lobbyists of hypocrisy and of not understanding the geo-political nature and the niceties of diplomatic relations.

“I wish you had more awareness and less hypocrisy,” he wrote after explaining that the invitation for Mr Karimov to visit Prague between Feb. 20-22 was because the Czech president in 2004 had been invited to Tashkent.

Mr Zeman also said that Uzbekistan had recently held talks with the EU and was helping NATO extract its military kit out of neighbouring Afghanistan.

All this may be true but it won’t placate the human rights lobby which considers Mr Karimov leader of one of the most repulsive regimes in the world. They accuse him of torture and locking up his enemies.

Mr Karimov’s trip to Prague is set to be, politically, explosive.

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(News report from Issue No. 171, published on Feb. 12 2014)

HRW criticises Uzbekistan

JAN. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Czech Republic should cancel an invitation to Uzbek President Islam Karimov to visit Prague later this month because of its poor human rights record. HRW accuses Mr Karimov of presiding over a regime that uses torture.

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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)

Kazakhstan controls religious content

FEB. 4 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — If you think it sounds Orwellian, you wouldn’t be alone.

Kazakh officials announced that the Agency for Religion will now vet all religious content before it is run on state-owned media.

The plain speaking chief of the agency, Marat Azilkhanov, explained the move: “It’s a matter of the government’s ideology.”

Or this is just plain censorship, depending on how you look at it.

If truth be known this is the way it’s been going in Kazakhstan for some time.

In 2011, Kazakhstan introduced a law restricting religious activities and gatherings. This was generally regarded as an attempted crackdown on Islamic extremists.

New figures released by Mr Azilkhanov showed that over 500 different religious groups have failed to meet these new requirements and have been banned.

Human rights groups have complained that Kazakhstan uses the new religion laws to get rid of groups it finds troublesome.

(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)

Azerbaijan’s police detains activist

JAN. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Azerbaijan detained Omar Mamedov, a 19-year-old opposition activist, for drug possession. Mr Mamedov has become well known in Azerbaijan for blog posts that mock President Ilham Aliyev. Rights campaigners have accused the Azerbaijani authorities of cracking down on opponents of Mr Aliyev.

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Kazakh court rules against police brutality

JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a landmark ruling, a judge in the northern Kostanai region of Kazakhstan turned down an appeal by the Kazakh Interior Ministry against damages awarded to a man for torture meted out by police in 2007.

The award to Aleksandr Gerasimov of 2m tenge ($13,000) in damages in November 2013 for his beatings six years earlier and the decision this month to uphold that fine is a rare victory for rights campaigners in Kazakhstan.

It’s doubly important because this was the first case to go before the UN’s Committee Against Torture. It ruled in Mr Gerasimov’s favour in May 2012, setting off the chain of events that led to the police fine.

Courts in sovereign states are supposed to respect the decision of the UN’s 10-person Committee Against Torture but the reality is that they are often ignored. Kazakhstan signed the UN Convention Against Torture in 1998.

The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Anastassia Miller, a lawyer with the Kazakh International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law as saying that Mr Gerasimov’s case set a precedent for Kazakhs looking to redress police torture.

Human rights lobbyists have long campaigned against general police brutality in Kazakhstan. They say that beatings of prisoners to extract confessions is widespread in Kazakh police stations.

In 2007, Mr Gerasimov travelled to a police station to look for his stepson who’d been rounded up after a woman had been killed. His lawyers said that police detained him, accused him of the murder and then beat him and suffocated him with a plastic bag leaving him with lasting health problems.

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Kazakh court rules against police

JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A judge in Kazakhstan upheld a damages claim against police who beat Aleksandr Gerasimov while he was in custody in 2007. The decision was a rare victory for the human rights lobby in Kazakhstan over the authorities.

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)