JAN. 8 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s security services detained the head of a banned Islamic group for inciting disorder and calling for a Jihad, media reported. Earlier in January, Mohsun Samedov, leader of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, had posted a speech on the internet criticising a ban on headscarves and calling for the government to quit.
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(News report from Issue No. 22, published on Jan. 11 2011)
DEC. 26 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – This year Kazakhs could be asked to vote in their second referendum since independence in 1991.
The first referendum in 1995 asked Kazakhs to bypass the Constitution and extend Nursultan Nazarbayev’s term as president. Nearly 16 years later, a potential second referendum will ask Kazakhs to bypass the Constitution again and extend Mr Nazarbayev’s term as president.
The Constitution states a presidential election should be held every five years and the next one had been planned for 2012. Now, Parliament and the Kazakh people say they want Mr Nazarbayev to reign uninterrupted until 2020.
Opponents of Mr Nazarbayev say this highlights his autocratic ways. His supporters say the people and not Mr Nazarbayev is driving the referendum.
It is no surprise that the 70-year-old Mr Nazarbayev wants to run Kazakhstan for the next decade. His aides hinted throughout 2010 he wanted to remain in power, in June Parliament made him Leader of the Nation and his succession policy clearly still needs finalising. In 2007, Parliament also changed Kazakhstan’s Constitution to allow Mr Nazarbayev, and only Mr Nazarbayev, to run for an unlimited number of terms as president.
But scrapping presidential elections (even through a referendum) is a significant step, especially as Kazakhstan ended 2010 as chairman of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — Europe’s human rights and democracy watchdog.
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(News report from Issue No. 21, published on Jan. 4 2011)
DEC. 30 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media quoted a human rights group in Uzbekistan saying that in 2010 39 prisoners died of torture in the country’s prisons. The Independent Human Rights Defenders Group said 370 Muslims had been jailed on inflated charges of belonging to radical groups. The Uzbek government did not comment.
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(News report from Issue No. 21, published on Jan. 4 2011)
DEC. 15 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh jailed 5 more Uzbek men for murder during ethnic violence in June. Human rights groups have said that Uzbeks are being unfairly punished for the violence during which about 400 people, mainly Uzbeks, died.
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(News report from Issue No. 20, published on Dec. 20 2010)
NOV. 24 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh sentenced 17 ethnic Uzbeks to life in prison and two more to 25 years for the murder of 16 Kyrgyz during rioting in June. About 370 mainly ethnic Uzbeks died in the ethnic violence. Human rights groups have said Uzbeks are being blamed unfairly for the violence.
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(News report from Issue No. 17, published on Nov. 29 2010)
NOV. 18/19 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan released two bloggers from jail whose imprisonment in November 2009 for hooliganism triggered an international outcry. Human rights groups said the authorities arrested the bloggers after they made a satire about the government. The court released them but did not overturn their conviction.
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(News report from Issue No. 16, published on Nov. 22 2010)
NOV. 18 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Alongside China, Russia, Cuba, Iraq and Morocco, Kazakhstan will not attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo next month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. This year the committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to an imprisoned Chinese dissident angering China. China is one of Kazakhstan’s biggest investors.
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(News report from Issue No. 16, published on Nov. 22 2010)
NOV. 9 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – Germany’s human rights commissioner called on the International Labour Organisation, a UN agency, to investigate Uzbekistan for using child labour to pick its cotton harvest. This is the sharpest criticism by a leading European figure of Uzbekistan’s alleged use of child labour. Uzbekistan has previously promised to stop the practice.
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(News report from Issue No. 15, published on Nov. 15 2010)
NOV. 11 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan agreed with the European Court for Human Rights that sentences against an opposition newspaper editor for terrorism, tax evasion and racial hatred were illegal but it also upheld a separate 30-month sentence for drug possession and kept him in jail.
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(News report from Issue No. 15, published on Nov. 15 2010)
OCT. 15 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan convicted a reporter of slander, insult and disturbing the peace. The judge fined Abdulmalik Boboyev, who works for US-funded Voice of America, $10,000 but did not jail him. Mr Boboyev was the second Uzbek reporter convicted but not sent to jail by Uzbek authorities in a week, the same week an Uzbek delegation visited Washington for talks.
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(News report from Issue No. 12, published on Oct. 21 2010)