JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s weightlifting federation has said it will tighten checks on its athletes, media reported. The announcement follows the embarrassing disclosure last year that nine weightlifters from Kazakhstan had taken performance enhancing drugs. Kazakhstan has to pay a $500,000 fine for the doping.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Output from the Chevron-led oil project Tengizchevroil rose to 27.1m tonnes in 2013 from 24.2m tonnes in 2012, media reported. The Tengiz oil field is one of the biggest in Kazakhstan and, with the giant Caspian Sea Kashagan oil project stalling, the figures are good news for the Kazakh economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
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.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — If you thought his work was done in Kazakhstan, think again. The press office of the Kazakh president released photos of Nursultan Nazarbayev and former PM Tony Blair talking and laughing as they discussed the so-called Kazakhstan- 2050 strategy. Mr Blair started working as an adviser to Mr Nazarbayev in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian train and plane manufacturer Bombardier plans to open an office in Astana, local media reported. By moving into Kazakhstan Bombardier highlights potential as a client. Bombardier makes passenger planes and Kazakhstan wants to bolster its air transport sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Alliance Bank asked its creditors to accept a so-called haircut to keep the bank solvent. In financial terms a haircut is when creditors agree to reduce repayments. Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna and billionaire Bulat Utemuratov are Alliance Bank’s biggest stakeholders.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The release from prison of Maksat Usenov, son of an executive working on Kazakhstan’s showcase EXPO-2017, triggered a rare show of online dissent.
Despite killing a man, prosecutors dropped the criminal case against Mr Usenov and converted his sentence into a fine after his father paid off the family of the dead man.
More than 16,000 people signed an online petition on the grassroots Avaaz.org website against Mr Usenov’s release.
This is a classic case of the children of the authorities having a more lenient ride than ordinary citizens.
In December 2013, Mr Usenov was speeding through Almaty in his luxury BMW X6 (prices start from around $75,000). He crashed at a busy intersection — there are many in Almaty — killed a bystander and injured five others.
Police detained Mr Usenov and were going to charge him with dangerous driving and manslaughter. Instead, his father, Kazhymurat Usenov, was able to pay off the family of the man he’d killed. The family dropped charges against Mr Usenov and the police let him free.
The whole episode gives a valuable insight into modern-day Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)
JAN. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh defence minister Adilbek Dzhaksybekov flew to Tel Aviv to sign a military deal with his Israeli counterpart Moshe Ya’alon. Media reported the two states would hold joint military exercises and that Kazakhstan would buy various Israeli-made weapons. Kazakhstan has said it wants to modernise its military.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — China and Russia have agreed to lend $400m for the modernisation of the Ekibastuz power plant in Kazakhstan, media reported. The coal-fired power plant in the northern region of Pavlodar is one of the biggest in Kazakhstan, generating an estimated 12% of the country’s energy.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)