Tag Archives: labour rights

Kazakhstan jails trade union leader

MAY 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan jailed trade union leader Amin Yeleusinov, the second senior union official to be imprisoned in the past two months. Yeleusinov was imprisoned for two years for stealing property. He is banned from union activities for five years and has to pay a $26,300 fine. New York-based Human Rights Watch said that the prison sentence was political and designed to undermine the trade union movement which has gained prominence over the past few years. A court outlawed a major trade union group at the start of the year.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)

 

Kazakh court jails labour union leader

APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Astana found union leader Nurbek Kushakbayev, guilty of organising an illegal strike in January and sentenced him to 2-1⁄2 years in prison. His supporters say the sentence is harsh and that the court was being politicised. Kushakbayev had been deputy chairman of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions which was closed on the orders of a court in Shymkent. The government has been trying to curtail the power of the trade unions.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Uzbek authorities detain rights campaigner

MARCH 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Uzbekistan detained human rights campaigner Elena Urlaeva, Reuters reported quoting a video message she posted on the internet. In her video message, Ms Urlaeva said that she had been detained, beaten and taken to a psychiatric unit in Tashkent. She is best known for campaigning against forced labour in the cotton industry. She had been due to meet with the World Bank to discuss forced labour violations.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 319, published on March 3 2017)

ILO says making progress in scrapping forced labour in Uzbekistan

FEB. 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) said that Uzbekistan was making progress in eradicating child labour from its cotton harvests. Uzbekistan has come under intense criticism for using school children to pick the crop. Several Western fashion retailers have refused to stock products which have been made with Uzbek cotton.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh authorities are intimidating protesters

ALMATY, FEB 2, 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in western Kazakhstan are trying to intimidate workers into giving up their hunger strikes, the Eurasianet website reported.

The Eurasianet report quoted workers as saying that a breakdown in trust with the authorities was pushing them towards a potentially violent confrontation.

“We cannot allow another Zhanaozen,” Eurasianet quoted a lawyer for a detained union leader as saying. Zhanaozen is the town in western Kazakhstan where police and strikers clashed in 2011. At least 15 people died.

Several hundred oil workers have been refusing to eat in west Kazakhstan in protest over the closure of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, an umbrella organization, by a court in Shymkent at the beginning of the year. The hunger strikers’ de facto leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbaev were arrested on Jan. 20

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh authorities arrest union leaders

JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised the Kazakh authorities for arresting two union leaders on Jan. 20 for allegedly organising a hunger strike by oil workers earlier in the year against the closure of a union confederation structure. The two union leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbayev, have been placed in pretrial detention. The Kazakh government wants to reduce the power of the unions, who they blame for a series of strikes since 2011.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)

Hunger strike over union closure grows at oil fields in west Kazakhstan

ALMATY, JAN. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — At least 400 oil workers in western Kazakhstan have started a hunger strike against the forced closure of the country’s trade union umbrella body, media reported.

The hunger strikers are, mainly, workers at the Kalamkas and Zhetybai oil fields in Mangistau region owned by the state-run Mangistau- munaigas. This is near to Zhanaozen where, in 2011, police shot dead at least 15 striking oil workers.

The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported that demonstrators were demanding that the government overturns a decision by a court in Shymkent to disband the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan because it hadn’t been

properly registered at its inception. This is the largest workers’ union in the country and analysts suspected that the Kazakh authorities were increasingly wary and worried about the power that it had accumulated.

Since 2011, the authorities in Kazakhstan have generally bent to accommodate the unions, preferring to dodge confrontation.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

HRW criticises Kazakhstan over Union closure

JAN. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised the imminent closure of Kazakhstan’s independent workers’ union, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan, as a violation of the right to freedom of association. A court in Shymkent, south Kazakhstan, had ordered the Union’s closure because it had violated union registration rules. The Kazakh authorities are suspicious of trade unions. They blame them for stirring up an oil workers strike in 2011 that turned into a riot.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Kazakhstan imposes restrictions on labour unions

NOV. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch accused Kazakhstan of deliberately creating mountains of red tape to thwart and frustrate labour unions. In a report entitled: “Kazakhstan: Workers’ Rights Violated, Restricted”, HRW said that the Kazakh elite grew nervous of labour unions after a strike in 2011 ended with police shooting dead several protesters. HRW said that the government had imposed a registration system on labour unions as a way of monitoring their activities.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 306, published on Nov. 25 2016)

European Parliament set to approve Uzbek cotton deal

NOV. 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — An influential European Parliament committee backed a textile trade deal with Uzbekistan that had been moth- balled in 2011 on concerns over the use of child labour.

The vote is a triumph for Uzbekistan and acting-president Shavkat Mirziyoyev as it bestows credibility on the Uzbek cotton sector after years of negative headlines and boycotts by international clothing companies.

The Committee on International Trade will now recommend at a full European Parliament vote in December that a trade deal is made with Uzbekistan.

Reuters quoted Maria Arena, one of the MPs on the committee, as saying that Uzbekistan had improved its labour rights over the past few years.

“The progress made by the Uzbek authorities allows us to move forward and include textiles in our partnership agreement. But we will remain extremely vigilant,” she was quoted as saying.

Last year the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) monitored the Uzbek cotton harvest. It said in a report that there had been major improvements in the way labour was organised and although it was still commonplace for government workers to leave their jobs to pick cotton during the harvest, the use of child labour was far reduced.

Human rights groups, though, were adamant that the European Parliament needed to set an example and avoid a deal with Uzbekistan. In an open letter to the committee sent three days before its meeting, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said that it was because of the European Parliament’s rejection of a trade deal in 2011 that Uzbekistan agreed to open up to UN monitors. It also said that the scenario in Uzbekistan wasn’t as positive as the committee made out.

“We were pleased to note that as a result of international pressure since 2013 children have not been forced to pick cotton on a nationwide scale, and child labour has effectively declined. Yet, local officials reportedly still resort to forced child labour out of a need to fulfil their quotas,” HRW said in its letter.

“Since 2014 we have received steady reports of extortion linked to the cotton harvest.”

Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s most important commodities. For Mr Mirziyoyev, the timing of the recommendation is also important. He faces a presidential election next month.

He is certain to win this election and become the second post-Soviet president of Uzbekistan after Islam Karimov who died in September, but he still needs to win over popular support. Backing from the European Parliament that child labour is reducing in Uzbekistan and a trade deal can now be made will strengthen his position.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 304, published on Nov. 11 2016)