APRIL 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – An Uzbek citizen received a 16-year jail sentence in Uzbekistan for spying for Tajikistan. The televised trial showed the man, Sharifjon Asrorov, confessing the alleged crimes. Tensions between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan continue to be high. Governments in Central Asia use espionage crimes to discredit rival neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)
MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court of appeal in Kazakhstan suspended prison sentences handed out to two Kazakh activists in January. Yermek Narymbayev and Serikzhan Mambetalin, imprisoned for posting messages on Facebook that the authorities said spread racial hatred, were released from prison and put under house arrest. Human rights activists saw this as a conciliatory move towards the EU ahead of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to Brussels.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Deputy PM Dariga Nazarbayeva said that the recently-imposed ban on the use of smartphones in government buildings in Kazakhstan does not apply to journalists. At a press conference, Ms Nazarbayeva said that the ban is only aimed at reducing leaks of classified documents.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 29 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — In a move designed to improve driving standards, the Kazakh government scrapped rules that forced learner drivers to take lessons at specialist driving schools before they can sit a test.
Previously, it was incumbent on the specialist driving schools to approve learners as ready to step up to take a driving test. This, the government said, added cost, bureaucracy and corruption that was putting people off taking driving exams.
Kazakhstan has one of the worst ratios of deadly accidents on its roads. In 2013, the World Health Organisation said that deaths by car accidents in Kazakhstan averaged 24.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest rate among countries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus and around four times higher than the European average. These are often attributable to poor roads or poorly maintained vehicles, but also to bad driving.
An official in the interior ministry told the Conway Bulletin on condition of anonymity that the new rules were designed to simplify government procedures, cut red tape and encourage people to sit a driving exam.
“It is done for simplification. If a person knows the rules, has some driving skills and he or she can pass the exams, we do not think it is necessary to make them study in driving schools,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, driving instructors were less than impressed.
The Kazakh Association of Driving Schools said that the government’s new rules may actually worsen the quality of driving in the country.
Learner driver Akbota Mulkibayeva also doubted the new system would eradicate corruption.
“It is sad because there will be even more bribes to pass the test now,” she said, emphasising Kazakhstan’s shifting and hard to eradicate corruption issues.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 29/30 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 250 delegates from Kyrgyzstan’s civil society gathered in the conference centre of a Bishkek hotel to discuss, argue and chew over just how they can play a more prominent role in holding the authorities to account and influencing the country’s development.
Organisers have hailed the meeting as groundbreaking for Central Asia which since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 has been driven by top-down decision-making. Civil society is able to influence events at a very local level in Kyrgyzstan but higher up, except perhaps through the ballot box and through revolutions, little is possible.
Rita Karasartova, Director of the Institute of Social Analysis, and one of the organisers of the forum dubbed ‘I Care’, said that the movement had taken momentum and inspiration from a conference organised last year to discuss potential changes to the Kyrgyz constitution.
“We were concerned about possible big risks of this proposal, and we wanted to speak up about them in front of the Government on the central square,” she told a Conway Bulletin correspondent. “Despite some parliamentary factions accusing us of preparing coup d’état, our protests were fruitful because the President cancelled the proposed constitutional changes.”
At the ‘I Care’ meeting judicial reforms, MPs pay and the failure of governments to deliver on election promises were hot topics — a reflection of how free Kyrgyzstan’s society is compared to the rest of the region.
Some, though, were sceptical of the reasons for the conference.
Anastasia, 23, a student in Bishkek, said: “Such forums do not happen just by themselves. There must be foreign supporters that promote them to have such activities.”
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s minister of education Yerlan Sagadiyev said school councils were free to allow headscarves into the classroom. The declaration follows a public request to allow kimeshek headdress, considered part of Kazakh traditional dress, thus not in conflict with the government’s ban on wearing religious clothing items. Mr Sagadiyev’s declaration has now opened the way for more exceptions.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
MARCH 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan converted a seven-year prison sentence into a five-year conditional one for human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, allowing his immediate release. Mr Aliyev had already spent two years in prison. His release follows the release of 14 political prisoners earlier this month. The West has criticised Azerbaijan for its crack- down on free speech.
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(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)
ALMATY, MARCH 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Canadian gold miner Alhambra Resources said it was seeking damages against Kazakhstan’s government, via the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, for the bankruptcy of its Kazakh subsidiary.
This is the second major arbitration case against Kazakhstan in the past few months. In January, the Kazakh government had to pay $25m compensation to Estonian builder Windoor after a court in Stockholm ruled it had broken a contract in 2012 to build a conference centre for its foreign ministry.
A sharp economic downturn has hit Kazakhstan hard and forced the government to cut budgets and projects, undermining, to some extent, its credibility as a client.
The company accused the Kazakh government of acting in an “unfair and inequitable” way against both Alhambra and its subsidiary Saga Creek.
Alhambra said the Kazakh government had broken its terms of contract with Saga Creek, imposed excessive fines on it and withheld mining licences.
“This conduct by the Government has frustrated Alhambra’s investment activities in Kazakhstan, drained the Corporation’s resources and culminated in the bankruptcy of Saga Creek,” it said in a statement. Kazakhstan has not commented.
In 2011, a high court in the Akmola region of northwest Kazakhstan cancelled a $1.6m tax bill that local government had sent to Alhambra.
The new arbitration, the company said, had been initiated after a Kazakh court on March 3 upheld the a bankruptcy order imposed on Alhambra’s subsidiary in December.
Saga Creek and Alhambra own a 25-year licence to mine the Uzboy gold field in north Kazakhstan near the border with Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 273, published on March 25 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Appeal Court cut a jail sentence handed down to former PM Serik Akhmetov, jailed last year for corruption, to eight years from10 years. Akhmetov was jailed last year in a high-profile case. He was PM for 18 months until April 2014 and was then defence minister. The case drew attention to Kazakhstan’s reputation for corruption.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Senate ratified a trade deal with the European Union which Kazakh foreign minister Yerlan Idrissov said had far reaching implications. Mr Idrissov said: “The most important part of the new treaty is the trade section, which offers additional guarantees of stability to our European partners and will help raise Kazakhstan’s investment appeal.”
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)