Tag Archives: law

Kazakh Parliament passes phedophile castration law

MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s parliament passed a law which will authorise officials to chemically castrate men convicted of paedophilia, AFP reported. Chemical castration is used in some countries although some human rights groups have criticised it. Without explaining why, Kazakhstan said that cases of paedophilia have doubled in the past four or five years and that it needs to increase the deterrent.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Tajik court sentences IRPT activists

MARCH 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in the Tajik town of Isfara jailed three men to up to 11 years in prison for offences linked to their memberships of the now banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). The Tajik authorities banned the IRPT, the country’s only real opposition party last year, and has since been imprisoning its members. The West has criticised this as a crackdown.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Georgia PM wants constitution to block gay marriages

MARCH 8 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said he wanted to write into the national constitution that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, a thinly disguised attempt to woo conservative voters ahead of a parliamentary election in October.

Georgian society is broadly conservative and anti-gay rallies have been strongly supported over the last few years. Gay rights rallies have been attacked.

Mr Kvirikashvili’s Georgian Dream coalition is facing a tough battle to win another term in office.

It has tried to canvass votes from Georgia’s conservative base by looking for support from the influential Georgian Orthodox Church. The Church is anti-gay rights.

“We have a pending initiative that would guarantee the protection of the sacred institution of marriage, via the constitution,” media quoted Mr Kvirikashvili as saying.

This would mean changing the constitution to ensure that marriage is only possible between a man and a woman.

He appeared to be responding to an initiative by Georgian civil rights lawyer Giorgi Tatishvili who has been lobbying for same-sex marriage.

Importantly for Georgia, the EU has highlighted its conservative views over gas rights and other civil issues as a potential stumbling block for its integration into the EU.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Editorial: Georgia’s constitution

MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Can it really be acceptable for Georgia’s PM to ask for the constitution be altered to block gay marriages? He wants, in effect, to subvert the country’s constitution to match his own beliefs.

This is wrong. It is not up to the PM or the government to tinker with a national constitution when it feels like it.

And it feels even more sullied because this is an election year. The suspicion is that Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili sees this as a vote winning ploy, a tool to woo Georgia’s important conservative base.

The Georgian Dream coalition, Mr Kvirikashvili’s party, has a reputation for going after the conservative vote and this very much feels as if it is playing up to this reputation. Georgia’s Constitutional Court should stand up to him and tell him to get on with the job of governing the country rather than trying to turn the national constitution into a political football.

For observers, Mr Kvirikashvili’s comments about the constitution should put them on warning about just how vicious this up and coming election campaign is likely to be.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)

Kazakhstan acquits reporter’s charges

FEB. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Almaty acquitted Yulia Kozlova, a journalist for nakanune.kz which is often critical of the authorities, of drug related charges. Ms Kozlova has said that the charges were politically motivated. Acquittals in Kazakhstan are extremely rare. It may be that the authorities are trying to deflect a barrage of negative criticism accusing them of cracking down on independent media.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Kyrgyzstan debates NGO law, again

FEB. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz MPs have said that they are once again going to debate a controversial bill dubbed the “foreign agents’ law”. The bill was touted last year as being similar to one passed by Russia in 2012 that made it more difficult for NGOs to receive funding from overseas. The West has been increasingly concerned by what it has said is a trend by Kyrgyzstan to move towards Russia and away from the more liberal values that it had once appeared to embrace.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Kyrgyzstan considers Muslim debt

FEB. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps following Kazakhstan’s lead, Kyrgyz parliamentarians are going to discuss the potential to issue a so-called sukuk, media reported. A sukuk is a debt which adheres to Islamic laws and principles. One of the advantages is that a sukuk may attract a greater range of potential investors from the Middle East and South-East Asia. The Kyrgyz parliament still has to discuss new laws aimed at easing a route to issuing a sukuk.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Kazakhstan’s senate agrees new budget

MARCH 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s senate passed a new budget for 2016 that reported an increase in state spending, a plan designed to kick-start the economy. The government’s actual income from taxes will drop in 2016, it is forecasting, by around 8% but a lump of cash earmarked for various projects in 2017 will instead be injected into the system this year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)

Azerbaijan drops currency tax

FEB. 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Azerbaijani parliament formally dropped a plan to impose a 20% tax on all deals in foreign currencies. It voted to drop the bill, which had passed earlier in the year, after President Ilham Aliyev refused to sign it. The motive for the bill had been to protect Azerbaijan’s manat currency which has lost around half its value but critics said it was unfair and unworkable. Low oil prices have hit Azerbaijan hard. It is reliant on oil to earn export revenue.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)

Kazakh activist serves house arrest

FEB. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ermek Narymbayev, one of two Kazakh civil rights activists imprisoned last month for inciting social unrest, has been allowed to return home and serve out his sentence under house arrest, media quoted his wife as saying. Opponents of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev have accused him of cracking down on free speech.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)