Tag Archives: law

Azerbaijan jails prominent human rights defenders

AUG. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan sentenced human rights defenders Leyla and Arif Yunus to 8-1/2 and 7 years in prison for financial crimes, in what their supporters said was a sham trial.

Tanya Lokshina, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Moscow, attended the sentencing.

“No matter what technical and legalistic pretexts the authorities are now using to lock up and destroy the Yunuses, one glance into that courtroom leaves you with no shadow of a doubt — this is a political trial and the supposed perpetrators are in fact victims of a vicious repression campaign against independent critics,” she wrote in a story on the Guardian website.

The Yunuses are just the latest human rights defenders, opposition activists or troublesome journalist to be sent to jail in Azerbaijan. The authorities have responded by saying that the West is mounting a concerted effort to blacken its name with negative PR.

But, perhaps, a precedent has been set. Attitudes towards free speech in Azerbaijan appear very dim as the death of another journalist on Aug. 8 appears to show.

Razim Aliyev died after he was beaten up apparently for criticising on Facebook international Azerbaijani footballer Javid Huseynov for making a politically sensitive gesture at a match between his club Gabala and a Cypriot team. Police have detained six men, including Mr Huseynov.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 243, published on Aug. 14 2015)

Armenia to convict Russian soldier

AUG. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Russian military court sentenced soldier Valery Permyakov to 10 years in jail for desertion and then handed him over to Armenian officials who are building a case to try him for the stabbing to death of an entire family earlier this year. Permyakov had been serving at the Gyumri military base in Armenia, one of Russia’s largest overseas bases.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 243, published on Aug. 14 2015)

Kyrgyz court sentences Ex-Osh mayor

JULY 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan sentenced Melis Myrzakhmatov, a former mayor of Osh and a firebrand politician with a large following to 7 years in prison for various financial crimes. Myrzakhmatov was viewed as a potential destabilising influence. He has been on the run since January 2014, when he lost his mayoral seat.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Tajikistan limits government news

DUSHANBE, JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tajik government said official news should be sent first to the state news agency Khovar, prompting allegations of a media crackdown.

Bishkek-based Tajik news agency Ozodagon published a scan of the decree.

The decree said: “All official information, meetings of the Government of Tajikistan, the President of Tajikistan’s working visits within the country and abroad, international, republican and sectoral meetings should be provided first to Khovar state information agency, and only after that should be sent by the agency to other media.”

The authorities in Tajikistan have been limiting media freedom over the past few years. The West has accused Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon of increasingly authoritarian tendencies.

The new law is another step towards becoming a fully authoritarian state, said Dr Irshod Sulaymoni, an independent political analyst in Dushanbe.

“The decree essentially contradicts the laws, including the constitution, of Tajikistan and questions the reality of equal access to information given by the law,” he said. “I think that the decree is clearly intended to control the official news.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Georgian parliament passes banking law

JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament passed a final reading of a bill that strips supervision of the country’s commercial banking sector from the Central Bank. The World Bank had urged the government to drop the bill. President Giorgi Margvelashvili now has to sign the bill into law although he has said he may veto it.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Tajik court jails opposition member

JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Tajikistan jailed Jaloliddin Mahmudov, a senior official in the opposition Islamic Renaissance party, for illegally handling weapons, media reported. Opposition groups in Tajikistan have said that they are being unfairly targeted by the authorities.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Kyrgyzstan downgrades relations with the US

JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – BISHKEK – Kyrgyzstan downgraded bilateral relations with the US because of an award the State Department gave to an imprisoned ethnic Uzbek human rights defender last week, media reported.

Relations between the US and Kyrgyzstan have been worsening since the US military withdrew from an air base outside Bishkek last year. Since then, Kyrgyzstan has drifted towards Russia, joining its Eurasian Economic Union and adopting laws on foreign-funded NGOs and homosexuals which the US has said infringes civil liberties.

The award was given by the US State Department to Azimzhan Askarov. He was imprisoned in the south of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 after ethnic fighting killed nearly 400 people in the city of Osh. His supporters said that the charges, inciting violence, had been fabricated.

After Askarov’s son travelled to Washington to pick up the award, Kyrgyz PM Temir Sariyev signed a decree denouncing relations, which will come into effect on Aug. 20. The move will mean tax breaks awarded to US companies will be cancelled.

On the streets of Bishkek, reaction was mixed. Some people welcomed the tough stance by Mr Sariyev, others were cautious.

“In a couple of years, we will become a colony of Russia,” said a 30-year-old resident of Bishkek. “It is indeed bad that we are losing such assistance because Kyrgyzstan is a poor country.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)

Armenian constitution row heats up

JULY 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – YEREVAN — Armenia’s opposition accused President Serzh Sargsyan of trying to fiddle with the constitution so that he can run the country from parliament after he leaves the presidency in 2018.

Last week, Armenia’s Constitutional Court unveiled plans for a transition to a parliamentary democracy. Armenians are due to vote on the reforms in December.

The government has said a new system would strengthen democracy.

The opposition disagree.

“Serzh Sargsyan is carrying out the reform with one purpose only: to circumvent the constitutional ban on seeking a third term as president and thus extend his own power, Levon Zurabyan, the head of the ANC parliamentary faction,” said in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Armenia’s constitution currently concentrates power with the president. It limits him or her to two terms of five years, a ceiling that Mr Sargsyan will hit in 2018.

David Harutyunyan, an MP from the ruling Republican Party, defended the constitutional changes.

“The basic idea of constitutional reform is to prepare the country for a peaceful change of power, he told journalists at a press conference.

“The current constitution with a semi-hybrid form of government has brought some countries to a dangerous situation. For Armenia, it may have even more damaging consequences.”

There is precedent for reducing the power of the president and switching to a parliamentary democracy in the Central Asia and South Caucasus region.

Azerbaijani activists go on trial

JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Husband and wife Arif and Leyla Yunis will go on trial, accused of financial crimes, on July 27, a year after they were arrested, media reported. Both Arif and Leyla Yunis are high profile human rights defenders and their trial is almost certain to act as a flash-point.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)

Protesters challenge Kyrgyz labour law changes

JULY 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – BISHKEK — Dozens of people protested in central Bishkek against proposed changes to labour laws which they say will reduce the rights of temporary workers.

The main proposed changes focus on making it easier for foreign companies to hire and fire workers.

The government has argued that it needs to update labour laws to crackdown on the “shadow economy” where employers hire people for short periods but do not pay tax.

Protesters said the amendments would help foreign companies dodge paying social security and over-time.

The mood at the protest, which wound its way through central Bishkek under a cloudless blue sky, was angry but calm.

“We are against slavery,” one of the protesters’ banners said.

Many of the protesters were representatives of workers’ unions attached to mines, including the Kumtor mine in the east of the country owned by Toronto-based Centerra Gold. Kumtor is Kyrgyzstan’s single biggest industrial asset.

After the protest, the government said they would set up a working group to look at the demonstrators’ concerns.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)