APRIL 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Greece arrested Data Akhalaia, the former head of Georgia’s intelligence agency, when he tried to cross the border into Italy on a fake passport one month ago, media reported. Mr Akhalaia is wanted in Georgia for involvement in a murder in 2006.
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(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)
APRIL 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh courts badly need to root out corruption, Kazakhstan’s Secretary of State Adilbek Dzhaksybekov said. His comments are a rare admission from a Kazakh government official that more needs to be done to reform corruption institutions.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — With the carrot of closer EU ties dangling before it, the Georgian government introduced a long delayed anti-discrimination bill to parliament.
The bill, whose passage is necessary to conclude a visa-free travel deal with the EU, is meant to provide protection against discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, colour, gender, religion and sexual orientation. In highly conservative, macho Georgia, discrimination still persists.
A first draft, prepared by the Justice Ministry together with civil society groups, was ready in January and it had envisaged financial penalties for state and private sector institutions that broke the law.
After consultation with various lawmaker, though, the new draft ditched these provisions.
Human Rights activist Tamta Mikeladze, who helped draft the original version, is disappointed. She said the Georgian Orthodox Church lobbied the government to water down the original version.
“I can’t say whether this will be enough for the EU to grant visa-free travel, but I can tell you that it’s not enough to protect minorities from discrimination,” she said.
The government wants to pursue EU integration and pander to the demands of the Church, a powerful group, which contains many anti-European elements. One of its major fears is that it will be forced to accept same-sex marriages.
It remains to be seen if this anti-discrimination bill will be enough to either persuade the EU that Georgia deserves visa-free travel and if it will improve the plight of minorities in the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 180, published on April 16 2014)
APRIL 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Tajik court ordered the state to re-nationalise a garment plant owned by Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian businessman held in Vienna on criminal charges, because it had been illegally privatised. Critics of the Tajik government accused it of using Ukraine’s crisis to seize assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — With Russia’s annexation of Crimea firmly in mind, Kazakhstan’s parliament is likely to pass laws that will criminalise separatist action, media reported. Kazakhstan’s north is home to a large Russian minority which it worries will follow the example of Crimea and try to join Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
TBILISI/Georgia, APRIL 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – – Irakli, a dreadlocked Tbilisi street artist, was in a whiney mood.
“For two years it has been impossible to get real marijuana in Tbilisi,” he said. Marijuana grows naturally across Georgia, and is widely consumed recreationally in the south and northwest. In Tbilisi, however, strict drug laws and stiff sentences make it tough to find.
For Irakli, and many other young Georgians, the solution is something they call ‘bio’, synthetic marijuana sold over the internet. Manufactured in China and the Netherlands, it consists of chemicals in powder form or sprayed over tea and dried herbs so as to be easily smoked. Sold in $20 foil sachets marked ‘Incense’, orders are delivered to a Georgian post office.
Bio has taken over the Tbilisi club and party scene. In recent months, synthetic approximations of cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs have become more widely available, all marketed under the name of ‘bio’.
The craze has not gone unnoticed by the country’s authorities, which amended the drug laws to criminalize the possession and sale of synthetic drugs. But the police have no test for it unlike for real marijuana, said Irakli.
“They can’t test you and they can’t test what you are smoking,” he said. “Nobody knows what is in it.”
Whatever is in it, it can have lethal effects. In February a man died at a central Tbilisi nightspot. He was thought to have consumed a large quantity of synthetic drugs.
“Of course it’s more dangerous, but if the law changes people will stop smoking it,” Irakli said.
That seems unlikely. Pro-legalisation protests in 2013 may have attracted more than a thousand people but the interior ministry is staunchly against any relaxing of the drug laws.
For now at least the clubbers of Tbilisi will keep taking bio, and the associated risks.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
APRIL 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the government’s flagship pension reforms were illegal, triggering a fresh crisis at the top of the Armenian political spectrum.
The ruling was a major blow to the government which has stubbornly stuck to its pension reform agenda despite increasing levels of public discontent. It also appeared to come as a surprise.
The following day Tigran Sargsyan resign as Armenia’s PM, although he did not link his resignation explicitly with the Court’s ruling. There have been perpetual rumours about his health and other job offers.
Later this month, the government also faces a vote of no confidence in parliament. Opinion polls have shown that its popularity has sunk to fresh lows.
And most of this unpopularity stems from the pension reforms.
Thousands have marched against changes which were introduced at the start of the year. The reforms stated that everybody born after Jan. 1 1974 would have to pay 5% of their salary into a state pension fund. The state has promised to match private contributions to the pension fund up to a maximum of $61 per month.
But now the Constitutional Court has ruled that the pension reforms introduced by the government restrict the rights of its citizens.
The problem for Armenia is, similarly to other countries in the former Soviet Union, it simply has to reform its state pension system to pay for its aging population and to compensate for the large grey economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 179, published on April 9 2014)
MARCH 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Ashgabat are stopping couples from kissing and holding hands in public, Chronicles of Turkmenistan, an opposition website based in Vienna, reported. Chronicles of Turkmenistan said police were trying to impose a morality code.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a similar move to Russia’s controversial law of 2013, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament published a draft bill that would outlaw spreading information about gay issues. The bill is currently only published online for public discussion but this is the first step to turning it into law.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)
APRIL 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Under new rules designed to quash Islamic radicals, internet cafes in Uzbekistan will have to install surveillance cameras. The order was signed into law on March 19. Uzbekistan has increased surveillance generally, angering human rights campaigners.
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(News report from Issue No. 178, published on April 2 2014)