NOV. 4 (The Bulletin) — US NGO Freedom House said that free speech in Kazakhstan, alongside Sudan and Brazil, had deteriorated rapidly over the past 12 months. It said that the drop in free speech coincided with the handover of power from Nursultan Nazarbayev to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and that the government had tried to “monopolise the mobile market and implement real-time electronic surveillance”.
ENDS
— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin
NOV. 6 (The Bulletin) — The authorities in Belarus refused an extradition request made by the Tajik government for opposition activist Farhod Odinaev because of potential torture concerns. The Belarussian authorities had arrested Mr Odinaev in September as he travelled from Russia to Poland for a conference. Mr Odinaev had been a member of the now-banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan.
ENDS
— This story was first published in issue 428 of the weekly Bulletin
Aug. 7 (The Bulletin) — Kazakhstan halted the roll-out of an internet programme that had been heavily criticised as a surveillance system. After several international free speech and human rights organisations had complained that Kazakh telecoms companies were forcing users to install snooping software onto their browsers, Kazakhstan’s State Security Committee said that the rollout had been a test and was never meant to be comprehensive.
ENDS
— This story was first published in issue 418 of the weekly Bulletin
ALMATY/July 22 (The Bulletin) — Free speech groups accused Kazakh telecoms provider Kcell of trying to strong-arm its customers into installing a piece of spyware that will allow the authorities to snoop on their internet activity.
Kcell responded by saying that the software was not mandatory and that it was designed to protect the end user rather than spy on them.
Internet users in Kazakhstan, though, have said that when they avoided installing the software they
have been redirected to webpages telling them that the internet will be limited without the extra Kcell software.
Advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in New York, Courtney Radsch, said: “Authorities in Kazakhstan have a long history of jailing, censoring, and harassing journalists, and this effort to protect citizens from ‘dangerous content’ should be viewed with the utmost scepticism.”
ENDS
— This story was first published in issue 417 of the weekly Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin
JAN. 29 (The Conway Bulletin) — Karin Strenz, a German MP from the ruling Christian Democratic Party, has become the first parliamentarian to be punished by his/her home country for taking cash and gifts from Azerbaijan between 2012-14, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
HRW said that on Jan. 18 Germany’s Bundestag had ruled that Ms Strenz had broken parliamentary rules in a “cash-for-lobbying” scandal that has been dubbed by anti-corruption campaigners as the “Azerbaijani Laundromat”. Ms Strenz faces a fine of up to $68,000. She has also faced calls from within the Christian Democratic Party to resign.
But, critically for HRW, Ms Strenz is the only one of 16 members of the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe (PACE) to be punished by their national parliaments since being thrown out of PACE for taking the gifts and cash in exchange for defending Azerbaijan’s human rights record.
In a statement, Hugh Williamson, HRW’s director for Europe and Central Asia, said: “This is the most shocking aspect…Let’s hope politicians in Spain, Belgium, and other parliaments hit by the scandal will quickly follow the Bundestag’s lead. It’s about standing up for human rights in Azerbaijan, and in Europe as a whole.”
Last year, PACE published a report that described a patronage and influence network set up by Azerbaijan to help it steer debates in the Assembly where people were openly criticising Baku’s human rights record.
Over the past decade, Azerbaijan has jailed dozens of opposition activists and journalists for financial crimes and drug smuggling, charges that many have said have been fabricated.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is sensitive to criticism from Europe, particularly because, at the time, he had been trying to secure a major gas supply deal.
The PACE report in 2018 said that Italian Luca Volonte was at the centre of the 2.4m euro corruption scandal to buy support in the Assembly for Azerbaijan.
He is being investigated in Italy for corruption, although a court in Milan cleared him of money laundering February 2018.
END
>This story was first published in issue 398 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 31 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019
JAN. 12 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Khujand, north Tajikistan, sentenced journalist Khayrullo Mirsaidov to eight months in prison in absentia for breaking the conditions of his earlier release from prison by fleeing the country. Mr Mirsaidov left Tajikistan shortly after a court released him from prison in August 2018. He had been given a 12-year prison sentence earlier in 2018 for various financial crimes but was released after international pressure. Mr Mirsaidov said the charges had been fabricated after he complained of corruption.
END
>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
JAN. 15 (The Conway Bulletin) — Several Azerbaijani opposition activists and journalists, including award-winning investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, joined jailed blogger Mehmen Huseynov in a hunger strike. Huseynov, 26, was jailed for defamation in 2017. He had been nearing the end of his jail sentence when the authorities said that that they were charging him with attacking a prison officer. The charges could add seven years to his sentence. Huseynov and his supporters have said the charges have been fabricated to silence him. Azerbaijan is already considered to have a poor record for human and media rights. The added attention of the hunger strike will further dent its reputation.
END
>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019
JAN. 10 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Azerbaijan to pay journalist Khadija Ismayilova 16,750 euros compensation for failing to investigate a 2012 blackmail campaign against her that hinged around an online sex video.
The ruling damages Azerbaijan’s already-poor reputation for media rights just as it prepares to become a major gas supplier to Europe.
Azerbaijan “had had a duty to investigate. However, there had been significant flaws and delays in the investigation, even though there had been obvious leads,” the ECHR said in a statement.
The ECHR, though, stopped short of blaming the Azerbaijani government for the blackmail. “It had not been possible to establish ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that the State itself had been responsible for the very serious invasion of Ms Ismayilova’s privacy,” it said.
Her supporters said the government tried to intimidate Ms Ismayilova, one of Azerbaijan’s most high-profile journalists, because she had been investigating corruption claims against Azerbaijani Pres. Ilham Aliyev.
When it failed, her supporters said, officials fabricated evidence that she had been involved with corruption. She served 537 days in prison, being released in May 2016. Azerbaijani officials have not commented.
This year, Azerbaijan is expected to start pumping gas from its Caspian Sea fields to Europe along the so-called Southern Gas Corridor.
END
>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019
FEB. 5 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz president Sooronbai Jeenbekov dropped a $73,500 libel suit against the 24.kg news agency for publishing a story which said that he and his brother had ties to “radical Arab organisations”. Although he wants damages, Mr Jeenbekov’s decision to drop the libel suit will play well to free speech activists who have accused Kyrgyzstan of adopting some its neighbours’ autocratic leanings. Mr Jeenbekov’s predecessor, Almazbek Atambayev, was notoriously litigious and wouldn’t baulk at bankrupting media outlets.
ENDS
>>This story was first published in issue 360 of The Conway Bulletin
BISHKEK, JAN 4 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in the Kyrgyz capital sentenced Kanatbek Isaev, an opposition politician, to 12 years in prison for corruption after a high profile trial that critics of the government described as a politically motivated farce.
The imprisonment of Isaev, who was arrested in May, five months before a presidential election, further crushes opponents of President Sooronbay Jeenbekov and his ally and predecessor Almazbek Atambayev.
It has also triggered a wave of criticism over the Kyrgyz authorities apparent selective clampdown on corruption which has focused on critics of the government — politicians, businessmen and journalists.
Discussing press freedom in Kyrgyzstan, CIVICUS Alliance, a global network of civil rights groups, said in a tweet: “The new president of #Kyrgyzstan has a choice: continue to attack government critics, or break with the legacy of his predecessor and allow for public discussion on the challenges facing the country.”
Last year, the popular news website Zanoza was fined $400,000 for insulting the president and an opposition TV station was closed down. On Dec. 19, police raided NTS, the TV station of Pres. Jeenbekov’s main rival in the October election Omurbek Babanov. He has fled abroad since his failed presidential bid, renounced his political ambitions and accused the authorities of closing down NTS.
Isaev, the jailed MP, is a former mayor of Tokmok and was a high profile supporter of Mr Babanov before his arrest. The corruption charges date back to 2008-10, when he was Tokmok mayor.
ENDS
— This story was first published on Jan. 5 2018 in issue 356 of The Conway Bulletin