Tag Archives: politics

Turkmen president to fly to Berlin

AUG. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was due to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, a rare European trip for Turkmenistan’s leader. The visit is likely to focus on potential gas supplies to Europe from Turkmenistan but human rights groups have been piling pressure on Ms Merkel to bring up their various human rights grievances with Mr Berdymukhamedov.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Azerbaijan starts Gulenist purge

AUG. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has started prosecuting people working in public offices allegedly linked to the exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen who Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of orchestrating a coup attempt against him in July, media reported. Azerbaijan is Turkey’s strongest ally in the region.

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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Kazakhstan frees opposition activist

AUG. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan released on parole one of its most prominent opposition politicians from prison after almost four years, drawing praise but also demands to release more dissidents.

Vladimir Kozlov, head of the Alga! party, walked out of prison after Kazakhstan’s highest court decreed that he should be freed early. He had been the most high profile activist arrested after an oil workers’ strike in the western city of Zhanaozen turned into a riot with police which killed at least 15 people in December 2011 after a strike lasting several months.

He was sent to prison for 7-1/2 years for inciting social discord, although his supporters have said that he was only trying to help the oil workers promote their cause.

Speaking at a press conference after his release, Mr Kozlov said that pressure from the European Union and other human rights groups had led to his release.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Mr Kozlov as saying that the EU had helped him “remain a human being” while in prison,

And the EU put out a brief statement too.

“The release on parole of the prominent Kazakh activist Vladimir Kozlov, who was imprisoned following the Zhanaozen events of 2011, is positive news,” it said.

“Further steps should now follow, leading to the full rehabilitation and release of all those civil society activists currently detained or under restriction of movement in Kazakhstan, in line with the country’s international commitments.”

Human rights groups have criticised Kazakhstan for cracking down on media and opposition groups heavily over the past few years. The Kazakh government has accused Mr Kozlov and others of being linked to coup plots.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Uzbek president nears death after stroke

AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov suffered a stroke on Saturday which left him with a brain haemorrhage, his daughter Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva said, setting up a succession battle over Central Asia’s most populous country.

Uzbekistan is, effectively, a lynchpin for stability in Central Asia. Its population of 31.5m is nearly as much as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan combined, it borders every other country in the region and had been the Soviet Union’s Central Asian administrative and logistical centre.

Under Mr Karimov’s rule, Tashkent lost out to Almaty as the commercial centre of Central Asia for Western multi-nationals but it still holds great sway at a more local level.

Mr Karimov has never publicly named a successor. His eldest daughter Gulnara Karimova, who had looked destined to succeed him fell from grace in 2014 over bribery allegations, leaving Uzbekistan set for a potentially messy succession battle.

Ms Karimova-Tillyaeva said her 78-year-old father had been hospitalised on Saturday after the stroke.

“At the moment it is too early to make any predictions about his future status,” she wrote on Instagram.

Uzbekistan is famed for its central role along the Silk Road, the fabled trade route several centuries ago that connected Europe and China.

Recently, though, Uzbekistan has earned a reputation for repression and for having a closed economy. Western companies have complained of state interference; accusations of slave labour have undermined Uzbekistan’s important cotton sector.

But the US, Russia and China — the major influences on Central Asia — will be hoping for a peaceful handover of power. The radical IS group has been growing in influence and the worry is that it may try to take advantage of any power vacuum.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Trial of journalists begins in Kazakhstan

AUG. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The trial of Seitkazy Matayev, head of Kazakhstan’s journalist union and his son, Asset, for embezzlement began. Mr Matayev had been the first press secretary to President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1991 and he had been presumed to be above a crackdown on the media this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)

Georgian president blocks gay rights referendum

AUG. 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili blocked a petition calling for a referendum that sought to enshrine an outright ban on gay marriages in Georgia’s Constitution. Supporters of the petition had argued for a referendum on the issue to be held at the same time as a parliamentary election in October.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Armenia’s president sacks security chiefs

AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan sacked Hrant Yepiskoposyan, first deputy director of the National Security Service, after partly blaming him for a two week stand-off with gunmen linked to an imprisoned opposition leader who had captured a police station in Yerevan.

The standoff ended after the gunmen gave themselves up but not before it had triggered street battles between supporters of Zhirayr Sefilyan, the imprisoned leader of the radical opposition group Founding Parliament and a hero veteran of the war in the 1990s with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Dozens of people were arrested during the clashes, the worst in Yerevan for more than eight years.

Three policemen were also killed during the standoff which ended on July 31. Police have said that they were shot dead by the gunmen who captured the police station.

The authorities refused to release Mr Sefilyan, a key demand of the gunmen, but the standoff did trigger a serious constitutional crisis for Mr Sargsyan and has damaged his standing.

Analysts said that the capture of the police station and the support that the hostage-takers appeared to garner from ordinary people showed the level of frustration at Mr Sargsyan and his supporters.

“Many of them were almost certainly taking an opportunity to protest against the status quo, rather than endorsing an act of violence,” analyst Thomas de Waal wrote on the Open Democracy website.

“But even that is an indication of how desperate many mainstream Armenians feel in the face of a political system which they feel has no place for them — and which, due to recent constitutional changes, is likely to see Sargsyan and his team retain their grip on power for many years.”

Since the stand-off ended, Mr Sargsyan has sacked senior security officials. Kevork Kostanyan also resigned as the country’s prosecutor-general.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Kyrgyz president supports constitutional changes

AUG. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev said that he supported a referendum that would tweak the constitution and shift more power from the president to the PM. In the aftermath of a revolution in 2010, Kyrgyzstan voted to give parliament and the PM more power, a shift to what Western analysts have often dubbed as Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy. Mr Atambayev said changes were needed to stop a new president taking too much power.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

People in Kyrgyz city burn posters

JULY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — People in Batken, south-western Kyrgyzstan, burned a government poster aimed at countering the growth of radical Islam which showed Kyrgyz women in traditional clothes transitioning into women wearing a full, black burqa. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev unveiled the poster this month as part of the fight against a recruitment drive in Central Asia by the radical IS group. The poster has proved controversial in Kyrgyzstan because of accusations that it is stigmatising conservative Muslims.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

PetroKazakhstan’s production shrinks in H1

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-traded upstream oil company KMG EP said its H1 2016 production shrank by 0.7% to 6.1m tonnes of oil. In particular, the company said that production slowed significantly at PetroKazakhstan’s operations in central Kazakhstan. KMG EP owns a 33% stake in PetroKazakhstan, while China’s CNPC owns the rest. KMG EP is a subsidiary of state-owned energy company Kazmunaigas.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)