Tag Archives: politics

Turkmen President promotes his son

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Serdar Berdymukhamedov, son of Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, was appointed to an unspecified post in the country’s foreign ministry, the opposition website Alternative News Turkmenistan reported. According to the report, Serdar Berdymukhamedov previously worked in the now-dismissed state agency responsible for hydrocarbon resources.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Azerbaijanian authorities release Iranian assets

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Iranian government said that Azerbaijan’s authorities had decided to release assets belonging to Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO) and the Central Bank of Iran, as part of the relaxation of international sanctions against Iran. Mohsen Pak Ayeen, Iran’s Ambassador to Baku, said that a total of $400m held at the International Bank of Azerbaijan were released by local courts.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Kazakh officials arrest head of construction department

JULY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh anti-corruption agency ordered the arrest of Yerkin Bukharbayev, head of the construction department in the city of Shymkent, southern Kazakhstan. Mr Bukharbayev is accused of having embezzled public funds during a tender in 2013 to improve the flow of the Badam river which runs through the city. Bukharbayev and his associates allegedly stole 170m tenge ($1.1m at the time).

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Armenia to ban Turkish products

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia plans to ban the import of 50 Turkish products into Armenia, officially because they fail to meet new safety standards, a move that could reduce its overall imports from Turkey by up to 20%, Vazgen Safaryan, head of the lobby group Union of Domestic Producers, told local media.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Turkmen President urges to vote on new constitution

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov ordered the Council of Elders to vote on a new constitution in mid-September. The Council of Elders is an advisory body chaired by Mr Berdymukhamedov widely believed to rubber-stamp his diectorates. A proposed new constitution that would effectively extend Mr Berdymukhamedov’s term as president was published in February.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Zhirayr Sefilyan: A radical Armenian war hero

JULY 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Charismatic and enigmatic, Zhirayr Sefilyan, exists on the fringe of Armenia’s fractious political spectrum. He was virtually unknown outside Armenia until an armed group of his supporters captured a police station in southern Yerevan on July 17, killed a police commander and took several people hostage.

Clashes between anti-government protesters and police followed and now Sefilyan is spoken of in foreign ministries from Russia to the United States.

The slim 49-year-old has the air of a radical outsider. A Lebanese- Armenian, Sefilyan was a young army officer during the war that Azerbaijan and Armenia-backed forces fought in the early 1990s for control of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

As an infantry commander, Sefilyan played a key role one of the greatest victories for the Armenia-backed rebels when they captured the city of Shusha.

This battle on May 8 1992 is fixed in Armenian lore, as the point when the war for Nagorno-Karabakh turned in their favour.

Until that point they had been on the backfoot.

After taking Shusha, despite being outnumbered and out-gunned, the Armenia-backed rebels scored a number of victories and rolled back the Azerbaijani forces until a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1994 ended the war.

Afterwards, Sefilyan led veteran groups and campaigned for better pensions, housing and rights. An intense man, his political views appeared to harden over the years and he drifted more and more towards the fringe of the political spectrum. His Founding Parliament movement calls for an overhaul of politics, accusing politicians of corruption. It has never taken part in an election and its support is estimated at a few thousand.

At the movement’s core is Sefilyan. He has now been arrested three times — in 2007, 2015 and in June 2016.

In June, police arrested Sefilyan for possessing illegal weapons. This arrest triggered the hostage-taking in Yerevan on July 17 and the subsequent clashes between protesters and police.

So far one policeman has been killed when armed men captured the police station and more than 50 people have been injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.

Sefilyan, the fringe radical, has now taken centre stage in Armenia’s politics.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Armed group captures Armenian capital police station

JULY 17-21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian police and and anti-government supporters clashed sporadically throughout the week outside a police station in Yerevan that was captured on Sunday by gunmen calling for the release of a jailed opposition leader.

The clashes were the worst in Yerevan since demonstrators fought police over plans to increase electricity prices in July and August 2015.

Most of the fighting between protesters and police was small-scale but on Wednesday night riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesters. The protesters responded by throwing stones and charging the police. Media reported that 51 people, including 28 policemen, were injured. Police made three arrests.

PM Hovik Abrahamyan dismissed both the protesters and hostage-takers.

“What happened in the police precinct is inadmissible and should be condemned, since real changes cannot be achieved through violence,” he told the media.

As Armenia’s economy stagnates, frustration is rising making flash- points, more common.

Now, mainly angry young Armenians, have latched on to the arrest of Zhirair Sefilyan, the leader of a little- known opposition group, called the Founding Parliament movement, as a cause through which to vent their frustration.

Sefilyan was arrested last month for plotting a coup. His supporters have said the charges are false and have been spread to undermine the former military commander.

One policeman was killed during the attack on the police station. The stand-off around the police station continues.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Azerbaijan closes TV station after it tried to broadcast Gulen interview

JULY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Azerbaijan suspended the Azerbaijani News Service (ANS), a popular privately owned TV station, after it said it would broadcast an interview it had taken in the US with Fathullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of masterminding a coup attempt.

Azerbaijan’s National Council for Television and Radio called the interview “propaganda” aimed at “undermining the strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and Turkey”. It immediately suspended ANS’s licence for one month and also took action to rescind it permanently.

Western governments have previously accused the Azerbaijani authorities of cracking down on any media considered even vaguely awkward. In 2015, it expelled the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Seen as mildly pro-government, over the past few years ANS has exercised a degree of independence and, until now, it was not affected by the government-led crackdown against dissenting media outlets.

Kenan Aliyev, an Azerbaijani journalist and former director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani Service, called ANS’s closure despicable.

“ANS will suffer for a month and later they will be allowed to work but with less independence and more self-censorship,” Mr Aliyev told The Conway Bulletin. “There is no free press under the current regime.”

Mr Gulen is a former ally of Mr Erdogan. He has denied any link to the July 15 failed coup attempt. Azerbaijan and Turkey are close allies and, following Turkey’s lead, Azerbaijan has cracked down on institutions and officials with Gulen links, including stripping the Qafkas University in Baku of its independence.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Kazakh court fines opposition newspaper

ALMATY, JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a case that media freedom lobbyists say shows how Kazakhstan is muzzling independent media, a court in Almaty ordered the opposition newspaper Tribuna/ Ashyk Alan to pay 5m tenge ($14,836) in damages to government official Sultanbek Syzdykov after it described him as corrupt for stealing 23m tenge ($68,249) from the budget of the 2011 Asian Games.

Although police launched an investigation into Mr Syzdykov, the court ruled that the newspaper could not describe him as corrupt because he had repaid the amount he had stolen.

Denis Krivosheyev, the Tribuna journalist who wrote the story, said that the verdict was nonsense.

“This government official was convicted of corruption,” he told reporters outside the court. “It is a fact that no one denies.”

Western government and media freedom groups have accused Kazakhstan of cracking down on free speech. Earlier this year, Guzyal Baidalinova, editor of the opposition Nakanune.kz website, was convicted of slander against Kazkommertsbank, Kazakhstan’s largest bank. She was released from prison, also on July 12, although her guilty sentence remains.

The government has cracked down on the media this year, partly as a reaction to a worsening eco- nomic outlook and to increasing unrest in the country.

Yermurat Bapi, a trustee of the journalists’ union in Kazakhstan told The Conway Bulletin that the media environment was worsening.

“This authoritarian system that was developed over 15 to 20 years has become obsolete, it is dying and with its last gasp is trying to preserve and protect itself through bans, persecutions and the courts,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Kyrgyz Election Commission unseats MP

JULY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission unseated MP Jyrgalbek Samatov after proving he had used fake documents to lodge his candidacy for a parliamentary election in October last year. The government’s election watchdog found that Mr Samatov had not relinquished his double Russian-Kyrgyz citizenship ahead of the election, which made him automatically unelectable. Mr Samatov later said he would sue the Commission.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)