JAN. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan has formally asked Turkey to extradite Umarali Quvatov, an opposition figure who previously had good links to Tajik president Emmomali Rakhmon. In October the Tajik authorities banned Mr Quvatov’s organisation Group 24. They also said that they wanted to charge him with bribery.
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(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Former Georgian president Mikheil Saaksvhili accused the current Georgian government of turning a blind eye to the hundreds of Georgians who had crossed into Syria and were allegedly fighting for the extremist group IS. The comments by Mr Saakashvili, who is now based in New York, were widely broadcast in Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015
>>Murders trigger anger at Russian base>>
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Russian soldier serving at Russia’s vast military base at Gyumri in Armenia murdered six members of a family and went on the run before being captured, media reported.
The killings have raised tension around the base with dozens of demonstrators reportedly calling for an apology from the base commander.
Gyumri is one of Russia’s largest overseas bases with about 3,000 soldiers stationed there. Armenia’s government views it as an important counterbalance to increasing Azerbaijani military dominance in the region.
Russian officials said that the soldier, named as Private Valery Permyakov, had been captured trying to cross into Turkey a few hours after the murders. No reason for the murders has been given.
According to officials, Permyakov shot dead six members of a local family. The only survivor was a six-month-old boy who was stabbed.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tajikistan sentenced one of the country’s most prominent lawyers to nine years in jail for bribery and fraud.
Supporters of Sukhrat Kudratov, the jailed lawyer, said that his real crime was to defend opposition activist and former government official Zaid Saidov in 2013. Saidov was jailed for corruption as well as polygamy.
Certainly the case against Kudratov seems weak and the punishment meted out excessive.
On twitter, Steve Swerdlow of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said: “Jailing of Shurat Kudratov is a serious setback for the freedom of expression and the independent legal profession in Tajikistan.”
As well as being a high profile lawyer prepared to take on human rights cases that others would ignore, Kudratov was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, an opposition party. His name was on their list of candidates for a parliamentary election in March.
Human rights and democracy groups have long criticised Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon for his authoritarian policies. He has been Tajik president since the end of a civil war in the mid-1990s.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek Border Guard Service has beefed up its units along its frontier with Afghanistan, citing intelligence that the Taliban was mustering its forces, although some analysts and Afghan security officials questioned the level of the threat.
Central Asian governments have said that the withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan will worsen its own border security.
Two weeks ago, Zamir Kabulov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan said that the Taliban was planning a wide offensive on Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in April.
Even with the Russian warning and the Uzbek military build-up, the Tajik-language service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Afghan general Abdusabur Nusrati refuting reports of the Taliban build-up.
An Uzbek analyst who declined to be named was also sceptical over just how acute the Taliban threat was.
Instead he suggested that the move may be linked to the up and coming presidential election set for March 29. He said that the security issue may play into President Islam Karimov’s image as the tough man of Uzbekistan.
“The country is preparing for presidential elections in only three months,” he said. “To my mind this statements is another indication that he is eyeing another bid as president.”
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kazakh court extended the pre-trial house arrest of former PM Serik Akhmetov. Mr Akhmetov, who was arrested in November and accused of corruption, was Kazakh PM between Sept. 2012 and April 2014. His fall from grace highlights the fragile nature of power in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
>>Demonstration against closure of political magazine>>
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a rare show of public dissent in Kazakhstan, a small crowd gathered in Almaty to protest against the closure of weekly opposition newspaper Adam bol”.
Led by the newspaper editor, Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, a group of 25 journalists and activists walked across the Arbat, a pedestrian and commercial zone in the centre of the former capital shouting slogans and waving placards that challenged Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev to rescind the order to close the magazine.
Black-clad security officers stood to the side closely monitoring the protest.
“The presence of ‘men in black’ is always felt at these events,” Dina Baidildayeva a high-profile blogger who filmed the protest told the Bulletin.
The authorities in Kazakhstan have clamped down on political pluralism and media freedom over the past few years, especially in the wake of the Zhanaozen riots in west Kazakhstan in 2011 that killed at least 15 people. Allowing the Adam bol demonstration, therefore, was fairly remarkable.
The newspaper was shut down last November, after it published an article on Ukraine that highlighted Kazakhs fighting in the Ukrainian civil war. The article also questioned Russia’s role in the conflict.
Nate Schenkkan, Central Asia programme officer at the US media watchdog NGO Freedom House, said: “The article on Ukraine could have been just a pretext to do away with an uncomfortable publication for the leadership.”
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
DEC. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Kairat Kelimbetov, ex head of the Kazakh Central Bank, as head of the Astana Financial Centre, media reported. Mr Kelimbetov has kept a low profile since being sacked as head of the CBank in Nov. after two years in the job. The Astana Financial Centre is a state project to promote the Kazakh capital as an international finance centre.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
DEC. 29 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Senior officials, and perhaps even heads of government, from Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have tentatively agreed to meet in Astana for talks later this month on how to resolve the ongoing civil war in Ukraine. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is keen to project Astana as a global centre for conflict disputes.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 17 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan held a parliamentary election largely described as being designed to re-enforce the government’s authority. Only four pro-president parties were allowed to contest the election to the 150-seat lower house of parliament. Europe’s main election watchdog, the OSCE, said the election was uncompetitive.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)