SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s prosecutor-general ordered the exhumation of the body of former PM Zurab Zhvania and ally of former president Mikheil Saakashvili who died in 2005 allegedly of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater. Despite the official verdict of accidental death, suspicions around Zhvania’s death have persisted.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenian opposition groups have launched another round of anti- government protests, media reported. Around 2,000 people gathered for the first planned protest in a town outside Yerevan. Six more rallies are planned around the country with a final rally in central Yerevan on Oct. 10.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik president Emomalii Rakhmon will visit the city of Khorog in the east of the country for the first time since fighting between local forces and government soldiers in 2012, officials said.
The visit is, officially, part of countrywide tour by Mr Rakhmon but his trip to Khorog will also be seen as a show of strength in the troublesome area. Few would have been surprised if Mr Rakhmon had chalked the city off his tour. It remains a bastion of anti-government opposition where armed groups opposed to the regime in Dushanbe enjoy support from the local population, mostly ethnic Pamiris that have felt shortchanged ever since Mr Rakhmon’s political faction claimed victory in a five year civil war.
For much of the country’s first two decades of independence, Khorog was relatively stable. But a military operation launched by the government against local powerbrokers in July 2012 shattered the calm in the city. Both government and opposition forces suffered heavy losses.
In May this year, another smaller scale operation saw government agents kill three Khorog residents suspected of drug-smuggling, triggering two days of rioting.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
ALMATY/Kazakhstan, OCT. 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan is enjoying something of a renaissance in film-making but it’s not easy, as one young script-writer explained over tea.
Erlan Suluhan, 25, is one of many Kazakh students who received a scholarship from the US government to pursue their studies in the United States. Last year he returned from studying at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. One of his projects was a short movie depicting the adventures of an older woman who gets lost inside her own building.
“I was trying to find the turning point between the formation of one’s identity and the crisis that inevitably emerges,” he said in an interview in a cafe in Almaty.
He poured himself another cup of tea from a porcelain pot.
“Looking at Kazakhstan through the prism of the development of single identities could spark questions that are silenced nowadays within the society,” Suluhan said.
His film, 18’21, was acclaimed at the Cannes Festival this year. In Kazakhstan it was shunned.
KazakhFilm, the state-owned agency refused to support him, because he carried out his project independently. The message the film carried, about individualism, may have rankled too.
Still, KazakhFilm has been enjoying some success over the past couple of years. Last year another film by a Kazakh writer won the second prize at the Berlin Film Festival.
Looking ahead to his next film, Suluhan was sanguine about the complexities of writing films about personal choice in a Kazakhstan where the government places more emphasis on conformity.
“I don’t want to get explicitly political, because I don’t want to tell the audience what to think,” he said. “Instead, I’m interested in poking, rousing, inducing people to reflect on themselves by showing the significance of minor everyday chores and their impact on the creation of the self.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Bishkek ruled against plans by the government to increase fees on electricity and gas, media reported, argued for by reformers who have said that Kyrgyzstan needs to charge more for its utilities.The ruling is a blow for the government which has been working to modernise Soviet-era systems.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia swore in Raul Khajimba as its new president after he won an election in August. Georgia has described the election as illegal. Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia after a Georgia-Russia war in 2008. It is considered a Russian vassal state.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan denied entry to the country to an exiled opposition leader’s wife and son, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. RFE/RL said Bahodir Choriev’s wife and son had tried to enter Tashkent via a flight from Istanbul.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz PM Djoomart Otorbayev sacked two cabinet ministers, minister of culture Kamila Taliyeva and interior minister Abdyldy Suranchiyev, his first major reshuffle since taking over the job in March.
The sackings are a nod to public dissatisfaction with the government, with reports growing that many ministers are hanging on to their jobs by a thread.
But they may be less about improving the efficiency of government and more about preparations for next year’s parliamentary elections. With a winter energy crisis expected to put pressure on both President Almazbek Atambayev, affiliated to the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, and Mr Otorbayev, loosely associated with the socialist Ata-Meken party, dropping a few unpopular officials makes political sense.
Kyrgyz media reported that both the sacked ministers where disliked, making them easy scapegoats for failings across government but personnel changes are unlikely to spare the government public frustration if the winters are as cold as expected, especially with Kyrgyzstan’s power production struggling.
Ulugbek Erkeshev, a Kyrgyz political journalist, said he has seen it all before.
“At a time when they need to be working together as a government around the clock they are passing portfolios around,” he said.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is having to play a precarious balancing game to keep competing interests in and around Ukraine happy, Kazakh foreign minister Erlan Idrissov said in an interview with Reuters in New York.
Mr Idrissov was in the United States to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry to reaffirm the two countries’ friendly ties.
The complexity of Kazakhstan’s position is not just down to its geographically position but also because of its membership of the Kremlin-led Customs Union.
“We as a matter of principle support an independent, sovereign, forward-looking, advancing politically and economically Ukraine. That is the core of our policy towards Ukraine,” Mr Idrissov said in the interview.
“We take no sides.”
The United States and the EU have imposed economic sanctions on Russia which has slowed its economy and triggered a knock-on effect on neighbouring Central Asia. Russian economic growth powers Central Asian economies.
Mr Idrissov underlined the impact of sanctions on Kazakhstan. “The crisis prevents the entire area from focusing on economic development and delivering well-being to the population,” he said.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 10 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – It looks like the Kazakh president’s office is becoming more commercially-minded.
Media reported that it has trademarked the Akorda, or the presidential palace, and a handful of other buildings in Astana.
One of the trade-marked images of the blue-domed Akorda show the sun rising behind it, rays of light shining over its roof.
It’s unclear, currently, just what the presidential administration plan to do with the trademark other than boost the image of the building itself.
The Akorda, which means White Horde, was built in 200 and lies at the centre of Astana, the city at the focus of President Nazarbayev’s vision for Kazakhstan.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)