AUG. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – People protesting against the alleged use of child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields have targeted South Korea’s Daewoo International Corporation, media reported. According to demonstrators Daewoo buys 5% of Uzbekistan’s cotton. The protests are a reminder of just how sensitive the use of Uzbek cotton is in western clothing.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
JULY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Georgia charged former president Mikheil Saakashvili with illegally breaking up an anti-government demonstration in 2007, taking over a television station and expropriating a businessman’s assets.
Mr Saakashvili, who has previously declined to appear in front of a court to face the charges, described them as politically motivated.
Georgian politics is sharply polarised and since the Georgian Dream coalition, led by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, came to power in the parliamentary elections in 2012 and the presidential vote in 2013 it has chased and charged Mr Saakashvili’s former associates with various crimes.
Both the EU and the US have criticised the Georgian Dream for persecuting former high-ranking officials but, despite Georgia’s continued pro-Western agenda, they have been unable to stop the charges.
Mr Saakashvili left Georgia last year, after the presidential election, to avoid facing charges which he said would be fabricated and levied against him.
The United States considered Mr Saakashvili a key ally and charges levied against him will irritate them.
“Commitment to the rule of law means both that everyone must comply with the law in a democratic society and that the legal system should not be used as a tool of political retribution,” the US State Department said in a statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)
JULY 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new report released by the Kyrgyz government’s main think tank, the National Institute of Strategic Studies (NISS), said that joining the Customs Union (CU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU) may trigger short term economic and social discomfort.
The report is the first serious analysis of the costs and benefits of membership carried out by the government itself. It will make for troubling reading for President Almazbek Atambayev who is still trying to sell the idea of membership of the CU/EaEU to the general public.
Membership of the CU will probably trigger inflation which may lead to political unrest and possibly even a rise in Islamic radicalism, the report said. The Macroeconomic situation may subsequently improve, the report added, without making predictions as to how long that might take.
The report also stressed several benefits of the CU, including duty-free oil imports from Russia — a benefit Kyrgyzstan already enjoys — and security via the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Kyrgyzstan is already a member.
On Kyrgyzstan’s frail democracy, the report was also incisive. Parliamentarianism would be better developed outside the EaEU than inside it, while norms of governance and nationalist sentiment in Russia could hamper Kyrgyzstan’s political development, the report said.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Concerned about possible unrest connected with electricity price increases, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan has ordered his policy chiefs to investigate whether it can soften the price rises for less well-off families, media reported.
Last month Armenia announced that it would increase the price for electricity by 10% form Aug. 1, its first price increase in two years.
Opposition politicians have said that the price increase will trigger inflation across the country and that this is just the first of several price planned price rises.
Armenia’s government has already had to negotiate through a difficult year.
A government resigned because of public unhappiness over its pension reform plans, economic growth estimates have been downgraded because of sanctions on Russia and now an electricity price increase threatens to erode the government’s popularity further.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JULY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prisoners in a jail in western Kazakhstan rioted over conditions, media reported. Human rights groups regularly complain to Kazakhstan about conditions that it keeps prisoners in. An official told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the riot had been quashed by law enforcement officers.
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
TBILISI/Georgia, JULY 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — From Basquiat to Banksy, politically charged street art has been a fixture of western cities for decades. Now, though, the walls and underpasses of Georgian capital Tbilisi are becoming an open-air gallery for a similar sort of subversive expression.
“It started after the war,” 34-year-old Natia, who runs workshops for aspiring street artists, said referring to the 2008 war with Russia. “One of our friends started using a stencil of Putin’s face, and people just got more creative.”
Today, that protest focuses on two of the most important issues for Georgia’s increasingly vocal liberal youth — gay rights and the decriminalization of marijuana. Graphic artist Musya Qeburia, 23, witnessed a police raid in June on her friend’s party. The police detained several guests for urine tests.
“They just came and took them for no reason, I was angry,” she said. In response, she erected what has become Tbilisi’s most celebrated piece, a line of figures, including Yoda, Super Mario and Brussels statue the Manneken Piss queuing to offer urine samples to a pair of Georgian police officers, one of whom looks like Chuck Norris (see photo on page 1).
The piece went viral on social networks, and according to Musya it has had a big impact.
But the reaction is not always positive. Rusa, 29, with three friends repainted a prominent central Tbilisi staircase in the colours of the rainbow flag, the symbol of gay rights.
“It was a silent, anonymous protest, silent because of the violence last year,” said Rusa, referring to an anti-gay riot in Tbilisi in 2013. “There were pictures of the staircase, people noticed. Then two days later city hall came and destroyed the staircase and reconstructed it (without the paint).”
Musya is undeterred. “They can only destroy,” she said. “They can’t make anything beautiful.”
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(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)
JUNE 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijani opposition activists protested outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg during a speech by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The protesters wore red T-shirts with pictures of different people in Azerbaijani jails who they say have been jailed for political reasons.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian rebel region of South Ossetia said that it now recognised the Luhansk People’s Republic as an independent state, media reported. Luhansk is a region in east Ukraine were pro-Russia separatists are fighting central government forces. South Ossetia declared independence in 2008 after a war between Russia and Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Reports on the internet have surfaced which suggest that unrest may be brewing in Karakalpakstan, the remote western region of Uzbekistan. Karakalpakstan is officially an autonomous republic although in practice this mean little. Reports said protesters demonstrating at job cuts at a gas processing plant had been arrested.
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)
JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Workers at an oil services company that supplies equipment to the Kashagan oil project in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea have gone on strike, media reported.
Since a strike by oil workers in west Kazakhstan ended in 2011 in clashes with police and 15 people being killed, the authorities have been ultra-sensitive to industrial action, so news that workers have walked out of Tuplar Energy Serves Company (TESCO) complaining of late salary payments will frustrate them.
TESCO have responded that their main client, the Australian company WorleyParsons hasn’t paid their invoices on time. WorleyParsons hasn’t commented.
The importance of this latest strike action in west Kazakhstan is not who is ultimately responsibly, no doubt lawyers will thrash this out, but the impact on the local community. If people aren’t working and aren’t being paid that means less cash in the local economy, increasing frustration and resentment of the increasingly rich political elite.
One disgruntled worker told the lada.kz news website: “I came here to work and establish a family, now I can’t find another job, the company hasn’t paid me for six months and the banks are pressuring me about my mortgage.”
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(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)