Tag Archives: protest

Tajik military strikes cause protests

MAY 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s restive southeast is threatening to boil over again after a special forces operation near Khorog, capital of Gorno-Badakhshan region, led to four deaths and a week of protests.

The deaths and the subsequent protests underline the difficulty that Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon has in imposing central government will on this restive part of the country.

The target of the operation was given as drug traffickers. That, though, may have been a euphemism for a local anti-government warlord.

The special forces operation killed two people in broad daylight and injured several others, angering locals who then protested and tried to storm the security forces headquarters. Reports said that two protesters were killed and more injured when security forces fired on the crowd.

The whole operation is reminiscent of a security operation in the same area two years ago. Back then, the army had to virtually close off the area and engage in street to street fighting with rebels. Dushanbe may have committed another blunder in a part of the country where its authority has been limited ever since a civil war in the 1990s.

Gorno-Badakhshan, whose population backed the ill-fated United Tajik Opposition in that conflict, is a hub of anti-government resentment.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Ex-Kyrgyz President begged for help

MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an interview with Russian TV, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko described how former Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev phoned him from a forest in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 after fleeing protesters and begged him for help. Mr Lukashenko gave Mr Bakiyev residence in Belarus.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Kazakhstanis protest against Eurasian Union

MAY 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Astana detained 20 people demonstrating against the proposed Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), two days before Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan planned to sign it into existence. The EEU is designed to replace the Customs Union. Some analysts have said that it will morph from an economic club into a political group.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)

Kazakhstan unveils pension plan

May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin)- In 2020, Kazakhstan will probably introduce a new pension scheme that will deduct 5% of an employee’s wages and automatically place it in a government plan, the labour ministry told the Tengrinews website.

Employers will match this employee contribution.

It appears that these planned reforms haven’t been announced more widely and loudly because of a very real fear of upsetting people.

The risk for Kazakhstan is fairly obvious. In Armenia a similar plan triggered widespread demonstrations. The problem is that Kazakhstan and other former Soviet States need to reform and update their pension schemes.

Last year, the Kazakh labour sacked its ministers because of backlash over trying to make women retire at the same age as men.

Persuading Kazakhs to accept the latest plan is also likely to be a serious challenge for the Kazakh government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

Anti gay protesters march in Georgia

May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Orthodox groups rallied in Tbilisi against a new law designed to protect same-sex relationships. Media estimated that there were several hundred people at the rally, underlining the conservative nature of Georgian society. The Georgian Orthodox Church retains a lot of power in Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)

HRW pressures Uzbekistan on Andijan inquiry

MAY 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the US and the EU to press Uzbekistan to allow an independent inquiry into the killings at Andijan, in the east of the country nine years ago. Officially 187 people died when soldiers fired on a crowd, although government critics have said the real figure is far more.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)

Amnesty highlights torture in Uzbekistan

MAY 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – For its global campaign against torture, Amnesty International has focused its attention on Uzbekistan.

Amnesty said that torture in Uzbekistan is widespread and that it often passes without being punished. It said that the Uzbek security services often beat detainees and sometimes rape them in order to get a confession.

One of Amnesty’s five global case studies was of an Uzbek women who fled the country in 2005 after police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. She returned five years later, was detained at the airport and then sent to jail for trying to organise a revolution. Eye witnesses, according to Amnesty, said the woman’s face was bruised and that she looked unusually thin at her trial.

None of this is new, but it is still worth highlighting. It’s also worth highlighting that most countries in Central Asia have a poor record on torture and human rights.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)

Azerbaijani court jails youth activists

MAY 6 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s strong-handed approach to opposition activists may have reached a tipping point after rare scuffles between young anti-government campaigners and police.

The trigger was a judge’s decision to jail eight leaders of the NIDA anti-government youth movement to between six and eight years on charges of hooliganism, possessing drugs and explosives and intent to spread public disorder.

If the charges sound draconian and Soviet that’s because they are, say human rights activists. The authorities say that they are simply doing their job and protecting the state.

Over the past few years, the authorities in Azerbaijan have been steadily ramping up their campaign against anti-government activists.

Barely a month passes without an opposition figure appearing in a court on charges of hooliganism. These court appearances invariably end up with a jail sentence.

Police arrested all eight NIDA activists during demonstrations in Baku in March 2013 against the death of an army conscript in mysterious circumstances.

The verdict, although predictable, triggered scuffles outside the courthouse in Baku and more detentions. The violence was not particularly serious but it is still important. Although street demonstrations in Azerbaijan are sometimes tolerated, there is very little history of violence against the police.

There may, though, be more to come.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 183, published on May 7 2014)

Georgia’s anti-discrimination law fuels tension

MAY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament passed an anti-discrimination bill it needed to implement for further integration into the EU but the conservative Orthodox Church has said it will protest against it.

Media reported that Georgia’s parliament passed the law unanimously.

The bill, its supporters and its detractors, give a good insight into the division coursing through Georgian society between modernisers and traditionalists.

The EU, which Georgia is desperate to join, has called on legislation that protects the rights of minorities. This has been generally accepted by Georgians, although the conservative Orthodox Church continues to rile against it.

And the Orthodox Church in Georgia is powerful. Patriarch Ilia II is considered a genuine power-broker, politicians cosy up to religious leaders and priests lead demonstrations. Last year, priests led a march against a gay rights parade that triggered violence. Tolerance in modern day Georgia only goes so far.

For the Church, the new laws are virtually heresy and it has promised to protest against it. Their main difficulty with the law is its protection of homosexuality.

Patriarch Ilia II was succinct. “Not a single believer will accept such law,” he said.

For NGOs pushing for the new legislation it has also been a slight disappointment. They were disappointed that the law finally adopted had been watered down from its original state.

Expect more tension between modernisers and traditionalists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 183, published on May 7 2014)

US report says Turkmens are ready to protest

APRIL 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — People in Turkmenistan are increasingly willing in risk imprisonment to complain about the authorities, a report by the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said. Turkmenistan is one of the most repressive regimes in the world but REF/RL said that, anecdotally at least, people had become less afraid of the authorities.

(News report from Issue No. 182, published on April 30 2014)