APRIL 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The former head of Kazakhstan’s journalist union, Seitqazy Mataev, has had his sentence for embezzlement and tax evasion cut to 2 years and 8 months from the 6 years he was given in October. Media reports said that the sentence cut was granted to Mataev in December in a presidential amnesty.
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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)
APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Astana found union leader Nurbek Kushakbayev, guilty of organising an illegal strike in January and sentenced him to 2-1⁄2 years in prison. His supporters say the sentence is harsh and that the court was being politicised. Kushakbayev had been deputy chairman of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions which was closed on the orders of a court in Shymkent. The government has been trying to curtail the power of the trade unions.
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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)
MARCH 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A lawyer working on a human rights case in Tajikistan has fled the country fearing for her safety, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported, just the latest in a series of anti- government activists who have moved into self-imposed exile. RFE/RL said that they had spoken to Muazzama Qodirova who was now in Germany where she hoped to apply for asylum. She had been working on defending jailed human rights lawyer, Buzurgmehr Yorov. Free speech and human rights groups have complained of the Tajik government’s increasingly dictatorial approach to governing.
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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)
MARCH 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a move that appears designed to outmanoeuvre a directive by Georgia’s Supreme Court to hand control of the Rustavi-2 TV channel to a pro-government businessman, the TV channel owners said that they wanted to give their shares to a company called Rustavi-2 is Mine ltd that is owned by its journalists and other employees. Earlier this year, the European Court for Human Rights stepped in and blocked the Georgian Supreme Court’s order to hand over control of Rustavi-2, which is fiercely critical of the government, to Kibar Khalvashi, who said he had been stripped of control of the TV channel by former Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
MARCH 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> What is the International Crises Group and why is it important to discuss its report on the first 100 days of Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s rule in Uzbekistan?
>> The International Crisis Group, or ICG, is a think tank based in Brussels. It draws most of its funding from Western governments and reports on some of the world’s long-running problem areas. It is influential. One of the areas it reports on is Central Asia and this report, on Mirziyoyev’s first 100 days as Uzbek president, is one of the first major efforts to evaluate his influence over the region’s most populous country.
>>How does the ICG view Mirziyoyev?
>>Essentially, positive with a strong dose of caution. Like others, the ICG welcomed moves by Mirziyoyev to improve relations with neighbours and has also said there are signs he wants to change the economy which has operated under a pseudo-Soviet centrally controlled system since the 1992 break up of the USSR. But the report’s authors also sounded a serious, and wise, note of caution. They pointed out that Mirziyoyev had been PM under Islam Karimov when the current system, designed to protect the elite, was devised.
>> Got it. What, according to ICG, are the most serious issues facing Mirziyoyev?
>> To start with, the ICG said that Mirziyoyev needs to shore up support within the ranks of the Uzbek elite. Without this support he will fail to update the system. It pointed to a government reshuffle at the start of the year which had improved things but said that he still needed to patch up his differences with Rustam Azimov, an ex-finance minister, and Rustam Inoyatov, the head of the National Security Service.
>> What about ordinary Uzbeks? Does ICG have any insight on how they view their new president?
>> Only a smattering of anecdotal evidence that suggests that Mirziyoyev is going about things the right way and that he has started out with a degree of popularity. ICG quoted a 55-year-old teacher in the Fergana Valley saying: “Mirziyoyev is a person who knows Uzbekistan’s real picture, he can make things better.”
>> And to sum up?
>> The ICG broadly welcomed Mirziyoyev’s first 100 days in office, although it also said that more is needed. It did urge foreign powers to work more closely with Uzbekistan under Mirziyoyev to ensure reforms that have been hinted at come through and don’t become early-day regime hubris.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
YEREVAN, MARCH 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Armenia arrested influential opposition activist Samvel Babyan for allegedly smuggling a surface-to-air shoulder-launched missile into the country.
Mr Babyan’s supporters said that the accusations were absurd and that they were politically motivated. Two other men were also arrested with Mr Babyan.
The arrest comes just days before a tense parliamentary election in Armenia, the first under a new constitution that will shape Armenian politics for the next few years. Under constitutional amendments, power will shift from the president to parliament.
And Mr Babyan, a former defence minister in the Armenia-backed government of Nagorno-Karabakh, publicly supports the Ohanyan-Raffi-Oskanyan bloc, named after three former government ministers who now lead the opposition to the ruling Republican Party.
They condemned his arrest.
“This behaviour exercised by the government is aimed at spreading the atmosphere of fear and affecting the results of the elections in an illegal way,” the Reuters news agency quoted their statement as saying.
Armenia’s security services said that the two men had been caught smuggling the missile in from Georgia, in order to deliver it to Mr Babyan. Although he has denied the charges, Mr Babyan’s reputation as a tough guy will mean that many ordinary Armenia’s will take the authorities’ view.
In 2000 he was sent to prison for 14 years for trying to assassinate a former leader of Nagorno-Karabakh. Released in 2004 he moved to Russia and only moved back to Armenia last year.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Only a UN negotiated peace deal in 1994 ended the fighting, although the peace remains shaky.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
MARCH 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Kyrgyzstan froze the bank accounts of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kyrgyz service and the website Zanoza.kg, which are both facing libel charges from the government for allegedly defaming President Almazbek Atambayev. The two media units deny the charges and have said that, instead, they are victims of the Kyrgyz government’s increasingly vitriolic attack on the free media.
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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)
MARCH 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan expelled a high-profile Russian journalist, triggering an angry response from Russia’s embassy in Bishkek. Officially, Girgory Mikhailov, the Kyrgyzstan bureau chief for the Regnum news agency was expelled for failing to register properly. Mr Mikhailov, who has worked in Kyrgyzstan since 2002, said that he had not committed any infringements and that he didn’t know the real reason for his expulsion.
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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)
MARCH 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tajikistan extended by two years a jail sentence imposed on human rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov who was imprisoned in October 2016 for 23 years for allegedly calling for a coup. At his trial, Yorov called the allegations against him politically motivated. He then read out a verse from a poem likening officials to fools, leading to a charge of contempt of court and the additional two year prison sentence which have now been passed down.
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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)
MARCH 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The influential New York-based Human Rights Watch described the imprisonment of Azerbaijani blogger Mehman Huseynov for slander in February as a “new low even for Azerbaijan”. Rights groups have been complaining that the Azerbaijani authorities have been crushing dissenting voices for years using slander and libel laws. Azerbaijani officials have refuted this and said instead that the West was intent on fomenting a revolution in Azerbaijan. Huseynov was well- known for reporting on official corruption.
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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)