Tag Archives: rights and freedoms

Turkmen authorities release RFE/RL reporter

Kazakh court detains editor

FEB. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Almaty ordered Zhanolat Mamay, editor of the independent Tribuna newspaper, to spend two months in pre-trial detention as police investigate accusations that he helped launder money stolen by exiled Kazakh opposition leader and former chairman of the now defunct BTA Bank Mukhtar Ablyazov. Mr Mamay’s supporters have said he has been detained because of a crackdown by the authorities against the media.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

Uzbek authorities release banker from jail

FEB. 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Uzbekistan have released Rustam Usmanov, who once owned a bank and a string of other business, after 19 years in prison, RFE/RL reported. RFE/RL quoted a relative of Mr Usmanov as saying that he was released on Feb. 13. The move may be part of a general softening of tone in Uzbekistan after the death of Islam Karimov, ruler for 25 years, and the emergence of Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Mr Usmanov is credited with setting up Uzbekistan’s first bank in the early 1990s. The 69- year-old was convicted of fraud in 1998.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

Tajik journalists quit worsening media scene

FEB. 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Well-established journalists in Tajikistan are leaving the country as the media environment worsens, the London-based media NGO Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said. After a series of interviews, it said that it knew of at least 20 journalists who had quit journalism in Tajikistan in the past year, including six with IWPR training. IWPR blamed a combination of state pressure and economic insecurity for the drop out.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Amnesty criticises Kazakhstan over social media crackdown

FEB. 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kazakhstan are chipping away at personal liberties with their increasingly aggressive crackdown on social media sites, Amnesty International said in a statement. It said independent media has been destroyed and that until recently Facebook and other social media sites had played an important role in facilitating political discourse. Now, though Amnesty said, the authorities were tracking people’s comments and using them in court to incriminate them.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Belarus deports Russian blogger to Azerbaijan

FEB. 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Belarus extradited Russian travel blogger Alexander Lapshin to Baku to face charges of supporting Armenia- backed rebels in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Free speech activists have said thatMr Lapshin’s arrest and extradition are symptomatic of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s authoritarian tendencies.

And in rare move, Russia released a statement criticising the blogger’s arrest.

Mr Lapshin is a relatively popular blogger who is better known for whimsical asides about his travel exploits and his travel pictures rather than his political musings. He travels on three different passports — Russian, Ukrainian and Israeli — and reportedly travelled to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2011 and 2012.

It is not clear why Mr Laphin’s trips to the region would have upset Azerbaijan and its authorities so much.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Kazakh police arrests independent editor

FEB. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Kazakhstan arrested Zhanbolat Mamay, the editor of the independent Tribuna newspaper, on corruption charges, once again worrying free speech activists . The press in Kazakhstan has been steadily eroded with a series of high-profile arrest of journalists last year. Tribuna and Mr Mamay had been regarded as one of the few remaining independent news outlets. Free speech activists have described the crackdown as a systematic effort to muzzle critics of the government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

Four transgender women attacked in Georgian nightclub

TBILISI, FEB. 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — An alleged gang of men attacked four transgender women in a nightclub just off Rustaveli, the main street in Tbilisi, once again triggering fears of a lack of acceptance in Georgia for alternative life- styles.

Transgender women have been targeted for attacks in the past couple of years, with several being killed.

The day before the latest attack a man was sent to prison for 13 years for killing a transgender woman in 2016.

But other social groups have also been attacked, including vegetarians, homosexuals and ethnic minorities.

Georgia wants to, ultimately, join the European Union but these hate crimes are likely to play against it. Georgia is renowned for having a deeply conservative society rooted in the Georgian Orthodox Church.

The Church, an important focal point for ordinary Georgians and their politicians, has campaigned against gay rights and has pushed for the ruling Georgian Dream coalition government to change the government to enshrine marriage between a man and a woman.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 316, published on Feb. 10 2017)

ILO says making progress in scrapping forced labour in Uzbekistan

FEB. 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) said that Uzbekistan was making progress in eradicating child labour from its cotton harvests. Uzbekistan has come under intense criticism for using school children to pick the crop. Several Western fashion retailers have refused to stock products which have been made with Uzbek cotton.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Freedom House says rights in Central Asia and the South Caucasus worsened in 2016

JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In its annual report mapping out the status of just how free people are to express themselves, the US-based NGO Freedom House said that in 2016 the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus cracked down on civil liberties.

Freedom House rates Georgia as the best place for civil liberties in the region, with a “Partly Free” status. It also gave this ranking to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan. The others were ranked “Not Free” with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan listed as two of the most repressive regimes in the world.

“Apparently unnerved by the repercussions of a lengthy slump in oil prices, the rulers of Azerbaijan and the Central Asian states used tightly controlled constitutional referendums to extend their rule into the future,” Freedom House wrote.

The Freedom House assessment of civil rights broadly mirrors the assessment of human rights groups who have been warning of worsening conditions in the region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)