JUNE 17 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz parliamentarians voted to ban the Moscow-based news website fergana.ru for inciting ethnic hatred, media reported, raising questions over free speech. Last month parliamentarians also banned the Finnish author of a report that criticised security forces in ethnic violence last year.
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(News report from Issue No. 45, published on June 21 2011)
JUNE 21 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – More confusion over whether the Pacific nation of Vanuatu has recognised the rebel Georgian state of Abkhazia as independent. Media reported that a new PM in Vanuatu had withdrawn recognition of Abkhazia’s independence only days after its foreign minister had declared new diplomatic ties with the Black Sea region.
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(News report from Issue No. 45, published on June 21 2011)
JUNE 17 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps sensitive to descriptions of Tajikistan as a failed state, a deputy in the Tajik parliament asked for a video game depicting fictional Chinese and US anti-terrorist operations in the country to be banned, media reported. The video game had been released earlier this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 45, published on June 21 2011)
JUNE 15 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan hosted the 10th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Central Asian security organisation lead by Russia and China. Heads of states and senior officials from India, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan joined leaders from the SCO member states for the meeting.
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(News report from Issue No. 45, published on June 21 2011)
JUNE 13 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan said they made progress towards a settlement on Nagorno-Karabakh at a meeting hosted by Russia, media reported. The rare positive statement from both sides comes just weeks before a major international conference on the disputed region.
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(News report from Issue No. 44, published on June 14 2011)
JUNE 9 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Vanuatu, a Pacific island nation with a population of 250,000, has become the fourth country after Russia to recognise Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia as independent. Vanuatu’s foreign minister announced the decision after days of confusion. Countries that have recognised Abkhazia’s independence have strengthened ties with Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 44, published on June 14 2011)
JUNE 14 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad joined Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev as a guest at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Astana. China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are SCO members.
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(News report from Issue No. 44, published on June 14 2011)
JUNE 6 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The death of Abkhazia’s President, Sergey Bagapsh, on May 29 removed a steadying influence on the volatile province and forces both Russia and Georgia to re-consider their strategy towards it.
A surprise visit by Russian PM Vladimir Putin to Bagapsh’s funeral in Abkhazia five days later underlined just how important control of the breakaway Georgian region is to Russia.
Abkhazia has been a de facto independent state since a war against Georgia after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia recognised Abkhazia — and South Ossetia, another rebel Georgian region — as an independent state in 2008 after it also fought Georgia in a brief war.
Bagapsh was considered a competent technocrat capable of uniting different factions and able to balance Russia’s interests — geo-political, military, economic — in the region with more nationalistic local politicians.
He had been president of Abkhazia since 2005. According to the constitution, Abkhazia now has three months to hold a presidential election.
There are three main candidates to replace Bagapsh: vice-President Aleksandr Ankvab, PM Sergey Shamba and Raul Khadjimba, Bagapsh’s former opponent. A power vacuum in Abkhazia could pull in Georgia which still hopes to reclaim the region and South Ossetia.
This tension between Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia is never far away. On June 3 Georgia said it had arrested two residents of Abkhazia for trying to plant a bomb on behalf of Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 43, published on June 6 2011)
JUNE 4 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s defence ministry once again warned it would one day send soldiers back into the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh to wrestle control from Armenia. It said Armenia has obstructed talks to resolve the dispute. Armenia refutes this. Armenia and Azerbaijan are due to meet in a few weeks to discuss the issue.
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(News report from Issue No. 43, published on June 6 2011)
MAY 25/26 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the worst street violence in Georgia since a state of emergency in November 2007, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at anti- government protesters blocking the main street in Tbilisi. The government said protesters had started the violence, the protesters said it was unprovoked. A car speeding away from the protest hit and killed two people.
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(News report from Issue No. 42, published on May 30 2011)