MAY 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Several hundred people were poisoned after eating ice cream in the Shahrian district of Andijan, in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley, media reported. Hospitals said that they admitted 182 people into intensive care for poisoning. There have been, so far, no reports of any deaths.
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(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)
BISHKEK, APRIL 29 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A landslide in south Kyrgyzstan buried a village, killing 24 people, including nine children.
The landslide has forced the government to explain why more people hadn’t been evacuated from the area around Osh, known to be vulnerable to landslides, after heavy rain.
Landslides are common in Kyrgyzstan, a poor and mountainous country where many people eke out a living from rearing cattle in remote areas.
Pictures from the landslide show a whole section of green hill had given way and crashed into the village of Ayu below.
The Kyrgyz ministry of emergencies, which has previously been criticised for being under-funded and ineffective, said that it had earlier issued warnings to everybody in the village to leave.
Elmira Sheripova, a spokeswoman for the ministry said that a dozen families chose to stay. She explained that families across Kyrgyzstan often refuse to relocate despite warnings from the authorities.
“Families refuse to leave dangerous zones for two reasons,” she said. “First, people say that they have been living in their houses for more than 20 years. Even their parents lived there for many years and nothing dangerous has ever happened. Second, people were not satisfied with the land provided from local governments.”
Nearly 18,000 families in Kyrgyzstan are considered to be living in dangerous area.
Ms Sheripova said that over 11,000 have been resettled from dangerous areas, 4,000 are on a list waiting for land to be allocated to them by local authorities but more than 3,000 have refused to relocate.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The trial began of Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze who is accused of trying to kill the Patriarch’s Secretary, Shorena Tetruashvili. In a case that has captivated Georgia, Archpriest Mamaladze was arrested trying to board a flight to Germany carrying cyanide earlier this year where Patriarch Ilia II was receiving medical treatment. It had been thought that the Archpriest had wanted to kill Ilia II but this has now been rejected. Instead, prosecutors believe that he had a vendetta against Ilia’s secretary.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
SAMARKAND/Uzbekistan, MAY 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a warm spring day, queues snake down the steps along the hillside of Samarkand’s Hazrat Khizr Mosque. The line is made up of men, women and children, some whole families. They are waiting to pay their respects to the late President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, who died on Sept. 2 2016.
Born in Samarkand, he is now buried here too and his final surroundings are certainly grand, and holy. The Hazrat Khizr Mosque, considered by many to be Samarkand’s most beautiful mosque, lies next to the famous necropolis, Shah-i-Zinda, a major tourist attraction and an important Islamic holy site.
Policemen stagger the crowds, letting a few up at a time. Any day soon the site will be closed as a more permanent mausoleum is built, and many are eager to come now, while they can.
One man, from Jizzakh, a two- hour drive away, had rushed to get here with his whole family in tow. “We know it’ll close so we wanted to come now. We don’t know how long the building work will last for,” he says.
He then adds: “We feel anxious about the future now the President is gone.”
Another man, an elder, or aksakal (white beard), wearing a long chapan (cloak) a red neck scarf, says that he met Karimov several times and had traveled from a village 150km away to come here. He’d also visited the Shah-i-Zinda that morning, and was heading to the Bibi-Khanym Mosque across the road afterwards.
Karimov’s grave is becoming part of the tourism circuit.
At the top, a mullah, sitting in a glass policeman’s box, reads out prayers through loud speakers. Looking crestfallen, most kneel and sit to pray while policemen look on unsmilingly, and bored. Slowly, the circle continues with more arriving and leaving, a continual cycle of muted grief and uncertainty about the future.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
BISHKEK, MAY 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) praised Kyrgyzstan for introducing new laws surrounding domestic violence, describing them as setting an important new standard for the region.
Activists have complained that domestic violence has largely gone unchecked and ignored by the male- dominated societies of Central Asia. They consider the introduction of the laws which make reporting domestic violence easier, as reported in issue 327 of The Conway Bulletin, to be groundbreaking.
Hillary Margolis, women’s rights researcher at HRW, said: “By enacting this new law, the Kyrgyz government has shown a commitment to the rights of domestic abuse victims and is setting a standard that others in the region should follow.”
The new laws improve protection for the victims of domestic violence and also validate that a complaint made by anybody about domestic violence has to be investigated by the police. Previously only a complaint by the direct victim had to be investigated and often these victims were reluctant to come forward.
HRW said that domestic violence was widespread in Kyrgyzstan, affecting a third of women. It said that only around half the cases were reported and, even then, only 7% were referred to courts as criminal cases.
It is a similar story across the region. Last year, in Kazakhstan, the issue of domestic violence was thrust into the mainstream when the popular TV host Bayan Yessentayeva was beaten by her husband at a petrol station outside Almaty. In subsequent interviews, women’s rights campaigners described domestic abuse as rampant because of a mix of heavy drinking and macho attitudes which subjugate women.
Referring to Kyrgyzstan, HRW said that the new laws needed to be backed-up by a change to the mindset.
“The new domestic violence law will only be meaningful if its promise is backed by action to make better protection for victims a reality,” Ms Margolis, from HRW, said.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree which should change the way that sport in the country is financed, skewing funding towards high-profile sports such as football, tennis and cycling . Kazakhstan has been using sport as a way of bolstering its brand across the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s Prosecutor’s Office said that they are going to charge Archpriest Giorgi Mamaladze with plotting to murder the secretary of Patriarch Ilia II, ending weeks of speculation that the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church had been the intended target. Archpriest Mamaladze was arrested in January carrying cyanide as he boarded a plane bound for Germany where Ilia II had been receiving hospital treatment. Prosecutors now believe that he had a vendetta against Patriarch Shorena Tetruashvili, Ilia II’s secretary.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s emergencies ministry is short-staffed and under-funded, deputy Kalys Ahmatov told parliament. The emergencies ministry is a legacy of the Soviet era and is deployed to deal with the aftermath of everything from earthquakes and avalanches to plane crashes. Specifically, Mr Ahmatov said that the ministry needed another 240 employees and 30% more equipment.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev signed into law a bill that is designed to strengthen legislation against domestic violence. The new law obliges police to investigate all reports of domestic violence even if the complaint was not filed by the victim.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and tipped by some analysts as his successor, has proposed boosting state investment into sport by 30%, media reported. Ms Nazarbayeva is now a senator. She had previously been a deputy PM.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)