APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – International ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said that it doesn’t expect the Azerbaijani government to raise tariffs on electricity for fear of social unrest. S&P downgraded the state-owned electricity distributor, Azerenergy, from a rating of BB+ to BB, saying it would need a government bailout to pay back its debts.
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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s ministry of defence said it will not hold its usual military parade in Astana to celebrate Victory Day on May 9, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The ministry said parades should only be organised for round anniversaries. Last year, Kazakhstan held its largest-ever parade for the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Observers said the decision not to hold a parade is linked to budget constraints.
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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)
MAY 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -DUSHANBE– Regional officials in Tajikistan are imposing strict regulations on the appearance of youngsters they allow to meet President Emomali Rakhmon when he visits, media reported, exposing what critics say are heavily stage-managed processes designed to flatter the Tajik leader.
According to reports, Shahnoz Niyozova, a student from the northern town of Mastchoh was barred from meeting Mr Rakhmon when he visited for Navruz celebrations in March because she was not sufficiently tall or Aryan in appearance.
A leaked official letter from the town’s administration gave a rare insight into local administrations’ think.
“Those who wish to speak before the Leader of Nation must have beautiful Aryan appearance, be tall, and have sonorous diction,” it said.
Local officials generally handpick the most beautiful and eloquent youths to meet Mr Rakhmon. They recite poems or thank him for bringing peace to Tajikistan.
Most ordinary Tajiks regard these meetings, which are shown on national television, as a waste of time.
In Dushanbe, Firdavs, 28, told a Bulletin correspondent that it was hot air.
“No one really talks about stuff that matter, like economic and political issues,” he said. “From all the flatteries and poems, you would think that we do not have any problems.”
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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A developer in Kazakhstan has produced an app for students to help them study for exams which he said would help to reduce stress and, also, high suicide rates among students. Analysts think that the country’s demanding school system contributes to boosting youth suicide rates among the world’s highest. Recently, the ministry of education announced that students could re-take failed exams.
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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Compared to the first quarter of last year, cashless payments in Kazakhstan grew by 26%, media reported. As of February 2016, cashless payments make up 15% of the total payments in the country, highlighting cash’s dominant position. The number of terminals used to take debit or credit cards in shops grew on a year-on-year basis by 24%.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)
APRIL 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gazprom Armenia, the Russian owned gas distributor, said it will apply to the country’s regulator to lower consumer prices by 6%. The discount will be limited to households that consume 10,000 cubic metres of gas a year, the company said. Earlier this month, Gazprom said it would give the Armenian government a 9% discount on the gas it supplies.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Once feted as a future Uzbek leader, and with an obvious taste for the limelight, Gulnara Karimova’s fall from grace has been sharp.
At the peak of her power and influence, she ran Uzbekistan’s top industrial conglomerate, Zeromax, owned the country’s biggest football team and was the Uzbek envoy to the United Nations in Geneva.
In her spare time, Ms Karimova designed clothes, developed perfume ranges for her own fashion label and produced whimsical music videos which starred, as a backing singer, French actor Gerard Depardieu, now more famous for drunken brawls on aeroplanes and for embracing former Soviet leaders shunned by the West.
But, despite the glamour, Googoosha, a nickname given to Ms Karimova by her father and mockingly adopted by ordinary Uzbeks, was described as the most hated person in the country.
A 2005 cable from the US embassy in Tashkent said that ordinary Uzbeks considered Ms Karimova to be “greedy and power hungry.”
“She remains the single most hated person in the country,” the author of the cable, then-ambassador Jon Purnell, wrote.
Since 2014, though, she has disappeared from public view, apparently incarcerated in a house in Tashkent. An international corruption scandal focused on payments made by mobile phone companies for access to Uzbekistan and an internal power struggle appear to have undermined Ms Karimova.
Pictures of her pleading with her guards and looking thin and drawn leaked out about a year ago, but little else has been seen or heard. Few ordinary Uzbeks care, though.
Eric McGlinchey, a professor at George Mason University, said that her public opulence had been the real reason behind her downfall.
“She wasn’t a quiet crook. She pursued a grotesquely extravagant lifestyle and that made her detested among both the ruling class and ordinary Uzbeks,” he said.
“Were she merely a quiet crook, revelations of hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore accounts could be overlooked.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 22 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — A 22-year-old Tajik army recruit has died after an alleged beating from more senior soldiers, media reported, highlighting what it said was a degrading Soviet-era culture of bullying and hazing in Tajikistan’s military.
Bakhtiyor Kurmonmadov died on April 19, five days after signing up to join the army.
His relatives said that there were bruises all over Kurmonmadov’s body. This was contested by an official report which said he died from a heart attack during an exercise.
To many, Kurmonmadov’s death was an indication of just how institutionalised bullying is in the Tajik army.
The system of informal beatings and bullying of young recruits by more senior soldiers even has a name, ‘dedovshina’ which literally means ‘grandfatherism’.
It’s a system that is spread across the armies of the former Soviet Union. A handful of recruits are killed or badly injured every year.
Last month, another conscript in Kurmonmadov’s unit was taken to hospital after a severe beating from older soldiers.
Amridin is a 24-year-old graduate,who was conscripted into the Tajik army two-years-ago. He described to a Conway Bulletin correspondent how he ended up in the army and severity of his treatment there.
“I was literally kidnapped in the streets and sent to the army. When we were new recruits, older soldiers beat, tortured, and harassed us in whatever way they wanted,” he said. “You cannot avoid getting beaten up because beating new conscripts is like an unwritten rule in the army.”
He coughed and complained about his health. He said that some of his colleagues had been beaten so badly that they would now be no use on a battlefield.
“If it continues in this way, we cannot defend our country if an enemy attacks us,” he said.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) NUKUS/Uzbekistan — This city, the capital of Karakalpakstan in west Uzbekistan, has yet to benefit from the shiny upgrades that have advanced the country’s larger cities.
A few new apartment blocks aside, there is little sign of redevelopment. There are no new malls and no new roads.
The airport is tiny and time warped, with just one conveyor belt for luggage. Just beyond the city limits is miles of parched desert scattered with saxaul trees, scrubby bush and abandoned poultry farms. It is a depressing place.
The one gem in Nukus’ crown is the Savitsky Museum.
Attracting a few thousand international visitors a year, it houses a 90,000-strong collection of world- class Russian avant-garde artworks. Igor Savitksy, a Kiev-born artist and collector, is celebrated for single handedly saving these works in the 1950s by hiding them away in Nukus, far from the disapproving eyes of the USSR’s fanatical leaders.
Recently the museum has been in the news after its long-serving and highly dedicated director, Marinika Babanazarova, was fired for unspecified reasons. To fans of the museum, it appeared that Nukus’ one shining light was in danger of going out.
As I toured the museum I met a curator who explained some of the more famous art pieces to me. Tentatively, I told her that I’d read the reports about Marinika being fired and I asked where she was now. The curator’s eyes fell to the floor.
“She is here in Nukus. We hope she will come back one day. We miss her, but we cannot break the system,” she said nervously.
She looked more hopeful when the conversation switched to the new wing of the museum which staff hope will attract more visitors.
Whether it will bring back Marinika remains to be seen.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)
APRIL 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hollywood A-list actor George Clooney attended a memorial in Yerevan to mark the 101st anniversary of what Armenia describes as a genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks against Armenians. Turkey has denied it was a genocide and has instead said that thousands of Armenians died in fighting linked to World War I. It’s unclear, exactly, how Mr Clooney is linked to Armenia and its genocide claim.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)