Tag Archives: society

Footballer lauds Azeri healthcare

NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tony Adams, the former England and Arsenal footballer, has become the unlikely cheerleader of Azerbaijan’s healthcare system.

Media quoted him as saying that he credits doctors in Azerbaijan, where he is working as director of football at the country’s biggest club Gabala, with saving his life with heart surgery.

He said that he referred himself to the Gabala team doctor after feeling chest pains.

“The brilliant surgeons at the Medical Plaza (hospital) did a fantastic job, as has been reiterated to me by my cardiologist in the UK,” he said.

“I know full well that without the brilliance of Dr Uzeyir Rahimov and his team I would not be alive now: a minor heart operation saved my life.”

Mr Adams, 49, is one of England’s most successful living footballers. He played more than 650 times for Arsenal, between 1983 and 2002, winning 10 trophies. He also played 60 times for England.

Mr Adams started managing Gabala in 2010.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Attacker burns down journalist office in Uzbekistan

OCT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A journalist documenting forced labour practices in east Uzbekistan said his office had been burnt down in an act of sabotage, media reported. Dmitiry Tikhonov also said that files with data on a number of specific cases appear to have been stolen from his office in Angren.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Armenian church re-opens in Georgia

OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Armenian Orthodox Church reconsecrated the Cathedral of St George in Tbilisi, considered one of its most important churches in the region. The Cathedral was closed in 2012 for restoration work.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Turkmenistan builds giant yurt

NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan built a supersized glass and aluminium yurt to celebrate the city of Mary’s position as 2015 Culture and Arts Capital of the Turkic World, media reported. The yurt, which can hold up to 3,000 people, drew criticism. Central Asian governments are given to grandiose projects, projecting an image of being out-of-touch.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Number of abortions rise in Georgia

NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of abortions in Georgia increased by three times between 2000 and 2012, new statistics published by Geostat showed. The statistics did also show a dip of 14% from 2012 – 2014. The abortion rate is significant in Georgia because of its generally traditional, church orientated society.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Georgia looks at health

OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian Chamber of Commerce launched an investigation into what it has said is a major gap in the country’s healthcare coverage which leaves over 400,000 Georgians uninsured. The timing of the study is pertinent. In October, Georgia Healthcare Group, the largest healthcare provider in Georgia, said it wanted to raise $100m in an IPO in London to modernise two of its private hospitals in Tbilisi.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)

Georgia’s court relaxes marijuana laws

OCT. 25 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia moved a step closer to decriminalising the recreational use of marijuana after its Constitutional Court ruled that possessing 70g of the drug should not lead to a prison sentence.

The ruling means that Georgia now has some of the most lax laws on marijuana possession in the former Soviet Union.

The Constitutional Court was called to rule on the case of Beka Tsikarishvili who was arrested in 2013 and faced a prison sentence for carrying 69g of marijuana. His supporters have stage rallies which have attracted hundreds of people.

“The purchase and possession of marijuana for personal use does not qualify for a prison sentence,” the court said in a note on its website.

Previously, carrying 50-500g of marijuana could lead to a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

Supporters of decriminalising marijuana cheered the court’s decision, calling it a “huge step forward”.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Immolation outside Nur Otan office stirs anger in Kazakhstan

OCT. 24 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — A 20-year-old man set fire to himself in the city of Taraz, south Kazakhstan, outside the headquarters of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s political party, a rare suicide by immolation that would have worried the authorities.

A video uploaded onto Youtube showed Yerlan Bektibayev talking to the camera in a central square in Taraz, before pouring lighter fuel over his head, setting himself on fire and then running into the Nur Otan building.

Bektibayev spoke in Kazakh before he set himself alight, explaining that he wanted to kill himself because he couldn’t find a job and that the authorities had bullied him by planting drugs on him and locking him up in prison for a murder that he didn’t commit.

“I cannot find any other way but to die. I do not want to live,” he said on the video.

Kazakhstan has a high rate of youth suicide. The United Nations has said that it is in the top ten countries for suicides of people between the ages of 14 and 29, but, even so, Bektibayev’s choice of setting himself on fire outside the Nur Otan regional headquarters will have alarmed the authorities.

It was an overtly political back- drop to the suicide, with overtones of the immolation in Tunisia in 2010 that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.

Official media largely avoided reporting on the suicide, one TV journalist who works for a state linked channel said he was told not to report on it, and police detained the man who filmed Bektibayev’s immolation.

Social media, though, was full of conflicting opinion. Some said that Bektibayev was to blame for taking his own life, others that society had failed him.

There was no official comment either from Nur Otan or the Taraz regional government.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Tajik students want opposition extradited

OCT. 26 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — A group of students at the Tajik National University appealed to the US, the EU and Germany to extradite opposition members, raising immediate concerns that the authorities may be coercing sectors of the population to pursue its agenda.

Civic activism is stunted in Tajikistan and this apparent support for the government worried analysts.

A Dushanbe-based analyst who spoke to a Bulletin correspondent said: “The government knows that the Western states will not extradite opposition leaders to Tajikistan. Thus, they control the students and organise similar appeals and demonstrations to show the world that Tajik youth are politically active and there is democracy in Tajikistan.”

The government has stepped up its persecution of opposition groups this year, banning them and arresting activists. It wants opposition leaders extradited from Europe.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)

Kazakhstan issues new post codes for Astana

OCT. 29 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazpochta, the Kazakh state-owned post service, signed a deal with Astana to switch to alpha- numeric post codes, evidence of the population boom in Kazakhstan’s capital city.

Post codes in Astana will now pinpoint a specific building, rather than just an area, a practice that closely resembles Britain’s custom.

The indexing system vastly increases the number of post codes available to use in Astana and will be rolled out later this year in some of the city’s new industrial developments, said Bagdat Musin, Kazpochta’s chairman.

“The new system will facilitate not only postmen, but also emergency workers,” he said.

With an official population of 860,000, doubling in the past decade, Astana has grown fast.

But it remains something of a commuter city. At the weekend Astana hollows out as the middle class head to Almaty to eat, drink, relax and party.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)