Tag Archives: society

Devaluation stokes salary rises in Turkmenistan

MAY 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Salaries have risen by nearly 10% since the beginning of the year in Turkmenistan, official media reported quoting the Turkmen finance ministry.

This piece of data is important for two main reasons. Firstly, it is a rare piece of data from Turkmenistan’s government on prices and inflation. Secondly, it shows the probable impact of the devaluation by 30% of Turkmenistan’s manta currency on Jan. 1.

Turkmenistan, like other countries in the region, has been struggling to cope with the fall in global energy prices and the downturn in Russia’s economy that has slashed around 50% off the value of its rouble currency.

Both issues have pressured Central Asian economies and Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedobv ordered the Central Bank to cut the value of the manat for the first time in seven years.

Typically, currency devaluations in Central Asia have triggered inflation and, although not officially confirmed, this appears to be the case in Turkmenistan.

The Turkmen finance ministry said salaries had risen by 9.5% in the first three months of the year. It didn’t give any more information.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)

Ismayilova receives award

MAY 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The PEN American Center awarded its Freedom Award to imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova. Ms Imayilova is in pre-trial detention for coaxing a fellow journalist into a suicide attempt. She is one of Azerbaijan’s most high- profile journalists.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)

Armenia needs diaspora support

APRIL 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s minister for diaspora, Hranush Hakobyan, called for Armenians based abroad to support the Armenian economy by opening up bank accounts. The Armenian diaspora acts as an important support for Armenia’s economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 230, published on May 6 2015)

Nazarbayev re-casts Kazakh history in his own image

ASTANA/Kazakhstan, APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Keen to build his everlasting legacy, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has create a museum in Astana to furnish his image as the Leader of the Nation.

A few days before the 74-year-old Nazarbayev won his fifth presidential election on April 26, The Conway Bulletin had a look around the National Museum, a futuristic building of marble and glass set at the heart of the new city.

It is the largest museum in Central Asia and was opened on July 6 last year, the 17th anniversary of Astana’s designation as Kazakhstan’s capital, a crown it took from Almaty in the south.

As if to underline its superiority over the far more louche Almaty, the new National Museum in Astana has taken the best from the old National Museum. All the national treasures are here from a huge 1-tonne bürkit, the national eagle to the Altyn Adam, so-called golden man, symbol of the nomadic warring times of the Kazakh civilisation.

Two grandiose light shows are shown every hour, with videos featuring the President. His words are engraved at each corner. “One people, one civilization, one future,” read one.

A couple of hundred visitors on a Sunday afternoon felt barely visible in this vast museum. Directing staff pointed the way, ensuring that tourists and locals both experience Nazarbayev’s own reading of Kazakhstan’s history.

In the Astana Hall, countless photos of the president giving speeches and inaugurating buildings are accompanied by Nazarbayev’s own drawings that served as a guidelines for Astana’s landmark monuments, such as the Baiterek tower, first sketched on a tissue.

The question that everybody wants answering now is when is he going to stand aside and allow another president to run the country. Even when he does though, there is little doubt that Nazarbayev, as the Leader of the Nation, will be standing and watching not too far behind the scenes.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Foreign currency sales fall in Kazakhstan

APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh media reported a 19% drop in sales of US dollars, euros and roubles at foreign exchange points in March compared to February, suggesting a slowdown of the near panicked drive by ordinary Kazakhs to sell out of tenge when they thought a devaluation was imminent.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015

Costs of Games rises in Azerbaijan

APRIL 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is covertly cutting salaries for state employees to try and pay for the rising cost of the European Games which are scheduled to be held next month, the Eurasinet website reported.

It quoted unnamed employees of Azerbaijan’s State Customs Committee saying that they had had their bonuses scrapped because of the Games.

Eurasianet said the State Customs Committee declined to comment and that the ministry of taxes denied the allegations.

The 16-day European Games, which starts on June 12, is a major set-piece event for Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev. He wants to use sport to promote the country and to distract from criticism of his human rights record.

The problem is that, although Azerbaijan has enough oil- generated wealth to survive a regional downturn in economics, cash is getting tighter and paying for the multi-billion- dollar European Games is getting harder.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Muslims complain in Tajikistan

APRIL 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Devout Muslims in Tajikistan say officials are waging a campaign designed to intimidate and humiliate them by shaving off their beards and limiting access to the annual Haj to Mecca, the AFP news agency reported. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has steadily cracked down on Islam.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Azerbaijan restricts people’s right to travel

APRIL 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Milli Majlis, the Azerbaijani Parliament approved an amendment to the Criminal Code which will punish citizens for not notifying the government within a month when they receive citizenship for another country.

Opposition members criticised the new law for imposing repressive legislation designed to increase the government’s control of its people.

Under the new law, citizens will be fined between 3,000 and 5,000 manat ($2,800-$4,750) or receive 360 to 480 hours of public service for not notifying the Azerbaijani authorities that they have taken a second nationality.

Azerbaijan already outlaws dual nationality but the existing laws did not contain a penalty.

Lawyer Muzaffar Baxishov of the Legal State Research Foundation, an Azerbaijani NGO told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the government wants to create obstacles for its critics.

“People will have to inform the government about new citizenship, otherwise they will be involved in a criminal case,” he said.

The US and the EU have both heavily criticised Azerbaijan for crushing dissent over the past few years. Many of Azerbaijan’s opposition groups gather emotional and financial support from outside the country. The government has already moved to restrict its citizens’ travel.

Under regulation introduced in January, Azerbaijanis now have to inform their embassies that they are residing in a country, even if temporarily. Previously, Azerbaijani citizens only had to tell embassies if they intended to stay in a country permanently.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Armenia remembers 1915

APRIL 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia officially marked the 100th anniversary of the killing of thousands of its countrymen by Ottoman Turks, an event it wants recognised as a genocide.

On the eve of the ceremony in Yerevan, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, joined a growing list of countries calling the death of up to 1.5m Armenians a genocide.

“What happened in the middle of the First World War in the Ottoman Empire under the eyes of the world was a genocide,” media quoted Bundestag Presi- dent Norbert Lammert as saying at the debate on the issue.

The issue is sensitive in Germany as historians have said Nazi leader Adolf Hitler used the killings of the Armenians in the east of modern-day Turkey as evidence the world would turn a blind eye to his plans to kill Jews in Europe.

Presiding over the sombre ceremony in Yerevan, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said: “Recognition of the genocide is a triumph of human conscience and justice over intolerance and hatred.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande were among the foreign dignitaries to attend the service.

The US sent a delegation but President Barack Obama has pointedly steered away from describing the deaths as a genocide.

Turkey has denied the genocide. It says Armenians died in the chaos around the final days of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said that he feels Armenia’s pain over the killings but he is quick to criticise descriptions of the deaths as a genocide.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)

Turkmens celebrate horses

APRIL 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan celebrated one of its biggest holidays of the year on the Day of the Horse, an important symbol for the country that celebrates horsemanship as a key skill and sign of manhood. Not the retiring type, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov also accepted a new title of the People’s Horse Breeder.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 229, published on April 29 2015)