Tag Archives: Tajikistan

Tajik opposition leader killed in Istanbul

MARCH 5 2015 (The Bulletin) – Umarali Kuvatov, leader of the banned Tajik opposition Group 24, was shot dead in Istanbul after leaving a dinner which his family later said had also been poisoned.

Opposition groups immediately accused Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon and his associates of being linked in the murder. He has not commented.

Turkish police later detained three Tajik nationals in connection with the murder.
A successful businessman, Kuvatov had once been an ally of President Rakhmon. He fled Tajikistan in 2012. Last year, the authorities in Tajikistan banned Group 24 from holding an anti-government rally and also accused it of trying to stage a coup. Its activists in Tajikistan have been arrested and jailed.

Facts around Kuvatov’s murder are murky but he is thought to have died from a single gunshot to the head after leaving a dinner at the home of another Tajik. His family said they had also been poisoned at the dinner.

Kuvatov’s murder comes only a few days after the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in Moscow. Unlike Nemtsov, though, Kuvatov was considered far more of a fringe player in Tajik opposition circles.

Even so, for Tajikistan’s opposition, the murder rids it of a characteristic and wealthy figure to challenge President Rakhmon and his iron-like grip on power.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)

Tajikistan’s fragile ancient tribe

GHARMEN/Tajikistan, March 11 2015 (The Bulletin) – Mubinjon Asimov and his two sons are among the few remaining survivors of the Yaghnobi people in Tajikistan.

“We lost not only our homes, our fields and our mountains. Our whole culture was annihilated,” said Asimov, an elderly herder still living in Gharmen, a small settlement of just over a dozen inhabitants in the Yaghnobi valley in southern Tajikistan.

He was talking about repression by the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

“We couldn’t use our native language in public and by the time we were allowed to come back to this valley only a few of us were still able to speak Yaghnobi,” he said.

The Yaghnobis are believed to be the heirs of Sogdia, a civilisation that stood against Alexander the Great during one of his last campaigns in the 4th century BC.

To the eyes of the casual visitor life here appears to follow the same old rhythms of a timeless past. Behind this romantic façade of mountainous bucolic isolation hides, however, a dramatic history of ethnic cleansing, persecutions and forced emigration.

The first wave of repressions came during Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s and led to many Yaghnobis being exiled, but it was only in the late 1950s that a systematic mass displacement of the whole Yaghnobi population was forcibly carried out.

Under the pretext of danger from landslides, the Soviet authorities evacuated the population from the valley to the hot plains of northern Tajikistan.

Sociologists have warned the Yagnobi people, culture and languages may die out.

Asimov agreed but now he said that the state wasn’t doing enough. “Now the state is all but nonexistent and not a single kopek has been invested in this valley,” he said. “Our recent past has been a dark one, but our future looks even bleaker.”
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)

IS is a threat to Tajikistan, says Russia

MARCH 5 2015 (The Bulletin) – Russia’s defence minister, Anatoly Anatonov, said IS groups in Afghanistan posed a threat to Tajikistan. Russia has been a consistent siren on Tajikistan, warning of the threat to its stability once NATO withdraws from Afghanistan. Russia maintains a garrison in Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 222, published on March 11 2015)

Western election monitors say Tajik election was unfair

MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A parliamentary election in Tajikistan has wiped out all opposition representation, delivering a chamber that 100% supports President Emomali Rakhmon.

Western observers said that the election had neither been free nor fair.

“Some contestants provided political alternatives, yet the March 1 parliamentary elections in Tajikistan took place in a restricted political space and failed to provide a level playing field for candidates,” the OSCE, Europe’s main democracy watchdog, said in a statement.
Some media quoted observers saying they had witnessed blatant ballot stuffing too.

Importantly, this is the first time that the opposition Islamic Revival Party has failed to win any seats in parliament. It failed to pass the 5% threshold needed to hold a seat in the 63-person chamber.

According to local media, Mr Rakhmon’s ruling People’s Democratic Party won 57 seats in the election with the Agrarian Party, the Party of Economic Reforms and the Socialist Party splitting the other six seats. All three of the minor parties are linked to Mr Rakhmon.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)

China to build lead plant in Tajikistan

MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Underscoring China’s influence over Tajikistan’s economy, a Chinese company has agreed to build a $200m lead producing plant, media reported quoting a senior Tajik government official. China has increased its influence over Tajikistan over the past few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)

Remittance flows to Tajikistan drop

FEB. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Remittance flows from Russia to Tajikistan dropped by 8.3% in 2014 compared to 2013, the Tajik Central Bank said. Remittances are vital to the Tajik economy but have dried up slightly since sanctions and a drop in energy prices hit the Russian economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)

Tajik cotton exports increase

FEB. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s cotton exports, an important foreign currency earner, grew by 7% in January compared to a year earlier, local media reported. The increase bucks a trend of falling cotton exports from Tajikistan over the past few years. Extra revenue from the exports though are tempered by a global drop in cotton prices.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015

Pressure builds on Tajik opposition

FEB. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan accused the government of cracking down on its activities in the build-up to a parliamentary election on March 1. The party’s chairman, Muhiddin Kabiri, told the AFP news agency that the party was facing “total pressure”.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)

Tajik migrants head home

FEB. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The falling rouble has persuaded up to half of St Petersburg’s Central Asian casual work force to return home, the AFP news agency reported.

St Petersburg’s deputy governor, Igor Albin, reportedly said that 50% of the snow sweepers, normally from Central Asia, had left the city.

AFP’s correspondent in St Petersburg directly quoted the head of a snow sweeping company who gave similar insight, although with a lower percentage heading home.

“Almost 30% of the workers who left to spend New Year’s as usual with their families in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan have not come back,” he said.

Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are most vulnerable to this trend. Tajikistan holds the dubious position as the country that is most reliant on remittances. These make up about 50% of its total GDP.

The Tajik Central Bank has tried to prop up its currency against the falling Russian rouble although it has warned that inflation is creeping up.

In Dushanbe, an immigration official told AFP that only half the number of Tajiks were leaving to take jobs abroad this year, compared to the same period in 2013.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)

Top TALCO manager sacked

FEB. 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajikistan’s president Emomali Rakhmon sacked the managing-director at TALCO, the company that runs its aluminium smelter, media reported. No official reason was given for sacking Sadriddin Sharipov from TALCO which generates around 70% of Tajikistan’s foreign earnings.

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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)