OCT. 13 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan convicted journalist Vladimir Berezovsky of libel on the Russian language news website vesti.uz. The court granted him an amnesty and he returned to work afterwards but Human Rights Watch still said the conviction was an attack on freedom of speech.
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(News report from Issue No. 11, published on Oct. 14 2010)
OCT. 7 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A reporter for U.S.-funded radio station Voice of America went on trial in Uzbekistan accused of slander and posing a threat to public order, news agencies quoted a local human rights group as saying. Reporter Abdumalik Boboyev faces up to eight years in jail.
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(News report from Issue No. 10, published on Oct. 7 2010)
SEPT. 15 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in south Kyrgyzstan gave an Uzbek rights activist and 7 other defendants a life jail sentence for killing a policeman during ethnic clashes in June. Human rights groups said the trial had been unfair and the defendants had been beaten.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 16 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Created in 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has a broad remit to promote economic, cultural and military cooperation between its 6 members; China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Certainly, the SCO has initiated a handful of economic and infrastructure projects but its roots are in military cooperation beginning in the mid-1990s. Some Western observers say the SCO could one day act as a counterbalance to NATO.
For now, though, SCO is politically too fractured to rival NATO and acts more as a regional forum to discuss anti-terrorist measures and energy policy than coordinate defence policies. Its regional anti-terrorist headquarters are based in Tashkent.
Notably, the SCO did not act during Kyrgyzstan’s revolution in April or in June during ethnic violence in the south of the country when hundreds died.
In 2008, the SCO and its members chose not to back Russia and recognise the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
Still, the large scale and highly publicised war games are the SCO’s most eye catching activity. Peace Mission 2010, the SCO military exercise which started on Sept. 13 in Kazakhstan, is the biggest military exercise since Russia hosted it in 2007.
The SCO does appear to have wider geographic ambitions. India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia have SCO observer status, Sri Lanka and Belarus are dialogue partners and Afghanistan has been invited to SCO summits as a guest.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 13 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — A 2 week long military exercise by the China and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) started in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, Russia and China sent 1,000 soldiers each, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan sent 150 soldiers each. Uzbekistan declined to send any. It is the biggest SCO military exercise since 2007.
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(News report from Issue No. 7, published on Sept. 16 2010)
SEPT. 7 2010 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva hinted that she could cancel next month’s parliamentary elections if she thought politicians were using the vote to stir up ethnic tension. Hundreds died in June during clashes between ethnics Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the south of the country.
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(News report from Issue No. 6, published on Sept. 9 2010)
SEPT. 20 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek media reported that on the sidelines of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s trip to the UN General Assembly in New York, a delegation had signed a series of deals with US businesses worth $2.6b. It said that the deals covered a range of potential investments and included companies such as Boeing and Visa. Uzbekistan has said it wants more foreign investment.
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— This story was first published in issue 344 of The Conway Bulletin, now called the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on Sept. 24 2017.
— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2017