JULY 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A blast at a gold mine around 90km southeast of Tashkent has killed 25 people, local media reported. The blast occurred on July 13 at the village of Kochbulak. Reports said the blast was linked to a ownership dispute.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Ufa, Russia, Uzbek leader Islam Karimov spoke unusually warmly about relations with Russia.
Mr Karimov veers from near- hostility towards Russia to extreme warmth.
Russian television showed Russian President Vladimir Putin greeting Mr Karimov.
“You haven’t been here on a state visit for a long time,” he said.
Mr Karimov shook his hand and replied: “Whatever disputes we may have, nobody can make Russia and Uzbekistan quarrel as we have common interests.”
Mr Karimov’s last state visit to Russia was in April 2013. Most Central Asia and South Caucasus leaders, other than those from Georgia and Turkmenistan, are semi-regular visitors to Moscow.
The Uzbek head of state’s manoeuvres are understandable.
Uzbekistan may be improving its relations with the West, especially with regards to allowing NATO countries to ship their military kit out of Afghanistan, but Russia is still the regional superpower and Mr Karimov needs its help economically as well as to bolster security along its porous southern border where he says the Taliban are massing.
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(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov travelled to Uzbekistan from Vienna where he had been attending a summit on Iran. Besides the usual talk of cooperation, Kommersant newspaper reported that Uzbek sources reassured Mr Lavrov that cooperation with the US will not develop at the expense of relations with Russia.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 240, published on July 16 2015)
JULY 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank approved a $305m loan to Uzbekistan to update and modernise its motorway network and a second loan of $105m to improve the irrigation network in the Bukhara region, media reported. Human rights groups have criticises the world Bank for the loans.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – GM Uzbekistan, a joint venture between the Uzbek government and US carmaker GM, sold 10,357 cars in Russia in the first half of this year, media reported quoting the company.
This is 57% less than in 2014 and highlights the economic problems rebounding around Central Asia linked to the decline in Russia’s economy.
Russia is one of GM Uzbekistan’s biggest market, so for it to drop away so seriously is bad news for the company.
GM Uzbekistan is based near the city of Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan.
In 2010, GM Uzbekistan employed 5,000 people. If demand for its cars, and it mainly produces mid-range Chevrolet cars at this plant, falls away significantly then these jobs may be under threat.
The drop in car sales is symptomatic of a general decline in economic conditions around the Central Asia region.
As well as a drop in exports to Russia, remittance flows back to Central Asia from workers in Moscow and beyond have dropped across the region by around 40%. Currencies have also dropped in value by around a third.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan arrested 500 police last year on various charges including corruption, torture and abuse of power, media reported quoting a source in the interior ministry. Rights groups have accused Uzbekistan of being a police state.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 6/7/8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Indian PM Narendra Modi started an eight day tour of Central Asia and Russia with stops in Tashkent and Astana, an expedition he hopes will generate energy deals and shore up business links.
This is the first grand tour of Central Asia by an Indian leader, underlining just how seriously the country is now taking the region. But India is also playing catch up with China which has already established deep business and government level links in Central Asia.
The need to deepen relations was acknowledged by Mr Modi in a statement to media he released after meeting Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
“I spoke about my vision for India’s relations with Central Asia,” he said.
“Kazakhstan is our biggest economic partner in the region. But, our relations are modest, compared to our potential. We will work together to take economic ties to a new level.”
Despite the rhetoric and good will that Mr Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov before him greeted Mr Modi with, no major deals were announced.
In Tashkent, the two sides said they discussed speeding up a deal to deliver uranium from Uzbekistan to India. In Astana, the Indian and Kazakh delegations also agreed a uranium supply deal and a mechanism to broaden military cooperation.
Mr Modi headed to the Russian city of Ufa on July 9 for a two day break from Central Asia to attend a meeting of the so- called BRICS, and a group that also includes Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa, and a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). India is an observer member of the SCO, an economic/security group headed by Russia and China and focused on Central Asia.
He returns to Central Asia on July 11 with a meeting in Ashgabat with Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov before travelling to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Mr Modi’s meeting with Mr Berdymukhamedov is arguably the most important.
India is the end destination for gas in an ambitious plan to build a pipeline from Turkmeni- stan across Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – To counter an increase in the number of Uzbek migrant workers returning home from Russia without work, Uzbekistan’s government has asked South Korea to increase the quota of workers it takes, RFE/RL reported. South Korea takes up to 22,500 migrant workers from Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 239, published on July 9 2015)
JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – US prosecutors have opened a case against an unnamed relative of Uzbek president Islam Karimov to regain around $300m paid out in apparent bribes by two Russian telecoms companies, media reported. The unnamed relative is widely thought to be Gulnara Karimova, Mr Karimov’s eldest daughter.
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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)
JUNE 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently without any sense of irony, Uzbek President Islam Karimov congratulated journalists in Uzbekistan on their work.
It could be said to be ironic because media groups rate Uzbekistan as one of the worst countries in the world for media freedom.
“We are well aware that today it is impossible to imagine life without your difficult and responsible work, without the multifaceted activities of the media,” Mr Karimov wrote in a letter published on the internet.
“The fruits of your painstaking work are always received with great interest and attention.”
There are now 1,400 media outlets in Uzbekistan, he said, including 70 TV stations, 30 radio channels and 300 websites.
Uzbek journalists, at least those without links to the authorities, disagree.
Daniil Kislov, the editor of the Fergana.Ru news agency which covers Central Asia, said: “The president’s impression on the richness of the information space seriously differs from reality. Reporters Without Borders placed Uzbekistan in the 166th position among 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index 2015.”
The Uzbek authorities have blocked access to Ferghana.com in Uzbekistan for several years.
US-funded RFE/RL, the BBC and the Voice of America are inaccessible in Uzbekistan, leaving the local information consumer limited to the government’s position on events.
And this view can be very skewed. Readers relying on government authorised journalism may not be aware of the problems facing Mr Karimov’s eldest daughter, she has been under house arrest for over a year, the arguments surrounding Uzbekistan’s use of child labour to pick its cotton, the general crackdown in civil liberties and, also, its poor media freedom ranking.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)