NOV. 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An official at the United Nations’ labour watchdog, ILO, said tentative progress had been made by Uzbekistan in eradicating child labour from the cotton harvest. AFP, a French news agency, quoted ILO official Harri Taliga as saying that he had seen some improvements during the recent harvest.
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(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
OCT. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Germany has agreed a deal with Uzbekistan to keep open an air base in the south of the country, media reported. According to German media, a helicopter crash a few days
before the current lease ran out at the end of October complicated the deal to extend the lease for the base which Germany took over in 2001 in the aftermath of the attack on New York by Al Qaeda and the NATO invasion of Afghanistan.
The base is important for several reasons.
After the withdrawal of the US military from their base outside Bishkek, the German base in Uzbekistan will now be NATO’s only full time base in the region. The French air force use the airport at Dushanbe but they share many of the facilities with civilian aircraft.
Uzbekistan is also an important transit country for NATO which is planning on shifting most of its kit out of Afghanistan through Uzbekistan and Russia.
For Uzbekistan, the German base is also something of a bulwark against the threat of Al Qaeda and Taliban across the border in Afghanistan.
Neither Uzbek nor German officials gave any details on the lease extension deal. Media reported that Germany stations about 300 soldiers at the base. Details of a 2011 deal showed that it paid 16m euros a year to lease the base.
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(News report from Issue No. 207, published on Nov. 5 2014)
OCT. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least 19 people have died this year during Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. Human rights campaigners have long accused the Uzbek authorities of forcing people to work in cotton fields during the harvest.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the Open Society Foundations, funded by US billionaire George Soros, on Uzbekistan’s cotton industry concluded that most of the profits from the sector goes to hidden funds that only a handful of top officials can access. Western companies are boycotting Uzbek cotton because of its alleged use of child labour.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Speaking via a video link to a conference in Tashkent, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said human interference had drained the Aral Sea with implications for millions of people. The Aral Sea, shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, has shrunk dramatically over the past 30 years, mainly due to Soviet era irrigation projects.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Relations between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have often been strained but the challenges of dealing with a potential security void once NATO withdraws from Afghanistan is pushing the two neighbours to work together.
Uzbek president Islam Karimov made a rare visit to Ashgabat specifically to discuss how to deal with the Taliban who are hovering around the borders of Central Asia.
Reports earlier this year have said Turkmen forces have crossed the border with Afghanistan to set up more robust check points and defences. Uzbekistan also borders Afghanistan and Mr Karimov will, no doubt, have been keen to hear about the Turkmen experiences.
Uzbekistan also has to deal with a determined Islamic insurgency of its own with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). It is worried that a resurgent Taliban will inspire the IMU.
With both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan outside the Russia-led Collective Security Organisation, both countries appear eager to pool intelligence and experiences for what analysts have said will be a difficult few months, perhaps years, ahead once NATO completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 206, published on Oct. 29 2014)
OCT. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek cinemas have been showing a carefully scripted film depicting how the life of the ordinary peasant is happier than those people seeking to emulate Western values in the city, the eurasianet.org website reported. Human rights workers accuse Uzbek officials of using propaganda to control people.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Uzbekistan stopped broadcasting the pan-CIS MIR TV shortly after a summit meeting of the CIS heads of state in Minsk, media reported. No official reason for cutting the broadcast was given although it does reduce, again, the amount of TV news that ordinary Uzbeks can watch.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A visit by Uzbek security chief Rustam Inoyatov caused a stir. Not because a senior Uzbek official visited Beijing, such trips have become fairly commonplace over the past five years or so as China extends its influence in the region, but because of a photo from the meeting.
At the meeting on Oct. 14, Mr Inoyatov is pictured shaking the hand of Meng Jianzhu, head of political and legal affairs of the Central Committee. This is effectively a ministerial position.
The photo showed a thick-set 70-year-old Mr Inoyatov with barely a fleck of grey in his hear.
It’s also the first publicly available picture of Mr Inoyatov for some years. Searches across the internet only yielded grainy or blurred shots.
The picture is symbolic. Mr Inoyatov has been accused of being behind the campaign to purge Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of President Islam Karimov, of power. This picture may represent him, literally, coming out of the shadows.
Another theory about the picture is that it shows that Mr Inoyatov and Mr Karimov are putting on a show of force to Russia and a warning that it should not try to destabilise elections planned for 2015.
The photo suggests that Uzbekistan and China have grown increasingly close and that Russia risks being left behind as a bystander.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)
OCT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – London-based Amnesty International said it had present a petition with 200,000 signatures calling for the release of dozens of so-called prisoners of conscience in Uzbekistan. Human rights activists say Uzbekistan has one of the worst records in the world.
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(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)