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Azerbaijan piles pressure on opposition journalists

APRIL 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in Azerbaijan appear to have reversed a softening of a crackdown on human rights activists and the media.

Meydan TV, an opposition news agency, said that prosecutors had opened new criminal investigation on alleged illegal business activities involving 15 of its journalists, who have been told they cannot leave the country.

The action disappointed civil rights groups who had, only last week, been applauding the Azerbaijani leadership for allowing Leyla and Arif Yunus to leave Baku for the Netherlands. The two human rights activists had been released from prison at the end of last year. They were imprisoned on various charges, including espionage, which their supporters said had been fabricated.

Nina Ognianova, Europe and Central Asia coordinator at the lobby group the Committee to Protect Journalist, said: “We call on officials in Azerbaijan to immediately cease the witch hunt of contributors to the online broadcaster Meydan TV.”

The day after Meydan TV said that prosecutors had opened new cases against 15 journalists, Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court upheld a six year sentence against Murad Adilov, a member of the opposition Popular Front Party arrested in May last year on charges of drug possession.

Relations between the West and Azerbaijan have been strained over the past three years while Azerbaijani officials have increasingly clamped down on the opposition.

It’s become something of a diplomatic quagmire.

Europe needs Azerbaijani gas and the US wants a stable Azerbaijan as an ally to undermine Russia’s dominance in the region. Both, though, loathe Azerbaijan’s recent human rights record.

As for Azerbaijan, the authorities appear to want to be able to crack- down on troublesome opposition activists, journalists and civil rights workers but they also need Europe to help it extract its oil and gas and also to act as a major energy client.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Oil Tanker catches fire in Azerbaijan-Turkmen Caspian Sea sector

APRIL 23 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A crew member died after a Russian oil tanker caught fire in the southern section of the Caspian Sea, between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Coastal guards from the three littoral countries joined forces to extinguish the fire and rescue the rest of the crew. The tanker was not carrying oil at the time of the accident. Last December, a fire at offshore oil and gas platforms killed more than 30 Azerbaijani workers.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Land reforms in Kazakhstan trigger protests across the country

APRIL 24-27 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — A proposed amendment to land registration laws triggered a series of rare protests across Kazakhstan, a reaction that the authorities have handled, so far, with a relative soft touch.

The first and largest rally was held in the western city of Atyrau, when around 1,000 demonstrators gathered to protest against a law which they say would allow foreigners to buy their land. Smaller protests, with a few dozen protesters, were held over the following days in Aktobe, Semey and Aktau.

The amended law is due to come into force in July.

“We are thousands here today, but if they start seizing and selling our land, we will be millions,” one of the speakers at the Atyrau protest said.

Importantly, most of the people at the protests were speaking Kazakh, rather than Russian. Kazakh is prevalent in poorer, more rural sections of Kazakhstan’s society. It is particularly widely spoken in the west of the country, in and around Atyrau, Aktobe and Aktau.

Some analysts said that the protests may have been part of a wider nationalist movement encouraged by the authorities to give a veneer of political discourse without posing any real threat to the elite. Both local governments and officials in Astana dismissed the claim that the new land code would give out land to foreigners.

At a meeting in Astana, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said: “The issue regarding selling land to foreign citizens is out of question. All talks regarding this issue are groundless. Those who heat up these rumours should be brought to justice.”

As The Bulletin went to press, police in Almaty had detained a handful of other activists who had planned a press conference against the new land code.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

IMF schedules mission to Tajikistan

APRIL 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The IMF said it will send a mission to Tajikistan in the next few weeks to work on a programme that could lead to a bailout, the FT reported. The IMF had previously offered help to Tajikistan, provided the government embraces a series of proposed reforms. Tajikistan has been hit hard by a regional economical downturn that has crashed into currencies and knocked out vital remittance flows from Russia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 278, published on April 29 2016)

Georgian officials arrest uranium smugglers

APRIL 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s security services said they had arrested six men, three Georgians and three Armenians, who were trying to sell uranium on the Black Market. Police found a container with an undisclosed amount of uranium in a Tbilisi home where one of the alleged smugglers lived. Authorities in the South Caucasus often have to grapple with smugglers of radioactive materials.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Lukoil starts Kandym work in Uzbekistan

APRIL 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian oil and gas company Lukoil said it had started construction work at the $3.3b Kandym Gas Processing Complex in south-west Uzbekistan, which will include gas wells, pipelines, compressor stations, storage facilities and a 80MW gas fired power plant. Lukoil will use gas from six fields it is developing with state-owned Uzbekneftegaz to fuel the new plant. Hyundai Engineering will supply the equipment for the plant

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Polymetal output declines in Kazakhstan

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian gold miner Polymetal said its output declined by 4% in the first quarter of the year to 260,000 ounces of gold equivalent, also due to a sharp decline in its Kazakh operations. At the Varvara gold project in north-western Kazakhstan, Polymetal produced 14,000 ounces of gold, 32% less than in Q1 2015, due to lower grade stockpiles. Polymetal said its Kyzyl gold project in north-eastern Kazakhstan is on track to start production this year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Tajikistan draws up database of approved names for newborns

DUSHANBE, APRIL 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Tajikistan have started forcing parents to choose names for their newborns from a database they consider to be authentically Tajik, a move that human rights activists have said is a blatant attempt to clamp down on pious Muslims.

Rahim Zulfoniyon, a representative from the State Committee on Language and Terminology, said that a working group of linguists, university professors, and academicians have been developing the registry which will contain more than 4,500 Tajik names for boys and girls.

At a press conference, Mr Zulfoniyon said that the database was designed to promote Tajik culture.

“We urge parents to refrain from naming their newborns with unpronounceable and difficult names, and name their children with easy and beautiful names,” he said.

The new name regulations mean that people cannot choose Soviet or Russian surnames and importantly Arab names labelled “alien to Tajik culture”

Unless you have dual Russian citizenship, you cannot use the “ov” suffix on surnames. Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon was, until 2010, called Rakhmonov. He dropped the ‘ov’ in a show of patriotism.

The name registry will be approved over the next couple of weeks but people have already started

complaining that they cannot give babies the names they want.

Hakim, 28, said he had been overjoyed by the birth of his son.

“I wanted to call him Abubakr in honour of the Prophet Muhammad’s companion, but the civil registry officials told me I should choose a Tajik name from the list. Why can’t I give my son the name I want?” he said.

A Dushanbe-based analyst, who wished to remain anonymous, said this was another attempt to prevent radical Islam taking root in Tajikistan.

“I think some officials wanted to show the President that they are also fighting radicalism in light of anti- Islamic policies of the government”, he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Kazakh President meets Karimov

APRIL 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Tashkent to meet with his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov to discuss regional security and economic ties. Both leaders emphasised good relations between the two countries. Mr Karimov told Mr Nazarbayev that “we need to synchronise our watches and go in the right direction”, a reference to working more closely together.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)

Press freedom worsens in Tajikistan

APRIL 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog for media freedom, said the press environment in Tajikistan has significantly worsened this year. In its annual ranking of countries, Reporters Without Borders said Tajikistan dropped 34 places, the largest overall fall in the table, to 150th place. There are 180 countries in the league table.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 277, published on April 22 2016)