Category Archives: Central Asia & South Caucasus News

TAV starts construction of new terminal at Georgian Airport

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – TAV Airports, a Turkish holding company that operates airports in Georgia, said it has started construction of a new terminal at Tbilisi airport. TAV said the project, which will include a new runway, will be completed by the end of 2017. TAV operates two airports in Georgia, in Tbilisi and Batumi. France’s ParisAeroport owns 38% in TAV, which is also listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Pen Portrait: Kyrgyz rights activist: Azimzhan Askarov

JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In Kyrgyzstan and abroad, Azimzhan Askarov divides opinion.

Charged with inciting ethnic hatred and participating in the murder of a police officer, Askarov was imprisoned for life in the south of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 after ethnic fighting killed nearly 400 people in the city of Osh.

It was a angry time, only a few months after a violent revolution, that enflamed historic, simmering tension between the two ethnic groups. Askarov’s supporters said that the charges had been fabricated and in July 2015, he received a human rights prize from the US State Department, an award that prompted the Kyrgyz government to downgrade diplomatic ties with Washington.

Now, after pressure from the UN, Kyrgyzstan has agreed to look again at his sentence.

Askarov, 65, was born in Kyrgyzstan into an Uzbek family. He studied in Tashkent before returning to Kyrgyzstan to work as a human rights advocate.

In 2002, Askarov founded the NGO Vozdukh (“air”) to investigate police brutality. According to local accounts, when challenged on why he had chosen to spend his life in the unglamorous, under-paid and dangerous world of human rights in Central Asia, he would say that “human rights are as indispensable as the air”.

Human rights lobby groups said at the time of his trial in 2010 that Askarov has been beaten and mistreated while in detention. Despite several attempts to reverse the sentence, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to keep Askarov in prison for life in 2011.

His supporters said that the state apparatus was working against him to crush a government opponent. The United States agreed but Kyrgyzstan wouldn’t budge. The tipping point came when the United Nations Human Rights Commission said that Askarov had been tortured and mistreated ahead of the trial and called the Kyrgyz authorities to release him.

Surprisingly, this time, the Kyrgyz Supreme Court listened and said it would look at the sentence again in July.

The question now, though, is whether the Supreme Court will seriously consider releasing Askarov over mistreatment before his trial in 2010, a move that would anger and irritate many Kyrgyz politicians who view him with suspicion.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

200 people protest against drug law in Georgia

TBILISI, JUNE 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Roughly 200 people protested in front of the former parliament building in central Tbilisi against what they said was an excessively draconian and ineffective zero tolerance policy towards drugs.

The protest was one of several organised this year against the drug law in the run-up to a parliamentary election.

In Georgia, possession of even the smallest amount of drugs is considered a criminal offence that could lead to a jail sentence. The law allows police officers to stop people on the street and test them for drug use.

The Georgian Dream coalition takes a conservative approach to society, pulling in support from Georgia’s traditional Orthodox Christian society, but it risks alienating more liberal-minded voters ahead of the election that analysts have said will be hard fought.

Under the slogan ‘Don’t punish us’, demonstrators demanded the decriminalisation of drugs and the allocation of resources instead to social projects and drug rehabilitation schemes.

David Otiashvili, one of the organisers of the protest, said the current legislation was not effective and that it was being used by the police as a tool to impose control over society.

“The legislation is really strict and harsh and it focuses only on punishing people. Georgia is testing 50,000 to 60,000 people per year and it costs us millions and millions. And we know that this drug test does nothing good, there is zero effect,” he said.

The previous government under President Mikheil Saakashvili imposed the zero tolerance rules.

Tea Kordzadze, one of the protesters, said: “What has this repressive drug policy brought to Georgia? The number of drug users has increased.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Analysis: Brexit splits region’s stocks

JULY 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, nicknamed Brexit, worried investors who ditched risky assets for safe havens such as gold and government bonds. And the ripple of nervous activity spread to Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Prices in the immediate aftermath for most stocks fell sharply, by 17% in the case of Kazakhstan copper producer KAZ Minerals.

Oil and gas-linked stocks followed a fall in Brent crude prices downwards. Tethys Petroleum was down 15% (the dotted purple line on the graph) and Roxi Petroleum lost 9%.

Only one company gained from Brexit. This was Toronto-listed miner Centerra Gold which followed the rising price of gold. Brexit forced investors to look for less risky shares, pushing a rise in gold prices, which climbed above $1,300/ounce.

In the following days, most of the shares bounced back in line with global investor sentiment but the split between gold – and gold-linked shares – and the rest was clear from the initial impact.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Cargolux Airlines International gets Turkmen permission

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Luxembourg-based logistics company Cargolux Airlines International has received permission from the Turkmen government to increase the number of flights to Turkmenbashi, a transport hub on the Caspian Sea shore. Since July 2015, Cargolux has connected Luxembourg City and Turkmenbashi with eight flights per week.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Kerry to visit Georgia

JUNE 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a potential boost to Georgia’s aspirations to join NATO, US Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Tbilisi on July 6, the US government said. The following dayMr Kerry will then travel on to Kiev. Joining NATO is a major component of Georgia’s foreign policy. Georgia has supported NATO’s military operations in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq over the past 15 years.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Georgia’s economy grows by 2.1%

JUNE 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Data from Georgia’s state statistics agency Geostat showed that the economy had grown by 2.1% in the 12 months to end-May, a slow down from the 4.3% annualised growth to the end of April. Georgia’s government has estimated GDP growth of 3% for 2015. Like the rest of the region, Georgia has been dealing with the double dangers of a recession in Russian and a drop in oil prices.

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(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Blast at an oil storage kills seven in Turkmenistan

JUNE 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A blast at an oil storage facility in Turkmenbashi in western Turkmenistan killed seven people, local media reported. A government official later denied the report but it would be unusual for a report of this nature to be erroneous. If it is confirmed, the incident will be a blow to the reputation of Turkmenistan’s main Caspian Sea port.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Kyrgyzstan considers luxury bill

JUNE 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In an effort to raise cash to pull through a long financial downturn, Kyrgyzstan’s economy ministry has prepared a bill that would impose an additional tax on luxury cars and large and expensive apartments, media reported. The prospect of a so-called luxury tax is a fairly radical departure from the norm in Central Asia where the rich are relatively lightly taxed.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)

Kazakhstan aims to reduce black economy

JUNE 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to reduce the size of the black economy and to increase the size of tax receipts, Kazakhstan has unveiled plans to force people to declare their income. Media reported that civil servants and employees of state-owned companies will have to declare their full income by 2017, with everybody else following by 2020. The black economy in Kazakhstan has been growing as people try to avoid paying taxes.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 287, published on July 1 2016)