JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian miner Polymetal said it reached an agreement with Sberbank for a $350m loan to finance the start-up of its Kyzyl project in north-eastern Kazakhstan. In 2015, it bought the Kyzyl project for $620m from Sumeru, a private group owned by Timur Kulibayev, son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Foreign trade turnover grew by 3% in Georgia in Jan.-May 2016 compared to the same period last year, the Statistics Committee said. Importantly, however, the gap between imports and exports grew by 15%, worsening the country’s trade balance. The value of imports increased by 8% to $3.3b. The value of exports decreased 12%, to $780m.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
TBILISI, JUNE 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s Central Election Committee (CEC) gave preliminary approval for a referendum on enshrining the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman in the Georgian Constitution, setting up a potentially acrimonious clash between liberals and conservatives.
If activists manage to collect the 200,000 signatures needed to trigger a referendum it is likely that the vote would be held on the same day as a parliamentary election — Oct. 8.
It’ll be closely watched by the European Union. Georgia wants to join the European Union and has been lobbying for visa-free access but, among other issues, Brussels has said that Georgia’s attitude towards gay rights undermines its application.
Georgia’s society is broadly conservative and against gay rights, although it does have a vocal LGBT community. In 2013, a crowd attacked a gay rights march in Tbilisi injuring several people. A Georgian Orthodox priest was photographed wielding a stool as a weapon.
The proposed referendum was put forward by several MPs, including Sandro Bregadze, who had been a deputy minister within the Georgian Dream coalition and is known for his staunchly homophobic comments.
He told a press conference after the CEC approval that the referendum question he wants to put forward is: “Do you agree or not the definition of marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purpose of starting a family?”
Lika Jalagania, lawyer at Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center, later told The Conway Bulletin that there was a strong chance that the group lobbying for the referendum would be able to collect the 200,000 signatures.
“I really think that they will reach this number, bearing in mind the current homophobic attitudes of Georgian society”, she said.
On June 13, outside the US embassy in Tbilisi a group of gay rights campaigners were holding a vigil in support of the victims of a homophobic attack on a nightclub in Orlando two days earlier. At least 49 people died in the attack, one of the worst mass shootings in the US.
A 57-year-old activist who declined to be named said that mainstream Georgians’ attitude towards the LGBT community would not change.
“The Church rules our country and that is not good for us,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
ALMATY, JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bayan Yessentayeva, a high profile TV celebrity and a role- model for thousands of Kazakh women, was beaten unconscious by her husband during a row at a petrol station, sparking a rare public debate about domestic violence in Kazakhstan.
Eyewitnesses said that Bakhytbek Yessentayev was drunk when he stabbed, punched and kicked Ms Yessentayeva, 42. Mr Yessentayev has a reputation for violence. Earlier this year, a video was posted on Youtube which allegedly showed him punch- ing staff at a casino after he lost thousands of dollars in one evening.
A spokesman for the Talgar hospital near Almaty said that Ms Yessentayeva was unconscious but in a stable condition.
“She’s a very strong woman to be able to survive, especially with such injuries. She has a strong spirit,” said Erbol Sarsenbayev, deputy director of the hospital.
For Kazakhs the beating has generated a rare, and uncomfortable, debate about domestic abuse.
According to the United Nations, 500 women are killed each year by their husbands or boyfriends in Kazakhstan, one of the highest rates per capita in the world.
Campaigners have said that in Kazakhstan a mix of heavy drinking, a distrust of the authorities and Islamic practices which can subjugate women in the home combine to create conditions which heighten scenarios where domestic abuse can occur.
The beating of Ms Yessentayeva, though, triggered a rare protest against domestic violence with women posting photos of their faces on Twitter with painted-on bruises.
Zulfiya Baisakova, chairperson of the activist group Union of Crisis Centers in Kazakhstan, said they receive between 15,000 to 20,000 reports of domestic violence each year.
“Official statistics show that everything is improving but unofficially statistics show an increase in the number of incidences,” she said.
And women in Kazakhstan are frustrated by the lack of attention that domestic abuse receives.
Diana Burkit, a student from south Kazakhstan, told the Conway Bulletin that although she was not a victim of abuse her relatives had been.
“I resent that only after Yessentayeva was abused has anybody paid attention to this. How about what goes on in Shymkent?” she said.
She described domestic violence in southern Kazakhstan as rampant.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank approved a $978m loan to finance the construction of a road link across Kazakhstan, which will complete the transit corridor between Astana and the west of the country. The project will cost a total of $1b and will be partly funded by the government. The World Bank is also funding part of the Kazakh section of the Western Europe – Western China highway.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan Railways chief Javid Gurbanov said that the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway connection has been delayed by adverse weather conditions, but is on track to be completed by the end of the year. Georgia has already completed the section that will cross its territory. The Turkish government also confirmed that it plans to complete its section by the end of 2016. The original timeline of the project, started in 2007,scheduled its completion for 2010.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -Viewers watching the UEFA European football championships in France will have noticed, it’s impossible not to, SOCAR sponsorship rolling across the advertising hoarding on the side of the pitch.
Even in a recession, SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, finds the cash to sponsor a major sporting event. This weekend, too, Baku hosts its inaugural Formula 1 Grand Prix. Last summer the city hosted the first European Games.
The total bill for these lavish affairs is likely to run to the billions of dollars. Of course the advertising has raised Azerbaijan’s profile but to what end? SOCAR doesn’t need to become a household name in Europe; athletics and motorsport are hardly integral to the Azerbaijani national character.
Most of these sporting deals would have been organised before the collapse in oil prices that has pressured Azerbaijan’s economy, tipped it into recession and squeezed jobs. Ordinary Azerbaijanis are not having a good time, as shown by nationwide protests earlier this year. Signs of resentment are being more easily picked up.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government ordered the closure of land borders for ten days to try to insulate the country from potential Islamic militant attacks ahead of a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) heads of states, scheduled for next week.
Leaders from Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan will join Uzbek President Islam Karimov at the annual SCO summit in Tashkent on June 23/24.
Uzbekistan has emphasised its efforts in combating terrorism, one of the pillars of the SCO, and wants to demonstrate its ability to become a safe haven of peace in Central Asia.
Analysts said that closing its border crossing checkpoints is a way of demonstrating control over its territory and its capacity to fence off potential terrorists from abroad.
The authorities dismissed earlier rumours that Tashkent would be closed off during the summit.
“There will be enhanced security checks, but the city will operate in normal mode,” the Uzbek ministry of interior said in a statement.
In the weeks leading up to the summit, the Tashkent city administration ordered a clean-up of the capital. Reports said that hundreds of satellite dishes were removed from houses on Prospekt Kosmonavtov,a main road in Tashkent which runs down to Mr Karimov’s official residence.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Central Bank said remittances from abroad fell by 5% in May to $92.9m, compared to May 2015, a sign that the regional economic malaise is still biting economies in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Money transfers from Russia represented one-third of all remittances last month. Remittance flows to Georgia have also been badly hit by Greece’s economic problems. Greece, also a predominately Orthodox country, had been the second highest originator of remittances to Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
JUNE 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Eurasian Economic Union, a trade bloc led by Russia but also involving Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia plans to set up a unified electricity market by 2019, EEU members’ energy ministers said after a meeting in Dushanbe. Tajikistan aspires to be part of the EEU, which critics have said is a Kremlin project to extend its control.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 285, published on June 17 2016)
