JUNE 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — South Korean automaker Hyundai said it has sold 500 Aero City buses to Turkmenistan, for $66m. Hyundai has already sold 700 buses to Turkmenistan over the past seven years. The new buses will mostly service the capital, Ashgabat, during the Asian Indoors Games in 2017.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said its Romanian subsidiary SOCAR Petroleum made a profit in 2015 for the first time since 2011 despite a fall in revenues. SOCAR Petroleum owns several filling stations across Romania. Low oil prices reduced total revenue at SOCAR Petroleum but also gave it a higher profit margin on sales.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 3/7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The European Union and the United Nations both condemned the harsh sentencing of former top members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan last week. “The court proceedings were not transparent and violated the rights of the accused to a fair trial,” the EU statement said. “The harsh sentencing reflects the steady increase of restrictions on freedom of expression in Tajikistan,” said David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR said it aims to increase oil and gas production at several offshore fields in the Caspian Sea. The company said it will build nine new platforms to drill 81 wells. CEO Rovnag Abdullayev said a new gas platform in the Guneshli block will be the first to be entirely designed and built by SOCAR.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)f
JUNE 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A new Hyatt hotel will open in mid- June in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, sources told local media. The US-based company had planned to open the new hotel in 2013. The original plan was a $113m investment and completion by early 2015. According to reports, costs have now grown to around $205 and include an investment from the government. The hotel will open just days before a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Tashkent.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s taken 13 years but human rights groups scored a significant victory in Turkmenistan when the authorities finally allowed Ayjemal Rejepova and her two young daughters to leave the country to rejoin their family in Europe.
Ms Rejepova’s father is Pirkuli Tanrykuliev, a former Turkmen doctor and opposition leader. He was imprisoned in 1999, released shortly afterwards and then allowed to leave the country for exile in Norway. His wife followed but his daughter was banned from joining him.
As well as being banned from travelling abroad, Ms Rejepova and her husband lost their jobs and were subject to searches and intimidation by the Turkmen security forces.
With the help of Western human rights groups, she has now succeeded in pressuring the Turkmen authorities in scrapping the travel ban. She has been brave but, as Human Rights Watch pointed out, there are thousands of other Turkmen also subject to a travel ban from Turkmenistan because of alleged offences linked to relatives. The pressure needs to be maintained.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Five Kazakh weightlifters have tested positive for taking banned drugs, Kazakhstan’s weightlifting association said. The names of the athletes who failed the tests have not been released although weightlifting websites speculated it could be Olympic champions Ilya Ilyin and Zulfiya Chinshanlo. The drug test failures and any subsequent bans would be a major blow to Kazakhstan’s hopes of winning medals at the Olympics in Brazil.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan and Afghanistan signed a 10-year agreement for the supply of electricity, a sign of enhanced cross-border cooperation for the two countries’ power sectors. State-owned Turkmenenergo and Afghanistan’s DABS extended the current agreement to the end of 2017 and signed a new agreement, which will last until the end of 2027. Turkmenistan aims to export electricity to Tajikistan and Pakistan via Afghanistan. It holds ambitions to turn itself into a regional power generation hub.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 10 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tokhtar Tuleshov, a man known as the Kazakh Beer King who has a penchant for luxury watches and racehorses, has been accused of masterminding protests that spread across Kazakhstan in April and May. According to the authorities Mr Tuleshov was trying to stoke a coup d’etat.
The well-groomed, Mr Tuleshov, is a kingpin in Shymkent, a sprawling city on Kazakhstan’s south on the border with Uzbekistan. The city has something of a reputation of an ethnic melting pot and is home to a million or so Kazakhs and Uzbeks. It also has a reputation for cross border trade and smuggling and for having an air of the so-called ‘wild south’.
Mr Tuleshov revelled in this environment, building up a power base that may have threatened more established politicians in Astana. In a dramatic raid captured on mobile phone footage on Jan. 30 this year, armed police swooped on a hotel where Mr Tuleshov was hosting a meeting. They arrested him and four of his colleagues for alleged drug smuggling and gun running.
His Shymkentpivo brewery is one of the biggest in Kazakhstan, producing around 200m litres of beer every year, including the Shymentskoe brand, one of the most popular. He also has close links with the Russian parliament and was the official representative in Kazakhstan of the Centre for the Analysis of Terrorist Threats, a Moscow-based group. Kazakh news websites have also reported that Mr Tuleshov has bought a majority stake in Uzbekistan’s biggest juice producer.
Like other wealthy businessmen in Kazakhstan, Mr Tuleshov was careful to support causes favoured by the ruling elite. This involved being a fully paid-up member of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party and a benefactor of various boxing associations.
Mr Tuleshov was not afraid of showing off his wealth, often driving around Shymkent in a black Rolls Royce, inevitably followed by a convoy of bodyguards, and making pop videos released on YouTube of his wife and daughter’s extravagant birthdays.
All this is a world away from his prison cell where Mr Tuleshov has been languishing for nearly six months. By being accused of trying to organise a coup d’etat, Mr Tuleshov is effectively being cast as an enemy of the state, making his situation precarious – to say the least.
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(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
JUNE 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — An Uzbek court in Samarkand jailed six locals who had planned to join the radical group ISIS in Syria and had incited others to practice Sharia law. The court handed out sentences of six to nine years. All the accused, five men and one woman, pleaded guilty. Official reports say that dozens of Central Asians travel to Syria every month to ISIS.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 284, published on June 10 2016)
