SEPT. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Vladimir Shkolnik, the Kazakh energy minister, said OPEC members asked Kazakhstan to cut its oil production in a coordinated attempt to increase oil prices. Kazakhstan has said oil production would be slightly lower this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Looking to boost the popular appeal of picking cotton, the authorities in Uzbekistan pulled in an actor and a singer for a photo op of them working in fields, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported. Uzbekistan’s cotton picking programme has drawn criticism from human rights groups.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A website run by Turkmen opposition activists living in exile said the plane belonging to Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had stopped off in Munich on its way to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting. The website speculated that he may have stopped off to visit a personal doctor.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh government has said it is considering cutting taxes for oil producers to encourage them to raise output. Some energy companies operating in Kazakhstan, especially the smaller ones, have said they will not produce oil until prices recover. Kazakhstan has cut its projected oil production in 2015 by 1m tonnes to 79.5m tonnes.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said that police had raided the home of journalist Islam Shikhali, one of its freelance contributors based in Baku. The West has criticised Azerbaijan for pressuring media. RFE/RL has closed its office in Baku.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 2 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s main opposition TV channel Rustavi2 said it will have to stop broadcasting within days unless it finds more cash quickly after a court seized a controlling stake in the company.
The court blocked the sale of the 51% stake to a relative of a former defence minister, a sale that had been considered vital to keep Rustavi2 afloat after an earlier decision linked to a row with a former shareholder handed control of the TV channel’s assets to the authorities.
At a press conference at the TV channel’s HQ in Tbilisi, Rustavi2 director Nika Gvaramia said that its closure was imminent.
“The current government, lead by Ivanishvili promises democracy, but they have finally done what they have wanted to do for the past four years — shut Rustavi2 down,” he said.
Bidzina Ivanishvili is Georgia’s richest man and architect of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.
Since winning a parliamentary election in 2012 and a presidential election a year later, Mr Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream have been trying to purge Georgia of remnants of former president Mikheil Saakashvili and his allies.
And analysts said that Rustavi2, one of only three main TV channels, has long been in his sights.
Maia Mikashavidze, a Tbilisi-based professor of mass communication, said Rustavi2 is considered one of the few voices critical of the current government and that the decision by the court to block the sale of the stake did carry a political undertone.
“Rustavi2’s operations are seriously threatened and may stall any time because the station is short of cash because of insufficient ad sales,” Ms Mikashavidze said.
“This limits access to alternative views and facts for a huge numbers of viewers who rely on Rustavi2 for that service.”
In Kutaisi, hundreds of people rallied in front of parliament to demand that the government take action to protect Rustavi2.
The US government, which has previously criticised Mr Ivanishvili and his supporters for their excessive zeal in prosecuting people and companies linked to Mr Saakashvili, said that it was concerned about the case.
“We do not like to see any kind of limitation on this pluralistic media environment.” US Ambassador Ian Kelley said in a statement.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 29 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia moved a step closer to ditch- ing prison sentences for people found with a small amount of marijuana after a parliamentary committee backed the proposal. The legal affairs committee said that it still wanted marijuana use to be illegal but not punishable with a prison sentence. Parliament is likely to vote on the issue later this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan security forces killed two men they said were linked to former deputy minister Gen. Abdukhalim Nazarzoda. Tajik authorities have accused Nazarzoda of plotting attacks on police checkpoints that killed more than two dozen people in Dushanbe and a nearby town last month. Nazarzoda was killed during a special operation.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
OCT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The OSCE, Europe’s main election and media rights watchdog, sent a note to the Kazakh government asking it not to cut access to news website which have been critical of the authorities. The OSCE has previously criticised Kazakhstan for is media rights record.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US embassy in Tashkent said that an unidentified man threw two homemade grenades over the wall of the compound.
One of the grenades exploded but didn’t injure anybody, the embassy said in a statement. No group has claimed responsibility. The embassy closed immediately after the attack although it reopened the following day.
“At approximately 7:30 am on Monday, September 28 an unidenti- fied assailant tossed two improvised incendiary devices onto embassy grounds,” the embassy said in a state- ment.
“One of the incendiary devices exploded. Immediately following the explosion the embassy went on lock- down. No one was injured in the blast.”
The attack will be a major concern for the US. Governments in Central Asia have spoken of the increased threat from radical Islam, although some of the evidence has been dis- puted. It’s still unclear if this attack was linked to radical Islam or to something else but it would have been unsettling.
In 2004, car bombs targeted both the US and Israeli embassies. Two security guards were killed outside the Israeli embassy.
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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
