Category Archives: Uncategorised

Uzbek President congratulates journalists

JUNE 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently without any sense of irony, Uzbek President Islam Karimov congratulated journalists in Uzbekistan on their work.

It could be said to be ironic because media groups rate Uzbekistan as one of the worst countries in the world for media freedom.

“We are well aware that today it is impossible to imagine life without your difficult and responsible work, without the multifaceted activities of the media,” Mr Karimov wrote in a letter published on the internet.

“The fruits of your painstaking work are always received with great interest and attention.”

There are now 1,400 media outlets in Uzbekistan, he said, including 70 TV stations, 30 radio channels and 300 websites.

Uzbek journalists, at least those without links to the authorities, disagree.

Daniil Kislov, the editor of the Fergana.Ru news agency which covers Central Asia, said: “The president’s impression on the richness of the information space seriously differs from reality. Reporters Without Borders placed Uzbekistan in the 166th position among 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index 2015.”

The Uzbek authorities have blocked access to Ferghana.com in Uzbekistan for several years.

US-funded RFE/RL, the BBC and the Voice of America are inaccessible in Uzbekistan, leaving the local information consumer limited to the government’s position on events.

And this view can be very skewed. Readers relying on government authorised journalism may not be aware of the problems facing Mr Karimov’s eldest daughter, she has been under house arrest for over a year, the arguments surrounding Uzbekistan’s use of child labour to pick its cotton, the general crackdown in civil liberties and, also, its poor media freedom ranking.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Kazakh economy to perform poor growth

JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Economists polled by Bloomberg News said Kazakhstan will be one of the top ten worst performing economies in 2015. Kazakhstan’s economy is expected to grow by 1.2% this year, down from an estimate of 3.6% in March.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Armania’s currency reserves increase

JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s foreign currency reserves increased by $100m in May, the Central Bank told media. The increase shows that pressure on the dram has reduced. Last year, the Central Bank spent a third of its reserves defining the dram.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Turkmen president travels to Tbilisi to talk energy policies

JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TBILISI — Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov travelled to Tbilisi for the first time in his eight-year presidency, part of a high-profile charm offensive aimed at winning support for pumping Turkmen gas to Europe across the South Caucasus.

Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili welcomed Mr Berdymukhamedov at the Presidential Palace overlooking Tbilisi with red carpet and a guard of honour.

“Energy is one of the issues on which we cooperate closely. A Transit route from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey has a huge potential,” Georgian media quoted Mr Berdymukhamedov as saying after the meeting. said.

Mr Margvelashvili agreed.

“Our joint transit and energy projects will make it possible to transit Turkmen energy resources to the European markets,” he said.

This year momentum has built for Turkmenistan to start sending its gas to Europe across the south Caucasus. The European Union has visited Ashgabat several times to secure promises of gas supplies from Turkmenistan and Turkmen officials have set up working groups with their Azerbaijani, Georgian and Turkish counterparts on how best to pump gas to Europe.

Europe wants to reduce its dependence on Russia for energy supplies and Turkmenistan wants to widen its client base. Currently most of its gas flows east to China.

By travelling to Tbilisi for the first time since he became Turkmen president in 2007, Mr Berdymukhamedov has sent out a strong signal of his intent.

Luca Anceschi, a professor of Central Asian Studies at Glasgow University explained.

“This meeting, marking Berdymukhamedov’s first official visit to Georgia, is an important display of Turkmenistan’s policy of maintaining an open dialogue with as many potential partners as possible,” he said.

And Georgia is important because it lies on the pipeline transit route from Azerbaijan to Turkey and then into Europe. Mr Berdymukhamedov, as he clearly has acknowledged, needs Georgian support to push gas through to Europe.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Football fever grips Georgian capital and tests infrastructure

TBILISI/Georgia, JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Football dominates conversation on the streets of Tbilisi. Its 51,000-seat Dinamo stadium will host the 40th UEFA Super Cup between Champions League winner Barcelona and Europa League winner Sevilla on August 11.

Tbilisi won the bid to host the Super Cup in the last few months of Mikheil Saakashvili’s government in 2012, the culmination of 1-1/2 years of negotiations.

“It’s a huge event for us,” said Boris Kiknadze, one of several thousand football fans in Tbilisi who are hoping to buy tickets for the big match. “Our teams are not great, so we never have big stars coming here. I am really excited to see Barcelona, if I manage to get a ticket.”

But that’s just the problem. Getting hold of a ticket has proved difficult, if not impossible. “It is a horrible mess here,” said Kiknadze. Biletebi.ge, an online ticket retailer, was selected as the main distributor of the game tickets. Used to selling tickets to jazz concerts and the theatre, rather than large sports events, it crashed seconds after thousands of fans tried to buy a ticket on June 22.

It restarted on June 30, introduced a virtual queue and allowed people 15 minutes on the website before timing out and four tickets per person. An estimated 140,000 people queued online for tickets. About 2,000 tickets were sold before the site crashed again.

Biletebi.ge said it experienced technical difficulties, and resumed sales on July 1 of the 4,300 tickets earmarked for people living outside Georgia. The remaining 22,000 tickets, reserved for Georgians, will be sold later this month at booths outside the stadium.

Tbilisi-based sports journalist Alastair Watt described what the match meant to Georgians.

“This is probably the biggest club match to take place in Georgia since independence (from the Soviet Union in 1991),” he said. “For the tens of thousands of Georgians who follow Barcelona, this is likely to be their only chance to see their team on Georgian soil.”

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Kyrgyz Central Bank initiates capitalisation criteria

JULY 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Commercial banks in Kyrgyzstan’s need to meet a minimum capitalisation level, the Central Bank said, part of an ongoing process to professionalise the banking sector and protect it against another Global Financial Crisis. By 2017, commercial banks in Kyrgyzstan will need a working capital of nearly $10m.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Turkmen capital opens Arkadag park

JUNE 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – To honour Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s 58th birthday, city authorities in Ashgabat named a new park Arkadag, which means “Protector” and is the moniker he likes to go by.

Critics of Mr Berdymukhamedov have accused him of encouraging his officials to promote a cult of personality, something that he disparaged at the start of this period in power in 2007.

Earlier this year, though, the authorities unveiled a giant statue of Mr Berdymukhamedov on a horse. Television shots have also increasingly showed him berating officials and holding court, emperor-like.

And the new Arkadag park appears to back up this image. The park’s main feature is a large white marble arch with Mr Berdymukhamedov’s portrait in its centre.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Turkmenistan to boost oil and gas exports

JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan’s oil and gas ministry said it wants to increase the amount of processed oil and gas products it exports. Turkmenistan has been trying to increase exports of both raw natural gas and processed products.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Azerbaijani capital closes first European Games

JUNE 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan brought the inaugural European Games to a close with another lavish ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Baku.

Opinion was divided on whether the Games had been a success.

Attendance of both crowds and top athletes was low, espe- cially in the perceived blue ribbon athletics events although Azerbaijan’s new sta- diums were highly praised.

For Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, the Games were an intrinsic part of his strategy to promote the country through sport.

Azerbaijan has sponsored football teams and plans to host a Formula 1 race next year. It will probably also bid to host the Olympics in 2024.

No expense was spared on the European Games, which featured Lady Gaga singing at the opening ceremony.

But complaints over Azerbaijan’s human rights record and a bus crash in the Olympic village which injured members of the Austrian swimming team overshadowed part the Games.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Kyrgyz MPs sack judge

JUNE 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – BISHKEK — MPs in Kyrgyzstan voted to sack a judge over a row about biometric data in what civil activists described as more evidence of parliament’s authoritarian tendencies.

Protesters gathered in the centre of Bishkek to demonstrate against the apparent sacking of Klara Sooronkulova, a judge in the Constitutional Chamber of the Kyrgyz Supreme Court.

She had been working on a document that would have declared a law brought in last year forcing everybody in Kyrgyzstan to give their fingerprint data to the state as unconstitutional.

“Sooronkulova was dismissed only because she expressed her opinion as an independent judge,” shouted Nurbek Toktakunov, a lawyer, at the protest.

The law that Ms Sooronkulova took umbridge with decreed that only those people who had submitted biometric data could vote in a parliamentary election set for October.

She said that this was unlawful. Apparently irritated by her reluctance to accept the law on biometric data, the government forced MPs to vote three times to sack her. She survived the first two efforts.

“This is a clear evidence of complete arbitrariness,” Ms Sooronkulova told a newspaper.

It’s unlikely that protests will gather momentum but the independence of the judiciary from the executive power has been damaged in Kyrgyzstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)