NOV. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged a US delegation flying to Tashkent for bilateral talks to push for the release of political prisoners. HRW has criticised the US for relaxing its pressure on Uzbekistan’s human rights record because it needs to transport military kit from Afghanistan across Uzbek territory.
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(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)
NOV. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Many of Georgia’s top politicians and businessmen gathered at the funeral in Tbilisi of former economy minister Kakha Bendukidze who died this month in London. Bendukidze was aged 58 when he died. He was the architect of the privatisation drive under former president Mikheil Saakashvili.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia brought back the bodies of three crew members of a helicopter shot down by Azerbaijan earlier this month, media reported. The shooting down of the helicopter over the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh has heightened tension between the two neighbours.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan is on the brink of accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the WTO’s director-general, Roberto Azevedo, said in a report. Kazakhstan has been negotiating to join the WTO since the late 1990s and joining the group would give its credibility a boost.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The local authorities in Kyrgyzstan have started a public education campaign to try to stop people from heading to Syria to join up with the extremist group Islamic State, media reported. Central Asian states have been alarmed at the increase in the number of recruits heading to Syria.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan is drafting legislation that will limit foreign funding to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), media reported. The laws are similar to those being passed by Kyrgyzstan and those already in place in Russia. NGOs say the laws will give the government far greater control over the NGO sector.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Seemingly trying to rile the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an enhanced military and strategic partnership with Abkhazia, one of Georgia’s two breakaway regions.
NATO immediately accused Russia of trying to annex the region which only Russia and a handful of its allies have recognised as independent.
Under the deal, Russia will defend Abkhazia’s borders and strengthen its military partnerships as well as give Abkhazia around $110m.
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the new de facto Abkhazian president Raul Khajimba said the deal recognised “equal relations between two sovereign states”.
As well as various economic and military deals, Russia has around 4,000 soldiers stationed in Abkhazia.
Western countries suspect that Russia only encourages Abkhazia and South Ossetia to seek independence from Georgia to act as an irritation to Tbilisi. They also suspect that the Kremlin may have similar ideas for eastern Ukraine which is in the middle of a civil war, focused around Donetsk.
Russia and Georgia fought a brief war over South Ossetia in 2008. Relations are only normalising now.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek President Islam Karimov made a rare trip to Astana where he met Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev to discuss plans by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to build extra hydropower capacity, an issue that has threatened to destabilise the region. Uzbekistan relies on water from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to feed its important cotton fields.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The OSCE, Europe’s election monitoring watchdog, said it will send a limited observation mission to Uzbekistan’s parliamentary elections on Dec. 21. The OSCE has never judged an election in Uzbekistan to be free and fair and has said it is pointless sending a larger team to the vote.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 21 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan, which has virtually zero history of polar exploration, signed up to the Antarctic Treaty, an international agreement to defend the neutrality of the region.
Kazakhstan had shown some interest in the Antarctic region in the past, with private expeditions. In 2011 a Kazakh expedition drove to the South Pole where it planted the national flag on the 20th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union.
Since then the government has unveiled plans to establish a Kazakh Antarctic station for research and possibly business purposes.
It’s likely that Kazakhstan wants to increase its international profile by signing up to the Antarctic Treaty.
Luca Anceschi, professor of Central Asian Security at the University of Glasgow, said: “This decision is in line with the government’s policy to increase and improve Kazakhstan’s visibility in the international arena.”
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
