AUG. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Halyk Bank, Kazakhstan’s second largest lender, increased its full year profit estimate by 10% to 100m tenge ($550m) after a strong first half of the year. The data is positive for Kazakhstan’s banking sector which is looking to rebound from the Global Financial Crisis.
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(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)
AUG. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Human rights groups have criticised former British PM Tony Blair for penning a letter in 2012 to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev giving him advice on how to refer in a speech to deadly clashes between police and anti- government demonstrators. Mr Blair has been an adviser to Mr Nazarbayev since 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)
AUG. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – For human rights workers and freedom of speech activists, these are increasingly worrying times in Kyrgyzstan.
Once considered a bastion of political and social pluralism, Kyrgyzstan appears to be retarding. Earlier this year politicians prepared the ground to implement harsh anti-gay laws, now reports have emerged that say the intelligence services are prosecuting two journalists for alleged defamation.
Eurasianet reported that Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (GKNB) has demanded damages of nearly $20,000 from Shorukh Saipov, a journalist who writes for the independent Fergana News website.
In an article in May, Mr Saipov said that the GKNB was extorting money from Muslims by threatening to prosecute them for extremism. The GKNB has said that the article deliberately tried to tarnish its reputation, charges that Fergana News has denied.
Highlighting the pressure on the media in Kyrgyzstan, Mr Saipov’s brother, also a journalist, was murdered in the southern city of Osh in 2007. His killers were never found.
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(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)
AUG. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps trying to woo Kyrgyzstan into the embrace of the Customs Union, Russia agreed to lift restrictions on the import of Kyrgyz agriculture products, media reported. The restrictions were imposed over food safety fears. Kyrgyzstan has applied to join the Russia-led Customs Union later this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)
SEPT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia has delayed by two years the roll out nationwide of juries in trials.
In 2010, Tbilisi became the first city in former Soviet Caucasus or Central Asia to allow jury verdicts in some trials. Initially, jury trials were limited to those in which both the prosecution and defence in murder cases agreed to it. The former Soviet Union has no legacy of jury trials and their introduction was considered a great modernising step by the administration of former President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Of course introducing jury trials suited Mr Saakashvili’s vision of where Georgia was heading. Mr Saakashvili was an arch-Western reformer. He saw Georgia’s future with the European Union, the United States and NATO. Introducing jury trials was another step in this direction.
The experiment was deemed a success and rolled out to courts in Georgia’s second city of Kutaisi. There have, reports said, been eight murder cases involving juries.
And lawmakers had put forward ambitious plans to push jury trials out across the country not only for murder cases but all crimes that involve a prison sentence from Oct. 1 2014. This has now been delayed.
Poor court infrastructure, a lack of understanding on how juries operate and the extra cost and time of running jury trials were the reasons behind the delay, the civil.ge new website reported quoted the Georgian ministry of justice as saying.
Still, the ambitious plan has only been delayed for two years, rather than scrapped altogether.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
AUG. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran has said that it will stop importing gas from Turkmenistan, media reported. Most of Turkmenistan’s gas flows to China and Iran was not a major client but, even so, the Iranian decision to stop imports will irk. With its economy improving, Iran has said that it plans to ramp up its own gas production.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
AUG. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – People protesting against the alleged use of child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields have targeted South Korea’s Daewoo International Corporation, media reported. According to demonstrators Daewoo buys 5% of Uzbekistan’s cotton. The protests are a reminder of just how sensitive the use of Uzbek cotton is in western clothing.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
AUG. 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan jailed seven men for plotting to attack the TALCO aluminium plant in the west of the country. TALCO is Tajikistan’s biggest economic asset and any successful attack would cripple the Tajik economy. The court said the group wanted to overthrow the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
AUG. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Coca-Cola has re-started drinks production in Uzbekistan a year after manufacturing stopped, media reported.
This is significant in the internal Uzbek power struggle and may show that after a turbulent 12 months Uzbekistan’s politics are calming.
Coca-Cola production in Uzbekistan had been closely associated with Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, through her company Zeromax which also owned several other major Uzbek companies.
Over the past year or so, though, the influence of Ms Karimova has waned. She is now under house arrest in Tashkent and her closest associates have been jailed for various economic crimes.
Information coming out of Uzbekistan is scant but analysts have said that Ms Karimova’s rivals moved to weaken her before she could set herself up as the heir apparent to her father.
In any case, Coca-Cola products had virtually disappeared from supermarket shelves in Uzbekistan this year. It appears now that control of Coca-Cola has been handed over to Ms Karimova’s rivals, marking their ascendency as well as the return of Coca-Cola’s soft drinks.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
AUG. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The United Nations and various international human rights campaigners have intensified their criticism of Azerbaijan for arresting a handful of leading activists over the past month, media reported. European leaders are courting Azerbaijan for its oil and gas but its human rights records has worsened.
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(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)
