SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, condemned Azerbaijan’s crackdown on media, the latest high profile institution to criticise Baku. On Sept. 1, a court in Baku jailed journalist Khadija Ismayilova for various financial crimes.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised Kazakhstan’s commitment to free speech after it ordered the independent-minded ADAM magazine to be suspended for three months for failing to publish copies in both Russian and Kazakh. The authorities closed down its predecessor ADAM Bol in 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Increasingly concerned about radicalising influences, Kazakhstan’s prosecutor-general said it was banning 700 websites and 21 religious organisation. Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states are worried about extremists linked to the IS group recruiting disenfranchised young men to their causes. Free speech activists have accused the government of using these concerns as a pretext for clamping down on media.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Baku sentenced investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova to 7-1/2 years in prison for various financial crimes, triggering heavy criticism from the West of Azerbaijan’s human rights record and commitment to free speech.
Ismayilova joins a growing list of human rights activists, journalists and opposition supporters who have been sent to prison by the authorities in Azerbaijan over the past few years.
Opponents of President Ilham Aliyev have accused him of effectively purging Azerbaijan of dissidents.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said: “The outrageous verdict against Khadija Ismayilova shows the Azerbaijani authorities’ willingness to subvert the law to exact revenge against critics.”
This opinion was backed up by other human rights and media agencies as well as the EU, the British government and the United States.
Azerbaijan retorts that the West is trying to organise a coup.
Ismayilova was jailed for tax evasion, embezzlement and abuse of power, almost an exact mirror of the type of wrong-doings she has investigated in various government agencies, and even the presidential family, over the past few years.
Mr Roth of Human Rights Watch said independent observers had been unable to access the courtroom because pro-government supporters had taken all the seating.
“The government gets away with things like this because Azerbaijan has paid no price for throwing one dissident, one human rights activists after another into prison,” he said.
Part of the dilemma for Europe is that it wants to reduce its gas dependency on Russia. This means finding an alternative source of gas and this source of gas is Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijani government appears to have gambled that Europe won’t stop building pipelines and negotiating gas contracts despite grumbling about its crackdown on dissidents.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan jailed journalist Khadija Ismayilova for various financial crimes. Her supporters have said that the charges were fabricated and that this is just another attempt by the authorities to silence one of their most fierce critics. Although the authorities in Azerbaijan have imprisoned dozens of human rights activists, opposition members and journalists, Ismayilova is the most high profile.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a speech to mark the 20th anniversary of the Kazakh constitution, President Nursultan Nazarbayev defended his democratic record and said Kazakhstan’s particularly diverse ethnic make-up made full democracy difficult to achieve.
Mr Nazarbayev, who won a presidential election in April with 98% of the vote, said that it was unfair to accuse him of being an autocrat.
“I know that we are sometimes accused of autocracy,” media quoted him as saying.
“How can we talk about autocracy when every four to five years the people vote in free elections to choose a president and elect a parliament?”
Western vote monitors have never judged an election in Kazakhstan to be either free or fair and Mr Nazarbayev’s opponents have previously accused him of being an autocrat, an accusation that clearly irks him.
Mr Nazarbayev who is 75-years- old and has yet to name a successor, has ruled over Kazakhstan since 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Central Asian states became independent countries for the first time.
He has often defended his record and said that Western-style democracy takes time to build.
“We need to consider that we are an Asian society, we have different traditions from the West,” Mr Nazarbayev said in his speech.
“We have other religious and cultural views, therefore we need to move carefully.”
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has disgraced itself, yet again, in the eyes of the West by locking up for 7-1⁄2 years, journalist Khadija Ismayilova.
Perhaps it is about of paranoia triggered by the Arab Spring of 2011 or perhaps it’s the whispering from Russia to clamp down on dissenters, but over the last few years the authorities in Azerbaijan have developed an unfortunate habit of jailing dissidents on various financial and drug-running charges.
Although Ismayilova and other dissenters may now sit in jail, it is the authorities in Azerbaijan who look foolish.
It’s impossible to take seriously all the charges thrown at the dissenters over the past few years. There have been too many of them, from similar backgrounds, facing similar charges.
Instead, the intrigue is just what has spooked President Ilham Aliyev and the authorities in Azerbaijan? Why does the country feel so insecure?
And there is also the worrying precedent that has been set. Last month a sports journalist was attacked and killed after criticising an international Azerbaijani footballer on Facebook. Journalists in Azerbaijan, it seems, who challenge the establishment are in great peril.
This is important for investors looking at Azerbaijan from a business viewpoint. There comes a tipping point when it becomes just too negative for a company or persons to invest in a country. The reputational damage outweighs any potential profit.
If it hasn’t done so already, Azerbaijan may fast be approaching this point.
By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
SEPT. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The OSCE, Europe’s democracy and civil rights watchdog, said it was going to send 30 long-term and 350 short-term observers to monitor Azerbaijan’s parliamentary election set for Nov. 1. Relations between Europe and Azerbaijan are at a low. Europe has accused Azerbaijan of cracking down on human rights; Azerbaijan has accused the West of trying to organise a coup.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 28 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — The Tajik government warned the Islamic Renaissance Party, the last remaining opposition parties, that it is now operating illegally because it was no longer active in enough cities to merit being called a political party.
Analysts said that this was another attempt by the government to disband one of its biggest critics.
In a statement published by the state news agency Khovar, the justice ministry said: “The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan is no longer a republican party.”
Officials said that according to the law, a republican party must have representative cells in most cities and district.
The statement says that the IRPT has cut its activities in 58 cities and districts, and cannot be considered an all-republican party able to hold a national congress.
The Tajik justice ministry gave IRPT 10 days to respond to the statement.
IRPT plans to hold a congress on Sept. 15 to choose new leaders to replace its self-exiled leader.
Mahmadali Hait, the deputy head of IRPT, told local media that the party is going to answer the government’s statement soon.
“Our answer to the justice ministry is almost ready, but we can disclose it only after the ministry receives our answer,” he said.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Riot police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of dozens of young men in the provincial Azerbaijani town of Mingachevir, a rare display of public anger and frustration in Azerbaijan. The crowd had been calling for the head of the local police force to resign after a 22-year-old Azerbaijani man died in police custody two days earlier.
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(News report from Issue No. 245, published on Aug. 28 2015)
