Tag Archives: human rights

Turkmenistan stages invisible election

FEB. 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – You’d be forgiven for not noticing, but on Sunday Feb. 12 2012 Turkmenistan holds a presidential election.

The election should give voters in Turkmenistan, which has a population of five million people and holds the world’s fourth largest reserves of gas, a chance to judge Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s first five years in power.

But it won’t. This is a mirage of an election.

Aside from Mr Berdymukhamedov, a 54-year-old former dentist, there are seven other official candidates. All are party loyalists, some currently hold ministerial positions and none offer genuine choice.

Despite the government’s rhetoric last year inviting its exiled opponents back to Turkmenistan, the opposition is wary and won’t return to contest the election.

The main international newswires have local correspondents inside Turkmenistan but Western journalists met a stony silence when they requested visas to cover the election.

Even the ubiquitous election monitors from Europe’s democracy watchdog, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have declined to go. They said simply that there was no point as democracy and choice in Turkmenistan does not exist.

The only issue is what official proportion of the votes Mr Berdymukhamedov will win. In 2007, he won with 89% of the vote. Will his winning margin in 2012 be bigger?

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 76, published on Feb. 9 2012)

US resumes non-lethal military aid to Uzbekistan

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FEB. 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has signed a waiver allowing the US to give Uzbekistan non-lethal military aid despite concerns over its human rights record, news agencies reported. Ms Clinton signed the waiver on Jan. 18. Uzbekistan is a vital cog in the US supply chain to its forces in Afghanistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 76, published on Feb. 9 2012)

Azerbaijan’s president scorns uprising talk

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FEB. 3 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – At the annual Munich Security Conference, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said Azerbaijan would not succumb to a Middle East-style uprising because of its strong economic growth. Last year police in Baku quashed a series of anti-government demonstrations and some analysts have said it may be vulnerable to an uprising.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 76, published on Feb. 9 2012)

The limits of press freedom in Central Asia and the South Caucasus

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FEB. 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media freedom rankings by the France-based NGO Reporters Without Borders reflect another tough year for local journalists in Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

Turkmenistan retains its standard position at the bottom of the 179-country list, just above North Korea and Eritrea, underlining its reputation as one of the world’s most repressive states. Twenty places above Turkmenistan is Uzbekistan, also in familiar territory.

But this year, between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, sliding 10 places to 162nd is Azerbaijan.

In 2011, the authorities in Azerbaijan quashed anti-government protests and imprisoned journalists and bloggers. In November a prominent Azerbaijani journalist was also murdered in Baku.

Reporters Without Borders called Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev a “predator” of the media.

“Violence is back in a big way there, with threats, beatings and abduction of opposition journalists,” the report said.

The report was compiled between Dec. 1 2010 and Nov. 30 2011, before the Kazakh authorities’ crackdown on media after riots in the west of the country.

Even so, Kazakhstan comes in at 154th position and looks set to slip in the next rankings.

Armenia enjoys the most media freedom in the region. In 77th position it has regained ground lost after opposition protests and a state-of-emergency in 2008.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 75, published on Feb. 2 2012)

Jehovah’s Witness activist jailed in Turkmenistan

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JAN. 25 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Turkmen authorities sentenced a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses to four years in jail at a secret trial for distributing pornography, Forum 18, the Norway-based religion news agency, reported. The group said that the allegations against Vladimir Nuryllayev, the jailed member, were fabricated.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 75, published on Feb. 2 2012)

Prisoners go on hunger strike in Kyrgyzstan

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JAN. 24 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Several hundred prisoners in Kyrgyzstan sewed together their lips in a protest against conditions inside the country’s jails. The Kyrgyz prison service had said they were going to force feed the prisoners to break a week-long hunger strike they had started after police and inmates fought in a Bishkek jail.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 74, published on Jan. 26 2012)

FIFA says no to women’s soccer world cup in Uzbekistan

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DEC. 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Soccer’s governing body, FIFA, scrapped plans for Uzbekistan to host the women’s under-20 soccer world cup next year. FIFA said it had to re-schedule the competition in Japan because of technical issues. Human rights groups have been strongly critical of Uzbekistan in the past few months.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 70, published on Dec. 22 2011)

European MPs reject trade deal with Uzbekistan

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DEC. 15 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject a deal to reduce tariffs on Uzbek textiles until the UN is given access to investigate reports of child labour. The decision comes at a time when, despite criticism over its human rights, Uzbekistan is being re-integrated into the international community.

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(News report from Issue No. 70, published on Dec. 22 2011)

HRW slams Uzbekistan in torture report

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DEC. 13 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by Human Rights Watch accused the US and NATO of virtually ignoring torture by Uzbekistan because it was now an ally in their war in Afghanistan. As relations with Pakistan have worsened, NATO has increased supplies to its forces in Afghanistan along a route through Uzbekistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 69, published on Dec. 14 2011)

Prominent Azerbaijani journalist murdered in Baku

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NOV. 30 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Rafiq Tagi, a 61-year-old widely respected Azerbaijani journalist, died of stab wounds in a Baku hospital on Nov. 23, four days after an unknown assailant attacked him.

He wrote articles critical of both the state and hard line Islam. Muslim extremists, though, are suspected of organising Tagi’s murder.

Whether or not the authorities or Muslim extremists are the main threat, for local journalists the former Soviet South Caucasus and Central Asia states are often both difficult and dangerous to report on.

In Turkmenistan police this year tracked down and imprisoned journalists who reported on an explosion at an arms depot. In Uzbekistan most local correspondents from international news agencies have been chased out and in Tajikistan the BBC’s reporter was jailed.

Southern Kyrgyzstan remains dangerous for ethnic Uzbek journalists and in Kazakhstan in October attackers armed with baseball bats and a gun beat a camera crew covering protests in the west of the country against the state oil company.

A 2010 press freedom index compiled by the US-based NGO Reporters Without Borders scored the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia poorly. Armenia, Georgia and Tajikistan ranked slightly better but Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were in the bottom quarter of the index.

The report card for 2011 may well be even worse.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 67, published on Dec. 1 2011)