Tag Archives: human rights

Kyrgyzstan approves weaker foreign agents bill

APRIL 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Kyrgyz parliamentary committee approved a weaker version of the so-called foreign agents bill than they had originally devised, eurasianet.org reported, appearing to give way to strong opposition to the new laws which Western human rights activists said had been inspired by a similar law in Russia. The paperwork burden and the hostile labelling of groups linked to foreign governments has been reduced compared to the previous version.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Arrested Kazakh journalist suffers high blood pressure

APRIL 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Setykazy Matayev, a senior figure in Kazakhstan’s media scene and the former head of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s press office, was sent to hospital suffering from high blood pressure. He was arrested last month and charged with corruption. He is the the most high-profile journalist to be arrested during a crackdown by the authorities on media over the past few months. Analysts have said the crackdown could be linked to a drop in the economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Georgian court rules surveillance bill unconstitutional

APRIL 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s Constitutional Court ruled that a 2014 surveillance bill is unconstitutional, rolling back on a controversial piece of legislation. The law allowed the security services to have unrestricted access to telecom operators’ networks to monitor communications. President Giorgi Margvelashvili had vetoed the bill in November 2014, but the Parliament overrode the veto and adopted the legislation.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 276, published on April 15 2016)

Azerbaijan jails five guilty of killing journalist

APRIL 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan found five men guilty of beating to death a journalist in August, sentencing them to prison.

The case triggered public debates in Azerbaijan where the authorities have appeared to hold critical journalists in contempt with their own clampdown on the media over the past few years.

The five men received sentences of between 9 and 13 years for knocking Rasim Aliyev to the floor and beating him in broad daylight in Baku. He later died in hospital from his injuries.

They were relatives and friends of Cavid Huseynov, an Azerbaijani international football player. Aliyev had criticised Mr Huseynov as “immoral and ill-bred” in a Facebook post for goading supporters of Apollon, a Cypriot team, at a football match by waving a Turkish flag.

After the verdict, Aliyev’s father said: “All of them are criminals and they killed my son on purpose. They planned the attack before meeting my son and they killed him.”

Mr Huseynov faces a trial for not reporting the crime. He has not been linked directly with the beating.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Man dies after questioning by Tajik police

APRIL 3 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — The death of a 27- year-old man after he had been questioned by Tajik police has sparked a row over police brutality in Tajikistan.

Bunyod Mirzoyev was found hanged after three days of police questioning over his apparent links to the Islamic extremist group IS. His family and friends said that police tortured him to try to extract a confession and had then killed him to try and hide the evidence.

The accusation triggered a forthright response from the police who issued a statement saying that they were on the receiving end of slander and that opponents of the authorities were trying to use the death of Mirzoyev to discredit the police.

Instead, the Tajik police said Mirzoyev had hanged himself from a tree when he returned home after being questioned.

“The suicide of B. Mirzoyev is currently under investigation by the prosecution,” the police said.

Still, human rights groups have long complained about police brutality in Tajikistan.

In 2012, Amnesty International released a report about the Tajik police’s use of torture to extract confessions.

“The torture methods used by the security forces are shocking: involving electric shocks, boiling water, suffocation, beatings, burning with cigarettes, rape and threats of rape – the only escape is to sign a confession or sometimes to pay a bribe ,” it said.

And it’s not difficult to find people who have had first hand experience of it.

A 32-year-old worker, said that the police beat people even if they have not done anything. “They can beat you up so hard that you will confess that you killed Lenin,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 275, published on April 8 2016)

Kazakhstan releases activists

MARCH 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court of appeal in Kazakhstan suspended prison sentences handed out to two Kazakh activists in January. Yermek Narymbayev and Serikzhan Mambetalin, imprisoned for posting messages on Facebook that the authorities said spread racial hatred, were released from prison and put under house arrest. Human rights activists saw this as a conciliatory move towards the EU ahead of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to Brussels.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Azerbaijani court releases activist

MARCH 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Azerbaijan converted a seven-year prison sentence into a five-year conditional one for human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, allowing his immediate release. Mr Aliyev had already spent two years in prison. His release follows the release of 14 political prisoners earlier this month. The West has criticised Azerbaijan for its crack- down on free speech.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 274, published on April 1 2016)

Editorial: Azerbaijan’s pardon

MARCH 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the past weeks, European Union representatives had said soothing, nice words to Azerbaijan’s leadership, especially in light of its key participation in the Southern Gas Corridor infrastructure complex, which will bring Caspian Sea gas to Europe by 2019.

Human rights advocates in the West had lobbied loudly for a hardline position regarding the government’s crackdown on political freedoms.

But the EU chose to avoid the critical topic and went on talking business.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev’s decision to free some political prisoners must be read as a payment in kind to the EU’s soft hand on human rights.

While welcoming the gesture, people in Azerbaijan are still waiting for the release of Ilgar Mammadov, Khadija Ismayilova and Intigam Aliyev, three political prisoners that were not pardoned.

By pardoning political prisoners, the government is holding out an olive branch towards the West, more than towards domestic actors. The struggle for them, for independent media and for opposition parties, is not over just yet.

ENDS

Editorial from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

Azerbaijan’s President releases political prisoners to appease Europe

MARCH 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a move that caught observers by surprise, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev released 148 prisoners, including a dozen or so political prisoners.

Observers, though, said that Mr Aliyev may have been feeling the heat from a sharp drop in the economy and growing unease among Azerbaijanis over accelerating inflation and a 50% cut in the value of the manat currency. They said that he may have wanted to extend a peace offering to the European Union, a vital trade partner, with which he has quarrelled over human rights.

Among those released were human rights campaigners Taleh Khasmamadov, Hilal Mammadov and Rasul Jafarov, opposition activist Nemat Panahli, exelection watchdog chief Anar Mammadli and journalist Parviz Hasimov.

They had all been arrested and jailed in the past three years for holding illegal weapons, drugs dealing or financial crimes.

Their supporters say that these charges have simply been trumped up to crackdown on dissenters in politics and the media.

Khadija Isamayilova, a journalist who focused on corruption and was jailed last year in a case that attracted worldwide media attention, was not pardoned.

On the same day that the prisoners were released, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, Novruz Mammadov, was briefing Azerbaijani media about improved relations with the European Union.

He said that a new document bringing together the EU and Azerbaijan was likely to be signed soon.

“I have no doubt about that, because, recently, the EU commissioners for foreign affairs and energy issues visited Azerbaijan and expressed their position on the essence of the relations,” the Trend news agency quoted him as saying.

One of the more significant visits by EU officials over the last few months was Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign affairs commissioner. She talked up relations between Azerbaijan and the EU.

The European Union is so important to Azerbaijan because it is on the brink of becoming its biggest market for gas from the next phase of its Caspian Sea development.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)

No free speech in Tajikistan – says UN Rapporteur

MARCH 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – After completing a mission to Tajikistan, David Kaye, a UN Special Rapporteur, said that freedom of expression in the country was dire. Mr Kaye said that the authorities were using concerns over security as an excuse to crackdown on the media and political parties they didn’t like. “The security situation has been used as a pretext, as an excuse, to crack down on freedom of expression,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)