JAN. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — On his first major foreign trip of 2015, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev travelled to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Reports from Berlin said the two leaders discussed the Ukraine war and developing business links.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Kazakh court extended the pre-trial house arrest of former PM Serik Akhmetov. Mr Akhmetov, who was arrested in November and accused of corruption, was Kazakh PM between Sept. 2012 and April 2014. His fall from grace highlights the fragile nature of power in Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
>>Demonstration against closure of political magazine>>
JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a rare show of public dissent in Kazakhstan, a small crowd gathered in Almaty to protest against the closure of weekly opposition newspaper Adam bol”.
Led by the newspaper editor, Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, a group of 25 journalists and activists walked across the Arbat, a pedestrian and commercial zone in the centre of the former capital shouting slogans and waving placards that challenged Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev to rescind the order to close the magazine.
Black-clad security officers stood to the side closely monitoring the protest.
“The presence of ‘men in black’ is always felt at these events,” Dina Baidildayeva a high-profile blogger who filmed the protest told the Bulletin.
The authorities in Kazakhstan have clamped down on political pluralism and media freedom over the past few years, especially in the wake of the Zhanaozen riots in west Kazakhstan in 2011 that killed at least 15 people. Allowing the Adam bol demonstration, therefore, was fairly remarkable.
The newspaper was shut down last November, after it published an article on Ukraine that highlighted Kazakhs fighting in the Ukrainian civil war. The article also questioned Russia’s role in the conflict.
Nate Schenkkan, Central Asia programme officer at the US media watchdog NGO Freedom House, said: “The article on Ukraine could have been just a pretext to do away with an uncomfortable publication for the leadership.”
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
KYZYLORDA/Kazakhstan, JAN. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vegetarianism is growing in popularity in Kazakhstan although ordering it successfully can still be a challenge, even for a well-known pop star.
Pasquale Caprino, an Italian singer who goes by the name of Son Pascal and has made Kazakhstan his home, was trying to order a bowl of vegetarian soup at a restaurant in Kyzylorda.
He’d headed out to this remote and barren medium-sized town in south-central Kazakhstan to shoot a music video.
The restaurant was making an effort with its Alpine chalet-style decorations and uniforms for the staff. It contrasted nicely with the concrete skyline outside. In the corner, overlooking the diners was a full-sized taxidermy of a snarling wolf.
Caprino wanted a bowl of cucumber soup without meat. It arrived, though, with sausage floating amongst the ubiquitous dill. Caprino tried again but in Kazakhstan where eating meat, including horsemeat, is ingrained into the national consciousness the waitress thought that she was being teased. He sighed and pushed away the bowl.
This story of frustration for vegetarians is common in Kazakhstan, said Baur Safi and Stanley Currier — two Almaty-based bloggers who run the vegetaristan.com website.
“During holidays or weddings, it is extremely difficult to find anything other than bread and a cucumber and tomato salad that a vegetarian can eat,” said Currier, a native of California.
Safi, a Kazakh, said, though, that it had become far easier in Almaty, at least, to order vegetarian dishes than it had been several years ago. Much of this is down to the introduction of cuisines that don’t use meat rather than any sort of pro-vegetarian groundswell.
“Many locals equate being vegetarian to being gay,” he said. “It’s a question of ethics, as if you’re trying to be special, and of machismo, which is linked to eating meat.”
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Food prices in Kazakhstan have increased by nearly 20%, the news website zakon.kz reported. Its unofficial survey of prices said they had risen far more than the official Statistics Committee data showed. Wheat, zakon.kz reported, had increased the most with a 25% rise in 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)
JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Currency woes in 2015 quickly translated into inflation across the South Caucasus and Central Asia.
Kazakhstan can be singled out as the worst performer in this department as inflation grew by a staggering 13.6% in 2015.
It was only in November that the minister of economy Yerbolat Dossayev said inflation wouldn’t surpass 10% in 2015. He was clearly wrong.
Interestingly, food prices grew significantly in Kazakhstan (+10.9%), while in Kyrgyzstan it was precisely food items that kept inflation from going too high.
Kyrgyzstan’s 11-month inflation in 2015 was 6.8% overall, but food prices decreased by 4.8% (Jan. 5).
Geostat, the Georgian statistics service, said annual inflation amounted to 4.9% in December, a 0.6% deflation compared to the previous month driven by lower transport and fuel prices, another impact of low oil prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
DEC. 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed Kairat Kelimbetov, ex head of the Kazakh Central Bank, as head of the Astana Financial Centre, media reported. Mr Kelimbetov has kept a low profile since being sacked as head of the CBank in Nov. after two years in the job. The Astana Financial Centre is a state project to promote the Kazakh capital as an international finance centre.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
DEC. 29 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Senior officials, and perhaps even heads of government, from Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have tentatively agreed to meet in Astana for talks later this month on how to resolve the ongoing civil war in Ukraine. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is keen to project Astana as a global centre for conflict disputes.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
>>Former Guantanamo Bay inmates accepted as asylum seekers>>
DEC. 31 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has taken charge of five former prisoners from the US’ controversial Guantanamo Bay prison.
The three Yemeni and two Tunisian nationals were flown to Kazakhstan and officially recorded as asylum seekers. It’s unclear, though, if they were transferred to a Kazakh prison or if they are being held elsewhere.
US President Barack Obama has said he is eager to close Guantanamo Bay prison and moving inmates to other countries is considered a politically acceptable way of achieving this.
But it’s also politically sensitive for the countries that agree to take the prisoners. Kazakh officials were eager to explain that the five prisoners, who were alleged to have links to al Qaeda but were never charged with a crime, had chosen to come to Kazakhstan.
In New York Laura Pitter, who analyses the US’ security policies for Human Rights Watch, said: “Accepting them as free men is the correct practice for Kazakhstan. The US has been detaining them unjustly and if Kazakhstan can give them a chance at a new life this should be commended.”
Still, news of the move triggered speculation over what deal had been done between Kazakhstan and the US.
In December, Yerlan Idrissov, Kazakhstan’s foreign minister, travelled to Washington for an official visit. Besides security issues, diplomatic talks were focused on economic bottlenecks such as the negotiations for Kazakhstan’s accession to the WTO.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
DEC. 11 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Kazkommertsbank posted a drop in profit for the nine months to the end of September 2014 of 10% mainly due to its purchase of BTA Bank which has a large amount of debt, media reported. Analysts said that Kazkommertsbank bought BTA Bank for political rather than business reasons.
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(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)
