AUG. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Archaeologists from the University of Karaganda, central Kazakhstan, said that they had discovered the remains of a pyramid used as a mausoleum for an ancient king or clan leader which may be 3,000 years old, media reported. If confirmed, the pyramid would be older than some Egyptian pyramids.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
AUG. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan released on parole one of its most prominent opposition politicians from prison after almost four years, drawing praise but also demands to release more dissidents.
Vladimir Kozlov, head of the Alga! party, walked out of prison after Kazakhstan’s highest court decreed that he should be freed early. He had been the most high profile activist arrested after an oil workers’ strike in the western city of Zhanaozen turned into a riot with police which killed at least 15 people in December 2011 after a strike lasting several months.
He was sent to prison for 7-1/2 years for inciting social discord, although his supporters have said that he was only trying to help the oil workers promote their cause.
Speaking at a press conference after his release, Mr Kozlov said that pressure from the European Union and other human rights groups had led to his release.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Mr Kozlov as saying that the EU had helped him “remain a human being” while in prison,
And the EU put out a brief statement too.
“The release on parole of the prominent Kazakh activist Vladimir Kozlov, who was imprisoned following the Zhanaozen events of 2011, is positive news,” it said.
“Further steps should now follow, leading to the full rehabilitation and release of all those civil society activists currently detained or under restriction of movement in Kazakhstan, in line with the country’s international commitments.”
Human rights groups have criticised Kazakhstan for cracking down on media and opposition groups heavily over the past few years. The Kazakh government has accused Mr Kozlov and others of being linked to coup plots.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
AUG. 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — At the Olympics in Rio, Uzbekistan won four gold medals, including three in boxing. Kazakhstan once again pulled in a decent haul, winning three golds, including a first ever swimming win, five silvers and nine bronzes. Tajikistan also won its first gold medal since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Dilshod Nazarov won gold in the hammer, becoming an instant national hero in Tajikistan. In the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan won a gold medal in taekwondo, Georgia won golds in wrestling and weightlifting and Armenia won a wrestling gold, its first for 20 years.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
AUG. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will wait until 2018 to start selling off state assets in what has been billed for years as the People’s IPO, Baljeet Kaur Grewal, managing director for portfolio investment at Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund told Bloomberg in an interview. He said the fund wanted to wait for oil prices to pick up before selling various assets.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
AUG. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The trial of Seitkazy Matayev, head of Kazakhstan’s journalist union and his son, Asset, for embezzlement began. Mr Matayev had been the first press secretary to President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1991 and he had been presumed to be above a crackdown on the media this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 293, published on Aug. 29 2016)
AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost the US’ regional profile, US Secretary of State John Kerry hosted a summit with all five foreign secretaries from Central Asia. Dubbed C5 +1, the meeting was a follow-up from its inaugural session in Samarkand last year. It’s important because the US has been accused of losing interest in the region since pulling its military out of Afghanistan in 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)
ALMATY, AUG. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev flew to Ankara to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, making him the first head-of-state to travel to Turkey since a coup attempt in July.
The meeting highlighted Mr Nazarbayev’s savvy foreign policy and his attempts to maintain a balance between the competing pressures placed over Kazakhstan by rival powers, mainly Russia, China, and Turkey and to a lesser extent the US.
On his trip to Ankara, Mr Nazarbayev voiced his support for Mr Erdogan, seen as one of the strongest leaders in the Muslim world, and, importantly, he also went some way to appeasing Mr Erdogan’s quest to crackdown on supporters of the exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen when he said that he would send back any teachers linked to the outlawed movement.
“We do not support anyone going against Turkey. This is not in our interest. Both sides’ education ministries will control the schools by creating a working group,” media quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying. “If there are teachers with links, we will send them back and ask the Turkish government to send other teachers.”
Mr Erdogan has blamed his former ally Mr Gulen, who now lives in the US for organising the coup attempt. He has arrested thousands of Gulenists in Turkey and put pressure on Turkey’s allies to close schools and hospitals linked to the Gulen movement.
Mr Nazarbayev, though, stopped short of agreeing to close the 30 Gulen-linked schools outright, as Kyrgyzstan has also declined to do. They are considered a key part of the Kazakh education system, offering a syllabus based on a secular scientific curriculum. News reports said that only around 8% to 9% of the teachers at Kazakhstan’s Gulenist schools were from Turkey.
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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)
AUG. 3 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After months of increasingly bitter rows, minority shareholders at London-traded KMG EP voted against selling their stakes in the company to its parent Kazakhstan’s state owned Kazmunaigas. Kazmunaigas had been looking to boost its 58% stake in the company, one of its few assets which have been doing relatively well during an increasingly tough oil-linked economic downturn. KMG EP mainly owns downstream operations which earn US dollars. These have been more profitable than many of KMG’s upstream operations.
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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)
AUG. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A judge in Kazakhstan ordered opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov to be released on parole, five years into a 7-1/2 sentence for trying to overthrow the government. Kozlov was the highest profile opposition figure to be imprisoned for trying to overthrow the government after clashes between oil workers and police in the west of the country in December 2011 that killed at least 16 people. The government has 15 days to act on the judge’s decision to free Kozlov.
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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)
JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil pipeline operator KazTransOil said its revenues fell by 1.2% to 96b tenge ($273m) in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year. KazTransOil, part of the Kazmunaigas group of companies, also said that it transported 10% less oil in H1 2016.
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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)
