Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan keeps Uzbek activist locked up

BISHKEK, JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Kyrgyzstan reiterated a life sentence against ethnic Uzbek rights activist Azimjan Askarov for stirring racial tension in the south of the country in 2010.

Kyrgyzstan has been under pressure from the United States, the United Nations and various human rights groups to free Askarov, but the judge in the court in Bishkek rejected the notion that the original conviction had been unsafe.

Human rights groups said the decision had been politically motivated and that the government was looking for scapegoats for ethnic violence in 2010. Askarov had been arrested in the aftermath of riots in 2010 focused on the southern city of Osh between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that killed several hundred people.

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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)

Kyrgyzstan increases fines for swearing in public and drinking

JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev signed into law a decree that increased fines handed out to people who swear on the street and drink in office blocks, media reported.Police officers can now hand out fines of 15,000 som ($200) for swearing in public and 10,000 som for drinking in the workplace.

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(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)

Aeroplane crashes into village near Kyrgyz capital, kills 38

BISHKEK, JAN. 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A Turkish cargo aeroplane flying from Hong Kong to Istanbul overshot the runway at Manas International Airport outside Bishkek on a refuelling stop, ploughed into a village and killed at least 38 people.

Crash investigators said fog had shrouded the airport but there had been no problems reported from the flight deck.

Airports in Central Asia are competing for lucrative stop-over trade for flights, both passenger and cargo, between East Asia and Europe. Depending on the investigators’ findings, the crash may damage Manas’ credibility.

At the crash site, the village of Dacha-Suu, which took the main impact, had been destroyed. The aeroplane’s torn wing stuck up through a smashed roof. The cockpit lay smashed and broken in a front garden. Part of the undercarriage had ripped through a living room, bringing death and destruction to Kyrgyz domestic tranquility.

Residents of the village who escaped described a loud bang.

“I thought there was an earthquake, but looking out of the window, we saw the fire,” one man told television news.

A Conway Bulletin correspondent said that the military and the police had cordoned off the site.

There has also been criticism of the government’s response with many Kyrgyz saying that President Almazbek Atambayev was too slow to show his grief over what is being treated as a national disaster.

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(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Remittance flows rise in Kyrgyzstan

JAN. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz workers abroad sent back $1.83b to Kyrgyzstan in the first 11 months of 2016, an 18.6% rise on 2015, media reported quoting the Kyrgyz Central Bank. Remittance flows are vital for Kyrgyzstan and a recession in Russia has severely dented its economy. The Central Bank also said that remittances from Russia in November 2016 were a third higher than in November 2015.

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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Designing a yurt-shaped greenhouse for Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK, JAN. 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tilek Toktogaziev has a vision. The 27-year-old Kyrgyz businessman wants to make farming more efficient and he wants to do it by turning the yurt, Kyrgyzstan’s national icon, into a greenhouse.

Or at least construct greenhouses in the shape of a yurt.

“We often copy models of greenhouses from the Koreans or the Dutch,” he told The Conway Bulletin (Jan. 6). “But they have their own climatic conditions. Even in cold times Kyrgyz people have survived in yurts.”

He has set about designing a greenhouse that will look and function like a yurt – the circular, heavy felt tent-like structure used by nomads to live in during the summer when their horses graze in lush valleys under snow-capped mountains.

Mr Toktogaziev has been building greenhouses since 2012, but it was only in 2016 that he thought of the yurt-shaped greenhouse.

“Out of season, local greenhouses cover 10% of market demand in Kyrgyzstan, whereas 90% of vegetables come from China and Uzbekistan,” he said, indicating market potential.

For now, though, Mr Toktogaziev wants to find foreign investors to help propel his concept onto the world market and also to educate Kyrgyz on the benefits of the greenhouse. He already has local investors and says the first greenhouse will be built in 2017.

It’s an uncertain road. What he is certain about, though, is keeping the national identity of the greenhouses.

“Local thermofelt (produced in a village near Bishkek) will be used to cover yurt-shaped greenhouse roof in nighttime to keep warmth,” he said.

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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Kyrgyz security services start monitoring Facebook

JAN. 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s security services have started monitoring 45 people who have criticised President Almazbek Atambayev on Facebook, the Eurasianet website reported. Eurasianet said that it had seen a memo which the Kyrgyz National Security Committee had written to an MP outlining its plans to watch the people. Human rights groups have previously criticised Kyrgyzstan for clamping down on free speech.

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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

China embassy attackers in Kyrgyzstan hide in Turkey

JAN. 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The suspects behind the attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek last year are in hiding in Istanbul, Kyrgyz media quoted Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to Turkey as saying. A car bomb killed two people working at the embassy on Aug. 30 2016. The authorities have blamed Uighurs from China’s western Xinjiang Province. Turkey has not commented.

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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Data shows Kyrgyz trade with EEU has fallen

BISHKEK, JAN. 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s trade with other members of the Kremlin-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) fell 18.6% in the first 10 months of 2016, the Russian news website gazeta.ru quoted an unnamed source at the Kyrgyz statistics committee as saying.

This data, if confirmed when the official statistics are released, highlights Kyrgyz officials’ concerns that joining the EEU has had a negative impact on its trade. They have said that the EEU favours the larger countries and has hampered Kyrgyzstan’s trade with China.

“In the first 10 months of 2016, trade turnover, the import-exports of Kyrgyzstan, with the EEU member states comprised of $1.575b,” the unnamed source said. “Compared to the same period in 2015, this figure was 81.4%, in other words it was a drop of 18.6%.”

The data also goes against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Kyrgyzstan’s trade turnover has increased since it joined the EEU.

Last month in a very public show of his frustration with the EEU, Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev delayed signing a key customs agreement between the five member states at a ceremony in St Petersburg.

Kyrgyzstan joined the EEU in August 2015 but its businessmen and MPs have complained of excessive bureaucracy and barriers to trading with China that the EEU has imposed.

Many analysts said Kyrgyzstan had been coerced into joining the EEU.

The other EEU member states are Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia.

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(News report from Issue No. 312, published on Jan. 13 2017)

Chinese miner operates in Kyrgyzstan

DEC. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Chinese company Full Gold Mining produced its first batch of concentrated gold at its Ishtamberdy gold deposit in Kyrgyzstan’s southeast region of Jalabad, the Kyrgyz government said. The project had stalled since 2011 because of a series of anti-mining protests and demonstrations against excessive Chinese control over Kyrgyzstan’s industry.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 311, published on Jan. 6 2017)

Kyrgyz President visits Uzbekistan

DEC. 24/25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev visited Tashkent, a symbolic trip which highlighted the vast improvement in relations between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan since Islam Karimov died in September. The neighbours have been close to war but since Karimov died, Uzbek officials have appeared to change their previously antagonistic stance towards Kyrgyzstan over disputed border areas.