Tag Archives: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyz police arrest alleged coup organisers

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Bishkek arrested three leaders of the opposition People’s Parliament group for planning what they said was a coup. Sources at law enforcement agencies said that police had arrested leader Bekbolot Talgarbekov and his associates Torobai Kolubayev and Marat Sultanov. Talgarbekov had been a senior government official under Kyrgyzstan’s first post Soviet president, Askar Akayev. Kyrgyzstan has suffered two violent revolutions since independence in 1991.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyz court sentences Bakiyev

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A court in Kyrgyzstan extended a prison sentence on the widely reviled Maxim Bakiyev, the son of the ousted former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, to 30 years for money laundering and extortion. Bakiyev has been living in London since he fled Kyrgyzstan after a revolution in 2010. In 2015, a transparency group revealed that he owns a mansion in southern England worth an estimated $5m. Kyrgyzstan has applied to have Bakiyev extradited but his lawyers have successfully countered this request by saying that he wouldn’t receive a fair trial in Kyrgyzstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyz court frees ex-Bishkek mayor

MAY 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A Kyrgyz court freed Nariman Tuleyev, former mayor of Bishkek, after roughly three years in prison. He had been convicted of corruption over a deal to buy Chinese buses and snow removal equipment. It’s unclear exactly why the Kyrgyz authorities had decided to amnesty Tuleyev although there have been allegations that he was beaten in prison.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyzstan’s Aktel cuts service

MAY 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyz mobile operator Aktel discontinued its mobile services after it let its licence expire. In December 2013, a court in Bishkek declared Aktel bankrupt and said its debt amounted to around $147m. Aktel previously operated under the brand names of Fonex and 7Mobile. It has now transferred its assets, but not its debts, to Jeti Mobile.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyz President uses Victory Day to warn of racism in Russia

BISHKEK, MAY 9 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a departure from normal diplomatic niceties, Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev used the celebration of the Soviet Union’s victory over the Nazis in 1945 to warn of growing racism against workers from Kyrgyzstan in Russia.

Thousands of migrants workers from Kyrgyzstan and the rest of Central Asia travel to work in Russia each year, sending home their salaries but racist attacks in Russia have been on the increase, a rise that some have linked to the economic downturn.

Earlier this month, Russian media reported that a group of skinheads attacked and injured a group of Kyrgyz on the Moscow metro.

In pouring rain at Kyrgyzstan’s Eternal Flame War Memorial, Mr Atambayev said that Russia and Russians should respect their neighbours in Kyrgyzstan more.

“Kyrgyz families shared food and shelter with hundreds of thousands of refugees (from Russia). Most of them soon stayed here forever and became Kyrgyz,” he said.

“I want to give a reminder of this to our brotherly nation, Russia, where unfortunately fascist groups are rising up.”

Heads of states in the former Soviet Union usually use the annual Victory Day parade and celebrations to remind their people of the region’s common cause and their debt to Russia. By using the occasion to highlight racism in Russia, Mr Atambayev was adding emphasis to his comments.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

CASA-1000 officially launched in Tajik capital

DUSHANBE, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Leaders from Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan flew to Dushanbe to officially launch the start of construction of the CASA- 1000 project, which they hope will give regional trade a boost.

CASA-1000 is the $1.2b World Bank backed project that policy makers hope will transform the economies of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, bolster stability in Afghanistan and boost power supplies in Pakistan.

The plan is simple — to build an electricity supply route from hydro- power stations in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, across Afghanistan and into Pakistan. But it has its detractors. Many analysts have argued that Afghanistan is simply too unstable to host a network of transmission lines and that power generation capacities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are too temperamental.

Still, in Dushanbe, at the official ceremony to kick off production, the leaders were upbeat.

Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon, hosted the ceremony. He said that the project would work and that it would have a number of positive side effects.

“This will promote solutions to a number of social, economic and environmental protection problems in all four countries,” he was quoted by media as saying.

The CASA-1000 transmission line will run for 1,222km and should be completed by 2018. It will transmit 1,300 megawatts of electricity, most of it to Pakistan.

Also at the ceremony were Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, and Kyrgyz Prime Minister Sooronbai Jeenbekov.

Western diplomats conceived the plan a few years ago as part of a new north-south Silk Road, although it has been the various local leaders with finance from the World Bank who have pushed it through.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kyrgyzstan scraps law that threatened to curtail NGOs

BISHKEK, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rights campaigners in Kyrgyzstan were celebrating an unexpected victory over a proposed law that would have imposed restrictions on local NGOs with links to foreign funding and influences.

In a sign of the growing maturity of Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary democracy, Kyrgyz lawmakers voted 65 to 46 against introducing a law that was supposedly based on Russia’s so-called foreign agents law. This would have meant that NGOs receiving funding from abroad would have had to register with a special database and agree to increased oversight.

Mihra Rittmann, the Human Rights Watch Kyrgyzstan researcher, said that Russia had used its own version of the law to carry out intrusive searches that have forced some NGOs to close.

“This is an important decision by Kyrgyzstan’s parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh,” she wrote. “Kyrgyzstan is Central Asia’s only parliamentary democracy and today’s rejection of the bill is a reminder of the positive role the Jogorku Kenesh can play in upholding Kyrgyzstan’s human rights commitments.”

Even before the vote on Thursday, the bill had been watered down taking out some of the more controversial wording, such as references to foreign agents with its undertone of espionage.

Still, seeing off the bill altogether is a victory for more liberal, Western- minded Kyrgyz who had worried about the expanding influence of Russia in Kyrgyzstan and the wider region in general.

Zhanar Akayev, an MP for the ruling Social Democratic Party, explained that economics had also played a role in defeating the bill.

“Many international organisations expressed their concern,” he was quoted by media as saying. “We get financial assistance from them in many fields, including healthcare, education, and agriculture, among others. We need this money.”

And this view was largely reflected outside parliament too.

Galina, 25, said she was relieved the bill had been voted down.

“Overall I think that the less the number of laws and regulations, the better it is,” she said. “I was afraid, that the state would use this law for its own purposes.”

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Editorial: NGOs in Kyrgyzstan

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Liberal, Western forces in Kyrgyzstan have scored a major victory by defeating a bill that had the Kremlin’s fingerprints all over it.

Essentially, the so called foreign agents bill aimed to blacklist NGOs which had links with foreign governments and organisations.

This blacklist would have meant more surveillance, checks and interference. It would have put many NGOs, which operate on tight margins and may not be pushing the preferred Kyrgyz government line, into liquidation.

Instead, by mounting a serious-minded campaign and targeting MPs who had a vote on the issue, those against the law were able to at first get it watered down and then scrapped altogether.

This is good news too for Kyrgyzstan’s fledgling parliamentary democracy, only five-years-old last year. It shows resilience and that the system is working. This was democracy in action in Central Asia.

The result of the MPs’ vote may also show that this term’s MPs, voted in last year, are more liberal bunch.

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(Editorial from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Kazakhstan explains power nexus

APRIL 29 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan has sold 218m kWh of electricity to Kyrgyzstan in 2016 at a price of 9 tenge ($0.03) per kWh from the Ekibastuz power station, the Kazakh government said. Kazakhstan earned around $6m from the sale. Kyrgyzstan is a net importer of electricity from neighbouring countries due to chronic water shortages in recent years. Last year, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan exported around 400m kWh to Kyrgyzstan.

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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)

Kyrgyz-Tajik CASA-1000, a ‘mad plan’ now nearing its launch

MAY 5 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — CASA-1000 is the power transmission project that most analysts dismissed as too madcap to work.

Conceived by US diplomats and regional officials sometime around 2010 when Hillary Clinton, then the US Secretary of State, was promoting her vision of a north-south Silk Road stretching from Central Asia to India, this was the project that was meant to fail.

Instead, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan will officially launch its construction next week.

If all goes to plan, and security in areas of Afghanistan where the Taliban are active is a major concern, CASA-1000 should foster improved relations in the region and boost economies.

The World Bank is the project’s biggest backer, pledging more than half the estimated $1b cost to build the 1,222km transmission line and support systems.

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(News report from Issue No. 279, published on May 6 2016)