JAN. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Tashkent ruled that an Uzbek company had broken copyright rules by using branding registered to the Nivea skin-care products, local media reported. German company Beiersdorf owns the Nivea brand. Protecting intellectual property is a challenge for Western companies working in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 170, published on Feb. 5 2014)
JAN. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — An estimated 4,000 people protested in central Yerevan against planned changes to the pension system. The protest dispersed quietly. The change in the pension law means that people aged 40 or under will have to pay 5% of their salary into a pension. Like other states in the former Soviet Union, Armenia needs to reform a pension scheme now considered overly generous.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — From April 1, cars that don’t conform to the EU’s Euro-4 level of emissions will be banned from being imported into Azerbaijan, Sabig Abdullayev, director of the Azerbaijan Standardisation and Certification Institute said.
This is important because it will change the shape of Azerbaijan’s car market.
Euro-4 is part of a grading scheme the EU created to measure the amount of emissions from cars. The EU introduced Euro-4 grade in 2005. A few years later carmakers in other countries introduced a similar emissions grade.
There is now a Euro-5 grade and later this year Euro-6 will be introduced.
By jumping from the current minimum Euro-2 standard to Euro-4, Azerbaijan is playing catch up. But it is only catching up for cars being imported. Cars made in Azerbaijan can still be produced legally at a worse emissions standard.
And there is also the small issue of the quality of fuel. Refineries in Azerbaijan only currently produce fuel to meet Euro-2 grade. This is being changed to hit Euro-3 but is still off the Euro-4 benchmark.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
JAN. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek President Islam Karimov has expanded the number of crimes that can be punishable under anti-terrorism laws, local media reported.
The authorities have said this move was necessary to protect the country from Islamic militants who have previously attacked government targets. Human rights defenders, though, said the expansion was an excuse to lock up more people and silence the government’s critics.
It will now be punishable by up to seven years in prison if a person is convicted of the loosely defined term of training for a terrorist act.
The expansion of the state’s anti-terrorist powers came shortly after the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) released its annual global report.
HRW was bleak on Uzbekistan.
“Uzbekistan’s human rights record remained abysmal across a wide spectrum of violations,” HRW said in its report.
HRW also accused the United States and the EU of ignoring these human rights violations in return for help extracting their soldiers from Afghanistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)
DEC. 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A change in Azerbaijan’s law will mean that foreign NGOs working in the country will have to appoint a local Azerbaijani to be its deputy chief. The Azerbaijani government has become increasingly suspicious of foreign NGOs. It has blamed them for an increase in anti-government action.
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(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)
DEC. 13 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Perhaps Uzbek President Islam Karimov plans to re-position himself as a defender of civil society. On Dec. 13 he signed a decree apparently aimed at promoting Uzbek non-government, non-profit organisations.
It’s, frankly, a curious agenda to push and the real reasons behind the drive to relax the burden on civil society are still to emerge. From Jan. 1 registration fees for local branches of NGO will be reduced.
It’s been hard for NGOs in Uzbekistan. They have routinely complained of inspections from tax officials which result in petty fines.
As for human rights groups, they’ve mainly been forced to leave. News agencies have been chased out too.
The list of problems that real NGOs and civil activists face in Uzbekistan is long, very long. This decree is likely to be window dressing. There is still a long way to go to strength civil society in Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)
DEC. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan will drop visa regulations for citizens of 34 OSCE member states by the end of 2014, media quoted a spokesman for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev as saying. The spokesman didn’t specify which of the OSCE’s 57 member states would be given visa-free status.
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(News report from Issue No. 164, published on Dec. 11 2013)
NOV. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan has introduced new regulation that, in theory, makes it harder to launder money and finance terrorism, media reported. Under the new rules, individual transactions of over $4,000 trigger a red flag, a tenth of the previous amount.
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(News report from Issue No. 163, published on Dec. 4 2013)
NOV. 21 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s upper house of parliament passed a so-called luxury tax that will increase excise duty on cigarettes and alcohol. The increase in excise duty is designed to bring prices of hard alcohol and cigarettes in Kazakhstan in line with Russia and Belarus, its Customs Unions partners.
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(News report from Issue No. 162, published on Nov. 27 2013)
NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost the country’s population, Azerbaijani lawmakers are considering state-sponsored fertility treatment, media reported. According to one media outlet, under the proposed scheme women may become eligible for state-sponsored fertility treatment after a year of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant.
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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)
