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COMMENT: One year on, Mirziyoyev is opening up Uzbekistan

— Progress can still be derailed but so far, and only one year into the job, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s reforms in Uzbekistan have looked pretty good, writes Bulletin editor James Kilner

SEPT. 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In the year that Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been running Uzbekistan, he has done more to open up the country than even the most optimistic observer could have imagined in Sept. 2016.

On paper, at least.

Mirziyoyev has released a number of political prisoners and mended relations with neighbours but the main structural changes, other than scrapping currency controls, that should propel Uzbekistan into the 21st century, are still to come.

Under Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan had been trapped in a sort of USSR time-warp. Mirziyoyev has promised to unravel this iron casing.

He has scrapped the dual currency system that made it more expensive to buy the soum on the official market, made noises about making it easier for foreign investors to take money out of the country and signed various decrees that will ditch the hated external passports needed to leave the country.

But these remain, in the large part, promises. Still, this is a better, more open, start than many people had expected when the former PM emerged as Karimov’s successor.
He quickly shored up his power-base by demoting his main rival to the top job former economy minister Rustam Azimov.

And he has made sure that he has struck a genuinely popular note with ordinary Uzbeks, going out to the regions and promising to invest in infrastructure projects that will create jobs and trade deals with neighbours which should generate wealth for people living in Central Asia’s most populous country.

Mirziyoyev has also done something that Karimov was always too afraid to do. He has reached out to pious Muslims. While Karimov tried to drive Islam underground, Mirziyoyev was pictured breaking the Ramadan fast with religious leaders. A huge olive branch.

Mirziyoyev has promised much to many in his first year in power. In his second year he needs to deliver on his promises.

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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017

Lola Karimova quits UN job

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AUG. 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a speech in Samarkand, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva, second daughter of former Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, said that she would step down as the country’s representative to UNESCO. Instead, she said, she wanted to concentrate on running the charity named after her father. Karimova-Tillyaeva is currently based in Europe. She has fallen out with her elder sister Gulnara Karimova who has been kept under house arrest in Tashkent since March 2014. Islam Karimov died in September 2016 after ruling the country since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

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(News report from Issue No. 342, published on Sept. 7 2017)

Bishkek court closes opposition TV station

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BISHKEK, AUG. 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Less than two months before what is shaping up to be an increasingly feisty and acrimonious presidential election, a court in Bishkek ordered the closure of the Sentyabr private TV channel that was broadly sympathetic with the opposition. The court banned Sentyabr for broadcasting film that it said was extremist. Specifically, it broadcast an interview with an ex-police chief in Osh in which he accused Pres. Almazbek Atambayev’s preferred successor, ex-PM Sooronbai Jeenbekov, of fuelling ethnic tension in the region in 2010.

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(News report from Issue No. 341, published on Aug. 27 2017)

Kyrgyzstan appoints new PM

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AUG. 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament confirmed Sapar Isakov, previously President Almazbek Atambayev’s chief of staff, as the new PM (Aug. 25). His predecessor, Sooronbai Jeenbekov, resigned to run for president in an election set for Oct. 15. Mr Atambayev is barred by the Kyrgyz constitution from running for a second term in office. He has backed Mr Jeenbekov.

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(News report from Issue No. 341, published on Aug. 27 2017)

Azerbaijan detains head of last independent news agency

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AUG. 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Turan news agency, described as the last independent news outlet in Azerbaijan, said it would close on Sept 1 after its director and owner was detained on tax evasion charges.

Human rights groups said that the charges levelled at Turan’s director, Mehman Aliyev, were false and should be dropped. He was detained and officially charged with tax evasion on Aug. 24.

“Who at this point can seriously believe that this is not a politically motivated case to silence a strong, independent voice in Azerbaijan’s deserted independent media landscape,” Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Turan and Aliyev, no relation to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, are accused of owing around $21,500 in unpaid taxes from 2014/16.

Azerbaijan has one of the worst records for independent media in the world. It has clashed with the European Union and the US, who accuse the Azerbaijani government of a systematic campaign to subvert the media, over the past few years.

And the US released a strongly worded statement describing the arrest of Aliyev, considered to be one of the post-Soviet pioneers of journalism in Azerbaijan, as an “Assault on media freedom”.

“These actions by the government of Azerbaijan to curtail freedom of press and to further restrict freedom of expression are the latest in a negative trend that includes the government’s May decision to block access to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other independent media websites,” the statement said.

“We urge the government of Azerbaijan to immediately release Mehman Aliyev, and all those incarcerated for exercising their fundamental freedoms, in accordance with its international obligations and OSCE commitments.”

The Azerbaijani government has not commented.

There are dozens of Azerbaijani journalists in jail for various reasons including various financial crimes, drug smuggling and gun possession.

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(News report from Issue No. 341, published on Aug. 27 2017)

Uzbekistan says to scrap exit visas

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TASHKENT, AUG. 8 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan will lift exit-visa requirements, media reported by quoting officials, potentially making it easier for millions of Uzbeks to travel abroad to find work.

Exit-visas are a hated hangover from the Soviet Union and, even if they were not difficult to obtain for most ordinary Uzbeks, were a reminder of the authoritarian nature of the regime. Scrapping them is another indication of the liberal reforms ushered in by Shavkat Mirziyoyev, president since September 2016 when Islam Karimov died. He has also promised to change foreign currency controls and also to encourage more foreign investment, as well as relax social controls, such as laws stipulating when bars and restaurants have to close.

Uzbekistan, like the rest of Central Asia, is reliant on remittances sent back from Uzbeks working abroad to bolster its economy. Most of these remittance payments are sent back to Uzbekistan from Russia.

Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry said a presidential decree on relaxing exit visas had already been drafted and government agencies were considering various pieces of legislation.

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(News report from Issue No. 339, published on Aug. 13 2017)

Berdy postures as Turkmen special forces assassin

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AUG. 2 2017 (The Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has been mocked for starring in a video in which he postures, firing a rifle and throwing daggers at targets, to adoring, gawping Turkmen commandos.

Keen to burnish his public image, Mr Berdymukhamedov is fond of releasing videos which show off his apparently unlimited skills.

A few days earlier a video showed him, wearing a white tracksuit and baseball cap, singing and playing the keyboard. At the start of the year, a video showed him leading government officials in a gym workout.

The common thread in each video is that Mr Berdymukhamedov, who is micromanaging his way through an economic downturn, plays the role of the kindly father- figure passing on his skills and knowledge to less able subjects.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on Aug. 5 2017)

Kyrgyzstan imprisons opposition leader

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AUG. 2 2017 (The Bulletin) — A court in Bishkek gave opposition leader Sadyr Japarov, known for his outspoken fiery speeches, an 11-1/2 year prison sentence for taking a former regional governor hostage during a rally in October 2013. Zaparov is influential on the streets of Bishkek, as shown earlier this year when his arrest triggered a series of tense protests. Kyrgyzstan is voting in a presidential election in October. Japarov had said that he wanted to take part in the election. A second high-profile potential presidential candidate, Omurbek Tekebayev, is in detention waiting to be tried for various financial crimes.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on Aug. 5 2017)

Czech investors in Kyrgyzstan’s hydro projects may be a false company

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BISHKEK, JULY 17 2017 (The Bulletin) — The Czech company that Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev was lauding for agreeing a multi-million-dollar deal to build new hydropower stations may not even exist.

Less than a week after a triumphant Mr Atambayev was quoted in media talking up Liglass, a company based in a provincial Czech town, as the new backers of a hydropower project that Russia backed out of in 2015, it has emerged that even his own diplomats were warning him that the company only appears to exist on paper.

Kyrgyzstan has staked much of its future economic potential on developing its hydropower. The deal was considered important because

Russia’s Rushydro pulled out of a $700m agreement to develop the hydropower stations in 2015.

Liglass had, according to Mr Atambayev, promised to pay $37m for a 50% stake in the Upper Naryn HPP, which includes two major hydropower projects, and to build and operate a string of smaller hydropower stations.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Ukraine strips former Georgian president Saakashvili of citizenship

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TBILISI, JULY 26 2017 (The Bulletin) — Ukraine stripped former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili of his citizenship, leaving the man once feted by US President George W. Bush as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union effectively stateless.

Mr Saakashvili, 49, may now be forced to seek asylum in the United States, where he is thought to have friends, and where he fled to in 2013 after leaving the Georgian Presidential Palace at the end of his second and final term in office.

Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko, who returned from a trip to Georgia earlier in July, had once considered Mr Saakashvili as an ally against Russia and in May 2015 gave him a Ukrainian passport and made him the governor of the Odessa region. But the quarrelsome Mr Saakashvili fell out with his Ukrainian hosts and resigned in November last year to set up a new political party.

Ukrainian migration was coy on why Saakashvili had had his passport taken from him.

“According to the constitution of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine takes decisions on losses of Ukrainian citizenship based on the conclusions of the citizenship commission,” it said in a statement.

Mr Saakashvili shot to power in Georgia in 2003 through a peaceful revolution that ushered in his pro- Western government. In 2008, though, he lost credibility with Western allies and with domestic voters after he triggered a war with Russia.

In a Facebook message, Mr Saakashvili said that he was currently outside Ukraine and that he would fight attempts to block him from returning to Ukraine.

“Now there is an attempt under way to force me to become a refugee,” he said. “This will not happen!”

Since 2012, his United National Movement party that once dominated Georgian politics has been humiliated, losing two parliamentary elections heavily, a presidential election and most municipality councils. The Georgian authorities want to try Mr Saakashvili for various financial crimes, allegations he has denied.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)