Tag Archives: politics

Gulnara Karimova says she is under house arrest in Uzbekistan

MARCH 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, reportedly managed to send a letter to the BBC alleging that she has been held under house arrest for the past five weeks.

If true, the email will confirm rumours that she has been held in her Tashkent apartment since a raid last month. Police reportedly also detained three of Ms Karimova’s close friends and business associates during the raid.

In the email Ms Karimova described how she has been beaten.

“I am under severe psychological pressure, I have been beaten, you can count bruises on my arms,” she wrote, according to the BBC.

Ms Karimova had been discussed as a successor to her father but over the past year her power and influence has, waned. She has lost various businesses in Uzbekistan to rivals and is now under investigation by the authorities in Switzerland for corruption and money laundering.

Ms Karimova is normally active on twitter but since the raid on her home in Tashkent in mid-February, her account has been quiet. This has fuelled speculation that she is under arrest.

The BBC said that they couldn’t confirm 100% that the letter was genuine. They did quote a hand-writing expert, though, saying that she thought there was high probability that the letter was written by Ms Karimova.

Most Uzbeks strongly dislike Ms Karimova who has promoted herself as an international fashion designer and pop singer. Even so, in the letter to the BBC she tried to project herself as a woman of the people defending them against corruption.

“The reason for this Pinochet-style persecution is that I dared to speak up about things that millions are quiet about,” she wrote of her house arrest in a reference to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)

Georgia orders Saakashvili to return

MARCH 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — It was only ever a matter of time.

Georgia’s government, a coalition called Georgian Dream that first won the 2012 parliamentary election and then the 2013 presidential election, has been going after former government ministers.

That’s the line taken by member of former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s government although the current government has said it is simply following its obligation to investigate alleged crimes.

Former ministers have been tried, and some found guilty, of corruption in what many observers have said is a witch hunt by rivals.

Now Georgia’s prosecution service has called up Mr Saakashvili for question on various cases ranging from the poisoning of a former PM to alleged government misspending and presidential pardons for convicted murderers.

The intent appears clear — to prove that Mr Saakashvili was corrupt and involved in various crimes. Last month his close ally, former PM Vano Merabishvili, was convicted of corruption and abuse of power and sentenced to five years in prison.

Mr Saakashvili has until March 27 to present himself at the prosecutor’s office in Tbilisi for questioning. He is currently in Brussels and has said that he has no intention of attending the hearing.

The United States which has been a long-term ally of Mr Saakashvili has said that it is concerned about the summons. As the United States is also a key ally of Georgia, this makes it harder for the government to pressure Mr Saakashvili into returning to Tbilisi to face awkward questions.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)

Old video of dead Georgian PM leaked

MARCH 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A video of former Georgian PM Zurab Zhvania lying dead in a Tbilisi flat in 2005 has surfaced on the internet, rekindling debate over how he died. A court decreed Zhvania died of carbon monoxide poisoning but this has been refuted.

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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)

Coalition building begins in Kyrgyzstan

MARCH 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz president Almazbek Atambayev tasked his Social Democrat party with forming a government after the Ata Meken party walked out of a coalition, causing it to collapse earlier this month. Forming a stable government from Kyrgyzstan’s fractious parliament is notoriously difficult.

ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)

Tajik president’s relative heads Tax Office

MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Highlighting nepotism in Tajik officialdom, Ashraf Gulov, the son-in-law of President Emonali Rakhmon, has been made head of the state Tax Committee’s internal audit department, media reported.

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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Airport in Kazakhstan faces bankruptcy

MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The impact of Kazakhstan’s 20% currency devaluation last month is beginning to filter through to business.

Kazakh senator Mikhail Bortnik said that unless JSC International Airport Aktau could restructure its dollar-denominated debt, it would go bankrupt.

JSC International Airport Aktau, which under a deal with Mangistau regional government is owned by Turkish company ATM until 2025, has re-built Aktau airport’s passenger terminal and runway over the last few years.

It is now Kazakhstan’s third busiest airport, behind Almaty and Astana, and hosts flights from Baku, Kiev, Moscow and central Europe.

But after February’s tenge devaluation the $47m debt that Mangistau regional government took on to re-build the airport from the state-run Development Bank of Kazakhstan (DBK) has become 20% more expensive to service.

The problem for the DBK is that if it agrees to restructure the Aktau airport debt, it may have to restructure several other company debts too.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Uzbekistan changes its constitution

MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s parliament voted to tinker with the country’s constitution and pass some of the president’s powers to the PM. President Islam Karimov first suggested the changes in December last year. It may be that he has been forced to reduce his powers by his increasingly powerful rivals in the security services.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Kyrgyzstan’s government falls

MARCH 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The third government coalition of Kyrgyzstan’s relatively young parliamentary democracy collapsed after the Ata-Meken faction walked out, accusing PM Jantoro Satybaldiev of corruption.

The coalition collapse ends Mr Satybaldiev’s premiership and throws up questions over Kyrgyzstan’s negotiations with Canada’s Centerra Gold over ownership of the Kumtor Gold mine — worth roughly 10% of Kyrgyz GDP. Mr Satybaldiev has stood up to demands to nationalise the mine and earlier this year negotiated a new equity deal. It’s unclear if that deal will still stand after his exit.

The three-party coalition had ruled Kyrgyzstan since September 2012 but a furore over the early release from jail of a Chechen crime baron and accusations that Mr Satybaldiev personally profited from the rebuilding of the south of the country after riots in 2010 have dogged his premiership.

The economy, too, has limped along, frustrating many.

Just how the coalition collapse will affect President Almazbek Atambayev reminds to be seen. He may have to call a parliamentary election to form a new government. A change in Kyrgyzstan’s constitution handed it a powerful parliament in October 2010.

One thing is certain, though, the latest government collapse highlights how politically unstable Kyrgyzstan is.

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Azerbaijan jails opposition leaders

MARCH 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a decision that provoked international condemnation from human rights groups, a court in Azerbaijan sent two opposition leaders to jail for organising illegal demonstration.

Human rights groups accused the court of being politically motivated, a charge they have used against Azerbaijan’s judiciary often over the last few years.

The US State Department backs up this analysis. Earlier this year in its annual global human rights assessment, it said that the authorities were increasingly persecuting opposition groups.

A court spokesman said that Tofig Yagublu, deputy head of the opposition Musavat party, and Ilgar Mammadov, leader of the Republican Alternative human rights group, were sentenced to five and seven years in prison.

Police arrested them in February 2013 and accused them of organising unrest in the town of Ismailli in January 2013. The unrest in Ismailli, 200km northwest of Baku, was the worst during President Ilham Aliyev’s 11 years in power.

Giorgi Gogia, senior researcher in the South Caucasus for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, wrote a withering analysis of the verdicts.

“Another day, another imprisonment of prominent government critics in Azerbaijan,” he said.

“Instead of looking into the underlying causes of such an expression of mass rage and there are many, starting with astounding government corruption the authorities decided to find convenient scapegoats who fit the false narrative of critics-as-enemies.”

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Swiss authorities investigate Uzbek president’s daughter

MARCH 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss investigators said they had started investigating Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, for money laundering. They had previously been investigating four people linked to Ms Karimova. Ms Karimova is reportedly currently under house arrest in Tashkent.

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)