Tag Archives: protest

Tajik President to visit east

SEPT. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik president Emomalii Rakhmon will visit the city of Khorog in the east of the country for the first time since fighting between local forces and government soldiers in 2012, officials said.

The visit is, officially, part of countrywide tour by Mr Rakhmon but his trip to Khorog will also be seen as a show of strength in the troublesome area. Few would have been surprised if Mr Rakhmon had chalked the city off his tour. It remains a bastion of anti-government opposition where armed groups opposed to the regime in Dushanbe enjoy support from the local population, mostly ethnic Pamiris that have felt shortchanged ever since Mr Rakhmon’s political faction claimed victory in a five year civil war.

For much of the country’s first two decades of independence, Khorog was relatively stable. But a military operation launched by the government against local powerbrokers in July 2012 shattered the calm in the city. Both government and opposition forces suffered heavy losses.

In May this year, another smaller scale operation saw government agents kill three Khorog residents suspected of drug-smuggling, triggering two days of rioting.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)

Anti-mining protests in Kyrgyzstan

AUG. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In two separate demonstrations, hundreds of protesters in Kyrgyzstan blocked roads to try and stop production at an iron ore mine and an oil refinery, media reported. In both cases, the protesters claimed the sites were damaging the environment, a well-used tactic by protesters wanting to stop industrial production.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 198, published on Sept. 3 2014)

Turkmens protest in Ashgabat

AUG. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 50 residents of an Ashgabat suburb blocked workmen from removing air conditioning units from their apartment block, media reported, a rare public protest in Turkmenistan. Turkmen officials have ordered apparently unsightly air conditioning units to be removed from apartment blocks despite the souring summer temperatures.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 198, published on Sept. 3 2014)

Yezedis rally in Armenia

AUG. 31 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Members of Armenia’s Yezedi community have been holding protests in Yerevan calling for more support to stop the attacks by them in Iraq. Armenia is home to around 50,000 Yezedi, one of the largest groups outside Iraq. Fighters from the Islamic State have been attacking and killing Yezedi members.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 198, published on Sept. 3 2014)

HRW criticise Blair on Kazakh President advice

AUG. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Human rights groups have criticised former British PM Tony Blair for penning a letter in 2012 to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev giving him advice on how to refer in a speech to deadly clashes between police and anti- government demonstrators. Mr Blair has been an adviser to Mr Nazarbayev since 2011.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 197, published on Aug. 27 2014)

Protesting against Uzbek cotton

AUG. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – People protesting against the alleged use of child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields have targeted South Korea’s Daewoo International Corporation, media reported. According to demonstrators Daewoo buys 5% of Uzbekistan’s cotton. The protests are a reminder of just how sensitive the use of Uzbek cotton is in western clothing.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 196, published on Aug. 20 2014)

Georgia charges Saakashvili

JULY 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prosecutors in Georgia charged former president Mikheil Saakashvili with illegally breaking up an anti-government demonstration in 2007, taking over a television station and expropriating a businessman’s assets.

Mr Saakashvili, who has previously declined to appear in front of a court to face the charges, described them as politically motivated.

Georgian politics is sharply polarised and since the Georgian Dream coalition, led by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, came to power in the parliamentary elections in 2012 and the presidential vote in 2013 it has chased and charged Mr Saakashvili’s former associates with various crimes.

Both the EU and the US have criticised the Georgian Dream for persecuting former high-ranking officials but, despite Georgia’s continued pro-Western agenda, they have been unable to stop the charges.

Mr Saakashvili left Georgia last year, after the presidential election, to avoid facing charges which he said would be fabricated and levied against him.

The United States considered Mr Saakashvili a key ally and charges levied against him will irritate them.

“Commitment to the rule of law means both that everyone must comply with the law in a democratic society and that the legal system should not be used as a tool of political retribution,” the US State Department said in a statement.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 193, published on July 30 2014)

Kyrgyzstan’s Customs Union woes

JULY 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – A new report released by the Kyrgyz government’s main think tank, the National Institute of Strategic Studies (NISS), said that joining the Customs Union (CU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU) may trigger short term economic and social discomfort.

The report is the first serious analysis of the costs and benefits of membership carried out by the government itself. It will make for troubling reading for President Almazbek Atambayev who is still trying to sell the idea of membership of the CU/EaEU to the general public.

Membership of the CU will probably trigger inflation which may lead to political unrest and possibly even a rise in Islamic radicalism, the report said. The Macroeconomic situation may subsequently improve, the report added, without making predictions as to how long that might take.

The report also stressed several benefits of the CU, including duty-free oil imports from Russia — a benefit Kyrgyzstan already enjoys — and security via the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Kyrgyzstan is already a member.

On Kyrgyzstan’s frail democracy, the report was also incisive. Parliamentarianism would be better developed outside the EaEU than inside it, while norms of governance and nationalist sentiment in Russia could hamper Kyrgyzstan’s political development, the report said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)

Armenia authorities worry about electricity

JULY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Concerned about possible unrest connected with electricity price increases, Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan has ordered his policy chiefs to investigate whether it can soften the price rises for less well-off families, media reported.

Last month Armenia announced that it would increase the price for electricity by 10% form Aug. 1, its first price increase in two years.

Opposition politicians have said that the price increase will trigger inflation across the country and that this is just the first of several price planned price rises.

Armenia’s government has already had to negotiate through a difficult year.

A government resigned because of public unhappiness over its pension reform plans, economic growth estimates have been downgraded because of sanctions on Russia and now an electricity price increase threatens to erode the government’s popularity further.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)

Prisoners riot in Western Kazakhstan

JULY 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Prisoners in a jail in western Kazakhstan rioted over conditions, media reported. Human rights groups regularly complain to Kazakhstan about conditions that it keeps prisoners in. An official told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the riot had been quashed by law enforcement officers.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 192, published on July 9 2014)