MARCH 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Several thousand people demonstrated against the government’s new pension scheme that means that people born after 1974 have to pay 5% of their salary into a central pot. The demonstration was the biggest against the scheme for some time, indicating how passionately people feel about it. There have been several protests this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 177, published on March 26 2014)
MARCH 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hundreds of people living in a town in the western Kazakh province of Mangistau protested against soaring joblessness after reading an interview by their mayor in which he boasted of unemployment of only 0.4%, media reported. Inhabitants said unemployment was nearer 40%.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — PromMashKomplekt, a plant in northern Kazakhstan that manufactures wheels for trains, has said it may have to make redundant 540 employees because of a contract row with a subsidiary of Temir Zholy, the Kazakh national railway, media reported. The row highlights the relatively precarious state of Kazakh industry.
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(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)
MARCH 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Acting as a peacemaker, the Aktobe regional government in north-west Kazakhstan stepped in to mediate in a labour dispute at an oil field operated by China’s state-run energy company CNPC.
The move highlights what appears to be Kazakhstan’s preferred policy when strikes are threatened — to appease labour unions rather than antagonise.
Kazakhstan is desperate to avoid a repeat of an oil workers’ strike in the western oil town of Zhanaozen in 2011 which ended in violence that killed at least 15 people.
Kazakh workers at CNPC AktobeMunaiGas say that they are treated unfairly, paid less and live in worse conditions compared to their Chinese counterparts.
This is a not a new complaint and, although China is a key energy client, Kazakhstan has pushed to improve worker conditions at Chinese companies. And this was no exception.
“The Commission recommended that managers improve the system of remuneration and create conditions for the production in accordance with labour laws,” the Aktobe government said in a statement.
Importantly sources in Aktobe said the threatened strike now appears to be on hold.
CNPC AktobeMunaiGas is one of Kazakhstan biggest oil producers, producing around 6m tonnes each year.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s fire-fighters have been striking over their chief who they say is corrupt, media reported. The fire-fighters say they have lost their bonuses to their supervisors.
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(News report from Issue No. 175, published on March 12 2014)
MARCH 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Anti-government rallies in Kazakhstan are rare, making a planned demonstration in central Almaty an ideal opportunity to gauge the public’s appetite for protest.
If you blinked, you would have missed it. It felt like that, anyway.
Around two dozen protesters, out-numbered by plainclothed police, gathered under a statue of Abai, Kazakhstan’s national poet, in a square in central Almaty.
Passers-by hurried on with barely a glance at the gathering. The normally ever-present uniformed police hadn’t bothered to monitor the protest.
There was, frankly, a lack of momentum.
One of the protesters shuffled his feet and said that people were afraid to turning up because of the fear of being arrested.
Certainly the authorities in Kazakhstan don’t tolerate dissent, they arrested several bloggers last month after they protested, but, even so, this was a poor turnout.
Yerlan Kaliyev, an opposition activist acting as a figurehead, tried to inject substance into the rally by referencing Abai, the poet.
He said: “His call to be wary of rich people is more than one hundred years old but could be directly applied to the current situation in our country.”
The protesters agreed with Mr Kaliyev.
They mixed political slogans with poetry recitals for about an hour. Then they all went home.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
MARCH 2 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Workers in Tajikistan building a road for a Chinese company have gone on strike after demanding higher wages, media reported. Looking to build influence in Central Asia, China has pledged to construct a series of roads and tunnels. Tension, though, flares with how Chinese companies treat their Tajik workers.
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(News report from Issue No. 174, published on March 5 2014)
FEB. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Roughly 500 students at Baku University demonstrated against a new credit system which they said was just another way of trying to increase tuition fees, media reported. According to reports, police detained 12 students. Sizeable protests against the authorities in Azerbaijan are relatively rare.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The revolution that swept Viktor Yanukovich from power in Ukraine has reverberated, gently, around the former Soviet Union.
In Almaty, the financial capital of Kazakhstan, roughly two dozen people gathered outside the Ukrainian consulate last week after news emerged that snipers had shot dozens of people in Kiev. They lit candles and sang the Ukrainian national anthem. Social media filled with statements of solidarity and posts that shared the latest news, both in Russian and in Kazakh.
Although analysts have said that the revolution in Ukraine may trigger anti-government demonstrations in other parts of the former Soviet Union, apart from the vigil outside the Ukrainian consulate in Almaty, the reaction on the streets was muted.
This was partly, said political observer Adil Nurmakov of blogbasta.kz, because most legal forms of protest in Kazakhstan had been extinguished.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
FEB. 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Clearly wary of any backlash, Uzbekistan’s state controlled media have avoided all mention of Ukraine’s revolution. Uzbekistan has one of the most tightly controlled media scenes in the world. Exiled opposition websites reported that, as usual, Uzbek media concentrated on reporting President Islam Karimov’s latest proclamations.
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(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)
