Tag Archives: protest

Protests weaken in Kyrgyzstan

MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Protests continued in the southern town of Bazar-Korgon against the imprisonment of Omur Tekebayev, head of the Ata-Meken party, for corruption. Media reported that around 50 people holding placards marched through the town. Protests that broke out immediately after Tekebayev’s arrest on Feb. 28 in Bishkek, though, have dissipated. Bazar-Korgon is Mr Tekebayev’s hometown.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Kyrgyz protesters gather after arrest of opposition leader

Leave a Reply

BISHKEK, FEB 27/28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hundreds of people in Kyrgyzstan protested against the arrest of opposition leader Omurbek Tekebayev, sparking worries of pro-tracted anti-government street demonstrations.

By the end of the week, the crowds had dissipated from a peak of 300 in Bishkek and 200 in Bazar Korgon, the town in southern region of Jalal-abad where Mr Tekebayev was born.

Even so, the sight of angry protesters, mainly young men, marching through the streets of Bishkek to the White House, the presidential office, noisily airing their grievances brought back memories of 2005 and 2010 when violent revolutions over- threw two governments.

Mr Tekebayev has been charged with corruption linked to the telecoms company Megacom in 2010. His supporters have said that the charges are politically motivated, designed to scupper any chances that Mr Tekebayev has of winning a presidential election set for November.

Addressing the crowd, Rosa Otunbayeva, a former Kyrgyz president and one of Mr Tekebayev’s most high-profile supporters, described his arrest as political persecution.

Kyrgyzstan’s society is increasingly polarised and November’s election is likely to be a tense affair. President Almazbek Atambayev is stepping down after one term in power, as stipulated by the constitution. He has not yet named a preferred successor.

Murat Borombai, a resident of Bishkek, said he went to the demonstration to support the opposition and not Mr Tekebayev in particular.

“These people are opposed to the state authorities who have started to repeat the way of authoritarianism, violations of civil rights the move to lawlessness and arbitrariness,” he said.

The authorities have denied that there was any political motivation behind the arrest of Mr Tekebayev or any of his colleagues.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 319, published on March 3 2017)

Thousands protest in Georgian capital to support Rustavi-2 TV channel

Leave a Reply

TBILISI, FEB. 19 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — An estimated 10,000 people protested in central Tbilisi against what they said was the attempted silencing of TV channel Rustavi-2’s anti-government rhetoric.

The demonstration was one of the biggest for several years in the Georgian capital and was a reminder that street-level politics are still a potent force in Georgia.

Rustavi-2, one of Georgia’s most popular TV channels and a supporter of the opposition UNM party, suspended broadcasts for two days before the demonstration.

Zaal Udumashvili, deputy director of Rustavi-2 and anchor of its main news program, told the demonstrators that the fight to save it was a fight to save democracy itself.

“Rustavi-2 is back on the air from now on, which means that the channel will never go off again,” he was quoted by media as saying.

“If Rustavi-2 falls, this will not be the fall of only one television. This will mean that there will be no space left for covering your problems, for bringing your problems to the entire country.”

Rustavi-2 is the focus of an ownership struggle currently playing out in the Supreme Court. The protesters said that the Georgian Dream government was trying to seize the channel from Giorgi and Levan Karamanishvili, associates of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, through businessman Kibar Khalvashi. Mr Khalvashi is a former co-owner of Rustavi-2 who says his stake in the TV channel was taken from him illegally.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)

Kyrgyz police arrests crowds protesting

Leave a Reply

FEB. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Kyrgyzstan detained the prominent opposition figure Almanbet Shykmamatov, allegedly questioning him for nine hours over corruption allegations. Dozens of people protested outside the White House, the presidential office. Mr Shykmamatov is a member of the Ata Meken political party, which draws it support mainly from the south.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)f

UNM protesters march in Georgian capital

FEB. 14 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Georgia detained 13 people during a rally organised by the United National Movement party (UNM), the party of the exiled former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. The demonstration, outside the city hall, was attended by 100 people and had been called to voice support for the Rustavi-2 TV station which they accuse the government of trying to control.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 317, published on Feb.17 2017)

Hundreds protest in Tbilisi against job cuts by Georgia’s defence ministry

TBILISI, JAN. 30 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Since December, Georgia’s defence ministry has laid off several hundred civil servants and soldiers, a round of redundancies aimed at modernising the army and reducing costs.

The lay-offs have triggered protests including one on Jan. 30 when a few hundred people marched in Tbilisi.

Protesters said 1,750 civil servants and 340 soldiers have lost their jobs without any compensation. Another 209 officers quit their jobs voluntarily.

Elguja Urushadze, a former Lieutenant Colonel who used to teach at the military academy, told the Bulletin that he was fired without any notice.

“I served in the Georgian National Army since the very first days of its existence,” he said. “I have been teaching protection from weapons of mass destruction since 1991. I was on a work trip on the 12th of January when they called me and told me I was removed from office. On the papers, my last working day was the 11th of January.”

Georgia wants to join NATO and has supported its mission in Afghanistan. It also has a detachment of soldiers supporting an EU mission in the Central African Republic.

It said that as well as cutting costs, the so-called “Optimisation” process was needed to bring the Georgian army into line with its NATO allies.

“In 2016, 67% of the 670m lari ($250m) budget funds were calculated for salaries and social expenses and only 33% was spent on the military technique, ammunition and on other needs,” the defence ministry said. “NATO standards say that payroll and administrative expenses should make up 50-53% of budget funds.”

It also said that the reforms will save 32m lari, 5% of the total budget.

The protesters, though, said they will continue until they are properly compensated for their job losses.

David Nemsadze, a retired army officer and now a human rights worker specialising in military affairs said: “During the layoffs process, the working code was violated. The selection process was not transparent at all.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh authorities are intimidating protesters

ALMATY, FEB 2, 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in western Kazakhstan are trying to intimidate workers into giving up their hunger strikes, the Eurasianet website reported.

The Eurasianet report quoted workers as saying that a breakdown in trust with the authorities was pushing them towards a potentially violent confrontation.

“We cannot allow another Zhanaozen,” Eurasianet quoted a lawyer for a detained union leader as saying. Zhanaozen is the town in western Kazakhstan where police and strikers clashed in 2011. At least 15 people died.

Several hundred oil workers have been refusing to eat in west Kazakhstan in protest over the closure of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, an umbrella organization, by a court in Shymkent at the beginning of the year. The hunger strikers’ de facto leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbaev were arrested on Jan. 20

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Hunger strike over union closure grows at oil fields in west Kazakhstan

ALMATY, JAN. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — At least 400 oil workers in western Kazakhstan have started a hunger strike against the forced closure of the country’s trade union umbrella body, media reported.

The hunger strikers are, mainly, workers at the Kalamkas and Zhetybai oil fields in Mangistau region owned by the state-run Mangistau- munaigas. This is near to Zhanaozen where, in 2011, police shot dead at least 15 striking oil workers.

The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported that demonstrators were demanding that the government overturns a decision by a court in Shymkent to disband the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan because it hadn’t been

properly registered at its inception. This is the largest workers’ union in the country and analysts suspected that the Kazakh authorities were increasingly wary and worried about the power that it had accumulated.

Since 2011, the authorities in Kazakhstan have generally bent to accommodate the unions, preferring to dodge confrontation.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)

Kazakh court sends to jail land protest organisers

ALMATY, NOV. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in western Kazakhstan sentenced the organisers of a land protest earlier this year to five years in prison, triggering outrage from their supporters and human rights workers.

The two men, Max Bokayev and Talgat Ayan, were convicted of inciting social unrest, spreading false information and creating public disorder. They pleaded not guilty and have said that they were just exercising their right to protest against land reforms which the government planned to introduce.

Reports from the courtroom said that supporters of the two men sung the national anthem and shouted “Freedom!” when they were driven away in a police van.

Mihra Rittmann, Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the two men had been jailed for political reasons.

“Jailing Bokayev and Ayan for nothing more than peacefully expressing dissenting views is an outrageous miscarriage of justice,” she said. “Max Bokayev and Talgat Ayan should be freed immediately.”

For the authorities, the jail sentences marked the final clampdown on a unprecedented period of unrest.

It started in April in Atyrau with a local protest organised by Bokayev and Ayan against the government’s reforms which focused on making it easier for foreigners to buy and own land in Kazakhstan.

The protests, though, gathered pace and within a fortnight had spread to major urban centres across the country, worrying Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. In some cities, protesters fought with riot police. They only stopped when he intervened, repealed the proposed reforms and sacked a handful of government officials.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 307, published on Dec. 2 2016)

People demonstrate in Azerbaijan over house demolitions

BAKU, NOV. 15 2016, (The Conway Bulletin) — Dozens of people in a suburb of Baku held a rare protest against the authorities over the demolition of 64 houses.

The authorities said that the houses needed to be cleared to build a new station for the city’s metro system extension. The protesters said, though, the compensation that they had been offered was derisory.

Nesibe Musayeva, one of the demonstrators, also said the authorities were deliberately underscoring the size of people’s properties.

“We can buy neither land nor houses with this money. Where can we go in such cold winter?” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “Where can we go with such an amount of money? We don’t want money. We want just a place to live.”

In the run up to both the 2015 European Games and the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, human rights groups accused Azerbaijan of abuse by beating residents who protested against house demolitions in the suburbs.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 305, published on Nov. 18 2016)