MAY 17 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of around 20 people attempted a rare gay pride march through the centre of Tbilisi until Christian activists and priests blocked their path and smashed their placards, media reported. The incident highlights Georgia’s deeply conservative society. Homosexuality is still a taboo subject.
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(News report from Issue No. 089, published on May 25 2012)
MAY 14 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police broke up another anti-government protest ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku later this month. Activists have used the Eurovision Song Contest as a focal point to challenge the government and call for President Ilham Aliyev to resign. Police detained a handful of protesters at the rally.
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(News report from Issue No. 088, published on May 18 2012)
MAY 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 100 anti-government protesters clashed with police as they tried to march to the mayor’s office in Baku, media reported. The protesters carried placards calling for President Ilham Aliyev to resign. Tension in Baku is rising ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest later this month.
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(News report from Issue No. 087, published on May 11 2012)
APRIL 22 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Anti-government protesters held their second sanctioned rally of the year in Baku, demanding the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that several thousand people attended the rally. Demonstrations are scheduled in Baku until the Eurovision Song Contest on May 26.
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(News report from Issue No. 085, published on April 27 2012)
MARCH 2 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in western Kazakhstan said they will charge 43 men with being involved in riots that killed at least 16 people on Dec. 16 in the town of Zhanaozen. Several police and officials have also been charged with employing excessive force and using live rounds to quell the riot.
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)
MARCH 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 1,000 people rioted in Quba, a town of 40,000 people in the north of Azerbaijan, burning down the house of the regional governor in the worst street violence since President Ilham Aliyev came to power in 2003.
Police in full riot gear resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets to restore order.
The trigger for the violence was a video of the governor chastising the people of Quba for selling their property. The day after the riot, the central government sacked him.
This protest was different from anti-government demonstrations in the past year in Baku. Most of those had been organised on Facebook and the internet by an emerging middle class. The authorities had been ready for them and snuffed them out before they could gather momentum.
There have also been protests by radical religious Azerbaijanis demonstrating against the government’s secular policies. Again these had been pre-arranged and easily dealt with.
In Quba, though, the protest had been spontaneous, non-religious, non-political and violent. All it took was a thoughtless remark by a governor to set alight seething frustration, showing just how fragile the authorities’ control is.
At least in Quba the authorities reached for tear gas and rubber bullets rather than the live rounds that their counterparts in western Kazakhstan used to quell a riot in December.
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)
FEB. 25 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Watched and cajoled by a heavy police presence, around 250 anti-government protesters demonstrated in Almaty. There were probably three or four times more police than protesters. Local media reported smaller opposition rallies in Astana and Uralsk in the northwest.
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(News report from Issue No. 079, published on March 1 2012)
FEB. 6 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 1,400 workers at the Kumtor gold mine, which makes up around 12% of Kyrgyzstan’s national income, started a strike over new tax payments which they say their employer should pay on their behalf. Centerra Gold, the Canadian company which owns and operates the mine, said the strike was illegal.
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(News report from Issue No. 76, published on Feb. 9 2012)
FEB. 3 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – At the annual Munich Security Conference, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said Azerbaijan would not succumb to a Middle East-style uprising because of its strong economic growth. Last year police in Baku quashed a series of anti-government demonstrations and some analysts have said it may be vulnerable to an uprising.
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(News report from Issue No. 76, published on Feb. 9 2012)
JAN. 31 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – After 46 days, the Kazakh authorities lifted a state-of-emergency in Zhanaozen. Zhanaozen, about two hours drive from Aktau on the Caspian Sea coast, was the focus of rioting last month. Police opened fire on protesting oil workers, killing at least 16 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 75, published on Feb. 2 2012)
