MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hundreds of students at Tbilisi State University staged a sit-in to protest at what they said was the non transparent way the university decides on its management structure. The protest attracted nationwide attention, and even forced the intervention of PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili. Some analysts said that the protest could spread.
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(News report from Issue No. 272, published on March 18 2016)
MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – About 200 people working for the oil services company Techno Trading, which is a sub-contractor for Mangistaumunaigas went on strike. They complained that the company had not paid them their quarterly bonuses. Industrial action is a sensitive issue in western Kazakhstan where police and demonstrators clashed in 2011, killing at least 14 people. Inflation is rising and the value of the tenge has dropped in Kazakhstan, straining worker-employer relations.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 8 2016, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Dozens of women protested in Bishkek against what they said was the patronising message sent out by the traditional March 8 International Women’s Day celebrations.
The march was a rare challenge to what has become one of the former Soviet area’s most popular and enduring holidays.
“Don’t sell 8th of March for flowers,” the marchers chanted. “We don’t want flowers, we need rights.”
Civic demonstrations, especially by pro-women’s rights groups are rare, if not unheard of, in Central Asia, where governments retain strict control and generally mistrust the rise of women in society.
Kyrgyzstan is something of an exception. It has more political plurality than other countries and counts a woman, Roza Otunbayeva, as a former head of state. She was president of Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and 2011, after a revolution overthrew her successor Kurmanbek Bakiyev. None of the other Central Asian states have had any significant female political or business leadership other than daughters of presidents.
Saadat, one of the march participants, told the Bulletin’s Bishkek correspondent that March 8 was not a holiday to celebrate spring and woman but something much more important.
“Instead of buying flowers and making profit for local flower shops, people would better support women’s crisis centres or female entrepreneurs,” she said.
“I think, one of reason why we were not dispersed on the square (bpolice) is that two female MPs were also with us on the square,” she added.
There is supposedly a quota of women in the Kyrgyz parliament of 30% although activists said the proportion of women in parliament had dropped to 12.4% from 19% in 2004.
Arina Sinovskaya, a member of a Kazakh feminist group, said their rally had been banned in Kazakhstan.
“In Kazakhstan, unfortunately, we cannot hold a march, so we came here to express our solidarity,” she said.
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(News report from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Women banging pots, blowing whistles and wearing grey capes in the streets of Almaty last January alarmed observers.
They were protesting about mortgages and how difficult it was to repay these loans after a devaluation of the tenge. In other words, this was yet another alarm bell about non-performing loans in Kazakhstan.
The country was battered with toxic loans in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8 and some banks, directly or indirectly, asked for help from the government.
And the government has only just started to offload these banks — think BTA and Kazkommertsbank’s merger last year.
Now, though, new data suggests that there may be another round of dodgy debt to deal with. This time the government needs to act early to stop borrowers from tipping the fragile banking system into the red again. It has the funds and it now also has the experience. This time round, there are few excuses for the Kazakh government and the Central Bank.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 271, published on March 11 2016)
MARCH 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The economic downturn that has hit Central Asia and the South Caucasus in the past two years has dented people’s purchasing power.
Most people earn salaries in their local currency but these have lost between 50% and 25% of their value in the past months.
This has triggered some social unrest, especially in the South Caucasus. In January, people in Azerbaijan took to the streets to protest against rising food prices and stagnating wages.
The same reasons were voiced by miners in Tkibuli, Georgia, who went on strike for two weeks asking for a 40% increase in salaries. Now reports have emerged from Yerevan where market stall owners briefly scuffled with police over rental prices.
In Central Asia, protests are less frequent and, generally, silenced quickly by the authorities. Last month, however, dozens of Kazakh women banging pots and blowing whistles protested in Almaty about mortgage repayments.
The crisis is starting to bite hard and the people are growing increasingly restless.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)
FEB. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Stall owners in Yerevan’s largest clothing market scuffled with police during a protest against what they say are unfair rents they are having to pay in worsening economic conditions.
Armenia is prone to street demonstrations which can often be drawn out and rattle governments. Last year protests over a proposed increase in electricity prices lasted weeks and eventually forced the government to backtrack.
And, just like its neighbours, Armenia’s economy has been worsening over the past 18 months. Remittances have fallen, GDP growth is low and shopkeepers have said that trade has collapsed.
Now frayed nerves appear to be morphing into street demonstrations once again.
Official data has shown that trade in Armenia in 2015 was down by nearly 60% on the previous year, media reported. Stall owners at the Malatia market on the western edge of the city appear to agree. Hundreds stopped work to join the protest that blocked a road.
“We are not slaves. Enough is enough,” RFE/RL quoted one stall owner as saying.
They wanted the rent on the stalls to be lowered by 30%, a figure that the market’s owner has said was impossible to hit.
The demonstration’s leaders have said that they will not pay rent in March unless the price is dropped, setting the scene for another show- down next month.
Police detained three people at the demonstration.
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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)
MARCH 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 1,000 miners at the Tkibuli mine in central Georgia ended their two-week long strike after agreeing a pay rise with Georgia Industrial Group (GIG) which owns the mine. Under the deal, the company GIG will increase miners’ salaries by 7% now and another 3% in April. The miners had wanted a 40% pay rise. Last week they broke into the GIG regional office.
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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)
FEB. 27 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Anger, frustration, despair. These were the main emotions described by the hundreds of protesters who marched through Tbilisi’s Old Town protesting against plans supported by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the former PM and the richest man in the country, to transform the surrounding hills into a series of hotels and entertainment centres.
“It’s unbelievable to me that they can get away with this.” Denis, 28, told The Conway Bulletin, while he was drawing a green NO on the palm of his hand.
“Why don’t they invest the $500m in revitalising our crumbling old town?”
Of course, though, there is another side. Mr Ivanishvili has said that the plans, which would also mean building a new cable car starting in Freedom Square at the heart of the city, will not alter the character of the city and will instead draw thousands more tourists, create much needed income and jobs.
“This project is interesting for our children and tourists. This will be a main tourist attraction. I am able and I want to assist my city,” Bidzina Ivanishvili has previously said.
For now, the developers appear to be winning the argument over the Panorama project and construction work has started, although planners have ruled against other projects.
The issues, though, remain the same across the region. Officials and businessmen, often linked to the political elite, want to develop a part of a city. Frustrated locals, often with few issues to protest legally about, want to stop them.
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(News report from Issue No. 270, published on March 4 2016)
FEB. 24 2016, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Part of a group of 1,500 striking Georgian miners stormed an office belonging to Georgian Industrial Group (GIG) who they accuse of paying salaries far below the market rate and of presiding over poor working conditions at its coal mine at Tkibuli.
The miners have now been on strike for 12 days. The scale of the strike, both its length and the number of strikers, makes it one of the most serious in recent Georgian history.
A video showed miners wearing heavy leather jackets climbing over a compound fence and then pushing in a gate to the GIG office in Tkibuli, central Georgia. Clearly angry and distressed, miners said that they earned $200 a month which, they said, was barely sufficient to survive on.
They want a 40% pay rise and an improvement in the mine’s health and safety record. Media said that 15 miners have died in separate accidents at the mine since 2009.
GIG has said that while it sympathises with some of the workers’ demands, it simply can’t afford to increase their salaries by as much as they want because of falling prices and demand for coal.
“Saknakhshiri GIG as a company of high responsibility will not issue unrealistic promises and will not make populist statements on the immediate increase of the salaries at this stage,” the company said in a statement after meeting the miners.
For the government, the strike piles more pressure on its various economic policies ahead of a parliamentary election later this year. A recession in Russia and a fall in its own currency has hit Georgia’s economy. Growth rates have been reduced, inflation is rising.
And the Tkibuli miners are not the only group of workers striking in Georgia. Media reported that workers at a glass factor in Ksani have also gone on strike.
Other companies, especially in the mining sector, have been laying off workers.
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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)
FEB. 20 2016, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — In a move reminiscent of protests organised by the authorities in Russia to hound government opponents and envoys of countries that the Kremlin had fallen out with, Tajik students demonstrated outside the Turkish and EU diplomatic missions in Dushanbe.
Around 70 students shouted slogans accusing Turkey and EU countries of allowing members of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) to hold meetings.
“Bring the traitors to the homeland” they shouted. “We came here to express our dissatisfaction with the fact that the traitors are given the opportunity to organize protest meetings (abroad).”
Reports from northern Tajikistan also said a group of students had protested outside the office of the OSCE, Europe’s democracy and human rights watchdog, in Khujand.
Students have previously demonstrated against the IRPT, although they have denied that they had been organised and paid by the government to mount the protests.
This explanation, though, didn’t sit with most analysts’ reading of the demonstrations. In Dushanbe, an analyst who asked to remain anonymous, told The Conway Bulletin’s Dushanbe correspondent that the authorities must have organised the demonstration as no protest could take place without their approval.
“Tajik authorities do not understand that Western countries and Turkey will not be affected by such protests and will not extradite the political refugees,” said the analyst.
Other observers likened the organised protests to Nashi, the youth movement organised by the Kremlin in the late 2000s to hound its enemies. Well funded and single- minded, Nashi gained notoriety for its determined and lengthy demonstrations against foreign ambassadors and democracy advocates.
Last year, the Tajik government outlawed the IRPT, the country’s only formal opposition party. Human rights groups have complained that the government aims to crack down on free speech.
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(News report from Issue No. 269, published on Feb. 26 2016)
