Tag Archives: rights and freedoms

Azerbaijan needs a transparency compliance check

OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a sort of best-practise benchmark for countries heavily involved in mining or oil production, told Azerbaijan that it needs to undergo a compliance check five months earlier than planned.

EITI chief Clare Short, a former British minister, said that concerns over Azerbaijan’s recent crackdown on civil society had triggered the compliance check.

“The situation facing civil society in Azerbaijan is clearly problematic,” Ms Short wrote in a statement.

“The Board discussed the findings of the fact finding mission and expressed deep concern. The Board hopes that Azerbaijan will open up more space for civil society to make its essential contribution to the EITI as laid down in our Standard.”

International pressure has been increasing on Azerbaijan over its treatment of opposition activists and human rights defenders. The EITI’s statement will be particularly irritating to Azerbaijan, though, as it has previously touted its links to EITI as evidence of its good intentions.

Being ordered to undergo a compliance check before 2015 will be publicly humiliating.

And there is some evidence that the pressure on Azerbaijan is beginning to tell. On Oct. 17, President Ilham Aliyev released four opposition activists as part of a wider amnesty.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)

Kyrgyzstan passes anti-gay law

OCT. 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to pass a law that bans so-called gay propaganda, seemingly playing to Russia which has passed a similar law already and against the United States which called the new legislation an attack on democracy. Kyrgyzstan is increasingly leaning towards Russia in world affairs.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 205, published on Oct. 22 2014)

US criticises Kyrgyz anti-gay law

OCT. 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The United States criticised moves by Kyrgyzstan to make so-called “gay propaganda” illegal as being harmful to democracy. The laws are similar to those introduced by Russia. The US embassy put out a rare harshly worded statement which said: “Sweeping limits on civil society harm democracy.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 204, published on Oct. 15 2014)

Kyrgyz MPs prepare anti-gay laws

OCT. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Controversial anti-gay legislation carbon-copied from Russia, is sailing through parliamentary reviews in Kyrgyzstan, triggering concerns about Moscow’s influence over Bishkek.

Parliament’s committee for human rights accepted the bill last week and the education committee was also expected to approve it. Advocates say the law, which will fine or jail citizens promoting “a positive relationship to homosexuality” in the media or around children, is designed to preserve traditional family values.

The law and its justification bear a strong resemblance to one passed in Russia in the summer of last year. Another bill being considered by the parliament, on recognising NGOs as foreign agents, echoes legislation voted through Russia’s State Duma in 2012.

Critics argue that parliamentarians are courting Russia’s favour, important to any politician with serious ambitions in Kyrgyzstan.

Writing in the New York Times, Masha Gessen, a former editor of RFE/RL’s Russian service said pro-Russian publications have infiltrated the Kyrgyz media space over the past few years and that Kyrgyzstan was a perfect lab rat. “It is small and poor and extremely susceptible to Russian pressure,” she wrote.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)

Kazakh politician says DNA samples will uncover gays

SEPT. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The message was clear.

In front of a coarse sign with a line running through it showing two stickmen having gay sex beside the warning “Homosexualism is a threat to the nation”, Kazakh politician Dauren Babamuratov, leader of a small nationalist faction in parliament, called on the government to ban gay men from holding various positions in parliament. He also claimed that blood samples could determine the sexual orientation of a person.

“I think it is very easy to identify a gay person by his or her DNA,” he said according to media.

“A blood test can show the presence of degeneratism in a person.”

His comments will find support in Kazakhstan where anti-homosexual sentiment is running high.

Last month a poster for an Almaty gay club depicting Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and Kazakh composer Kurmangazy Sagyrbayuly sparked an uproar.

There have been moves in Kazakhstan to introduce the type of laws that Russian already has in place that bans the discussion of homosexuality in schools.

Attitudes towards homosexuality in Kazakhstan have improved over the past few years. A handful of gay friendly bars have popped up but the homosexual community is still wary of flaunting itself too publicly.

Earlier this year, The Conway Bulletin carried a report from outside a nightclub in Almaty that described verbal abuse being hurled at people standing in the queue to enter the club.

Relatively, though, Almaty is the most liberal city for gay rights in Central Asia. Homosexuals from across the region tend to migrate to Almaty to work and live as there is a degree of tolerance. In most other cities in the region, homosexuals are often beaten in the street.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)

Free speech case to be heard in Kyrgyzstan

AUG. 25 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – For human rights workers and freedom of speech activists, these are increasingly worrying times in Kyrgyzstan.

Once considered a bastion of political and social pluralism, Kyrgyzstan appears to be retarding. Earlier this year politicians prepared the ground to implement harsh anti-gay laws, now reports have emerged that say the intelligence services are prosecuting two journalists for alleged defamation.

Eurasianet reported that Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (GKNB) has demanded damages of nearly $20,000 from Shorukh Saipov, a journalist who writes for the independent Fergana News website.

In an article in May, Mr Saipov said that the GKNB was extorting money from Muslims by threatening to prosecute them for extremism. The GKNB has said that the article deliberately tried to tarnish its reputation, charges that Fergana News has denied.

Highlighting the pressure on the media in Kyrgyzstan, Mr Saipov’s brother, also a journalist, was murdered in the southern city of Osh in 2007. His killers were never found.

ENDS

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

Street art turns political in Georgia

TBILISI/Georgia, JULY 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — From Basquiat to Banksy, politically charged street art has been a fixture of western cities for decades. Now, though, the walls and underpasses of Georgian capital Tbilisi are becoming an open-air gallery for a similar sort of subversive expression.

“It started after the war,” 34-year-old Natia, who runs workshops for aspiring street artists, said referring to the 2008 war with Russia. “One of our friends started using a stencil of Putin’s face, and people just got more creative.”

Today, that protest focuses on two of the most important issues for Georgia’s increasingly vocal liberal youth — gay rights and the decriminalization of marijuana. Graphic artist Musya Qeburia, 23, witnessed a police raid in June on her friend’s party. The police detained several guests for urine tests.

“They just came and took them for no reason, I was angry,” she said. In response, she erected what has become Tbilisi’s most celebrated piece, a line of figures, including Yoda, Super Mario and Brussels statue the Manneken Piss queuing to offer urine samples to a pair of Georgian police officers, one of whom looks like Chuck Norris (see photo on page 1).

The piece went viral on social networks, and according to Musya it has had a big impact.

But the reaction is not always positive. Rusa, 29, with three friends repainted a prominent central Tbilisi staircase in the colours of the rainbow flag, the symbol of gay rights.

“It was a silent, anonymous protest, silent because of the violence last year,” said Rusa, referring to an anti-gay riot in Tbilisi in 2013. “There were pictures of the staircase, people noticed. Then two days later city hall came and destroyed the staircase and reconstructed it (without the paint).”

Musya is undeterred. “They can only destroy,” she said. “They can’t make anything beautiful.”

ENDS

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

Workers strike in west Kazakhstan

JUNE 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Workers at an oil services company that supplies equipment to the Kashagan oil project in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea have gone on strike, media reported.

Since a strike by oil workers in west Kazakhstan ended in 2011 in clashes with police and 15 people being killed, the authorities have been ultra-sensitive to industrial action, so news that workers have walked out of Tuplar Energy Serves Company (TESCO) complaining of late salary payments will frustrate them.

TESCO have responded that their main client, the Australian company WorleyParsons hasn’t paid their invoices on time. WorleyParsons hasn’t commented.

The importance of this latest strike action in west Kazakhstan is not who is ultimately responsibly, no doubt lawyers will thrash this out, but the impact on the local community. If people aren’t working and aren’t being paid that means less cash in the local economy, increasing frustration and resentment of the increasingly rich political elite.

One disgruntled worker told the lada.kz news website: “I came here to work and establish a family, now I can’t find another job, the company hasn’t paid me for six months and the banks are pressuring me about my mortgage.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

World Bank loan to Uzbekistan stirs anger

JUNE 12 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank agreed to give Uzbekistan a $260m loan to improve irrigation in its agriculture, media reported, angering human rights activists who accuse Uzbekistan of using child labour to pick cotton. Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest exports although many Western fashion brands refuse to use it in their clothing.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 189, published on June 18 2014)

Anti gay protesters march in Georgia

May 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian Orthodox groups rallied in Tbilisi against a new law designed to protect same-sex relationships. Media estimated that there were several hundred people at the rally, underlining the conservative nature of Georgian society. The Georgian Orthodox Church retains a lot of power in Georgia.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)