Tag Archives: society

Uzbeks protest electricity shortages

NOV. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — For Uzbek citizens to protest on the streets, a problem must be severe. Very severe. The last time that a major public protest took place was in the town of Andijan, eastern Uzbekistan, in 2005. Police opened fire on the crowd killing dozens, possibly hundreds.

It’s not surprising then that a shortage of gas or electricity in Uzbekistan has failed to trigger street protests of the sort you would expect in other countries. This, though, changed in Samarkand on Nov. 5 when, media reported, roughly 100 residents blocked a road to protest against the shutdown of gas and electricity supplies to their homes.

The protest, which successfully pushed the local authorities into re-starting gas supplies to residents’ homes (at least for now), is important because it underlined just how political and tense the issue has become in Uzbekistan.

It appears, simply, to be a clash of interests between the Uzbek leadership and ordinary citizens.

The Uzbek government wants to meet lucrative contracts to supply gas to China. This means, according to local media, depriving some Uzbek households of supplies.

And it looks set to worsen. Uzbekistan currently supplies 10b cubic metres of gas a year. China wants to build another couple of pipelines to boost imports from Uzbekistan to about 25b cubic metres a year.

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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)

Doping ban on Azeri athlete lifted

NOV. 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The International Paralympic Committee lifted a ban on Azerbaijani weightlifter Gunduz Ismayilov who had tested positive for doping in 2004 after he proved that a jilted ex-girlfriend had spiked his drink. Mr Ismayilov had received a life ban for testing positive for doping.

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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)

Olympic torch lands in Kazakhstan

NOV. 11 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — En route to the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, next year, the Olympic torch touched down from space in Kazakhstan. A Russian space rocket had flown the Olympic torch to the International Space Station from Russia’s launch site in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, as part of the pre-Games relay.

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(News report from Issue No. 160, published on Nov. 13 2013)

Azerbaijan wants to boost fertility

NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Looking to boost the country’s population, Azerbaijani lawmakers are considering state-sponsored fertility treatment, media reported. According to one media outlet, under the proposed scheme women may become eligible for state-sponsored fertility treatment after a year of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant.

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(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Youth suicides grow in Kazakhstan

NOV. 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The suicide rate in Kazakhstan is growing, it is almost double the global average according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), worrying parliamentarians.

The starkest statistic is in youth suicides which have been creeping up. Suicides by people under the age of 22 make up roughly a third of all suicides in Kazakhstan, according to Kazakh government statistics.

In WHO’s, rather morbid, global league table, Kazakhstan sits in the top five for most suicides per 100,000 people with roughly 25 every year. Russia, by comparison, has 20 suicides per 100,000 people every year.

Media outlets and government officials blame new technologies and the abandonment of traditional Kazakh family values, the growing pains of an expanding economy, for the high suicide rate.

Parliamentarians, though, have another theory.

They have blamed the foreign punk culture and the melancholic, Goth-like emo sub-culture for the rise in suicides and called for symbols such as guns and skull and cross bones to be banned in schools.

At a university canteen in Almaty, though, this theory was rubbished by a group of students.

“I know a couple of them that just wanted to show around the marks on their wrists,” Azamat, one of the students, said of teenagers following the emo fashion. “They don’t want to kill themselves.”

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Kazakh weightlifters involved in doping

NOV. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Nine Kazakh weightlifters have tested positive for doping, media quoted the International Weightlifting Federations (IWF) as saying. The findings are an embarrassment to Kazakhstan which wants to promote its prowess in the sport. At the 2012 Olympics, Kazakhstan won four gold medals in weightlifting.

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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Kazakhstan wants to become a centre for Islamic finance

OCT. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — At a conference in London, Kazakh officials were eager to talk about plans to turn Kazakhstan into a centre for Islamic finance.

Islamic finance is the term used to define investments made, basically, with Islamic principles in mind. It’s a fluid concept but one that has picked up advocates in the Muslim world over the past few years. Kazakhstan though, has been a bit slow off the mark.

Although nominally a secular country, most people in Kazakhstan are Muslim and it has a fairly developed banking sector in Almaty.

Last year, the Kazakhstan Development Bank issued a $75.5m Islamic bond in Malaysia, which has become something of a centre for Islamic finance.

That, though, appears to have been just the start.

Now Asset Issekeshev, the Kazakh minister for new technology, has said Kazakhstan wants to join the International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM), a global watchdog for Islamic finance.

Yerlan Baidaulet, a Kazakh board member at Jeddah-based bank Islamic Development Bank (IDB), went further though. He said now that Kazakhstan had a new head of its Central Bank, Islamic finance would really take off.

Mr Baidaulet told Reuters at the conference that IDB was introducing an Islamic bank and a leasing company in Kazakhstan next year.

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Cashless transactions increase in Kazakhstan

NOV. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The volume of cashless transactions in Kazakhstan increased by 25% in the year to the end of September, the Kazakh Central Bank said. This shows that Kazakh consumers are becoming more sophisticated and comfortable with using debit and credit cards. Cashless transactions account for roughly 15% of all purchases.

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Police crushes protest in Armenia

NOV. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police clashed with anti-government protesters armed with sticks in central Yerevan, media reported, raising the spectre of instability in Armenia. Reports said police arrested 20 people after the small-scale scuffles petered out. Protesters were complaining that a presidential election in February was unfair.

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)

Fuel shortage continues in Uzbekistan

NOV. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Despite assurances to the contrary, media groups continued to publish reports which said there was a shortage of fuel in Uzbekistan. US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that the worst shortages were in the eastern Ferghana Valley.

(News report from Issue No. 159, published on Nov. 6 2013)