Tag Archives: society

Turkmen president’s personality cult builds up

AUG. 14 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — After taking over as Turkmenistan’s president in 2007, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov dismantled the personality cult established by his predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov. Now, though, he appears to be building his own. Media reported that the authorities in Ashgabat have erected a 5m-high statue of Mr Berdymukhamedov’s father, a former interior ministry official.

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(News report from Issue No. 148, published on Aug. 19 2013)

Turkmenistan drops the Rukhnama

AUG. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen officials have pulled the quasi-religious book written by former President Saparmurat Niyazov from the national curriculum, media reported. The autocratic Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from independence in 1991 until he died in 2006. He wrote Rukhnama in 2001 and insisted that school children studied it.

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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)

Food prices increase in Armenia

AUG. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — In the year to end-July food prices in Armenia increased by around 10%, media quoted official statistics as saying. Food price increases are an important statistic to monitor as fast rises can trigger discontent. Spending on food makes up a large proportion of ordinary people’s income.

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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)

Luxurious holidays for Kyrgyzstan’s police

CHOLPON ATA/Kyrgyzstan, JULY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A sunny day had turned bad. Rain was sweeping down the valley warning of an impending storm. Just ahead of the storm, a sleek black 4×4 cruised out of the hills bordering Lake Issyk-Kul, the mountain-ringed glacial lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan.

“Do you need a ride?” asked the young Kyrgyz woman in the passenger seat.

Her driver pulled off towards Issyk-Kul, the large clear-blue lake which serves as a summer playground for Kyrgyzstan’s middle class and ruling elite.

The well-dressed lady in the passenger seat picked up the conversation.

“My driver took me to drink the first milk from a horse that’s just had a baby. It’s very good for the skin,” she said.” “I’m staying at Caprice. My husband’s in Bishkek. He’s in the financial police. He is, how do you say, a workaholic?”

Anti-corruption lobby groups accuse Kyrgyzstan’s police of being riddled with bribe-taking officials. Caprice, the hotel where this Kyrgyz lady was staying, lies near the town of Cholpon Ata on the northern shore of Lake Issyk Kul and is Kyrgyzstan’s most luxurious lakeside resort.

The hotel, the 4×4 and the pampered lifestyle spoke of wealth far beyond the reach of the average Kyrgyz civil servant. In a land of shady deals and rampant tax avoidance, a position in the country’s financial watchdog can be lucrative indeed.

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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)

Tea drinking in Azerbaijan gets a kitsch tinge

BAKU, JULY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Three Azeri men — a psychologist, a photographer, and a software engineer — sat at a café in central Baku. As always, they ordered tea with jam.

Jam is an important part of the tea drinking tradition in Azerbaijan but, like Baku itself, this tradition is changing.

The waiter served the tea and then proffered the three men a plate of nuts and dried fruit. He then added a plate heaped with pastries and another with a tower of miniature Kit Kat bars.

The psychologist shook his head vigorously.

“Ludicrous,” said the software engineer. “It used to be different. You would just choose a type of fruit jam to eat with the tea.”

Tea in Azerbaijan is encased in tradition. Served in an armudu, a pear-shaped glass designed to keep the liquid hot for as long as possible, tea is shared between friends in cafés and served to guests upon arrival in homes.

But excess and bombast, by-products of oil wealth, are everywhere in Baku. Some say that the evolution of the tea service is just another expression of the showy development of Baku. Others, that it simply marks the development of tradition.

The software engineer had another theory. “It’s for tourists,””he said. “Or children.”

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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)

Train crashes in Kazakhstan

JULY 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Roughly 50 people were injured when a freight train and a passenger train collided at Almaty’s main railway station, media reported. Of the injured, five were taken to hospital. An efficient rail infrastructure is essential in Kazakhstan. The government has pledged millions to modernise the network.

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(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)

Kazakhstan’s capital marks its birthday

ASTANA, JULY 29 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — With typical panache, the Kazakh capital marked its 15th birthday on July 6. By no coincidence Astana Day, as the public holiday is called, is also the birthday of the long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Astana is Mr Nazarbayev’s pet project. He moved the capital from Almaty, in the lush foothills of the Tien Shan mountains to the barren northern steppes in 1997.

On Astana Day, the reflection of skyscrapers made of steel and glass shimmered in the waters of the Yesil River. Crowds gathered around the Pyramid of Peace, designed by British architect Norman Foster, and the Kazakh Country column symbolising Kazakhstan’s sovereignty. A sculpture of Mr Nazarbayev is embedded into the column’s plinth.

For his critics this sort of architectural eulogy proves Mr Nazarbayev is fostering a cult of personality.

This year, a festival of Kazakh nomadic culture took place outside the Khan Shatyr shopping mall, whose swooping design resembles the regal tent of the nomadic rulers of old.

One poet sang of a time when Astana celebrated its 1,500th anniversary. By then Mr Nazarbayev will be long gone but probably not forgotten. Most Kazakhs believe Astana, which means capital, is destined one day to bear a more evocative name — that of Mr Nazarbayev himself.

(News report from Issue No. 145, published on July 29 2013)

Internet users in Azerbaijan grow

JULY 17 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The number of people using the internet in Azerbaijan has doubled in the last five years, local media reported quoted the information ministry. Officials said roughly 70% of the population now use the internet. Internet accessibility is an important indicator of economic and political development.

(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)

Child mortality drops in Kazakhstan

JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Infant mortality is an important benchmark for a country’s development, both economically and socially.

That’s why the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum includes infant mortality in its Global Competitiveness Index. That’s also why it matters that Unicef, the UN agency for children, reported on July 15 that Kazakhstan’s infant mortality has dropped by two-thirds since 1990.

Of course, it’s been all change in Kazakhstan since 1990 when it was a member of the Soviet Union. Back then, Nursultan Nazarbayev was chairman of the Kazakh Soviet. Almaty was the capital and the massive oil investments, funded mainly by foreign companies, were merely bare plans.

Now Kazakhstan is booming, economically, and socially.

Its public health service, though, is often derided as corrupt and inefficient so when Unicef said that infant deaths had fallen from 54 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to under 19 in 2012, it was consider something of a double success.

This is a clear boost for the Kazakh health service and, in economic terms, matches Kazakhstan’s development. That said, there is some way still to go. According to the World Bank, even the poorest country in the European Union, Bulgaria, has an infant mortality rate of roughly half that of Kazakhstan.

(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)

Infant mortality drops in Kazakhstan

JULY 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — UNICEF, the UN agency for children, said Kazakhstan is on target to hit its millennium goal of reducing infant mortality to two-thirds its 1990 rate. In 2012, infant mortality in Kazakhstan was 19 deaths per 1,000 live births, UNICEF reported.

(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)