JUNE 15 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two men shot dead Mukhit Kubayev, formerly Kazakhstan’s top aviation official, and Serik Bimurzin, a former world karate champion, on a remote stretch of road in western Kazakhstan, media reported. Police said that it was still unclear what the motive for the murders was.
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(News report from Issue No. 139, published on June 17 2013)
TASHKENT/Uzbekistan, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The black market currency traders in Taskhent’s bazaars are hardly inconspicuous.
“Dollars, dollars. Russian roubles,” they say.
Huge wads of cash change hands as people exchange dollars for Uzbek sums. The black market currency trade in Uzbekistan is big business and well established.
With the largest note worth a mere 1,000 sum (roughly 50 cents), the piles of money can be hefty. The trade is visible, but the police in Tashkent’s bazaars don’t step in; they’re taking a cut.
This currency black market has traditionally offered better rates than the banks. Exchanging $1,000 legally will give you about 2 billion sum, while on the black market you’ll receive around 2.7 billion sum.
Since February, the Uzbek government has banned people from buying cash dollars legally at all. Those needing hard currency must deposit money on debit cards which they can only use abroad.
When this ban on buying dollars came into force it sparked wild black market rate fluctuations and speculation that the government was out to smash this lucrative illegal trade. Such talk was short-lived, however, and the shadowy forces controlling the black market made a fortune on the exchange rate fluctuations.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Production resumed at the Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan after the authorities lifted a state of emergency. Protesters demanding more benefits from the mine had blockaded the site and clashed with police. The Kyrgyz government and Toronto-listed Centerra Gold, which owns the mine, put a Sept. 10 deadline on talks for a new Kumtor ownership deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kyrgyz parliament is considering adopting a law to chemically castrate convicted paedophiles and rapists once they have left prison, media reported. A handful of countries, including Russia and some parts of Europe, already inject rapists with a chemical that reduces their testosterone levels.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
JUNE 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — About 30 homeowners protested in central Almaty against excessive interest rate repayments on their mortgages, media reported. This protest was important as it was a relatively rare public demonstration in Kazakhstan. Personal debt repayments have become a potentially thorny issue for the government.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
YEREVAN/Armenia, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Carrefour, the French supermarket brand famed for its aggressive discount model, was supposed to open its first branch in Armenia last December. It didn’t hit this target although it has established an office in Yerevan.
Rumours on just why Carrefour’s launch has been delayed, drift around the Armenian capital. Most of these suggest that local, well-connected businessmen who control the supermarkets in Armenia don’t want the competition and have called in a few favours to delay the opening.
Regardless, the delay is frustrating people.
“Carrefour is no angel,” Anna Kachatryan, a 40-year-old housewife, said. “But I think that we need this sort of company to establish themselves in Armenia.”
She wanted food prices to drop and thought that Carrefour would help do this.
Armen Safarya, 54, though, said that he worried that Carrefour would become the dominant supermarket in Armenia and would end up harming local producers by pushing down their fees.
“This is not the solution,” he said. “Carrefour will control the entire market and will make local producers suffer.”
Carrefour itself has not explained the delay in opening its first store in Yerevan, although it has insisted that one would open by the end of 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
BRADFORD/England, JUNE 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — As gritty as ever, Azerbaijani photographer Reni Effendi uses a series of photos on three different subjects to highlight the fragility of life on the fringes.
The “Liquid Land: Legacies of oil and power” exhibition at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford, northern England, starts with portraits of elderly women eking out life in their radiation-stained homes near the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine. A nuclear reactor at the plant exploded on April 26 1986 throwing radiation over the surrounding countryside.
But this is just the warm-up, for you feel the point that Ms Effendi really wants to make is about her native country, Azerbaijan.
The second half of the exhibition displays portraits of refugees in Azerbaijan. Children pose as they go to school, a man relaxes in the bath. They are ordinary poses of a marginalised people struggling through everyday life.
Dotted between the portraits of the refugees are photographs taken from her father’s old collection of pictures of butterflies. Ms Effendi chose photographs of butterflies which are either on the brink of extinction or have been killed off altogether.
More insight into the refugees and their plight would have helped the social commentary, but the symbolism is powerful and does work.
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(News report from Issue No. 138, published on June 10 2013)
MAY 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Archaeologists in eastern Kazakhstan have found the grave of an apparently wealthy woman possibly dating back 2,400 years, media reported. The woman was buried wearing fine jewellery, including a gold headdress similar to the one worn by the so-called Golden Man, Kazakhstan’s most famous archaeology discovery.
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(News report from Issue No. 137, published on June 3 2013)
MAY 23 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian police arrested and charged two Orthodox priests with leading attacks on a gay rights parade on May 17, media reported. The attacks brought condemnation from Georgia’s Western allies and tarnished the country’s reputation for liberal thinking.
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(News report from Issue No. 136, published on May 27 2013)
MAY 26 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital lying on the edge of the Kyzylkum desert, received the Guinness World Record for the highest density of marble buildings in the world. Flush with profit from gas sales, Turkmenistan’s leaders have re-built Ashgabat with white marble since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 136, published on May 27 2013)
