MAY 10 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Georgian national statistics agency plans to carry out a census of the population this year, media reported. A census is carried out every 10 years and should provide policy makers and business with important data on how the country’s population is changing. The date of the census has yet to be announced.
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(News report from Issue No. 087, published on May 11 2012)
MAY 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has decreed that only the iconic London cab can be used as a taxi in Baku, media reported. Last year, a unit of Azerbaijan’s government bought hundreds of the London taxi cabs from manufacturer Magnesium Bronze, based in Britain. It now leases the taxis out to drivers.
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(News report from Issue No. 086, published on May 4 2012)
APRIL 22 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Anti-government protesters held their second sanctioned rally of the year in Baku, demanding the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that several thousand people attended the rally. Demonstrations are scheduled in Baku until the Eurovision Song Contest on May 26.
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(News report from Issue No. 085, published on April 27 2012)
MARCH 6 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov and the country’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, intends to launch another pop album. Many ordinary Uzbeks revile the high-living Ms Karimova who once controlled much of the country’s industry and owns her own fashion label.
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(News report from Issue No. 083, published on April 13 2012)
APRIL 7 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Perhaps trying to replicate the action-man image developed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkmen leader Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov won the country’s inaugural car race. Mr Berdymukhamedov was a last-minute entry into the race in Ashgabat. Correspondents reported the race had been blatantly choreographed.
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(News report from Issue No. 083, published on April 13 2012)
MARCH 30 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s soccer team lost 2-0 to Oman in playoffs to win a place at the Olympic Games, ending its bid to become the first Central Asian or South Caucasus nation to play in a global soccer tournament. Uzbekistan lost a 2-0 lead against the UAE in Tashkent earlier in March, a victory that would have won them an automatic place at the Olympics.
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(News report from Issue No. 082, published on April 6 2012)
MARCH 2 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in western Kazakhstan said they will charge 43 men with being involved in riots that killed at least 16 people on Dec. 16 in the town of Zhanaozen. Several police and officials have also been charged with employing excessive force and using live rounds to quell the riot.
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)
MARCH 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Underlining the surging personality cult surrounding Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the authorities declared an era of happiness to mark his election victory last month, media reported. The official newspaper published a new poem for the occasion.
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)
MARCH 1 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 1,000 people rioted in Quba, a town of 40,000 people in the north of Azerbaijan, burning down the house of the regional governor in the worst street violence since President Ilham Aliyev came to power in 2003.
Police in full riot gear resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets to restore order.
The trigger for the violence was a video of the governor chastising the people of Quba for selling their property. The day after the riot, the central government sacked him.
This protest was different from anti-government demonstrations in the past year in Baku. Most of those had been organised on Facebook and the internet by an emerging middle class. The authorities had been ready for them and snuffed them out before they could gather momentum.
There have also been protests by radical religious Azerbaijanis demonstrating against the government’s secular policies. Again these had been pre-arranged and easily dealt with.
In Quba, though, the protest had been spontaneous, non-religious, non-political and violent. All it took was a thoughtless remark by a governor to set alight seething frustration, showing just how fragile the authorities’ control is.
At least in Quba the authorities reached for tear gas and rubber bullets rather than the live rounds that their counterparts in western Kazakhstan used to quell a riot in December.
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(News report from Issue No. 080, published on March 8 2012)
FEB. 25 2012 (The Conway Bulletin) – Watched and cajoled by a heavy police presence, around 250 anti-government protesters demonstrated in Almaty. There were probably three or four times more police than protesters. Local media reported smaller opposition rallies in Astana and Uralsk in the northwest.
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(News report from Issue No. 079, published on March 1 2012)
