APRIL 18 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan deported three Swedish journalists who had tried to film an anti-government protest, said the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The authorities told the journalists, who worked for Swedish state broadcaster Sveriges Television, they did not have the correct accreditation.
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(News report from Issue No. 37, published on April 25 2011)
APRIL 15 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia plans to make two hours of chess a week compulsory for children at primary school, AFP reported quoting an official from the education ministry. Chess stars are revered in Armenia, which has produced a number of Grandmasters.
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(News report from Issue No. 36, published on April 18 2011)
APRIL 15 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgian opposition leader Nino Burjanadze, a former ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, told Bloomberg that revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia were a inspiration and anticipated a summer of anti-government protests. However, sources in Tbilisi said support for Ms Burjanadze and the opposition is on the wane and that serious protests were unlikely.
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(News report from Issue No. 36, published on April 18 2011)
APRIL 17 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Azerbaijan once again snuffed out an anti-government protest. Using tactics which have proved effective in countering protests this year, police detained protesters before they had barely unfurled a banner. Reuters quoted the Prosecutor-General saying that police detained 65 protesters and later released 25.
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(News report from Issue No. 36, published on April 18 2011)
APRIL 15 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will give Tajikistan $45m to spend on social projects. The ADB said Tajikistan is the poorest CIS state and that without help vital social services would fail. In January the ADB gave Tajikistan $145m for a new road.
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(News report from Issue No. 36, published on April 18 2011)
APRIL 4 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Frustration is growing among thousands of people in Turkmenistan without mobile phone access since the government cancelled a service agreement with Russia’s MTS in December, said the Initiative of Turkmen Human Rights. Altyn Asyr, now the only Turkmen mobile phone operator, has had to cope with a 400% jump in demand.
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(News report from Issue No. 35, published on April 11 2011)
APRIL 11 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The patience of Turkmenistan’s estimated 3.1m mobile phone subscribers is wearing thin. Services have been heavily disrupted since the Turkmen government terminated a contract with Russia’s biggest mobile phone operator MTS.
Under the agreement, MTS had serviced around 80% of Turkmen’s mobile phone market. When it rescinded the deal, the Turkmen ministry of communications said MTS had broken the terms of the contract which had also expired. MTS said the government just wanted the lucrative contract.
That all happened in December. Since then it appears Altyn Asyr, the trading name for Turkmen mobile phone provider TM-Cell, has struggled to meet demand. Even President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has become frustrated. In March, according to media reports, he called Altyn Asyr “bungling”.
Mobile phones are essential in Turkmenistan where fixed lines are unreliable and decrepit.
On April 4, the Initiative of Turkmen Human Rights reported how hundreds of people queued for hours outside an Altyn Asyr shop which promised to sell SIM cards. Instead they were only able to buy a voucher which could be swapped for a SIM card next month when new supplies arrive.
This report could not be independently corroborated but 3 days later news reports said the Turkmen government had signed a deal with equipment makers Nokia Siemens Networks and China’s Huawei Technologies to help improve services. The saga continues.
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(News report from Issue No. 35, published on April 11 2011)
APRIL 11 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The authorities in Azerbaijan could face their biggest anti-government protest so far this year on April 16 2011 after opposition groups promised to unite for the first time at a demonstration planned for central Baku. Police have clamped down hard on anti-government protests, detaining leaders the day before demonstrations.
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(News report from Issue No. 35, published on April 11 2011)
APRIL 8 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Protests in Armenia calling for the resignation of President Serzh Sargsyan and fresh elections continue to grow. AP reported that roughly 12,000 people demonstrated in the centre of Yerevan and more demonstrations have been promised. So far the protests have been peaceful.
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(News report from Issue No. 35, published on April 11 2011)
APRIL 4 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Nursultan Nazarbayev got what he wanted from Kazakhstan’s presidential election on April 3.
The Central Election Committee said he won with 95% of the vote. So, while rulers in the Middle East contend with popular uprisings, Nazarbayev has won a huge mandate to extend his 20 year rule by another five years.
But although support for Nazarbayev is high, the detail shows his victory may not have been as comprehensive as the headline figures suggest.
The main opposition boycotted the vote and said Nazarbayev’s three challengers were put up by the authorities to give the election a veneer of competition and despite an official turnout of 90%, a Conway Bulletin correspondent in Almaty found plenty of people who had not voted.
People also said they had been coerced into voting. In Shymkent, a city in southern Kazakhstan, a construction worker called Nazir said: “They told us that if we didn’t vote we would not be paid. So, we voted.”
International election monitors also said they had recorded incidences of ballot stuffing and intimidation. But in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on March 31, Nazarbayev wrote described Kazakhstan’s economic achievements and appeared to pre-empt criticism of the vote.
“It took the great democracies of the world centuries to develop,” he said. “We are not going to become a fully developed democracy overnight. But we have proved that we can deliver on our big ambitions.”
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(News report from Issue No. 34, published on April 4 2011)
