Tag Archives: society

Nationwide blackout hits Tajikistan

OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A three-hour nationwide blackout hit Tajikistan after a power outage temporarily halted the Nurek hydropower plant, casting doubts over the stability of the country’s electricity system. The government opened an investigation on the incident and introduced the traditional winter power rationing scheme from Nov. 1. Hydropower stations produce less power in winter months because the water levels in their reservoirs drop as the depth of snow higher up the mountains increases. The issue of Tajikistan’s power production is particularly important currently because it, along with Kyrgyzstan, is supposed to be powering up to send electricity supplies to Pakistan through the World Bank-backed CASA-1000 project.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Uzbeks complain about price rises but steer clear of protests

TASHKENT, NOV. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Anatoliy, 60, earns a living by ferrying children to school each day across Uzbekistan’s Soviet- built capital and then hawking for fares in his battered Daewoo Matiz, along the city’s wide boulevards.

“I used to spend 80,000 sum (around $25.7) per week to buy fuel for my car and now I spend 120,000 sum ($38.6),” he said with a resigned air.

On the issue of protesting against the price rises, he shrugged and said that people in Uzbekistan were different from people in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. “People here are ready to say ‘hop mailly’ [“let it be” in Uzbek] to whatever decision is taken by officials,” he said.

Uzbekistan is considered by most human rights organisations to be one of the most repressive countries in the world and anti-government demonstrations are virtually unheard of.

Officials have said that the price rises were needed to balance the price of petrol sold in the regions and in Tashkent. Many people, though, are skeptical and have said that the government is exporting too much petrol for its own profit.

Shokhrukh, 40, another Tashkent-based gypsy cab driver sucked in a deep breath when he was asked about the petrol price rises.

“Our oil reserves in the Bukhara deposit are now insufficient to cover domestic petrol demands and the government has to import petrol from Russia which they have to pay for in roubles and US dollars,” he said.

Like other Central Asian currencies, the Uzbek sum has lost value over the past couple of years, pushing up inflation.

But is it not only drivers who will be impacted by the rise in the cost of petrol. Shukhrat, 40, an ethnic Uyghur in Tashkent, who sells cloth at Tashkent local bazaar said that all prices will have to increase off the back of such a big jump in the price of petrol.

“Food requires transportation and consequently fuel, I expect some shop owners will rise their food prices,” he said.

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(News report from Issue No. 303, published on Nov. 4 2016)

Turkmen President agrees to pardon prisoners

OCT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov agreed to pardon 1,523 jail inmates to celebrate the 25th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. Mass amnesties for major events are fairly commonplace in Central Asia. Amnesties are also used as a way of relieving overcrowding.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Kazakh citizen to face trial for fighting in Ukraine

OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Aktobe, north-west Kazakhstan, started hearing the trial of Maksim Yermolov, a Kazakh citizen of Russian ethnicity, for fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. He was arrested in Feb. 2015 after returning from Ukraine’s Dontesk region. Kazakhstan has a sizable Russian population in the north of the country and has always worried that many would prefer to separate from Kazakhstan and join Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Japanese garden opens in Georgia

OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tbilisi mayor Davit Narmania opened a new Japanese Garden in the city’s botanical gardens. The $85,000 project had been paid for by the Japanese government and was dedicated to celebrating Georgia-Japan relations.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Russian soldier dies in brawl in Tajikistan

OCT. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Ahliddin Mashrabov, a Tajik, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing a Russian soldier during a fight in a restaurant in the Tajik provincial city of Qurghon-Teppa. Mashrabov pleaded guilty to murdering Mashrabov but said that he was attacked first. The case has shown up the often fractious ties between Russian soldiers based in Tajikistan and ordinary Tajiks. Russia has 7,000 soldiers based in Tajikistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Soviet-era films return to Georgian capital

TBILISI, OCT. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After years of negotiations, copies of almost all Georgian movies produced during the Soviet Union and stored in the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond will be sent to Georgia, a move that campaigners said will fill a gap in its cultural heritage.

Most of these movies had been dubbed into Russian. By bringing them back to their homeland, campaigners have said that it will be possible to unite them with their original Georgian audio tracks and reproduce them with modern technology.

Marina Kereselidze, the president of the Cinema Heritage Protection Association, said that current generations are not aware of the greatness of Georgian cinema as they had not had the chance to watch what she described as masterpieces.

“New generations do not know Georgian movies because they are simply not available. We had an excellent movie production that lies dead in Moscow,” she said.

Talks on bringing these movies back to Georgia started in 2004, an initiative headed by Eldar Shengelaia, a Georgian and Soviet film director. Since 2013 the Georgian Dream coalition government, which had been looking to improve ties with Russia after they dipped to a post-Soviet low in 2008, has endorsed the initiative and developed a programme to fund it.

Mr Shengelaia told The Conway Bulletin that these movies represent a significant part of Georgian cultural identity.

“When the movies are back in their homeland a missing part of our culture will be back”, he said.

Part of those movies were censored under Soviet rule and Lana Gogoberidze, a Georgian film director, said she was thrilled to be able to watch films produced by her mother, Nutsa Gogoberidze, once again. Gogoberidze’s films were denounced as political and banned during Josef Stalin’s repression in the 1930s. She was sent to a Gulag for 10 years and airbrushed from Soviet cultural history.

“I saw one of my mum’s work, Buba, only a couple of years ago. I hope I will be able to watch her second movie too, which nobody has seen yet,” she said.

The first four films are expected to be sent to Tbilisi next month. Georgia has to pay for each film reel and the entire repatriation process is expected to last 10 years.

The Georgian archive in Gosfilmofond holds 381 feature films, 200 animated films, and more than 100 scientific popular films.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Uzbek mayor talks on anti-divorce measures

OCT. 22 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Rakhmonbek Usmanov, the mayor of Tashkent, has said that he will name and shame couples who are seeking a divorce, Voice of America reported on its website. Quoting local media, VOA said that Mr Usmanov had become so exasperated with the growing number of divorces in Tashkent that he has drawn up a plan to name divorcing couples on a popular radio station and also in a local evening newspaper.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Georgian soldiers shoot man

OCT. 24 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Soldiers guarding a Georgian army base shot dead a man, named as Giorgi Shengelia, who they said had tried to break into the camp, media reported. Details of the incident at the Krtsanisi base near Tbilisi are thin. Media did not report whether the apparent attempted break-in was linked to crime or to Islamic extremism. The dead man’s family have accused the military of accidentally shooting Shengelia and then trying to cover it up.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Two workers die on construction sites in Georgia

OCT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Two construction workers died in two separate incidents on building sites in Tbilisi within a couple of days, highlighting the often poor levels of health and safety in Georgia. The first man to die fell from a building. The second died from a suspected heart attack. Georgia is going through something of a construction boom at the moment.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)