Tag Archives: society

Behlen to build sport infrastructure in Georgia

OCT. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Behlen Industries, a Canadian construction company, started building a new Sports Palace in Batumi, on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. The project is part of a government drive to build new sporting facilities across the country to promote healthy lifestyles and improve facilities for amateur and professional sports men and women. New complexes will also be built in Telavi and Gori, in east and central Georgia. The total cost of the three projects is $33.9m. Behlen is part of WGI Westman Group.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Russia returns the skull to Kazakhstan

OCT. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russia returned to Kazakhstan the skull of Keiki Batyr, one of the leaders of the 1916 Kazakh revolt against Russia. In 1923, Keiki Batyr was captured and killed by the Red Army. Kazakhstan had asked Russia to return Keiki Batyr’s skull for burial. In August, Russian PM Dmitri Medvedev agreed to return the relic to Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

ADB funds road in Kyrgyzstan

SEPT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) agreed to issue $95m in loans and grants to Kyrgyzstan for the reconstruction of the North-South Corridor, a vital road link. The Eurasian Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the Saudi Fund for Development and China’s Export-Import Bank are also participating in the reconstruction of the road.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Georgian Police arrest nationalists in Tbilisi after demo

TBILISI, SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Police in Tbilisi arrested 11 men after they attacked Turkish cafes and people wearing Muslim clothes after a march by nationalists through the city.

According to reports, a group of men, some masked, gathered at Rustaveli metro station in the centre and walked through a small street with numerous cafes and foreign restaurants where they shouted “Glory to our nation, death to enemies” and attacked the cafes.

The interior ministry later released a statement which blamed a group called Georgian Power, linked to hooligans at Georgia’s biggest football team Dynamo Tbilisi.

Earlier this year, a group of nationalists threw sausages at diners in a Tbilisi vegan restaurant.

A few days after that another group of nationalists and ultraconservative Orthodox Christians disrupted an open air concert in Tbilisi, accusing the organisers of arranging mass orgies.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Uzbekistan bans forced labour

SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan has ratified the International Labour Organisation’s convention on the ban on forced and child labour, the ministry of labour said in a statement. Every year, during the cotton harvest, human rights organisations denounce dozens of cases of child and forced labour. Cotton is an important commodity for Uzbekistan’s economy.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Young Tajiks attack on IRPT

SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A group of young pro-government demonstrators attacked the house of Rakhmatullo Rajab, a member of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) now in jail. The demonstrators threw rotten eggs onto the house, where Rajab’s relatives live. They also burned portraits of Rajab and other IRPT representatives, jailed last year after being accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the government. Human rights activists said this was just one of many violent attacks on the families of IRPT members.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

Azerbaijan’s IBA signs promotional deal with Juventus football club

SEPT. 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), majority owned by the government, signed a promotional deal with Italian football club Juventus, continuing Azerbaijan’s strategy of using sport to promote itself.

Juventus released a photo of its executives meeting IBA officials in Baku, posing with one of its famous black and white shirts.

Under the terms of the deal, the value of which has not been announced, IBA will be able to use Juventus logos and branding to promote its products. Juventus will also be committed to opening and running a football academy in Baku.

Juventus’ head of global partnerships and corporate revenues Giorgio Ricci said that the deal with IBA was the fifth regional sponsorship deal that the club had concluded in the last 16 months.

“We are proud to be working in a country of great potential such as Azerbaijan, and to collaborate with an organisation as prestigious as the International Bank of Azerbaijan,” he said.

For IBA, the timing is less auspicious. Azerbaijan’s economy has been under pressure because of a sharp fall in oil prices and analysts have said it will fall into a recession for the first time since 2009.

Banks have in particular come under pressure because of their previous loose lending arrangements which have now generated mountains of bad debt. This bad debt portfolio was exacerbated by a 50% fall in the value of the manat last year.

In July, a court in Azerbaijan also convicted IBA’s former CEO, Jahangir Hajiyev, of money laundering.

Sport, though, has become an important outlet for Azerbaijan to market itself. Azerbaijan had sponsored Spanish team Atletico Madrid and Baku is one of the 13 host cities for Euro 2020 football tournament.

The Azerbaijani government owns a 55% stake in IBA. IBA accounts for around 60% of all lending in Azerbaijan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Tajik official’s son crashes in a car

SEPT. 16 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Faromuz Saidov, the 23-year-old son of Tajik deputy PM Davlati Saidov, crashed his car into a council cleaning truck killing two people in Dushanbe. One of the victims was travelling in Mr Saidov’s car, the other was a city worker. Mr Saidov was hospitalised and the interior ministry opened an investigation. Family members of public officials in Tajikistan, however, seldom receive punishment for road accidents.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Azerbaijan promotes its image in Paris

SEPT. 20 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Mehriban Aliyeva, the wife of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, opened the so-called Azerbaijani Village in central Paris. Ms Aliyeva, President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, cut the ribbon of the temporary exhibit, which will showcase Azerbaijani culture, history and cuisine at Place Joffre, a stone’s throw away from the Eiffel Tower. Azerbaijan has invested millions of dollars upgrading its image abroad.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)

Kazakh President wants to build new town on China border

ALMATY, SEPT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan wants to build a new town on its border with China by 2020 to boost the number of people living on its remote fringe, the Presidential Administration said after President Nursultan Nazarbayev toured the chosen site and studied plans.

If it goes to plan, the new city, which will be called Nurkent (Bright Village), and be home to 100,000 people. As well as populating its borders, Nurkent will also sit nicely with Mr Nazarbayev’s plan to build new homes.

It will be situated next to the Khorgos special economic zone and should boost Kazakh involvement in the region which has so far been dominated by China.

Rasul Zhumaly, a well-regarded political observer, told The Conway Bulletin that the government had to build a new town on the border with China.

“Chinese regions bordering us are developing fast which means that Kazakhstan has to match to these tendencies. It is a necessary and important project,” he said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 297, published on Sept. 23 2016)