Tag Archives: society

People protest in Georgian mine

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Residents of Ieli, a small village in the Svaneti region in the north of Georgia, demonstrated against a gold mining company that had started excavation work in the area. Dozens of protesters said that they didn’t believe that Optical System, a St Kitts and Nevis-based company, had a valid licence. The local government later showed that the company had been given an exploration licence in 2005.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Turkish officials detain dozens with Kyrgyz passport

MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Border authorities in Turkey detained dozens of ethnic Uyghurs who were trying to fly to Northern Cyprus with forged Kyrgyz passports. Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group predominantly from the west China region of Xinjiang, neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. They have said that they are being persecuted by Chinese officials.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Google Street View comes to Kyrgyzstan

BISHKEK, MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan became the 77th country to feature in Google Street View, and the first in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, highlighting its relative openness and potentially giving its tourist sector a boost.

Tilek Mamutov, Google’s representative in Kyrgyzstan, said in a Facebook post that the new service will give people around the world the chance to make a virtual road-trip across Kyrgyzstan.

“Now users of Google Maps all over the world can take virtual trips along Kyrgyz roads and discover tourist attractions online,” he said.

Google Street View integrates with the California-based company’s mapping service to allow users to navigate their way though cities at street level with static images.

Mr Mamutov said it took around 1-1/2 years for Google to photograph virtually every road in Kyrgyzstan.

A similar programme was rolled out in some cities in Kazakhstan by Yandex, the Russian search engine, but there is no timeline yet for Google to capture each and every corner of the country.

Google Street View has been criticised for impinging on people’s privacy.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Georgia Healthcare Group posts strong Q1 results

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia’s largest healthcare company, Georgia Healthcare Group (GHG), posted a 33% rise in revenue in the first quarter of 2016, highlighting rising demand from Georgians for private medical services.

Revenues increased to 71.7m lari (around $33m) in the first quarter of 2016, a jump of a third from 2015. The company attributed the positive results to its ability to grab market share in the healthcare sector.

And this is set to grow, according to GHG, which bought Georgian pharmaceutical retailer and wholesaler GPC earlier in May.

“We are clearly on track to deliver our target of more than doubling 2015 healthcare services revenues by 2018,” CEO Nikoloz Gamkrelidze said in a statement.

GHG also positively reviewed the recent tax reforms that the Georgian government put in place for next year. Under the new rules, undistributed profits will no longer be subject to a 15% profit tax. The government has said that the new tax rules are designed to encourage companies to invest, giving the economy a boost. In the short-term, though, the new tax code will reduce government income.

“We expect this amendment to take effect for our healthcare services earnings on 1 January 2017, and this is expected to significantly reduce the Group’s effective tax rate from 2017 onwards,” Mr Gamkrelidze said.

The healthcare sector in Georgia has proven resilient during the current economic downturn. This economic slowdown, which has hit the entire Central Asia and South Caucasus region, forced Georgia’s lari currency to fall by 30% in the past 18 months and has slowed GDP growth.

Last November, GHG listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange.

BGEO Group, a London-based holding company that owns Bank of Georgia, owns a 65.07% stake in GHG.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Uzbekistan opens language studies

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government opened the first state university devoted entirely to the study of Uzbek language and literature. The new university, named after Alisher Navoi, a 15th century linguist and poet, is located in Tashkent. The Uzbek government considers Uzbek language as part of its national brand and an important part of its nation building.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Germany to vote on Armenian genocide

MAY 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – German lawmakers scheduled for June a vote on whether to label the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 as a “genocide”, a move that will score a major victory for Armenian lobby groups. In a 2005 resolution, the German parliament fell short of calling the deaths a genocide. France, Italy and a handful of other European countries recognise the 1915 events as a genocide, which irritates Turkey.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Tajik ministers says everyone should have flag

MAY 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Ramadan Rakhimzoda, the Tajik minister of internal affairs, said that every Tajik household should fly a national flag as proof of patriotism. The flag is an important item in the construction of Tajikistan’s national identity. In 2011, for the twentieth anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence, President Emomali Rakhmon ordered what was then the tallest flagpole in the world to be built in Dushanbe.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

Kazakhstan to control NGO funds

MAY 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s ministry of culture established an agency that will manage grant funding for NGOs, a decision in line with the new NGO law that President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed in December 2015. Human rights and NGO lobby groups have said that this law and this agency will restrict their ability to receive funding and undermine their work.

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(News report from Issue No. 281, published on May 20 2016)

UN condemns clampdown in Kazakhstan

MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned what it said was the Kazakh authorities crackdown on protests against proposed amendments to the land code. “The government must immediately end all forms of persecution and take effective measures to protect civil society,” it said. The protests forced Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev to delay planned changes to the land code. Mobile recordings of the protests showed police clashing with demonstrators.

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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)

Editorial: Gay rights in Armenia and Azerbaijan

MAY 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the lobby group IGLA-Europe makes for discouraging reading. Propping up the league table on gay, lesbian and transgender rights in 49 countries across Europe and its near abroad are Azerbaijan and Armenia, split by Russia.

They scored 5% and 7%. Above them, halfway up the table, was Georgia with 30%. The fine-print said that the report was primarily concerned with the legal framework established in each country to allow gays, lesbians and transgender people the same rights and protections as everybody else.

The IGLA’s assessment, in Armenia and Azerbaijan at least, was that this appears to be near zero.

And this is reflected in news reports of attacks on homosexuals and other minorities in Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Importantly, though, it is not just people with different sexual orienta- tions who are potential targets in these countries. The same group-think extends towards opposition activists, overly pious Muslims and journalists. They are all marginalised. This whole mentality needs changing.

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(Editorial from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)