Tag Archives: society

Prison population falls in Kazakhstan

JAN. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The size of Kazakhstan’s prison population has fallen by around 20% since 2013 to 40,000 people, the Kazakh Prosecutor-General’s office said. Human rights groups have previously criticised Kazakhstan for the poor conditions of its prisons. Riots and violence by prisoners protesting against conditions had, only a few years ago, been fairly frequent.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Kazakh mortgage holders protest

JAN. 12 2016, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Around 100 people demonstrated in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial capital, over the rising cost of servicing US dollar mortgages, an indicator of growing discontent over the worsening state of the Kazakh economy.

The protesters targeted two banks — ATF and Forte Bank — which they said were refusing to help homeowners with US dollar mortgages despite a 50% drop in the value of the Kazakh tenge. They carried a symbolic coffin filled with underwear and ripped up mortgage statements.

Sulubike Zhaksylykova was on the march. She is head of an NGO which is lobbying for banks to help mortgage owners.

“One of the main goals of the protest is to refinance mortgages in dollars according to people’s ability to pay,” she told The Conway Bulletin.

“There are many disabled people of first and second category who receive 26,000 tenge per ($71) month [of government benefits] and these banks require them to pay 100,000 tenge a month [in mortgage repayments].”

The Kazakh government last year released a 130b tenge ($355m) cash-pot which it handed to commercial banks to help them refinance homeowners’ mortgages. Ms Zhaksylykova, though, accused the banks of not doing enough to help people.

After the protest both ATF Bank and Forte Bank said they would work to improve individual mortgage repayments.

Public protests in Almaty are rare but as the economy worsens, emotions are running high.

The Kazakh economy has always had relatively high levels of household debt and after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/9, Kazakhstan had one of the highest proportions of non-performing loans.

Analysts have now warned that bad mortgages may be the source of another debt crisis.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Protesters clash with police in Azerbaijan

JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Protests against rising prices broke out in at least five regional towns in Azerbaijan, the most serious and widespread civil unrest linked to an economic downturn that has shaken Central Asia and the South Caucasus over the past 18 months.

In Siyazan, about an hour’s drive north of Baku, heavily armed riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at crowds of young men who pelted them with stones. Later, reports said that at least 50 people had been detained by the police.

Footage shot on mobile phones and released on the opposition Meydan website showed police in full body armour carrying shields backed up by armoured vehicles marching towards groups of young men.

In other protests in regional towns, groups of men argued with officials and complained about losing jobs and a drop in living standards.

The following day, the Azerbaijani authorities released a statement that blamed various opposition parties for organising the protests. Azerbaijan’s opposition, which has seen its ranks thinned by a series of arrests and imprisonments over the past couple of years, said that the protests had been spontaneous.

Hours later the government appeared to back down over one of the protesters’ main demands — to stop prices from rising — by ordering a VAT exemption on flour and wheat.

A sharp fall in oil prices has hit Azerbaijan hard. It devalued its manat currency twice last year, halving its value. The government has also cut welfare and infrastructure projects.

There have been small-scale protests in Azerbaijan and in Georgia and Armenia, but these were the most violent and widespread.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Armenia arrests assassination plotters

JAN. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Security forces in Armenia arrested two more people, including Garnik Markarian, leader of a small, obscure opposition party, for allegedly being part of a group plotting a series of assassinations. In November, security forces in Armenia raided a house in Yerevan and arrested 10 people for allegedly being linked to the assassination plot. In the following weeks, at least 12 more people were arrested.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Turkmenistan starts to ban cigarettes

JAN. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen officials have started pulling cigarettes off shops’ shelves in what appears to be a draconian attempt to effectively ban smoking altogether.

In Ashgabat, an AFP correspondent interviewed a shopkeeper who said that officials had recently ordered him to stop selling cigarette or face a heavy fine.

“(They) came to our shop recently and forced us to remove cigarettes from the shelves, threatening us with huge fines,” 34-year-old Bairam Saryev said.

Turkmenistan’s President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov is known for his eccentricity. He is a former dentist and hates smoking. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has praised his efforts to discourage smokers by banning smoking in all public buildings, parks and offices as well as cigarette advertising.

Last year WHO said only 8% of Turkmenistan’s population smoked, the lowest of any country.

The Turkmen government has not published any official announcement on whether it will ban smoking altogether.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Editorial: Turkmenistan’s final puff

JAN. 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – By all accounts, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the president of Turkmenistan, is a very particular man.

He likes to be a winner, making sure that he wins horse races held in Turkmenistan each year. He likes, and appreciates, statues of himself which have started appearing in Ashgabat. He likes, far more than his predecessor, foreign travel.

He doesn’t like poor performing officials and he especially doesn’t like smoking. At least that’s the impression he has given.

Mr Berdymukhamedov has taken it upon himself to eradicate smoking, it appears. According to news reports he has banned smoking in almost all public places and has stopped shops from selling cigarettes.

This is, surely, a shame as lighting up a ciggie at the end of a day is a simple pleasure that had been available in Turkmenistan, a country not known for its personal freedoms.

Still, there may be one upside for smokers in Turkmenistan. The illegal cigarette behind the bike shed may come come back in vogue.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Rail revenues fall in Kazakhstan

JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Revenues earned by the Kazakh national railway company were down by 12.6% in the 11 months to the end of November compared to the same period in 2014, the ranking.kz website reported. The website said that passenger numbers had dropped off, another sign of the tight grip that the current economic downturn has taken of Kazakhstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

11 die from swine flu in Armenia

JAN. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least 11 people have died of H1N1 Swine Flu in Armenia, media reported quoting the ministry of health. The ministry of health said that this did not equate to an epidemic, although there are another 80 people in prison suffering from the flu. Swine flu worries governments around the world because it can spread and has previously triggered epidemics.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)

Utility prices rise in Kazakhstan

JAN. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media in Kazakhstan reported that utility companies had increased water and electricity prices by up to 15%, more evidence of latent inflation in the Kazakh economy linked to a sharp drop in the value of the tenge. Analysts have said frustration is growing among ordinary people about price rises. Electricity price rises in particular are a sensitive issue across the S.Caucasus/C.Asia region.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)

Editorial: Horse-play in Kyrgyzstan

JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Scottish welder Michael Mcfeat was seeing in the New Year at the canteen in the Kumtor gold mine high up in the Tien Shan mountains when he sent a message back home to friends in Scotland jokingly referring to the chuchuk, a horse-meat sausage, as a horse’s penis.

It was a joke that was intended to raise smiles back home, and it may well have done, but Mcfeat’s error was to make it on an open Facebook account. Locals workers read his joke. They were furious.

Mcfeat is back home now, lucky to have escaped a beating from angry locals, while the Toronto-listed Centerra Gold that runs the mine is dealing with the latest PR setback in its relations with Kyrgyzstan.

The Kyrgyz may be overly sensitive to foreigners laughing at their national identity but, 25 years after the fall of the USSR, it is still a young country. Instead, the onus should be on international companies working in Kyrgyzstan and the rest of Central Asia to educate their foreign staff and also to impose some all important social media rules and guidelines.

After all what the chuchuk is to the Kyrgyz, the haggis is to the Scots.

ENDS

(Editorial from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)