Tag Archives: society

Georgian Patriarch flip-flops on pardons

DEC. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Patriarch Ilia II, head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, appears to have embarrassed Georgian PM Iralik Garibashvili by asking to be granted the power to pardon prisoners only to withdraw the request after Mr Garibashvili issued a statement in support of the idea.

After watching a play put on by prisoners with Mr Garibashvili, Patriarch II told reporters that, alongside the president, he should have the right to pardon them of their crimes.

Mr Garibashvili didn’t comment at the time but the next day, his office said that he would push for the issue to be debated in parliament.

Shortly after Mr Garibashvili’s statement, though, Patriarch Ilia II appears to have changed his mind.

The Patriarch’s press office said: “It was an idea voiced with the desire for solidarity, support and compassion towards them [the prisoners] and not as a demand to discuss this proposal at a legislative level.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

Uzbekistan receives Aids grant

DEC. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Global Fund to Help Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has given Uzbekistan a grant of nearly $14m, media reported . Uzbekistan has one of the fastest growing rates of aids in the world.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

World Bank funds road in Georgia

DEC. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The World Bank has approved funding of $140m to upgrade a motorway running east-west across Georgia, media reported. Georgia’s infrastructure needs upgrading and the east-west motorway has been identified as an important project which will improve transport routes for 2.2m people.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 260, published on Dec. 11 2015)

EU says to give Georgia grant

NOV. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Union confirmed that it was preparing to give Georgia a grant of 100m euro to help improve parts of its society and business climate. Most of the grant is directed to Georgia’s agriculture sector but public bodies and utilities will also receive a chunk of the grant.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Turkmen authorities organise choir record

NOV. 30 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Officials in Turkmenistan organised 4,166 people to sing a song written by Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, AP news agency reported, breaking a previous world record for the largest choir. The choir sung in a giant yurt.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Georgian budget increases

NOV. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s parliament approved an increase of 96m lari ($40m) in next year’s budget to improve healthcare. The extra cash will be used by the ministry of health to bring in its universal healthcare programme. Introducing universal healthcare is a key policy of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)

Uzbekistan reduces child cotton pickers

NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A report by the UN’s International Labour Office (ILO) said the use of child labour to pick cotton in Uzbekistan has reduced although it hasn’t been totally eradicated.

The ILO’s findings are important because Uzbekistan has come under growing criticism for its use of children, medical staff and teachers for picking cotton. Cotton is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest exports, although many Western companies have stopped buying Uzbek cotton.

“The use of children in the cotton harvest has become rare and sporadic,” the ILO said in its report. “Authorities have taken a range of measures to reduce the incidence of child labour and make it socially unacceptable.”

It said that a campaign to stop teachers and medics being used to pick cotton has been less successful.

Activists rank Uzbekistan as one of the worst countries in the world for upholding human rights.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)

Tajik president to be given title of “Leader of the Nation”

NOV. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon is about to add another title to his growing list of names. Already called “His Excellency”, he will now add the moniker “Leader of the Nation”.

A group of deputies of the lower chamber of parliament have submitted a draft law proposing that Mr Rakhmon take this title.

One of the proposers of the bill, Abdurahim Kholikzoda told local media that the draft has been prepared because of a groundswell of support from ordinary Tajiks who want to honour their president and everything he has achieved.

“This is a tribute to the merits of the outstanding son of the Tajik people, President Emomali Rakhmon, and for his services to the country and the people of the country,” media quoted Mr Kholikzoda as saying.

Mr Kholikzoda has a track record of lavishly praising Mr Rakhmon. Once head of the State Religion Committee of Tajikistan, he called Mr Rakhmon “the sun” and “the star of happiness” earlier this year.

Many ordinary Tajik are suspicious, though, and suspect that Mr Rakhmon’s new title is a crude attempt to curry favour.

A Dushanbe resident called Farhod said: “We have the lowest economic development in the post- Soviet space, our migrants are dying in Russia, our families are freezing in areas without electricity or poisoned by carbon monoxide of coal, corruption is developed, and the list can go on.

“However, what are our MPs doing? They compete to invent such laws to get the attention of the President. I am speechless.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)

Explosion shuts down Azerbaijan’s internet

NOV. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A fire at an internet data centre in Azerbaijan knocked nearly the entire country off the World Wide Web for several hours, highlighting the fragility of the country’s infrastructure.

The internet tracking website renesys.com said that the fire at Data Telecom, the near-monopoly internet provider, knocked out 78% of Azerbaijan’s internet system. It also took out Azercell, one of three main mobile providers, as it relies heavily on Data Telecom for transmission.

Acting minister of communications and high technologies ltimas Mammadov – the communications minister was fired last week – told the Azernews website that the fire caused the outage at 4.15pm (1215 GMT).

“Internet outage occurred due to equipment damage at the technical centre of Azerbaijan’s primary service provider,” he said. “However, transmission channels to Georgia, Iran, and the Middle East were working at full capacity.”

Banks said that electronic payments and the SWIFT money transfer system also failed.

The outage will be an embarrassment to Azerbaijan which has tried to project an image of being a thoroughly modern country. Its communications systems now appears over-reliant on one service provider.

In 2011, a 75-year-old woman in Georgia accidentally sliced through a cable, cutting Armenia off from the internet. Georgia had provided 90% of Armenia’s internet access.

The internet black-out in Azerbaijan has shown that the South Caucasus’ internet is still fragile.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)

Kazakh Team Astana receives cycling licence

NOV. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a four-month-long review linked to a drug doping scandal, Astana Pro cycling team received its World Tour licence. Astana Pro, which is funded by the Kazakh sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna and races in the national colours, has been involved in several doping cases since it was set up in 2007.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)