NOV. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan built a supersized glass and aluminium yurt to celebrate the city of Mary’s position as 2015 Culture and Arts Capital of the Turkic World, media reported. The yurt, which can hold up to 3,000 people, drew criticism. Central Asian governments are given to grandiose projects, projecting an image of being out-of-touch.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of abortions in Georgia increased by three times between 2000 and 2012, new statistics published by Geostat showed. The statistics did also show a dip of 14% from 2012 – 2014. The abortion rate is significant in Georgia because of its generally traditional, church orientated society.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Georgian Chamber of Commerce launched an investigation into what it has said is a major gap in the country’s healthcare coverage which leaves over 400,000 Georgians uninsured. The timing of the study is pertinent. In October, Georgia Healthcare Group, the largest healthcare provider in Georgia, said it wanted to raise $100m in an IPO in London to modernise two of its private hospitals in Tbilisi.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
NOV. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Five Armenian crew members, including the pilot, were killed in plane crash in south Sudan. The Antonov-12 cargo plane, operated by Armenia’s Ala International, was carrying 40 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 255, published on Nov. 6 2015)
OCT. 25 2015, TBILISI (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia moved a step closer to decriminalising the recreational use of marijuana after its Constitutional Court ruled that possessing 70g of the drug should not lead to a prison sentence.
The ruling means that Georgia now has some of the most lax laws on marijuana possession in the former Soviet Union.
The Constitutional Court was called to rule on the case of Beka Tsikarishvili who was arrested in 2013 and faced a prison sentence for carrying 69g of marijuana. His supporters have stage rallies which have attracted hundreds of people.
“The purchase and possession of marijuana for personal use does not qualify for a prison sentence,” the court said in a note on its website.
Previously, carrying 50-500g of marijuana could lead to a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Supporters of decriminalising marijuana cheered the court’s decision, calling it a “huge step forward”.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 24 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — A 20-year-old man set fire to himself in the city of Taraz, south Kazakhstan, outside the headquarters of President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s political party, a rare suicide by immolation that would have worried the authorities.
A video uploaded onto Youtube showed Yerlan Bektibayev talking to the camera in a central square in Taraz, before pouring lighter fuel over his head, setting himself on fire and then running into the Nur Otan building.
Bektibayev spoke in Kazakh before he set himself alight, explaining that he wanted to kill himself because he couldn’t find a job and that the authorities had bullied him by planting drugs on him and locking him up in prison for a murder that he didn’t commit.
“I cannot find any other way but to die. I do not want to live,” he said on the video.
Kazakhstan has a high rate of youth suicide. The United Nations has said that it is in the top ten countries for suicides of people between the ages of 14 and 29, but, even so, Bektibayev’s choice of setting himself on fire outside the Nur Otan regional headquarters will have alarmed the authorities.
It was an overtly political back- drop to the suicide, with overtones of the immolation in Tunisia in 2010 that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.
Official media largely avoided reporting on the suicide, one TV journalist who works for a state linked channel said he was told not to report on it, and police detained the man who filmed Bektibayev’s immolation.
Social media, though, was full of conflicting opinion. Some said that Bektibayev was to blame for taking his own life, others that society had failed him.
There was no official comment either from Nur Otan or the Taraz regional government.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 26 2015, DUSHANBE (The Conway Bulletin) — A group of students at the Tajik National University appealed to the US, the EU and Germany to extradite opposition members, raising immediate concerns that the authorities may be coercing sectors of the population to pursue its agenda.
Civic activism is stunted in Tajikistan and this apparent support for the government worried analysts.
A Dushanbe-based analyst who spoke to a Bulletin correspondent said: “The government knows that the Western states will not extradite opposition leaders to Tajikistan. Thus, they control the students and organise similar appeals and demonstrations to show the world that Tajik youth are politically active and there is democracy in Tajikistan.”
The government has stepped up its persecution of opposition groups this year, banning them and arresting activists. It wants opposition leaders extradited from Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 29 2015, ALMATY (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazpochta, the Kazakh state-owned post service, signed a deal with Astana to switch to alpha- numeric post codes, evidence of the population boom in Kazakhstan’s capital city.
Post codes in Astana will now pinpoint a specific building, rather than just an area, a practice that closely resembles Britain’s custom.
The indexing system vastly increases the number of post codes available to use in Astana and will be rolled out later this year in some of the city’s new industrial developments, said Bagdat Musin, Kazpochta’s chairman.
“The new system will facilitate not only postmen, but also emergency workers,” he said.
With an official population of 860,000, doubling in the past decade, Astana has grown fast.
But it remains something of a commuter city. At the weekend Astana hollows out as the middle class head to Almaty to eat, drink, relax and party.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 27 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — US State Secretary, John Kerry, was due to fly to Kyrgyzstan on Oct. 31 for the start of his first tour of Central Asia, a stopover considered vital to repair relations with an ally that has drifted towards Russia over the past couple of years.
In Bishkek, Mr Kerry will hold bilateral discussions with senior Kyrgyz officials, including President Almazbek Atambayev, and open a new campus for the American University of Central Asia.
Top of Mr Kerry’s agenda will be the growing influence of Russia as well as a draft bill banning so-called gay propaganda and a law that bans local NGOs from foreign funding.
Marat Kazakpayev, a Bishkek analyst, said US investments and security would be discussed.
“They will discuss security in the region, including situation in Afghanistan and Syria, as well what to do to counter terrorism,” he said.
The US operated an airbase from the Manas airport outside Bishkek for 13 years until 2014 when it was wound down alongside military operations in Afghanistan.
For Mr Kerry and the US, this is an important trip to Central Asia.
It has ceded influence in the region to Russia and China. Russia has the historical, political and cultural links; China has the financial firepower.
In contrast, with the scaling down of military operations in Afghanistan, the US and the West have appeared to disengage with Central Asia. Mr Kerry’s main mission will be to re- assure the region’s leaders that the US is still interested in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan has forcibly evicted around 50,000 people from their homes in and around Ashgabat ahead of the 2017 Asian Indoors and Martial Arts Games, human rights group Amnesty International said in a report.
Researchers at Amnesty studied satellite images which they said showed evictions and demolitions between March 2014 and April 2015 in two Ashgabat neighbourhoods.
Ashgabat will host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games, a relatively minor Olympic event. It wants to impress visitors with a $2 Olympic Village and an extensive PR campaign on its readiness to open up to the world after decades of isolation.
Denis Krivosheev of Amnesty International said: “Instead of using the Games as an opportunity to clean up Turkmenistan’s human rights record, local authorities there have only succeeded in worsening living conditions for residents.”
Amnesty’s allegation, which the authorities have not refuted, will irritate the Turkmen government and further damage its image, just as it is trying to show the world a softer and more open side.
Analysis focused on Choganly and Shor, two so-called “dacha neighbourhoods” designated for holiday houses. More recently, though, Amnesty International said evictions were taking place in a suburb of Ashagbat too.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
