Tag Archives: society

In Baku, refugees rub shoulders with luxury

BAKU, APRIL 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – – Gulnara Makhmedova, a 62-year old refugee from the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh stood in front of a crumbling Soviet apartment block tucked behind the whitewashed faculty of medicine at Baku State University.

Just a few hundred yards away luxury cars were parked up in front of haute couture shops and expensive restaurants.

Gulnara lives with five members of her family in a one-bedroom apartment. In her apartment block, electricity runs for only a few hours a day and the water that trickles out of the tap is brown.

“My family has been waiting for a new flat for over twenty years now,” she said.
Gulnara is one of around 600,000 internally displaced refugees from the conflict which pitted Azerbaijani forces against Armenian-backed separatists after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Only a fragile 1994 cease-fire now keeps Nagorno-Karabakh from falling back into war.

They live in a precarious state of destitution in Azerbaijan’s sprawling capital.
“We all hoped we could start a new life here, but we only found ourselves living in worse conditions than the ones we left behind,” she said, pointing at the disintegrating mould stained ceiling of her apartment.

“When we arrived in Baku back in 1993 we immediately understood we were not welcome here as we represented a living reminder of Azerbaijan’s defeat,” she told the Bulletin referring to the thousands of civilians who fled Agdam, her hometown after an Armenian defeat of Azerbaijan.

Analysts have said that there may be another reason why Gulnara and her family are made to live in broken Soviet apartment blocks. It may suit Azerbaijani president Ilham ALiyev and his government to be able to show domestic television and visiting dignitaries the human suffering that the smouldering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has generated.
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(News report from Issue No. 226, published on April 8 2015)

Armenia plans update to torture definition

MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia will update its definition of the term torture to meet international standards, the London-based media NGO Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said. The update, the IWPR reported, was aimed at cracking down on police torture.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Azerbaijan signs shirt deal with Lazio FC

MARCH 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Lazio, a football team based in Rome, may sign a shirt sponsorship deal with Azerbaijan to carry its “Azerbaijan: Land of Fire” slogan, Azerbaijani websites reported quoting the national football association. Azerbaijan already sponsors Atletico Madrid.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Kazakhstan may bid for Football World Cup

APRIL 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Apparently not content with bidding to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, Kazakh officials have said they are considering a bid to host the 2026 Football World Cup. The Football World Cup is perhaps the world’s biggest sports tournament.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Asylum seekers from Azerbaijan rise

MARCH 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The number of asylum seekers from Azerbaijan to Europe is increasing, the United Nations said in a report on global trends.
The latest data from the UN showed that in the first quarter of 2014 641 people from Azerbaijan claimed asylum in Europe, compared to 572 people in the first quarter of 2013.

This is still below the numbers from Azerbaijan’s South Caucasus neighbours — Georgia and Armenia.

Independent observers in Azerbaijan have said that the main driver of asylum seekers — rather than the larger dynamic of economic migrants — is a crackdown by the Azerbaijani authorities on civic activists. Importantly, this has recently also included NGO leaders and journalists who feel persecuted by the authorities as well as opposition figures.

Alovsat Aliyev, head of the Azerbaijan Migration Centre, who has also left Baku to live in Berlin because he worried about persecution said the figures also represented a brain-drain for Azerbaijan.

“Not only do those who are persecuted leave the country, but these are also people who have high capacity of intelligence and don’t want to be part of corrupted system,” he told media.

Azerbaijani asylum seekers mostly use Georgia as a transition country, as it is considered safer than Iran, Turkey and Russia.

The United States the European Union have both called on Azerbaijan to stop its alleged crackdown on civil groups. Several US NGOs and the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have quit Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 225, published on April 12015)

Kazakhstan promotes itself through food and music

BERLIN, MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – To celebrate Nauryz, a traditional festival to mark the start of spring, the Kazakh embassy in Berlin paid for a free concert at the city’s Philharmonic Theatre.

The performance was to be a celebration of Kazakh culture with two youth orchestras and several dancers flown in from Astana.

Culture, as well as politics and trade, have become an important part of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, promoting its brand and pushing its image. Kazakhstan is bidding to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022, it is hosting the international EXPO in 2017 and wants to win one of the rotating seats at the UN Security Council.

Free, or heavily subsidised performances in European capitals are one way of pushing its messages.

The Kazakh ambassador to Germany, Bolat Nussupov, opened the concert in Berlin, speaking briefly about Kazakhstan’s concept on interethnic harmony. Kazakhstan heralds this concept regularly and the symbolism was maintained during the concert with dances routines from various Kazakh ethnicities in traditional costumes.

The evening, and the Kazakh PR push, continued outside the hall with free traditional food, from plov to baursaki.

“It’s nice to have such events when we’re so far from home. I felt surrounded by my own people, my own heritage for a night,” said Aya, who moved to Berlin 16 years ago from Kazakhstan.

And as well as delighting Kazakh emigres in Germany, the performance seemed to have made an impact on Kazakhstan’s target audience — ordinary Germans.

“It’s good to learn about Kazakh folklore, the performance was remarkable, if slightly cheesy,” Daniel, a German designer said as he swallowed a mouthful of baursak, a popular Kazakh fried bread snack.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)

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Three Kazakhs die in German air crash

MARCH 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Three Kazakhs and a Ukrainian opera singer born in Kazakhstan died in the Germanwings plane crash, the Kazakh foreign ministry said. The plane, carrying 150 people, crashed in the French Alps (March 24). It was flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)

Tajikistan starts to build new city

MARCH 24 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Tajikistan’s president launched construction of a new city to be built in a desert in the north of the country, media reported. The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said the project is designed to generated jobs in the region and that the city would be home to 250,000 people.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)

Aliyev blames the West for anti-Azerbaijan campaign

MARCH 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a public speech, President Ilham Aliyev blamed the international community for launching an anti-Azerbaijan campaign ahead of the European Games this summer.

This is important because analysts have been saying that Mr Aliyev has increasingly turned his back on the West. The United States and the EU have been increasingly vocal critics of his clampdown on civic society.

“This campaign, in fact, has never been stopped, but in the run-up to important international events this campaign becomes even uglier,” he said.

“We were faced with it three years ago in 2012, on the eve of the Eurovision contest. We are seeing it today, on the eve of the European Games. This is a well-coordinated anti-Azerbaijani campaign managed from one or several centres.”

The inaugural European Games, set to be staged in Baku in June, is a sensitive issue for Mr Aliyev.

He desperately wants to showcase Azerbaijan and to gloss over its more unsightly aspects such as a stalling economy and criticism over its human rights record.

According to the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Azerbaijan is spending $4b on the European Games.

In his speech Mr Aliyev stated that the main reason for the campaign is the current strength of the country. “

“It is also natural that the stronger Azerbaijan gets, the more pressure it comes under. Our independent policy is not to everyone’s liking though,” he said.

Erkin Gadirli of the ReAl oppositional movement said in an interview to Berlin-based Meydan TV that Mr Aliyev’s speech showed that he was increasingly paranoid about criticism in the international media.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)

Several thousand people protest in Tbilisi

MARCH 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – In the largest rally for several years in Georgia, demonstrators accused the government of economic mismanagement and called on it to resign.

Media estimated that several thousand people attended the march in Tbilisi.

Nino Lomouri, a 28 year old Tbilisi resident who works for the opposition United National Movement party (UNM), explained why she attended the rally.

“Not only do I pay more now for food and cigarettes, I also feel unsafe on the streets, crime has gone up a lot,” she said.

During the march, UNM MP Giorgi Gabashvili said that the UNM would hold several more anti-government protests across the country.

Georgia has a history of political turbulence and analysts have said the current economic problems across the region may stoke instability.

And via a video-link from Kiev where he holds a position with the Ukraine government, former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili said he wanted to return and lead the country once again.

“I miss you all. I miss Georgia,” he said. “I believe I will overcome all obstacles and come back to save the country.”

Mr Saakashvili, who led Georgia between 2003 and 2013, loved and loathed in equal measures in Georgia.

The current government coalition has an arrest warrant out for Mr Saakashvili for various economic crimes.

Mr Saakashvili has said the charges are politically motivated and that he wont return to Georgia until they are dropped. Several of his colleagues have been jailed for similar crimes.
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(News report from Issue No. 224, published on March 25 2015)