FEB. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -The International Cycling Union accused Team Astana of misleading it over anti-doping policies and called for its competition license to be withdrawn. Team Astana has near official backing in Kazakhstan and wears the national colours. A Team Astana rider won the 2014 Tour de France but other riders have failed drugs tests.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan is paying Britain to send a team of 160 athletes to compete at the inaugural European Games in Baku this year, the Guardian newspaper reported. In an interview, the British team manager, Mark England, said Azerbaijan was giving “participation grants”. Azerbaijan’s Olympic Committee said it was paying travel and other costs for all 50 teams to compete.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Citing Kyrgyzstan as one of the countries worst affected by a surge in measles, the World Health Organisation (WHO) called for a mass vaccination to prevent the disease spreading. WHO said Kyrgyzstan had 7,477 new measles cases since the start of 2014, out of 22,000 recorded in the Europe region.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
MARCH 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Popular Uzbek TV host, Rakhmatilla Mirzayev, has been stabbed to death, Uzbek media reported. Media did not give a motive for the murder of Mirzayev who was 60-years-old and had worked for Uzbek TV for 40 years. His death, though, will once again place Uzbekistan’s rule-of-law under scrutiny.
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(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
NEW YORK, March 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – — Kanat Beisekeyev is a young photographer from Almaty. At 22, he has already been in search of the American Dream for a couple of years, joining the New York Film Academy and the International Photography Center (IPC).
It’s exciting, but tough.
“New York changed my life, it’s tough here, man!” said Beisekeyev with a twinkle.
As well as chasing the American Dream, Beisekeyev is also a statistic. He is one of thousands of young Kazakhs who migrate in search of better salaries, better work and more political freedom. Many live in London and New York, global metropolitan centres.
And this year, for the first time in a decade, the outflow of migrants from Kazakhstan surpassed the inflow. The socio-demographic imbalance shows a clear brain drain, as those who leave the country are the youngest and the brightest while the incomers are mainly poor ethnic Kazakhs who were brought up in China, Mongolia and other surrounding countries.
Now a teaching assistant, at the IPC, Beisekeyev is in his natural habitat. He talks while he gazes upon award-winning photographs hanging from the walls. Outside, New York City is cold. The thermometer indicates minus 15C, but wind gusts make it feel even colder than Almaty, where Beisekeyev was planning to live his life.
“At some point, I came to the conclusion that Kazakhstan didn’t offer enough challenges,” he said.
Beisekeyev said that life in the United States wasn’t always easy, though. He said that in Kazakhstan he could fill a gallery and people would pay to see his photographs while in New York all he can get are internships or temporary jobs.
“I hope all I’m giving here will come back to me one day,” Beisekeyev muttered.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s ministry of labour has drafted a programme designed to encourage more people to have baby daughters.
One of the potential incentives — and this has not been made law yet — is to pay 10,000 manat ($9,500) to families who have a second daughter, NGO leaders who participated in the state program discussions told media.
In 2014, Azerbaijani statistics said that 46.4% of new-borns were girls. Some experts have said that women are under pressure to have an abortion if they are due to give birth to a second girl. Similarly to other countries in the region, boys are generally preferred in Azerbaijan.
A 35-year-old woman from Yevlakh in western Azerbaijan said she was pressured by her husband to abort a baby when they were told it was a girl.
“He is a nice man but I could understand him. We already had two girls at home, he wanted a boy,” she said. “Eventually we kept it because we found out that we were actually going to have twins. A girl and a boy. When the doctor told me this, I could not help crying out loudly.”
The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, said her husband would not have considered an abortion if there was a cash incentive to keep a third daughter.
Some members of Azerbaijan’s civil society, though, sounded a note of caution.
Hadi Rajabli, head of parliament’s Social Policy Commission said that if cash was handed out to families with more than one daughter, poorer families would prefer girls over boys creating more problems.
“There should be some other ways of doing this,” he said in an interview with local media.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 221, published on March 4 2015)
FEB. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank slashed the value of its manat currency by a third overnight, a sudden move that took businesses and ordinary Azerbaijanis by surprise.
Previously Azerbaijani officials had said that they would release the manat from its dollar peg, suggesting only a gradual devaluation to adjust to a sharp decline in the Russian rouble.
They have now justified the sudden devaluation by saying that they had little choice but to act in the face of a collapse in oil prices and economic turbulence in Russia.
“This decision was made in order to support diversification of Azerbaijan’s economy, strengthen its international compatibility and export potential as well as to provide balance of payments sustainability,” the Central Bank said in a statement.
On the streets of Azerbaijan’s towns, though, the devaluation was less generously viewed.
Veli, 29, a small business owner in Guba, a northern city, told a Bulletin correspondent that he was in shock.
“I believed the government. I kept my savings in the manat,” he said. “I lost third of my savings. It’s painful. It’s theft by the government.”
He said that he had no choice but to increase the price of the electronic goods he was selling in his shop — fuelling rising inflation.
Sahiba, a mother of two young children living in the city of Gazakh on the western border with Georgia echoed these sentiments. Her husband is a government official but has had his pay cut already this year.
“We’ve got a mortgage,” she said. “I don’t know what we’ll do.”
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(News report from Issue No. 220, published on Feb. 25 2015)
FEB. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss television reported that Emin Huseynov, a journalist and critic of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, has been hiding in Switzerland’s embassy in Baku for six months. It said Mr Huseynov took refuge in the embassy to avoid being arrested. Human rights groups criticise Azerbaijan’s recent record.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Azerbaijan have brought new charges against RFE/RL reporter Khadija Ismayilova, media reported. Ms Ismayilova, a critic of the government, is in pre-trial detention for coaxing a journalist into a suicide attempt. She will now also face charges of tax evasion and embezzlement.
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(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
FEB. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyzstan’s energy minister, Kubanychbek Turdubayev, has accused Russia of working too slowly on upgrades to hydropower projects, eurasianet.org reported. Upgrades to the Kambar-Ata 1 dam and the Upper-Naryn Cascade were part of a 2012 deal that saw Moscow secure an extension to leases on military bases in Kyrgyzstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 219, published on Feb. 18 2015)
