Tag Archives: society

Traders in Armenia protest against new tax code

>>New tax code is an effort to stop tax evasion>>

JAN. 26 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — A new tax code in Armenia is upsetting the very people it is supposed to be helping.

The government has decided to reduce the tax for small business, those earning less than $122,000, to 1% of their sales from 3.5%. The downside of the new law is that the traders and shopkeepers have to document more closely their sales.

Media reported that hundreds of traders demonstrated in front of the parliament building against the new tax laws. Their problem is the introduction of the extra paperwork.

The bottom line is that the government wants to increase tax receipts. To do this it has decided to crackdown on tax evasion and the fiddling of receipts. And this is where the problem lies. The Armenian traders’ will have to fill in more paperwork and, they say, will actually earn less under the new tax code because they will have to declare more of their sales.

The small traders have also complained that they are being used as guinea pigs before the new tax code is rolled out to bigger businesses.

With the Armenian economy reeling from the turmoil in Russia, the government is desperate to highlight good news. It has already had to postpone the introduction of the new tax code from November until Feb. 1. The issue is becoming increasingly contentious.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)

Mangistau soars in Kazakh wage earning table

>>Stats show increase in wages but illnesses also rise>>

JAN. 22 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — It’s a double-edged sword living in the west Kazakh region of Mangistau, according to the Kazakh stats office at least.

Mangistau, the main oil producing region of the country, has been enjoying a salary boom that other regions of Kazakhstan can only dream of. Last year the average workers’ salary in Mangistau rose by 22% to over $1,000/month. This is around 50% more than average salaries in other rural areas of the country.

Of course Mangistau’s fortunes are closely linked to the fortunes of the energy industry which has been enjoying something of a boom over the past few years. With falling oil prices, though, that could be about to change.

The stats don’t all show good news, though. Various statistics said Mangistau has the highest rate of several diseases in the country. Some environmentalists have said that people breathe and drink the by-products of uranium mining projects and the decommissioning of the old nuclear power plant in Aktau.

Worker disputes in the region also affect the region. In 2011, the town of Zhanaozen was the centre of clashes between protesters and police. At least 15 people died.

It’s a trade-off then. The salaries may be higher in Mangistau but the work pressures and the health risks are too.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)

Doping pressure mounts on Team Astana

>>Cycling team is closely linked to Kazakhstan>>

JAN. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The disgraced former cycling champion Lance Armstrong told the BBC in an interview that cycling, including Astana Pro Team, was riddled with doping.

Mr Armstrong, who had cycled for Astana Pro Team, said the sport’s governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), should ban Astana Pro Team. The UCI placed Astana Pro Team under probation in December after another case of doping emerged involving two team members.

The Astana Pro Team management has strongly denied the allegations of doping.
The whole row will be embarrassing, though, for Kazakh President Nazarbayev.

Samruk-Kazyna, the Kazakh investment fund, sponsors Astana Team Pro. The team wears the blue and yellow national colours and companies and teams carrying the Astana brand, the name Mr Nazarbayev gave to his new capital, are closely linked to Kazakh nationality.

On the same day that the BBC aired its interview with Mr Armstrong, the Astana Pro Team manager Alexander Vinokourov visited Mr Nazarbayev at the presidential palace in Astana, presenting him with a yellow jersey, symbol of last year’s victory in the Tour de France — the most prestigious bike ride in the world.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 216, published on Jan. 28 2015)

Anti-Charlie Hebdo protest in Bishkek

>>Crowds attracted across much of the region>>

JAN. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — An estimated 1,000 people demonstrated in a Bishkek park against the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Eyewitness accounts from the city centre park said that protesters held posters declaring: “I am not Charlie. I love my Prophet.”

Other posters read: “We’re against cartoons of our Prophet”.

The “I am Charlie” slogan swept across much of the Western world after Islamic radicals murdered 12 people during an editorial meeting at the magazine’s headquarters in central Paris earlier this month.

Much of the Islamic world, though, has been far more reticent. Reports from Baku and other cities across Central Asia have also suggested that anti-Charlie Hebdo demonstrations have drawn relatively large crowds.

The protests are a reminder that for all the rhetoric of Westernising and of supporting Western military action in Afghanistan, that Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan, and other countries where anti-Charlie Hebdo demonstrations emerged, are predominantly Islamic countries.

And these countries are not simply nominally Islamic, as they are often pictured in the West. There is a strong strain of fairly pious Muslim thought running through these societies.
ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 215, published on Jan. 21 2015)

WHO praises new cigarette laws in Kyrgyzstan

>>Laws important in country with little formal health education>>

JAN. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The World Health Organisation (WHO) is lauding a move by Kyrgyzstan to increase tax on cigarettes and to make it law to publish garish images of the damage smoking can to people’s health on packets.

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament ratified the news laws at the end of last year, WHO said. The laws will equalise the tax on cigarettes with neighbouring Kazakhstan.

“Tobacco taxes for different types of tobacco will increase as of 2015 and are expected to increase to the level of tobacco taxes in the neighbouring Kazakhstan,” WHO said in its statement.

“As of 2014, tobacco taxes in Kyrgyzstan are 2-1/2 to 12 times lower than in Kazakhstan.”

The pictures that will be carried on cigarette boxes from 2016 show how smoking gives people cancer and other diseases.

This is an important step. Tightening regulations on smoking and educating the general public on the dangers of smoking is seen as a civilising step and a marker of a country’s development.

For Kyrgyzstan, where cigarettes appear to be clamped to the lips of men walking down a street and the purple fog of tobacco smoke fugs many bars, this is a big step indeed. Public health is often overlooked in Kyrgyzstan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)

Protesters gather in Almaty for march

>>Demonstration against closure of political magazine>>

JAN. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a rare show of public dissent in Kazakhstan, a small crowd gathered in Almaty to protest against the closure of weekly opposition newspaper Adam bol”.

Led by the newspaper editor, Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, a group of 25 journalists and activists walked across the Arbat, a pedestrian and commercial zone in the centre of the former capital shouting slogans and waving placards that challenged Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev to rescind the order to close the magazine.

Black-clad security officers stood to the side closely monitoring the protest.

“The presence of ‘men in black’ is always felt at these events,” Dina Baidildayeva a high-profile blogger who filmed the protest told the Bulletin.

The authorities in Kazakhstan have clamped down on political pluralism and media freedom over the past few years, especially in the wake of the Zhanaozen riots in west Kazakhstan in 2011 that killed at least 15 people. Allowing the Adam bol demonstration, therefore, was fairly remarkable.

The newspaper was shut down last November, after it published an article on Ukraine that highlighted Kazakhs fighting in the Ukrainian civil war. The article also questioned Russia’s role in the conflict.

Nate Schenkkan, Central Asia programme officer at the US media watchdog NGO Freedom House, said: “The article on Ukraine could have been just a pretext to do away with an uncomfortable publication for the leadership.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)

Veggie options are rare in Kazakhstan

KYZYLORDA/Kazakhstan, JAN. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Vegetarianism is growing in popularity in Kazakhstan although ordering it successfully can still be a challenge, even for a well-known pop star.

Pasquale Caprino, an Italian singer who goes by the name of Son Pascal and has made Kazakhstan his home, was trying to order a bowl of vegetarian soup at a restaurant in Kyzylorda.

He’d headed out to this remote and barren medium-sized town in south-central Kazakhstan to shoot a music video.

The restaurant was making an effort with its Alpine chalet-style decorations and uniforms for the staff. It contrasted nicely with the concrete skyline outside. In the corner, overlooking the diners was a full-sized taxidermy of a snarling wolf.

Caprino wanted a bowl of cucumber soup without meat. It arrived, though, with sausage floating amongst the ubiquitous dill. Caprino tried again but in Kazakhstan where eating meat, including horsemeat, is ingrained into the national consciousness the waitress thought that she was being teased. He sighed and pushed away the bowl.

This story of frustration for vegetarians is common in Kazakhstan, said Baur Safi and Stanley Currier — two Almaty-based bloggers who run the vegetaristan.com website.

“During holidays or weddings, it is extremely difficult to find anything other than bread and a cucumber and tomato salad that a vegetarian can eat,” said Currier, a native of California.

Safi, a Kazakh, said, though, that it had become far easier in Almaty, at least, to order vegetarian dishes than it had been several years ago. Much of this is down to the introduction of cuisines that don’t use meat rather than any sort of pro-vegetarian groundswell.

“Many locals equate being vegetarian to being gay,” he said. “It’s a question of ethics, as if you’re trying to be special, and of machismo, which is linked to eating meat.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 214, published on Jan. 14 2015)

Azerbaijan raids Radio Free Europe

>>US criticises yet another crackdown on civil liberties>>

DEC. 28 2014, (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan continued its crackdown on the media in the run up to New Year when it raided the office of US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

Officials pulled RFE/RL off the air and detained a handful of its journalists. They said that the raid was
part of a criminal investigation although they refused to elaborate.

Earlier in December Azerbaijani officials arrested an employee of the local language RFE/RL service for allegedly working for a foreign security service. Also, one of the radio station’s star journalists, Khadija Ismayilova, is currently being held in pre-trial detention. She is accused of coaxing a man into suicide.

For the past couple of years, the authorities in Azerbaijan have been mounting an increasingly aggressive
campaign against the remnants of its free-speaking media and other more liberal minded sections of its civil society. Newspaper editors have been imprisoned, anti-government activists locked up and NGOs backed by Western powers threatened.

And this belligerent attitude towards Western values has now severely strained relations with the US and Europe.

The US issued a strongly worded statement criticising the raid on RFE/RL.

In 2014 the US also withdrew its long-running Peace Corps programme. Although this was described as routine, observers said it was likely linked to worsening relations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 213, published on Jan. 7 2015)

Kazakh oil and gas site denies poisonous gas leak

DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The consortium developing the Karachaganak oil and gas site (KPO) in west Kazakhstan denied that a gas leak at its plant poisoned 20 children and three teachers at a school in a nearby village.

Ambulances rushed the children and teachers to hospital after they suddenly fainted on Nov. 28.

KPO made the statement after Kazakh media widely quoted the Prosecutor-General for Kazakhstan’s western region, Serik Karamanov, saying that there had been a brief gas leak the day before the mass fainting at the Karachaganak site only a few kilometres away from the village.

The KPO statement said: “A mobile environmental monitoring station has also been despatched to Berezovka village and has reported no exceedances above the official Maximum Permissible Concentration limits.”

Whether the Kazakh authorities agree, remains to be seen.

Mr Karamanov was clear about what he thought may have been the cause of the poisoning.

“It has been established that at 14:19 on November 27 at the gas-processing complex of KPO, there occurred a discharge of condensate for a period of two minutes,” he said according to local media reports.

The incident is a reminder of the tension at local levels between the foreign-led projects in the energy sector and local communities who accuse them of not doing enough to protect their environment.

Karachaganak is important to Kazakhstan. It is considered one of the country’s most successful projects, and produces around 40% of Kazakhstan’s gas and 13% of its oil. Britain’s BG Group and Italy’s ENI own a 29.5% stake each, Chevron owns 18%, Russia’s Lukoil owns 13.5% and the Kazakh state oil and gas company, KazMunaiGas owns 10%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)

US Peace Corps leave Azerbaijan

DEC. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The US Peace Corps programme, which sends young Americans to teach English around the world, left Azerbaijan. Depending on who you believe, the US either withdrew the programme because it decided it was no longer needed, or the Azerbaijani authorities threw Peace Corps out as Washington-Baku relations deteriorated.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)