DEC. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – At least 40 NGOs in Kyrgyzstan signed a petition urging Pres. Almazbek Atambayev to avoid signing into law a bill which will make overseas funding illegal, media reported. Mr Atambayev has previous said the law is important because it prevents foreign states from using NGOs to spy on Kyrgyzstan. The NGOs say the funding is a vital lifeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 5 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in India arrested three women, two from Turkmenistan and one from Uzbekistan, for being sex workers, the Times of India newspaper reported.
The newspaper reported that the number of women arrested from Central Asia who have been sex workers has increased over the past few years.
One of the Turkmen girls arrested said she had moved to Delhi four years ago to work as a translator but that sex work was far better paid. She said that she had been sent to work in different cities in India by middlemen.
India has become something of a magnet for women who end up either in the sex trade or adult slavery and Central Asia is a particularly strong recruiting ground.
“Experts estimate that millions of women and children are victims of sex trafficking in India,” a US State Department report this year said.
“A large number of Nepali, Afghan, and Bangladeshi females the majority of whom are children aged nine to 14 years old and women and girls from China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, and Uganda are
also subjected to sex trafficking in India.”
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
DEC. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan unveiled a project to build a six-lane 66km ring-road around Almaty which they hope will both ease congestion in the city and provide a new financing model for major infrastructure projects.
The FT reported that the number of cars in Almaty has exploded by 50% in the last five years. Anybody walking around its choked-up streets at rush hour will be able to taste the exhaust fumes in the air.
With support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Kazakhstan has launched a plan to raise $680m in what has been dubbed its first internationally-tendered public-private partnership scheme.
Importantly, as the EBRD’s infrastructure chief, Thomas Meier, said the project is a test of Kazakhstan’s attractiveness and in particular law changes made this year. Most important of these was that any disputes concerning infrastructure developments would be settled by international arbitration.
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(News report from Issue No. 212, published on Dec. 10 2014)
NOV. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government is creating a job programme for migrants returning from Russia, official media reported. Uzbek media must be regarded with scepticism but, with news of its job-creation scheme, perhaps the government is acknowledging a downturn in Russia’s economy and its knock-on effects.
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(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)
LONDON/United Kingdom, DEC. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Western security analysts over-hype the impact of radical Islam on Central Asia, a new paper by two academics said.
The paper, published by the London-based think tank Chatham House and written by John Heathershaw of Exeter University and David Montgomery of Pittsburgh University, said that there were six key areas where myths on the impact of radical Islam had been wrongly propagated.
There wrongly propagated myths were: There is a post-Soviet Islamic revival; to Islamicise is to radicalise; authoritarianism and poverty cause radicalisation; underground Muslim groups are radical; radical Muslim groups are globally networked; political Islam opposes the secular state.
“The paper demonstrates that while the six claims are made consistently in secular security discourse (with one exception) they are not justified in practice,” Mr Heathershaw and Mr Montgomery wrote.
The paper chose to study reports written by the respected Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group (ICG) over the last five years. The paper uses ICG reports because it, rightly, described the ICG as the most consistent and serious on the region.
“Once one sees through the myth of post-Soviet Muslim radicalization, it is possible to see that there is nothing essential to former Soviet Central Asia that generates religious radicalisation,” the report said.
This research is important because the spectre of Muslim radicalism is used so often in the discourse by leaders in Central Asia to justify clamp-downs in human rights and media. It also forms, as this paper describes, an important part of the prism through which the West views Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)
DEC. 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Roughly 120 university lecturers in Armenia born since 1974 have quit their jobs because of government plans to change the pension system, the London-based NGO Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said. IWPR said this equalled about a quarter of the total number of university academics under the age of 45 in Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)
NOV. 26 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Bolivia’s parliament passed a law condemning denial of the alleged genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago.
Although Bolivia hasn’t made genocide denial a crime, the statement will be seen as a diplomatic victory by Armenia. It has been locked in a long-running row with Turkey over the allegations of genocide. Turkey denies the allegations and says that Armenians died in confused fighting in eastern Turkey.
Media quoted the resolution passed by the Bolivian parliament as saying: “It declares its firm commitment to human rights, truth, justice, solidarity and condemnation against all denialist policy regarding the genocide and crimes against humanity suffered by the Armenian nation.”
The declaration may be clear but the motivation behind it is far less clear. Armenia and Bolivia haven’t particularly strong ties and it may simply be a piece of posturing by the Bolivian parliament. Still, Armenia is short of friends and happy to take any vote of support.
Turkish-Armenian relations also caught the attention of Pope Francis this week during his three-day trip to Turkey.
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(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)
NOV. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural division, declared that lavash was a cultural icon belonging to Armenia. Lavash is a thin white bread used to wrap cheese, vegetable or meat. UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage List, compiled since 2008, appears to delight and infuriate nations in equal measure.
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(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)
NOV. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The local authorities in Kyrgyzstan have started a public education campaign to try to stop people from heading to Syria to join up with the extremist group Islamic State, media reported. Central Asian states have been alarmed at the increase in the number of recruits heading to Syria.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
NOV. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – An outdated version of the Kazakh national anthem was played at a medals ceremony at the Women’s World Amateur Boxing Championships in South Korea, media reported. Kazakhstan is sensitive about national anthem mix-ups after errors that included a spoof anthem and the old Soviet anthem.
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(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)
