JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – One British national was killed in a car crash in central Baku, media reported. He had been working on the European Games. At the start of Games a bus crashed into Austrian swimmers in the Olympic Village badly injuring one of them.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan wants to sponsor a Formula 1 team, sports minister Azad Rakhimov said. Mr Rakhimov said he would like to see a team race in the Azerbaijani national colours. Baku hosts an F1 race in 2016 and wants to increase its profile by sponsoring sports teams.
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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)
JUNE 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), travelled to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as part of a short trip to the region. Mr Bach first travelled to Baku for the opening ceremony of the European Games and then to Tashkent, Dushanbe and Bishkek.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was one of a handful of international leaders to head to Azerbaijan for the opening ceremony of the European Games. In Baku, he held talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Turkmenistan wants to send gas to Europe via Azerbaijan.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a lavish ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev opened the inaugural European Games.
The focal point of the $95m opening ceremony celebrations was a haunting rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine by Mr Aliyev hosted a handful of global leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. The leaders of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Serbia also attended.
And the glitz and the glamour couldn’t displace all the criticism of Azerbaijan and its record on human rights over the past few years.
Irish band U2 used a concert in Montreal to call for the release of a number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan. In a strongly worded statement, Rupert Colville, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, heavily criticised Mr Aliyev and the authorities in Azerbaijan.
“These cases are indicative of a shrinking democratic space in Azerbaijan,” he said.
The Games themselves haven’t been without controversy either. Police arrested a bus driver who ploughed his coach into a group of Austrian swimmers walking on a pavement in the Olympic village and a partisan Azerbaijani crowd booed Armenian athletes at the Opening Ceremony.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan arrested on corruption charges Talgat Yermegiyayev, two days after he had quit as the chairman of the company organising President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s EXPO-217 extravaganza.
The arrest will be a major embarrassment to Mr Nazarbayev who has pledged to crackdown on corruption in Kazakhstan.
Adilbek Dzhaksybekov, the mayor of Astana, was quickly given the job of heading EXPO- 2017.
For Mr Yermegiyayev, a powerful businessmen with links to the top of the Kazakh elite, his arrest marks a very heavy fall from grace.
Alongside him, police also arrested Kazhymurat Usenov on embezzlement charges. Mr Usenov was in charge of much of the construction work for EXPO-2017 in Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)
JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Under the glare of international media and the scrutiny of the human rights lobby, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev prepared to open the inaugural European Games in Baku on June 12.
Mr Aliyev and Azerbaijan have been building up to this moment for years and view the Games, which last until June 28, as a chance to promote the country.
But the Games have also drawn major criticism of Azerbaijan’s recent human rights record. It has imprisoned journalists and locked up opposition activists.
One of the most high profile prisoners is Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist who is in pre-trial detention. She is accused of goading another journalist into a suicide attempt.
On the eve of the Games, the New York Times published a letter from Ms Ismayilova.
“Azerbaijan’s best and brightest have been locked up, tucked away for the European Games. They didn’t want you to see or hear us and our inconvenient truths,” she wrote. “The truth is that Azerbaijan is in the midst of a human rights crisis. Things have never been worse.”
The Azerbaijani authorities have countered these allegations by accusing the West of an anti-Azerbaijan campaign.
Away from the rehtoric the build up to the Games has been fraught. A fire tore through a block of flats last month killing at least 15 people. It spread quickly because of foam stuck to the side of the building to beautify it for the Games. And earlier this week, a bus hit a group of Austrian athletes in the Olympic Vil- lage, badly injuring one of the synchronised swimming team.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Football, or soccer as Americans prefer to call the sport, is not Turkmenistan’s strong point.
It is currently ranked 173rd in the world, out of 209 teams. In Central Asia, only Kyrgyzstan is rated worse in 177th position.
But Turkmenistan’s status in the football world has just dipped further after it lost to the US protectorate of Guam 1-0.
This was Guam’s first ever World Cup qualifier victory.
Guam has a population of 200,000 and is not noted as a football powerhouse either. It last played a World Cup qualifier in 2000, losing 16-0 to Tajikistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Arsen Julfalakian and Artur Aleksanian, two Olympic medal winning Armenian wrestlers, have pulled out of the European Games in Baku because they said that it would be biased towards their Azerbaijani competitors, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)
JUNE 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Games, due to start in Baku on June 12, may turn out to be more of curse for Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev than a blessing.
The Games have shone a spotlight on Azerbaijan and it is not a pretty sight, according to many Western politicians and activists.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Michael Frost, was the latest high profile figure to criticise Azerbaijan on its civil rights record.
“As preparations are in full swing for the Baku Games, the Azerbaijani authorities stepped up their efforts to harass, jail, and surveil human rights defenders, as well as ban them from travel and freeze their assets,” he said, according to the UN website.
Many of the journalists and activists arrested over the past couple of years have been sent to prison on drugs and arms related charges. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been chased out of Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijani officials dismissed Mr Frost’s statement as part of the anti-Azerbaijan narrative that has been put forward over the last few years.
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(News report from Issue No. 234, published on June 4 2015)
