Tag Archives: Uzbekistan

Uzbek President approves French investment

JUNE 14 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek president Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree that formalises an investment by French carmaker PSA, owner of the Peugeot and Citron brands. PSA plans to produce around 16,000 vans every year in Uzbekistan. The Uzbek car-making sector is important domestically as it is one of the few outside the oil and gas sector with foreign investors. US’ GM is a 25% stake holder in a joint-venture with Uzbekistan’s Uzavtosanoat.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Uzbekistan considers weapons purchase

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JUNE 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek defence minister Atabek Ibadullayev travelled to Kazakhstan to tour weapons plants in Uralsk which produce armoured vehicles and optical rifles sites. Kazakhstan’s ministry of defence then released a statement which said that although Uzbekistan hadn’t yet purchased any weapons, Mr Ibadullayev had expressed an interest. Kazakh-Uzbek military ties are improving.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Uzbek President sacks power company head

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JUNE 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev sacked Fazliddin Salomov as the head of Uzenergo, the state-owned electricity producer, for failing to generate more revenue from power sales. Electricity is a thorny issue in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Countries need to increase prices but risk upsetting ordinary people. In Armenia, street protests in 2015 reversed a drive to scarp power subsidies. Mr Salomov had only been in the job since Sept. 2016. He was replaced by Ulugbek Mustafaev, formerly the deputy head of the Jizzakh region.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Uzbek President sacks head of power company

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

UN chief’s visit disappoints human rights activists

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ALMATY, JUNE 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — UN Security general Antonio Guterres completed a tour of all five Central Asian states, his first since taking the job six months ago, although human rights activists complained that he had taken too soft a line on a regional crackdown of journalists and dissenters.

Mr Guterres’ main message was that the governments of the region need to remain engaged with international organisations to reach their full potential.

“Kazakhstan has been a symbol of dialogue, a symbol of peace, a symbol of the promotion of contacts between cultures, religions and civilizations; and with its presence in the (UN) Security Council, an extremely important dimension in mediation, in relation to conflict,” he said in Astana.

In Ashgabat, a few days later, after attending a counter-terrorism conference Mr Guterres, a former Portuguese PM and UN high commissioner for refugees, took a tougher line on rights.

“Upholding the rights of freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in this region are fundamental to countering the threat that violent extremism poses,” he said.

Even so, with media freedoms and human rights on the retreat in the region, after a series of arrests of journalists and a crackdown on workers’ unions, activists accused Mr Guterres of going soft on the issue in favour of developing nodes of engagement.

Hugh Williamson, director of the Central Asia division at New York- based Human Rights Watch, said Mr Guterres had failed to meet members of local civil rights movements on his tour of the region and that describing Kazakhstan as a “pillar of stability” and Kyrgyzstan as a “pioneer of democracy” was sending out the wrong message.

“Central Asian leaders also pay close attention to what high-level visitors like Guterres focus on, also in public,” he said in a statement.

“Not only did Guterres fail to set clear expectations on human rights improvements across Central Asia, his praise for his largely authoritarian audience risks sending the message that trampling over human rights is fine.”

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Uzbekistan’s Pres. Mirziyoyev reaches out to Muslims

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TASHKENT, JUNE 15 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev hosted an iftar, a religious dinner eaten after sunset during the Islamic festival of Ramadan, for the first time in Uzbekistan, possibly a sign that he is trying to woo pious Muslims.

The dinner featured 1,200 people and was televised, a medium widely used by the Uzbek authorities when they want to get a message out to the population.

One Uzbek man in his 20s said that this was a clear signal that Mr Mirziyoyev was trying to make a clean break with the policies of former president Islam Karimov who distrusted and marginalised Islam.

“It seems that our president began taming imams with soft power,” he said.

Another young Uzbek was more direct and said that Mirziyoyev may have other priorities.

“Putin was also a Communist and a KGB agent and now he manipulates the masses via the Russian Orthodox Church,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin who promoted the Orthodox church and rebuilt cathedrals once he took power, in direct contrast to the Soviet Union’s treatment of religion.

“So does Mirziyoyev, I think.”

Although there has been a gradual increase in some civil liberties in the past nine months or so, people in Uzbekistan are still wary of discussing politics and both men declined to be named.

Uzbekistan is officially a secular republic, although its population is predominantly Muslim. After independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Karimov argued with leaders of a popular Islamist movement. He ended up banning them, leading to the creation of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) which launched a series of bomb attacks in the 1990s.

Karimov also blacklisted hundreds of pious ordinary Muslims and tried to ban some practices, such as the iftar.

On a trip to Bukhara in the south of the country earlier on June 15, before his iftar, Mr Mirziyoyev also suggested that he was going to roll back some of the Karimov-era restrictions on Muslims.

He said that he wanted to rebuild the 15th century madrasah Mir Arab and also that it might be time to move some people off an official blacklist of Muslims.

“All the blacklisted can’t be radicals. You should speak to them, recheck their views and learn if there are any innocent who were blacklisted inequitably,” he told an audience of thousands on a conference call that lasted several hours with religious and secular leaders across the country.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Kazakh and Uzbek ties improving

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JUNE 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — On the sidelines of the Astana Economic Forum, Kazakh deputy foreign minister Roman Vassilenko said that there had been positive developments in bilateral relations with Uzbekistan since Shavkat Mirziyoyev took over as president in 2016. “Since September last year there have been positive developments with Kazakhstan and its relations with Uzbekistan,” he told journalists at a briefing. Mr Mirziyoyev has made improving relations with neighbours, tense under his predecessor Islam Karimov, a cornerstone of his presidency.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Uzbekistan to build fruit farm

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JUNE 13 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev officially kicked off construction of a fruit farm in the Andijan region of the Ferghana Valley, highlighting a drive by the authorities to increase exports to neighbours. Media reported that the 615-hectare project will cost $24m and be operational by the end of the year.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Uzbek interior minister plans first visit in 19 yrs

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JUNE 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — Uzbekistan interior minister Major- General Abdusalom Azizov will visit Tajikistan for the first time in 19 years next month, media reported, another sign that Uzbek-Tajik relations are improving under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Major-Gen. Azizov is due to attend a meeting of regional interior ministers in Dushanbe on June 27-29.

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(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

400 people protest in Uzbekistan’s largest demonstration for 12 years

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TASHKENT, JUNE 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — An estimated 400 people protested in Tashkent against police inaction over the murder of a 17-year-old student, the largest demonstration in Uzbekistan against the authorities for 12 years.

Under former leader Islam Karimov the authorities in Uzbekistan cracked down hard on public gatherings, essentially banning them. A Bulletin correspondent in Tashkent said this was the largest demonstration in Uzbekistan since the army shot dead several hundred people in the town of Andijan in 2005.

Activists said that the protest in Dostyk Square had been planned after 19,000 people signed an online petition calling on the authorities to investigate the death of Jasurbek Ibraghimov. He was beaten at his university in Tashkent at the start of May and died in hospital on June 1. The police had declined to investigate but after the public outcry changed their mind.

“We came to the park at 10am (0400GMT). There were 15 to 20 of us. The police tried to disperse us but after more and more people started coming they stopped interrupting the protest,” one activist said.

Another explained that the protest represented not just the need to investigate the death of Ibraghimov properly but also the pent up frustration felt by young Uzbeks. Many of the protesters were young, in their 20s, and savvy users of Facebook and other forms of social media.

“The protest was not spontaneous, it had deep roots. The unrest against corruption and injustice had been roaring like an enraged lion in people’s hearts until Jasur’s death,” said Anvar, a civil activist who agreed to be named. “The death of Jasur broke the silence. People took the park both to mourn the teen’s death and to say enough to social injustice and corrupt systems.”

Since taking over as leader in September 2017, Shavkat Mirziyoyev has talked of opening the country to investors and generating more personal freedoms, but commentators were taken by surprise by the spontaneous demonstration and the authorities’, relatively, relaxed attitude towards it. The protest also highlights just how powerful social media is becoming. The security forces monitor the internet but the sheer number of apps and internet variants and their increased user numbers makes it difficult to cover.

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(News report from Issue No. 332, published on June 12 2017)