MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan delayed a ban on imports of cars lacking some safety features from the GM car plant in Uzbekistan, media reported, a boost for the Uzbek car-making sector. Earlier this year reports said that the Nexus and Matiz models would be banned from January. The ban will now not be imposed until July.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
MAY 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan aims to keep economic growth at between 7% and 8% per year for the next four years, media reported quoting material from a business forum in Tashkent. Economic data from Uzbekistan should be treated with scepticism. Uzbekistan has been looking to develop its hi-tech sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 186, published on May 28 2014)
May 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The International Rugby Board (IRB) has accepted Uzbekistan’s rugby association as a full member, media reported. Rugby is in its infancy in Uzbekistan but the IRB has said that it is committed to spread it across Asia. Neighbouring Kazakhstan is already an IRB member.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek police arrested Russian businessman Alexander Pozdeev in Tashkent, media reported. Mr Pozdeev is, reportedly, head of the Zapadno-Uralsky Machine- Building Factory in Russia. Media reports were unclear exactly why police had arrested Mr Pozdeev although they said it may be linked to an environmental accident.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 14 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – NATO officially opened its representative office in Tashkent, a year after setting it up. NATO has been cultivating improved relations with Uzbekistan because it wants to extract most of its kit from Afghanistan back to Europe through the Uzbek railway network.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbek President Islam Karimov clearly intends to remain in power for some time to come.
At a conference in Samarkand, Mr Karimov, 76, said that he had no intention of relinquishing power any time soon.
“I am one of those who is criticised for staying too long,” AFP quoted Mr Karimov telling diplomats and scholars gathered for a conference on the Golden Age of Islam.
“I am criticized, but I stay. I am criticised but I want to keep working. What’s wrong with that?”
Mr Karimov’s comments are pertinent for two reasons. Over the past six months or so some doubt has crept in over the strength of the Karimov family’s grip on power. Mr Karimov’s eldest daughter, Gulnara, has disappeared from public life since she was reportedly placed under house arrest earlier this year. Prior to that she had been stripped, very publicly, of power and influence.
As, seemingly, her father’s successor, these attacks on Gulnara were seen as an attack on Mr Karimov himself. His powerful intelligence chief, Rustam Inoyatov is widely thought of to be behind the discrediting of Gulnara Karimova.
Mr Karimov has ruled over Uzbekistan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Next year, Uzbekistan holds a presidential election. This may only be a Potemkin election but it is still important and it looks as if Mr Karimov will be one of the candidates.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
May 15 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The joint-venture between US carmaker GM and the Uzbek government sold 14% less cars in Russia between January and April this year compared with the same period in 2013, media reported. Reports did not give a reason why sales had tailed off. Russia is one of the key markets for the car plant, based in Andijan, east Uzbekistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 185, published on May 21 2014)
MAY 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – For its global campaign against torture, Amnesty International has focused its attention on Uzbekistan.
Amnesty said that torture in Uzbekistan is widespread and that it often passes without being punished. It said that the Uzbek security services often beat detainees and sometimes rape them in order to get a confession.
One of Amnesty’s five global case studies was of an Uzbek women who fled the country in 2005 after police opened fire on a crowd of protesters. She returned five years later, was detained at the airport and then sent to jail for trying to organise a revolution. Eye witnesses, according to Amnesty, said the woman’s face was bruised and that she looked unusually thin at her trial.
None of this is new, but it is still worth highlighting. It’s also worth highlighting that most countries in Central Asia have a poor record on torture and human rights.
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(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)
MAY 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the US and the EU to press Uzbekistan to allow an independent inquiry into the killings at Andijan, in the east of the country nine years ago. Officially 187 people died when soldiers fired on a crowd, although government critics have said the real figure is far more.
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(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)
MAY 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan said that Uzbekistan was still restricting gas supplies to its southern city of Osh. Osh has reportedly been without gas for a few weeks, generating some social tension. Uzbekistan’s Soviet era gas system supplies southern Kyrgyzstan with gas. Relations between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan are strained.
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(News report from Issue No. 184, published on May 14 2014)
