OCT. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish telecoms operator TeliaSonera demoted an executive for his role in deals made in 2007 to secure an Uzbek 3G licence. Tero Kivisaari was demoted from head of the company’s mobile division. Investigators allege TeliaSonera indirectly paid Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the Uzbek president, for the 3G licence.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A consortium of energy companies led by the state-owned Uzbekneftegaz will invest around $200m exploring south and east Uzbekistan for oil, media reported. The reports said that China’s CNPC, the Czech Republic’s ERIELL Corporation and Tethys Petroleum, registered in Guernsey, will also be involved in the project.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Doubts are emerging over whether observer from the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) will be able to investigate effectively whether Uzbekistan still uses children to harvest its cotton.
Eight teams of monitors from the ILO have been in Uzbekistan since Sept. 23. Their job is to travel around the regions and detail any incidences of child labour.
Bowing to worldwide pressure, Uzbekistan last year pledged to give up using children to pick cotton. This year it invited the ILO to send teams to watch the harvest.
But reports are now leaking out that Uzbek officials may be working hard to give the UN monitors the run-around. Media and Uzbek opposition groups have said that because the ILO monitors are cooperating with the Uzbek authorities, their movements are tracked.
This means that officials can warn teachers when the ILO monitors are approaching, giving them time to usher their pupils from the fields back into the classroom.
Picking cotton is a labour intensive task, so if Uzbekistan has really stopped using children, who is harvesting it instead?
Not medical staff, the podrobno.uz website quoted Abdulkhakimov Hodzhibayev, a senior doctor, as saying. He was responding to reports that doctors and nurses were picking cotton instead of carrying out medical duties.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek authorities moved, Dilmurod Sayyid, a well-known journalist and critic of the government, from a prison in western Uzbekistan to a hospital in Tashkent, media reported, triggering concern that his health may be failing. A court sentence Sayyid to 12 years in prison in 2009 for extortion.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Trouble appears to be brewing on the border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Traditionally, Uzbekistan closes its border with its southern neighbour for 72 hours around its Independence Day celebrations on Sept. 1 each year. This year, though, the border remains shut, more than one month later.
Media also reported that Uzbek officials had cancelled a deal made in June with Turkmenistan that allowed citizens from both countries to visit the other for three days without a visa.
It’s unclear what exactly has happened or when, although officials from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan did meet in Bukhara at the end of last month to discuss border issues.
Whatever the official reasons for the border problems, the implications are fairly serious. Business and families are cross border affairs and detouring to the nearest consulates for visas and various permissions to travel is a time consuming tedious business.
One agency that will benefit from the confusion is the border guards’ service. The guards on the borders are notoriously corrupt and, although officially closed, people will still be crossing back and forth. The size of the bribe they need to pay will have increased.
Uzbekistan currently imposes visa requirements on citizens of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan but not Russia or Kazakhstan.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 4 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan is negotiating a deal to export 100,000 tonnes of fertiliser to China every year, Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported. Three years ago Uzbekistan built a potash fertiliser plant with 200,000 tonnes of annual capacity. It wants to increase capacity at the plant.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
OCT. 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — The twitter account of Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter and potential successor of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, has closed without explanation. Ms Karimova had used her twitter account to respond to criticism and also to post photos from her latest music video or yoga class.
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(News report from Issue No. 155, published on Oct. 9 2013)
SEPT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shaking off the West’s child labour accusations, Uzbekistan signed a major cotton export deal with China, media reported. Uzbekistan will now export 300,000 tonnes of cotton fibre to China, half its total production.
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(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 25 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch, the New York-based lobby group, accused the Uzbek authorities of fabricating charges against activist Bobomurod Razzakov. A court in Bukhara found Razzakov guilty of human trafficking on Sept. 24 and sentenced him to four years in prison. Rights groups say Uzbekistan has one of the worst records in the world.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
SEPT. 27 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — While Gulnara Karimova, eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, enjoys dabbling in politics and releasing pop videos, her sister Lola is, apparently, happiest at home with her family in their mortgaged house in Geneva.
That was the message, at least from Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva in a rare email interview with BBC on Sept. 27.
Ms Karimova-Tillyaeva also said that she hadn’t spoke to her elder sister for 12 years.
“All the information about my sister, I get from the foreign media, including the BBC website,” she said.
Gulnara Karimova is often touted as a potential successor to her father who has been president of Uzbekistan since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. By contrast, Ms Karimova-Tillyaeva said her main interest was her three children and husband Timur Tillyaev.
Ms Karimova-Tillyaeva also said that she was surprised to read in the Swiss press that she was one of the richest people in the country. Her husband, she said, ran a logistics company and they took a mortgage to buy their house which cost a reported $46m.
Two years ago, Ms Karimova-Tillyaeva lost a libel case against a French website that had described her as a dictator’s daughter.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 154, published on Oct. 2 2013)
