Just over a month since the kidnapping of Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli from Tbilisi, the Georgian government still has no official explanation for his disappearance from the Georgian capital and incarceration in an Azerbaijani jail.
As yet, there has been no detailed public briefing about police investigators’ findings concerning the May 29 abduction of the investigative journalist, a self-exiled critic of the Azerbaijani government.
That does not mean they do not exist. But amidst ongoing domestic and international concerns about what the case could mean for Georgia’s reputation as a developing democracy, the government appears resolutely tight-lipped.
Now on the defensive, Tbilisi has emphasized that an investigation is, indeed, underway. It has asked Azerbaijan that Georgian investigators be allowed to hear from Mukhtarli himself, currently in pre-trial detention in Baku on questionable criminal charges, about his kidnapping. Tbilisi is waiting for Baku’s response to its request, General Prosecutor Irakli Shotadze announced on June 27.
Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Shalva Khutsishvili, though, has promised that once Tbilisi has that testimony and "the broader picture is clear,” as the government-run Agenda.ge put it, the investigation’s interim results and relevant CCTV camera recordings will be released.
In a blow against press freedom in Kyrgyzstan, a court has found in favor of the prosecutor’s office in a libel suit against a newspaper and a prominent rights activist.
The court in Bishkek on June 30 ruled to find Zanoza.kg news website guilty on two counts of besmirching the honor of President Almazbek Atambayev, to whom they must now pay 15 million som (around $215,000).
In the same ruling, the court found that Cholpon Dzhakupova had smeared Atambayev by stating, during a roundtable, that the president was a “personality with maniacal inclinations” who should “read the constitution.” Dzhakupova was ordered to pay 3 million som ($43,000) in damages.
Dzhakupova’s comments were carried by Zanoza.kg. The website admitted that it had slightly misquoted Dzhakupova, although the activist said she had no recriminations and that the publication had conveyed the basic gist of her remarks accurately.
The co-founder of Zanoza.kg. Naryn Aiyp, who also penned the offending piece, said the verdict against them constituted “hounding of the media.”
“None of the judges tried to establish the facts of the pass a fair judgement. They simly carried out the orders of the authorities,” Aiyp told EurasiaNet.org.
Dzhakupova said the government is evidently bent on silencing all people with alternative views.
“This was a predictable verdict. This is about the preparations for the upcoming elections. It is a terrorizing tactic,” she said, referring to vote scheduled for October.
When asked what moral damages Atambayev had suffered as a result of critical and offensive articles, the prosecutor, Ruslan Abdyrahman, said that the president had “endured worsening health and has aged considerably over the past seven years” as a result of critical coverage.
A international delegation of representatives from the Jehovah’s Witness traveled to Uzbekistan in a unprecedented visit for a meeting with officials with the state religions agency.
As reported by the government’s own website, the delegation was led by Witnesses representatives Kenneth Flodin and Lorenzo Trapanese. They were accompanied by the head of the local chapter of the organization, Nikolai Korolev.
The event is, not to put too fine a point on it, stunning. Jehovah’s Witness has historically been one of the most intensely repressed religious groups in Uzbekistan. A search through leading Uzbek news website throws up a seemingly endless torrent of stories of arrests and busts for proselytizing. One typical news item on Podrobno.uz is unsubtly illustrated with a picture of a sign reading simply: “Beware of the Sect!”
Witnesses have been arrested up and down the country over the years and are popularly viewed with equal suspicion by Muslims and Christians alike. Detainees typically face charges of pursuing illegal missionary activities.
Dzhahongir, a Witness who agreed to be identified only by his first name, said he had been thrown into police cells on multiple occasions.
“They are very harsh with us, even worse than with members of the [banned Muslim group] Hizb ut-Tahrir. They always ask the same provocative question: Why have you, a Muslim and an Uzbek, become a member of this sect? Usually they fine us or let us go after we pay them a bribe,” Dzhahongir told EurasiaNet.org.
The president of Uzbekistan bust another taboo this week with a visit to a psychiatric clinic in Tashkent that has at times been used to incarcerate activists and journalists.
The secretive facility is regularly mentioned in the reports of local and international rights activists. So it was a surprise when on June 26, at the close of the holy month of Ramadan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev decided to drop in to check on renovation works.
Uzbekistan’s First Channel featured the visit in its evening bulletin, making for the first time most people had likely seen the inside of a building known popularly by the name “psikhushka,” or madhouse.
“Have the mayor, the minister or his deputies ever visited this hospital, which is right in the middle of the city? Have they seen the conditions here? Immaterial of what conditions patients kept here may suffer from, they are still our citizens and we should care properly for them. We must create the best possible conditions for the sick,” Mirziyoyev said in televised remarks.
Mirziyoyev called for including the renovation of old medical facilities and the building of new ones into broader state investment programs. He also called for increasing the living standards of healthcare workers and to provide them with suitable housing.
In observance of the end of Ramadan, Mirziyoyev handed out gifts to patients, including televisions, fridges and clothes.
Head doctor Hairullo Husanhodjayev told state television that this was the first time the psychiatric had received such a visit in its 120 years since inception.
A court in Kyrgyzstan has sentenced three people to lengthy jail terms for their alleged role in the car bomb attack on China’s embassy last August, but many questions remain over the rigor of the 10-month long investigation.
Khasamidin Ismailov was handed an 18-year sentence by the court in Bishkek on June 27, while Hikmatillo Abdulazhanov and Kunazim Mansirova were each ordered to serve 10 years in jail apiece.
All had pleaded not guilty to assisting the bomber in carrying out the August 30 embassy attack, which injured five people after a car packed with explosives rammed into the gates of the building. Nobody other than the attacker was killed in the attack.
Lawyers for the three have said they will appeal.
The account is confused and bears all too little scrutiny.
In the weeks after the attack, the press service of the State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, declared that the embassy attack had been commissioned by Uyghur extremists operating in Syria in the ranks of Jabhat al-Nusra and Jamaat Tawhid wal-Jihod. At the time, the GKNB released a list of around a dozen suspects identified by their initials and described them as being relatives of another person of interest, Burkhaniddin Zhantorayev.
Troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization take part in an anti-narcotics trafficking exercise in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2013. (photo: CSTO)
Kyrgyzstan is against the expansion of the existing Russian airbase in the country, but is encouraging the Kremlin to build a separate military training base in the south of the country.
That's according to Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev, who said he discussed the matter with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last week in Moscow.
"I told Vladimir Vladimirovich: 'If you really want to think about security, then we are interested in starting construction of some sort of training facility in the south of the country.' I think that would be a good option," Atambayev told reporters in Bishkek on June 24.
Atambayev added that while he was in favor of modernizing the Kant air base, which Russia operates outside Bishkek, he was against sending additional forces there. "We have strongly objected when Russian authorities have suggested expanding the military base at Kant," he said.
"What point is there to building it [Kant] up? Defend Bishkek from what? If we really think about the future, we need to think about the fact that we're seeing more problems from Afghanistan," he said. "If we're going to defend, we need to look at the border of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. That's my position."
It's not quite clear from Atambayev's telling how the topic came up in his June 20 meeting with Putin. And Putin spokesman Dmitriy Peskov declined to comment on Atambayev's remarks.
Not Uzbek Enough: A screenshot from Munisa Rizayeva's video for Sakramento (Source: YouTube)
As of July 1, singers in Uzbekistan will need to get permission from the state-run performers’ regulator before they are allowed to post their videos on YouTube. Anybody found in violation of the rule could face losing their lucrative performing license.
Rumors of this rule had been circulating for some days on social media and were last week confirmed by RFE/RL’s Uzbekistan service, Radio Ozodlik.
“This is being done to prevent the dissemination of music videos that do not correspond to national traditions and the mentality of the Uzbek people,” a representative for Uzbekkonsert told Ozodlik.
Prior to the YouTube rule being announced, domestically produced music videos had become object of much public discussion. In a talkshow aired on June 20, guests rounded in particular on a song called “Sakramento” by Munisa Rizayeva.
One participant of the talkshow, cultural commentator Fakhritdin Ismatov, complained to EurasiaNet.org that the video was made in slavish imitation of Spanish culture — not particularly easy to detect in the actual clip — and that many of the Uzbek words in the song have been inappropriately Hispanicized. This unbridled submission to foreign values notwithstanding, the video has to date been viewed more than 3.7 million times.
Dildora Nishanova, a show business journalist, told EurasiaNet.org that there is every chance that Sakramento will no longer the shown on local television. This kind of policy could prove ruinous for artists, since videos online and on TV constitute a valuable form of exposure.
When it came time to discuss the rights of women and girls in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament on June 22, the male members of the house decided they had somewhere better to be and took off.
Discussions were organized as an opportunity for lawmakers to question government representatives and experts on the issue, but out of the 101 deputies that had voted for various initiatives earlier in the day, only 16 remained. Of those, more than half were women.
Tolkun Tulekova, the director of the Association for Crisis Centers, who came to speak to lawmakers, said the predominantly male MPs left the chamber as soon as the subject was announced.
“They are not interested in women’s problems and in how their rights are being trampled. They chose to ignore the situation of half the members of our society. This was offensive to us,” Tulekova said.
Tulekova said that not one of the departing MPs returned to the chamber, even though several hours remained before the close of business.
Ainur Altybayeva, a member of the constitutional legislation committee, who organized the day’s discussion, said the behavior of her male colleagues outraged everybody present.
“Of course it hurts that they left. We discussed reproductive health and education. These are very important issues,” she told EurasiaNet.org.
All the same, Altybayeva thanked the male MPs for their prior record of supporting legislation upholding women’s rights.
President Almazbek Atambayev in April gave his final seal of approval to legislation intended to provide greater protections for victims of domestic abuse. Lawmakers and the government were widely hailed for the passage of the rules requiring police to respond more robustly to reports of abuse .
CSTO peacekeeping troops, practicing in Belarus in 2016 in a scenario involving a UN-mandated peacekeeping mission. (photo: CSTO)
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have denied that they are in talks to send troops as part of a peacekeeping mission, contradicting statements from a day earlier by Russian and Turkish officials. But another Russian official confirmed that the talks were going on, and there seemed to be enough wiggle room in Astana and Bishkek to suggest that such a deployment is not out of the question.
"Kazakhstan is not negotiating with anyone about sending its service personnel to Syria," Kazakhstan's foreign minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov told media in Astana on June 23, the day after a senior Russian official said that Kazakhstan was doing just that.
The response from Bishkek was less categorical. "This issue has been raised only on the level of the Permanent Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and we have not received any further proposals," said Temir Dzhumakadyrov, the secretary of Kyrgyzstan's security council. The CSTO is a Russia-led security bloc that includes Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as well as Armenia, Belarus, and Tajikistan. "Information about the possible deployment of our soldiers to Syria are not entirely correct. The issue is only a peacekeeping contingent."
And Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Minister Erlan Abdyldayev said that the issue wasn't discussed when President Almazbek Atambayev visited Moscow on June 20, but that "the Russian proposal has been discussed earlier in the framework of the CSTO," Interfax reported.
A civic activist in Kazakhstan jailed for his involvement in land protests in 2016 is entering the third week of a hunger strike declared in protest at the authorities’ refusal to relocate him to a prison in his home region.
RFE/RL’s Kazakhstan service, Radio Azattyk, on June 22 cited Max Bokayev’s sister as saying that the Almaty district court in Astana rejected a formal application for the activist to be relocated from his current prison in the Northern Kazakhstan Region to Atyrau Region.
“They didn’t show us the documents that served as the basis for refusal to carry out the transfer, citing secrecy,” Zhanargul Bokayeva told Azattyk.
Prison authorities have not confirmed that Bokayev is on the hunger strike and have declined to comment on his state of health.
Bokayeva said her brother, who is 44 years old, stopped taking food on June 9 and is only drinking water, and that as a result he has shed nine kilograms.
Bokayev and his colleague, Talgat Ayan, were in November found guilty of inciting social unrest, spreading false information and disrupting public order and accordingly sentenced to five years in jail. The severity of the verdict appeared intended in part to put a definitive end to the season of political unrest that began when thousands of citizens hit the streets in the spring of 2016 in protest at legislation to privatize swathes of public land. In the absence of adequate information campaigns, speculation circulated that much of the land would be bought by foreign investors, primarily from China — a taboo suggestion in a country where land is popularly deemed a natural birthright and where suspicions toward China run high.