Field Reports

On November 21, the local prosecutor’s office of Kazakhstan’s Almaty region officially requested the provincial court to order an administrative closure of over forty print and online media outlets, including the Russian-language Respublika web-portal and the popular Vzglyad newspaper. The complaint also included the names of two television channels (K-Plus and Stan.tv) whose frequent reporting on Kazakhstan’s domestic politics are widely considered as the most outspoken source of criticism of the country’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his government, especially after the December 2011 bloody events in Zhanaozen.

Uzbekistan’s capital and many districts are suffering from yet another fuel crisis. Fuel shortages have become a regular occurrence in Uzbekistan since 2010. Severe shortages of gasoline in Tashkent were reported on November 13-14, two weeks earlier than last year. Car drivers queue for several hours to fill up their tanks, and are sometimes forced to wait through the night. No official explanations are given for the massive fuel shortages, leaving those affected to speculate on the reasons for their troubles.

On November 16, 2012, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev notified Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambaev of the allocation of a grant in the amount of US$ 25 million to Kyrgyzstan. According to Kyrgyzstan’s Prime Minister Jantoro Satybaldiev, the Russian grant will be exclusively used to support the state budget. The Prime Minister said that the grant is expected to be transferred by the end of 2012. On November 20, President Atambaev met with Kyrgyzstan’s Minister of Finance Olga Lavrova to underline the importance of the Russian grant and make sure that all the necessary documentation is prepared in a timely manner in order to secure receipt of the grant by the end of 2012. President Atambaev added that the grant will help the government of Kyrgyzstan to maintain fiscal stability in the country.

Abkhazia no longer considers the present format of the Geneva talks suitable and insists that its status be advanced from “participant” to “delegation” in the Geneva process, according to a report issued by Abkhazia’s foreign ministry on November 19.

On October 23, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov announced a so-called presidential plan including a five year economic plan for 2012-2016 and vowed to invest 200 billion manats (US$ 70 billion) into the state and private sectors of the economy to turn Turkmenistan into an industrial state. The plan also aims to bring new reforms in the country’s educational, agricultural and energy sectors. Berdimuhamedov unveiled the presidential plan at an annual meeting of the Council of Elders, an advisory body that meets annually and has no legal authority except for lavishing the president’s new policy initiatives and decisions with praise.

On November 9, Tbilisi’s City Court ruled to release the Chief of the Joint Staff of Georgia’s armed forces Giorgi Kalandadze and the commander of the 4th army brigade Zurab Shamatava on a GEL 20,000 bail each. However, President Mikheil Saakashvili’s long-time ally and once influential government member Bachana Akhalaia was placed in pre-trial detention.

In early November, the American non-governmental human rights organization “Responsible Sourcing Network”, which aims at uniting people for the eradication of slavery in the modern world as well as promoting sustainable development and fair business, announced that more than a hundred world brand companies boycotted the use of Uzbek cotton and textile for their produce. According to the company’s representative, this is an unprecedented number of companies that have joined the campaign against the use of child labor for picking cotton in Uzbekistan, which provides momentum for the campaign as a whole. Some sources suggest, however, that the Uzbek authorities will not suffer serious losses from the boycott as their produce can be easily directed eastwards.

In late October the Russian publishing house Vzglyad v Budushee (Look into the future) based in St. Petersburg issued a handbook for foreign labor migrants in Russia. On the first page of the handbook, labor migrants are pictured as tools – a broom, a paint roller, a brush and a spatula, while Russian citizens look like normal people – a policeman, a doctor, a guide, etc. Such depiction of the labor migrants was considered humiliating by human rights activists in the major countries of origin for labor migrants, and Tajikistan was among the first to express concerns. The issue received wide publicity in local and regional media, and the publishing house currently undergoes checking by the Prosecutor General.

On October 25, Georgia’s parliament approved Bidzina Ivanishvili as prime minister with 88 votes against 54. On the same ballot, parliament passed the government’s new composition and its program, envisaging comprehensive shifts in key policy areas that involve constitutional and structural changes.

In late October, Kazakhstan’s recently appointed Minister of Economic Development and Trade Yerbolat Dossayev informed the country’s Parliament that the Kazakh economy was expected to grow by 5.4 percent in 2012, which is 0.6 percent lower than the previous forecast. According to the minister, the unfavorable situation on world commodities markets had led to the weakening of demand for Kazakhstan’s energy exports and encouraged the Government to temper its optimism. At the same time, Kazakhstan’s southern neighbor, Uzbekistan, was credited with a 7.5 percent economic growth rate by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development whose July 2012 forecast had been reconsidered in favor of better expectations. In this context, the continuous inflow of foreign direct investment to Kazakhstan is decidedly not sufficient to offset the currently observed slowdown of its economic and industrial development as well as the country’s unabated dependence on raw materials.