Central Asia's week that was #10
Unexpected acquittals in Kyrgyzstan, a murder attempt in Kyiv, claims of a coup plot in Tajikistan. And Chinese hunger for Kazakh chicken feet, hurt Uzbek feelings, and revisiting the Silk Road.
So this happened…
A court in Kyrgyzstan acquitted 22 activists, journalists and politicians accused of plotting mass unrest and seeking to seize power. Prosecutors alleged the group were using their opposition to a border demarcation deal with Uzbekistan as a smokescreen for organizing the disruptive protests. President Sadyr Japarov sought to cast the verdict as evidence of the independence of the judiciary in Kyrgyzstan. The ruling was unjust, and the accused should at least have been fined, he argued. Prosecutors are expected to appeal.
The former leader of a pocket opposition party in Tajikistan has been arrested and accused of plotting a coup against the regime of President Emomali Rahmon. Parliament voted at the request of prosecutors to strip Saidjafar Usmonzoda of the immunity status granted to him as a lawmaker. Usmonzoda’s Democratic Party is only formally an opposition force – a fact that suggests his downfall has been triggered by elite infighting. State-linked online trolls last month disseminated the revelation that Usmonzoda is related by marriage to the head of the security services.
Aidos Sadykov, a self-exiled journalist from Kazakhstan with strongly anti-government views, was hospitalized in Kyiv after being shot by an unknown assailant. Sadykov runs the Base YouTube channel, which regularly features content critical of the Kazakh government. Much of the content has focused on worker discontent in oil-rich western regions of the country. Sadykov and his wife have lived in the Ukrainian capital since 2014. They are wanted in their home country on charges of inciting social, ethnic or religious enmity. Ukrainian police have not revealed whether they have any leads on the motivation for the attempted killing or who carried it out.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol wrapped up a three-country tour of the region, taking in visits to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. A Korean-Uzbek business forum held in Tashkent during Yoon’s stay produced $9.6 billion worth of investment agreements. In Kazakhstan, the Korean leader oversaw a deal for companies from his country to explore for critical minerals needed by chip producers and auto manufacturing companies.
Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted to lift a ban on the exploration and development of deposits containing uranium and thorium. The head of the Cabinet, Akylbek Japarov, says the purpose of this change to the law is not to mine those elements, but rather to develop titanomagnetite reserves. Kyrgyz authorities say that around 10 million tons of titanomagnetite, zirconium, phosphorites and rare earth metals have been discovered at the Kyzyl-Ompol field, which lies close to the country’s hallowed Issyk-Kul Lake. President Japarov (no relation to Akylbek Japarov) has repeatedly insisted that developing Kyzyl-Ompol poses no environmental risks and that only safe mining methods will be used.
China will issue $2.35 billion in loans for construction of a planned China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway line, the head of Kyrgyzstan’s state railroad company said. Azamat Sakiyev said the entire project is expected to cost $4.7 billion to complete. Building work will be done by a company jointly operated by the three countries. The terms of the loan have not been made public. The Kyrgyz section of the route will entail building 81 bridges collectively spanning 26 kilometres and 41 tunnels with a total length of 120 kilometres.
U.S. media reported that six men from Tajikistan with suspected links to the Islamic State militant group have been arrested after sting operations in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The suspects are said to have entered the United States by crossing the border with Mexico, unnamed law enforcement sources told the New York Post. While originally from Tajikistan, the men were described as nationals of Russia, suggesting they had spent time in that country and obtained citizenship. FBI Director Chris Wray has said his agency is concerned that militants linked to the Islamic State may be seeking to mount attacks in the United States analogous to the mass killing of citizens carried out at a concert venue outside Moscow in March.
And there’s this too…
Almost 5,000 cases of domestic violence were recorded in Kyrgyzstan from January to April, a 15 percent increase on the same period in 2023. Police say more than 4,300 temporary restraint orders were issued over that period. In almost all instances, the aggressors were male. Rights advocates say Kyrgyzstan has made commendable progress in instituting legal protections for victims of gender-based violence, but that the process of securing protection orders is patchily implemented. Activists also argue that much work remains to be done to change permissive attitudes toward violence against women.
The British Museum in London announced it will hold an exhibition later this year that will “challenge and expand the modern popular concept of the ‘Silk Road’ as a simple history of trade between ‘East’ and ‘West.’” Some of the items on display are being loaned by museums in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These will include a six-metre-long mural from the Hall of the Ambassadors in Afrasiyab, in Samarkand. The painting is said to have been commissioned by the king of Samarkand in the mid-seventh century and was rediscovered during road construction works in the 1960s.
Uzbekistan’s Cinematography Agency, which operates under the auspices of the Culture Ministry, reportedly complained that the title character of the movie Anora, the winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, was a slight against Uzbek women. The agency said in a since-deleted Telegram post that naming the central sex worker character Anora, a common name in Uzbekistan, was the work of “international organizations and influential individuals with unfriendly attitudes toward Uzbekistan.” The nationality of the character in the film in question is not, in fact, stated. The Cinematography Agency suggested moviegoers spurn Anora and instead watch the 2022 film Uzbechka, which tells the fictionalized story of a female Uzbek sniper fighting in the ranks of the Red Army during World War II.
Uzbekistan is poised to train 600 truck drivers to take up jobs in the European Union. The announcement followed the signing of a deal between the Uzbek External Labour Migration Agency and Latvia-based logistics company Kreiss. These plans reflect increasing efforts by Uzbekistan to diversify the range of available destinations for their expat labourers. A spokesman for the Uzbek presidential administration said earlier this month that the number of people from Uzbekistan going to work in Russia has fallen from around 4-6 million to 1 million people since 2016. He attributed this trend to the “effectiveness of the [Uzbek government’s] ongoing economic reforms.”
Chinese companies are exploring the possibility of importing chicken feet from Kazakhstan. While this part of the chicken is popular in China, there is little demand for it in Kazakhstan. Poultry producers in neighbouring Uzbekistan got the go-ahead to export chicken feet, along with other edible consumables, to China in 2023. China used to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of chicken from the United States, where the feet were otherwise to be ground down for animal feed. This trade withered amid a tariffs war in 2011, however.
A man imprisoned in Turkmenistan for sharing a photo of a visiting World Health Organization delegation has been released after serving the entirety of his four-year sentence. Nurgeldy Khalykov was formally charged with fraud, but critics have described that case as a fraudulent sham. The visit to Turkmenistan by the WHO team in 2020 was being closely watched as the country was one of only a few in the world to deny it had recorded any cases of COVID-19. The photo shared with independent media by Khalykov showed the WHO team sitting by a pool in their hotel in Ashgabat. It is not known if the WHO ever interceded on Khalykov’s behalf.
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