Central Asia's week that was #8
Pogrom in Kyrgyzstan, protests in Kazakhstan, Rain (and more rain) all over the region. And then, sorcerers in Tajikistan, bank sold for cheap, and football news from Kyrgyzstan.
So this happened…
Violent mobs of young men in Kyrgyzstan’s capital laid siege to the dormitories of Pakistani university students. More than 40 people sustained injuries over a night of assaults. The attack was said to be a reprisal for the beating of a group of Kyrgyz men at the hands of foreign students – Egyptians, in fact – a few days earlier. Police were deployed to the centre in large numbers, but they largely looked on impassively. In a speech delivered two days after unrest, President Sadyr Japarov sought to pin the blame for inciting the pogroms on unspecified government critics. He offered no evidence for this claim. Looters on the same night targeted a garment factory in a Bishkek suburb that was staffed by Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi nationals. Three people were hospitalized following that assault.
Hundreds of Pakistani nationals have left Kyrgyzstan following the unrest in Bishkek. Six chartered planes flew out of Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan on Tuesday alone. Deputy Education Minister Rasul Abazbek uulu told journalists that foreign students contribute around 12-16 billion soms ($135-180 million) to the state coffers annually. There are around 28,800 foreigners pursuing their studies in Kyrgyzstan – most of them are believed to be from India and Pakistan. The foreign minister of Pakistan, Ishaq Dar, made a snap visit to Bishkek and received assurances from his Kyrgyz counterpart that the police would adopt “all necessary measures” to ensure the safety of Pakistani students.
Demonstrators who set up a tent camp in the western Kazakhstan town of Kulsary in a demand for larger compensation payments for flood damage to their homes ended their weeklong protest. Disgruntled residents were asking that damaged property be valued at 400,000 tenge ($900) per square metre, around twice what the government was offering. It has not been divulged what promises — or threats — were made to bring the protest to a close. Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov said that 10 billion tenge ($22.6 million) has been spent so far on providing more than 26,000 flood-affected households with one-time cash payments. Much more is expected to follow. Hundreds of new homes are being built in areas worst affected by the floods, Bektenov said.
Turkmenistan was battered by yet more abnormally intense rainfall. A Moscow-based meteorological news service reported that many Turkmen cities have already seen more precipitation this month than in any time since records began – more than 130 years ago. RFE/RL’s Turkmen service carried reports about a large section of railroad in the Mary province being washed away by rain. As is customary for Turkmenistan, state media have ignored the situation.
Heavy rainfall in Tajikistan has likewise caused rivers to overflow and provoked flooding and countless mudslides. Large areas of farming land in several regions of the country have been destroyed by the waters. Emergency services have warned the destructive weather conditions may yet persist. Neighbouring Uzbekistan has not been spared. Almost 67,000 households were for a time knocked off the power grid by heavy rains and winds.
The head of Kyrgyzstan’s security services, Kamchybek Tashiyev, declared that parliament had been “cleansed” of figures linked to now-jailed former customs boss and behind-the-scenes powerbroker Rayimbek Matraimov. Tashiyev said a similar clear-out in government agencies is still ongoing. Fully 18 MPs have surrendered their mandates since mid-April, when the security services boss gave notice of his intention to initiate a purge. Matraimov was extradited from Azerbaijan in March and is facing an array of grave criminal charges.
Tajikistan’s border troops are stepping up security measures in cross-border areas to ward off threats from “terrorist and extremist organizations.” Foreign nationals have been warned to avoid approaching locations near borders without proper authorization. Independent news outlet Pamirinside has reported, meanwhile, that the security services are conducting intensive security sweeps in a remote area of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO). Around 50 residents of the Yazghulom Valley, which lies in an area of GBAO adjacent to Afghanistan, have been detained and delivered to Dushanbe, the outlet claimed.
Kyrgyzstan’s Justice Ministry approved regulations under which nongovernmental organizations getting funding from abroad will need to register as entities fulfilling the “functions of a foreign representative.” The paperwork will need to be submitted within two months from May 16. Rights advocates have said the legislation, which they say is closely modelled on a Russian analogue, will stigmatise organisations doing important work and force many of them out of existence.
And there’s this too…
Qatar-based Lesha Bank has completed the acquisition of Almaty-based Bereke Bank from Kazakhstan’s government for $147 million. This was apparently quite the discount. The bank was formerly the Kazakhstan subsidiary of Russian state lender Sberbank, but it was sold to the Kazakh government for a reported $333 million and rebranded in 2022 after being targeted by U.S. sanctions. The sanctions were lifted a few months after that sale went through.
A new mini-hydroelectric power station was inaugurated in Kyrgyzstan. The 25-megawatt electricity generator cost $32 million to complete and is the first facility of its kind to be installed in the country since independence. Officials say the power plant will supply the needs of around 19,000 households in the Talas province. On the same day, President Sadyr Japarov oversaw the opening of a revamped airport in the eponymous regional capital, Talas. The terminal was built in 1979 but abandoned in the early 1990s.
Uzbekistan imported three times as much natural gas in January-April as it did over the same period in 2023. Buying the fuel cost $462 billion, official data showed. Exports of natural gas over the same period fell by half. Uzbekistan has been importing gas from Russia since October. The state gas company has said it plans to invest $500 million on infrastructure to ensure growing volumes of the fuel can be bought from Russia.
Uzbekistan’s Senate unanimously ratified a security agreement with the United States that will allow for the exchange of classified information between the two countries. The agreement further envisions the provision of military training to the Uzbek armed forces. Uzbekistan has welcomed security cooperation with Washington but has explicitly ruled out hosting a military base of the kind that existed there until 2005.
The number of official complaints lodged by prison inmates in Kazakhstan quadrupled in 2023 as compared to the year before. One analysis of this trend has linked it to the intensified efforts of independent and parastatal monitoring bodies. In at least one-third of cases, the petitions of prisoners were related to unhappiness over medical care. The Human Rights Commissioner has cited the lack of facilities for specialized consultations within penitentiaries as a reason for delays in providing care.
In a first for Kyrgyzstan, the football federation, which is headed by security services boss Kamchybek Tashiyev, will install Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology at a stadium in the southern city of Jalal-Abad. Tashiyev, who is from the Jalal-Abad region, made the announcement last week while inaugurating the newly refurbished 5,000-seater stadium. Construction of a Barcelona franchise soccer academy in the same city is reportedly being done with investment from Tashiyev’s sons.
More than 50 self-styled sorcerers and fortune-tellers were detained in Tajikistan following the recent adoption of fresh legislation to criminalise those activities. Police say practitioners of these supernatural crafts are tricking gullible people into parting with large amounts of money to cure them of their misfortunes. One recidivist sorceress asked for $700 in return for helping ease the tensions between a married couple, police said.
French fashion magazine ELLE will launch a paper Uzbek-language edition later this year. This is the first time a prominent international glossy magazine will be produced in Uzbek. An online version of the publication is expected to go live in June, with the hard copy version following in September.
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