The poorest country in Central Asia, Tajikistan initiated the most expensive trial in the history of British legal proceedings. Tajikistan will pay 120 million USD for the legal fees which represents 5,2 percent of the country’s entire GDP. A bone of contention is the Tajik Aluminum Company (Talco), fully owned by the state. The Tajik side accused its partners of fraud. …read more

The May month traditionally comes to Kyrgyzstan with the holiday days. 1st May is the Labor Day, 5th May is the Constitution’s Day and on 9th May Kyrgyzstan celebrates Victory’s day. These day the life of Kyrgyzstan is rather quiet and slow.

On 1st May, the Communist’s party held the short meeting at the Old Square in Bishkek. There were a lot of people who held the portraits of Lenin and the old soviet flags. It was really strange demonstration, because the communists also hung the scarecrow of the president of USA George Bush during the meeting.

Lj-user Lvenks even called [ru] this demonstration as “a parade of the insane”.

…read more

After the disintegration of the USSR, the Soviet communist identity and ideology ceased to exist and the new countries confronted the vital problems of defining new identities and ideologies. Most of the ex-Soviet countries were quick to give up the past and embrace the new life with new national values and ideas. Uzbekistan was one of the few countries where a process of defining a new identity and setting up new national values went in a very rapid manner.

The changing cultural and political atmosphere was first reflected throughout Uzbekistan through renaming of squares, streets and parks from Soviet-type names into symbols of  either independence or national identity. All Soviet monuments were dismantled, being replaced with the heroes of Uzbek history. For the last two weeks, the Uzbek blogosphere discussed changes that were happenning in the post-Soviet period in Uzbekistan. …read more

The mayor of Dushanbe and Chairman of the Tajik Parliament’s Upper Chamber Mamadsaid Ubaidulloev proposed a strange way to raise funds for construction of Rogun hydropower station - one of the biggest energy projects in Tajikistan. He calculated all salaries of the Dushanbe residents and drew a conclusion that if all of the working people in the city give up half of their wages in May and June, it will constitute about $10 million. The power plant reportedly requires about $1 billion more, but in fact nobody knows the real amount of money necessary for completion of the construction. …read more

Текст на русском здесь.

Application Deadline: June 1, 2008

 Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute Public Health Program’s Health Media Initiative, is now accepting project proposals for the third round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects focused especially on public health issues involving marginalized populations. Ideal applicants are dynamic NGOs or individuals who: …read more

The Andijon events of May 2005, when several hundred of demonstrating civilians were reportedly shot dead by the Uzbek government troops, made the whole world tremble. The results did take long to come. The United States made several statements on severe human rights violations in Uzbekistan, for which later were asked to call back the Karshi-Khanabad airbase, and EU has put several sanctions, including visa bans on high ranking Uzbek officials. However, today, after three years have passed, both US and EU seem to have forgotten Andijon. …read more

Plitical intra-elite battles and anti-corruption crusades both remain hot topics on the agenda of Kazakhstani blogosphere, but speculations over the looming global food crisis and its implications for Central Asia made the bloggers cover this issue in their discussions.

Ehot wonders, what will Kazakhstan be looking like if the food deficit strikes the region harshly and marks out that in such critical period

“elites - including ardent oppositionists - will leave the country with everything what can be taken out, and leave the nation to the mercy of fate”.

According to various assessments of experts, aggravation of the food problematique can lead to doubling of prices for foodstuff in the next five years. Epolet writes that in such conditions it would be natural if the national business starts eyeing the ways of making money on food

…read more

A next to last week of April started from the unexpected fall of temperature. A lot of bloggers posted the photographs of the frozen greenery and the trees under snow. Yanagi presented the beautiful photos of the leaves under snow in her blog and told [ru]:

I was scared when I had seen this tree from the kitchen window.

red_ptero called [ru] this fall of temperature “grimaces of the global warming”.

A fall of temperature has happened not only to nature. A Russian military was heavy injured because of an incident between Russian militaries from the Russian airbase in Kant city and the Kyrgyz police. Many people consider this incident as a threat for the Kyrgyz-Russian relationships.

…read more

The first week of April started with the ambiguous opinions of Kyrgyz bloggers about the Marie Claire magazine article by American journalist Erin Finnerty with photography by Rena Effendi and the provocative headline “Kyrgyzstan: From Silk to Heroin” about the problems of women in Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan.

For instance, beketova wrote [ru]:

“It’s rubbish. To write something just to shock more. Like that scandal story about Borat, when Kazakhstan fell prey to a casual selection. Film doesn’t sound Kazakhstan anyway!”

svetofor_kg noticed that Erin Finnerty has been doing research for a few years [ru]:

“In general, the Slavic people were drug addicts up to 2003 year (according to the statistic 1990-2003). Later drug addicts appeared between the indigenous populations, although, there are more drug couriers among the [native peoples] of Central Asian nations. Everybody knows the houses of the drug barons in Osh. It is compared that heroin in Kyrgyzstan is cheaper that 1 kilo of apples (40 versus 50 soms). The indigenous habitants of Bishkek form a marginal part of the population of Kyrgyzstan and aren’t representative [of the entire nation, they are] like an enclave. There are heroin and vodka in the regions. So, make conclusion yourself”.

The discussion also attracted the author of the photos, Rena Effendi, who left a comment about this article. She wrote [ru]:
…read more

Kazakhstani political field may only seem still and silent against the background of a one-party parliament and a long-ruling president. But in its depth it is very lively - passions and intrigues are brewing both within the state apparatus and in the opposition’s camp. The competition between groupings is not transparent for public and, certainly, not too democratic. Most likely, despite the country’s looming OSCE chairmanship in 2010, this kind of political system will remain until then and long after:

“OSCE officials can forget about all Kazakhstan’s promises concerning democratization. All promises, in exchange of which we obtained your votes for our chairmanship. For those of you having problems with understanding, the Kazakhstan’s president plainly explained in his interview with Reuters: “We were elected as full-fledged member of the Organization, and we have no commitments whatsoever”, writes Arseny of neweurasia. 

…read more