The new Manas statue is entering the final stages of assembling. I snuck into the construction site around the pedestal to snag these photos.

To be frank, I feel that it’s a travesty what they’ve done to Ala-Too. She had become a world-famous symbol and represented the best of Kyrgyzstan. That’s not meant to disrespect Manas, but his symbolism, indeed his message just seems more divisive or antiquated than the grand old lady he’s replacing.

Editor’s Note: A Polish man who was called “Borat” has won a lawsuit for racial slander, reports neweurasia’s Avicenna. “Since calling somebody ‘Borat’ is now officially qualified as racial abuse, this may become a precedent to others using this downgrading term to Central Asians, in any other region of Great Britain,” he remarks. [Check out the rest of neweurasia's coverage of the ridiculous and otherwise sorry story of "Borat" by clicking here.]

This news made me feel so good: A Polish engineer, who was called Borat at work, has been awarded £2,250 (approximately $3,683) compensation after a tribunal ruled the nickname was racist, reports Daily Mail.

The panel found that Adrian Ruda was “degraded and humiliated” by the nickname given to him by a fellow worker in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

Since calling somebody “Borat” is now officially qualified as racial abuse according to a Leeds tribunal, this may become a precedent to others using this downgrading term to Central Asians, in any other region of Great Britain; or even far beyond.

This could be an excellent example for my fellow countrymen sue all those who call them “Borat,” when they hear something like “Ah, you are from Kazakhstan! You are Borat!”

Read the full story »

United Kingdom-based think tank, Maplecroft, issued the Terrorism Risk Index compiled by respected analysts.

According to the authors of the research, it has rated the new nation of South Sudan in the top five countries most at risk from terrorist attacks after Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The latest Terrorism Risk Index (TRI), released by risk analysis and mapping firm Maplecroft, rates 20 countries and territories as ‘extreme risk,’ with Somalia (1), Pakistan (2), Iraq (3), Afghanistan (4) once again topping the ranking. The ‘extreme risk’ category also includes: South Sudan (5), Yemen (6), Palestinian Occupied Territories (7), DR Congo (8) Central African Republic (9), Colombia (10), Algeria (11), Thailand (12), Philippines (13), Russia (14), Sudan (15), Iran (16), Burundi (17), India (18), Nigeria (19) and Israel (20).

While Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are ranked “low risk”, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were judged to be at “medium risk” of an attack (see the map).

To remind, earlier this year Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were included onto DHS’s list of “specially designated countries (SDCs) that have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members”. Read the full story »

The EU Project to support women with disabilities in Kazakhstan comes to its end. In this light, Concluding Workshop on Effective Management will be held in Atyrau and Astana on August 8 and 9, the EU Delegation to Kazakhstan press-service report.

The two-day workshops on effective management and leadership for heads and activists of organizations of women with disabilities from two regions of Kazakhstan (West and North-East) will be held in Astana and Atyrau. In June 2011 the similar workshop for the representatives of South Kazakhstan has already took place in Almaty.

According to the press-release, the workshops are conducted within a two-year project on strengthening leadership and managerial capacities of organisations of women with disabilities, their networks and dialogue with the government on issues related to disability and gender equality. The two-year project is funded by the European Union for about 150 000 Euro and implemented by the Association of Women with Disabilities Shyrak together with International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC), and in association with the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Read the full story »

Editor’s Note: Originally written by neweurasia’s Adam (RUS).

The newspaper “Kursiv” has recently published an interesting piece about running a hotel business in Almaty. It is known that already in March Hayatt, which used to administer “Rahat Palace”, has left, whereas Kempinski Bayterek and Radisson Blu have frozen their projects down for an unknown period of time. Noticeably, Park Inn and JW Marriott are planning to be opened in 2012-2013.

There are four internationally-ran hotels in Almaty at the moment – InterContinental, Royal Tulip, Rixos and HolidayInn with 935 rooms. Overall Almaty has 96 hotels with 5,170 rooms.

The upcoming 3-4 years may introduce another group of major hotel projects of “luxury” and “premium” class with over 348 rooms in total. Kempinski Bayterek and Radisson Blu projects have been suspended due to financial difficulties and the proposed time of their resumed work is unknown. The numbers about planned investments into the projects vary.

Park Inn and JW Marriott, however, are doing much better. They are planning to open in 2012 and 2013. One of the main reasons for their optimism is the degree of their readiness for exploitation. According to some experts, ‘accurate data on investments are absent, but approximate numbers are 200 – 250 million USD’.

Apart from the abovementioned businesses, some other major foreign companies such as Four Seasons and Hilton are now evaluating the capacities of the local market. This might create ‘extra-surplus’ in the “five-star” segment because in the last two years the Almaty hotel industry has mostly seen new projects of only ‘premium-class’.

Given that Almaty is becoming increasingly busy, there is also an increasingly unsatisfied demand for 3 and 4-star hotels. Spring and fall are the most active periods for holding exhibitions and international conferences. It is also the time when there is a lack of affordable hotel rooms. This, in turn, has made renting private housing popular.

Until 2007 Almaty’s hotel business was on a rise. In 2007 hotels were 50% full; from 2008 to 2009 the indexes rapidly decreased. The record of 60-70% was put during the Asian games. In 2010 the number of customers decreased for 1% compared to 2009. Hotel businesses in 2011 are expected to be moderately successful.

The founder and former editor of Svoboda Slova newspaper, Guljan Yergaliyeva, is the racy and outspoken – in a very good way – prominent and controversial Kazakh journalist who most recently ‘bared it all to tell the truth’ and opened her own news website guljan.org. Check out neweurasia’s coverage on the liberating story: “A Kazakh journalist strips naked for the truth”

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that the journalist told other journalists on July 21st in Almaty that “her website has been under attack since July 15. She said the attack was likely connected to the content on the website.” In attempts to find and stop the hackers, she sent letters to KazakhTelecom, Kazakhstan’s Internet provider, and also to the Communications and Information Ministry. In addition, the journalist is also reaching out to international Internet organizations to help solve the problem.

The guljan.org article “Кто покушается на guljan: Организованная атака на наш сайт” “Who attempts to guljan: Organized attack on our site” – which explains the site’s attack(s) in full – concludes with saying:

“…want to become commonplace in Kazakhstan conclusion: there is no real freedom in KZ — speech, conscience, assembly, opinion, competition, and much of what is needed democratic country. And while this country will keep on “parole” of President Nazarbayev, and not on the basis of the Constitution, we will always live under the pressure of this DOS (in Kazakh, friendly) attacks.”

Read the full story »

So, as you’ve probably noticed from our Twitter feed, the WordPress ban in Kazakhstan appears to be over. Two days ago, neweurasia‘s Asqat tweeted the good news. To double-check, I checked with our team in Kyrgyzstan whether they are having an easier time accessing WordPress (that’s because the two countries’ telecoms are deeply entwined, and so what happens in Kazakhstan inevitably washes over into Kyrgyzstan). Happily, they report that everything’s back to normal. Now, an update and a comment…

Update: Earlier I posted about how this ban may have been (ostensibly) due to two blogs. There’s been a small debate concerning the URL of one of the them. We’ve reported that it’s djamat.wordpress.com, but RFE/RL reported that it’s jamaat.wordpress.com (here and here). The URL we reported doesn’t appear to have ever existed; the URL RFE/RL reported belongs to the Bangladeshi Jamaat-i-Islami, created in 2005 but after just one post never used again. Consider this my digital version of a shrug.

Comment: Like any nation, Kazakhstan has legitimate concerns regarding the effects of controversial content on the Internet, and it reserves the right to do what it sees best to protect its population. However, considering that the target of this latest action was a major platform for citizen journalism, what’s also at stake are rights that encompass and even transcend the national — the rights of individuals to express their opinions and, in turn, be heard. By lifting this ban, the Kazakh authorities are therefore doing the right thing twice-over. It is my hope that this is setting a positive precedent, although of course time will tell.

World Bank Group support to countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region totaled more than $9.3 billion in fiscal year 2011. This was double pre-crisis levels but, as planned, less than at the height of the crisis. The Bank continued to lend significant support this fiscal year to help countries sustain the nascent recovery in the region, while mitigating the impact of lingering effects of the crisis on the region’s most vulnerable, World Bank’s press-service reports.

“Countries in the region are continuing to face a challenging environment as they look to recover from the crisis. Growth resumed in Europe and Central Asia in 2010 and reached 4.5 percent, following sharp declines during the global crisis. Projections for 2011–13 are for slightly stronger performance, but remain below those for other regions.

For net importers, higher food and energy prices threaten to increase poverty, particularly in Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan, and the continued financial concerns in Western Europe provides added uncertainty. The World Bank remains committed to supporting the countries in the region as they continue to recover from the crisis and take the necessary steps to improve the lives of their citizens.”

Philippe Le Houérou, World Bank Vice President for the Europe and Central Asia Region.

Read the full story »

Editor’s note: Information about the WordPress ban in Kazakhstan is slowly trickling out. On 15 July, it was revealed that the ban is ostensibly due to two WordPress blogs that fell afoul of Kazakh censors, but one of the blogs appears not to have existed and the other was taken down from WordPress for violating the latter’s terms of service. neweurasia’s Schwartz reports.

According to neweurasia‘s Asqat, Kazakhstan’s Minister of Communications and Information, Askar K. Zhumagaliev, has announced that the WordPress ban will be lifted soon, although the official didn’t say precisely when. In the meantime, I’m still trying to make sense of what even happened. Back on 15 July, the following comment and reply appeared on Zhumagaliev’s blog:

[...] Пожалуйста дайте срочное указание в Казахтелеком. Пусть сделают полное отображение блога на bakhytzhan10.wordpess.com Я думаю сотни людей сейчас испытывают затруднения. На wordpress заходят,а на приборную панель попасть не могу!

[...] Please give an indication of an emergency in Kazakhtelecom. Let them do the full display on a blog bakhytzhan10.wordpess.com I think hundreds of people are now experiencing difficulties. We can sign into WordPress but not access the dashboard!

25 мая 2011 года решением Сарыаркинского районного суда г. Астана наложен запрет на распространение казахстанскими провайдерами информации, размещенной на интернет-ресурсах www.djamat.wordpress.com и www.caucase.wordpress.com и признанной противоречащей законодательным актам Республики Казахстан. В этой связи, доступ к блог-платформе wordpress.com закрыт, так как все блоги, размещенные на данном интернет-ресурсе, обладают идентичными IP-адресами.

May 25, 2011 – The district court of Saryarka Astana decided to ban from distribution by Kazakh providers information posted on the websites djamat.wordpress.com and caucase.wordpress.com, which were found to contradict the legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In this regard, access to the WordPress.com blog platform is closed, as are all blogs are posted on this web resource [because they] have identical IP-addresses.

I went looking for information about these two blogs. Read the full story »

Translator’s Note: There is active collaboration between criminal groups and security forces in the Almaty oblast, according to the Muslim Committee for Human Rights in Central Asia (MCHRCA) and the Muslims Union of Kazakhstan (MUK). They claim to have received many complaints from the citizens of Iliy region about illegal actions that usually remain unpunished. Originally written by neweurasia’s Avicenna (RUS)

According to the Muslim Committee for Human Rights in Central Asia (MCHRCA) and the Muslims Union of Kazakhstan (MUK), two citizens of Iliy region, A.Zuev and O. Norgaimer, who were victims of attacks from criminals, no longer trust the police and are ready to use any possible measures to protect themselves. They say that there is a grossly evident merge between security forces and organized crime groups.

The Muslim activists have appealed to the Minister of Internal Affairs A. Kasymov, Prosecutor General A. Daulbaev and the Vice Chairman of the Nur Otan Party N. Nigmatullin to take tough measures in order to re-establish law and order in the Almaty oblast. They are demanding an investigation into various security bodies and are planning their own, as well. In the event that police officers or prosecutors in Iliy are proven to be cooperating with criminal networks, the activists will demand their their immediate resignation and that they be held responsible before the law.