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ASHGABAT (TCA) — On Sunday, November 18, the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat will sponsor screenings of three critically-acclaimed independent documentary films, at Ashgabat Cinema, followed by a Q&A session with American film experts.
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BISHKEK (TCA) — Kyrgyzstan’s President Sooronbai Jeenbekov has accused his predecessor Almazbek Atambayev of attempting to unduly influence him, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reports.
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DUSHANBE (TCA) — On November 16, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon set the first turbine of the Rogun hydroelectric dam in motion at a ceremony attended by thousands to mark the latest milestone in this ambitious $3.9-billion project involving Italian company Salini Impregilo to double the country’s energy production.
Rahmon pressed a red button to switch on the plant’s first of six planned turbines.
President Rahmon watched as the rotor of Unit 6 came to life in the dam’s power house in the presence of government officials and foreign dignitaries, including World Bank Vice President, Europe and Central Asia Cyril Muller, Italian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Manlio Di Stefano and Salini Impregilo Chief Executive Pietro Salini.
Unit 6 is the first of six turbines being installed at the dam. With each having a capacity of 600 megawatts (MW), the total installed capacity will eventually be 3,600 MW, equal to three nuclear power plants. This huge capacity will make Rogun the most powerful hydroelectric dam in Central Asia.
A second turbine is expected to start producing electricity in 2019 in what is called early generation: putting into operation part of the dam before it is completed, Salini Impregilo said in a press release. The early start of the turbines will allow Tajikistan to cope with internal demand for electricity, especially during the winter months when thousands of families are in need light and heat. It will also be able to raise money from the sale of part of the electricity produced to neighbouring countries.
Commissioned by OJSC Rogun Hydropower Project, the state-run company that is coordinating the project, the rockfill dam with a loam core is being built by Salini Impregilo to become the tallest dam in the world at 335 metres. Salini Impregilo is doing the main civil works and related services. With the dam crest at an elevation of 1,300 meters above the sea level, Rogun will also become the world’s highest dam, breaking the record held by the Nurek Dam, also in Tajikistan.
Located in the upper reaches of the Vakhsh River in the Pamir Mountains, Rogun is about 90 kilometres from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
Dushanbe hopes the $3.9 billion project built on the Vakhsh river will not only make the country energy self-sufficient, but plans to export some of its output to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reported.
The project was launched in the late 1970s but halted after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Construction restarted in late October 2016, less than two months after the announced death of Islam Karimov, the long-term president of neighboring Uzbekistan. Karimov opposed the project, saying the dam would reduce water flows to Uzbekistan’s cotton fields.
Last year, Tajikistan raised $500 million from an inaugural international bond offering to help finance the construction, which is being carried out by an Italian company, Salini Impregilo.
Dushanbe hopes to generate money to finance further construction at the plant after its starts producing energy.
ALMATY (TCA) — Under the pretext of fighting terrorism and extremism, authorities in Kazakhstan are waging a war on opposition and dissent. We are republishing this article on the issue, written by Joanna Lillis, originally published by Eurasianet:
Askhat Sharbat stood up in a Kazakh court earlier this month and admitted to a litany of grave offenses.
He allowed his rented apartment to be used as an improvised studio for a video propagandizing terrorism. And then, last November, he distributed this footage through a popular messaging app. Sharbat even agreed he had expressed support for a political organization now banned by the government for purported extremism.
But Sharbat was not in the dock. He was a witness for the prosecution in the trial of three men accused of hatching a violent plot to overthrow 78-year-old President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Sharbat’s testimony, given in an Almaty court over several days this month, elicited howls of protest from the dock on November 8. The men on trial, Almat Zhumagulov, Kenzhebek Abishev and Oralbek Omyrov, deny the charges of propagandizing terrorism, which rest heavily on the footage distributed by Sharbat. What they cannot understand – and protested about in court – is why they, and not their accuser, are on trial.
Rights activists and commentators watching this peculiar case detect a familiar story of political repression and score-settling. It is not religious extremism that mostly appears to unnerve Kazakhstan’s government, but dissent.
The main item of evidence presented by the prosecution has been widely disseminated and credulously reported by local media. It looks almost like a parody.
The footage shows three men in white face masks standing in front of a black flag bearing a resemblance to the Islamic State standard. One figure uncertainly reads out a script, urging violent jihad against Kazakhstan. He is flanked by a pair holding fake AK-47 rifles.
The case of the prosecution is not that the people in the footage are Zhumagulov, Abishev and Omyrov. Those individuals have never been identified. The narrative being weaved by the prosecution is far more convoluted.
The trio now on trial say they barely knew one another when they were arrested. The one thing they did have in common, however, was involvement in an informal political discussion group called Alash. The group would gather in Almaty’s Mahatma Gandhi Park and discuss, among other things, their unhappiness with Nazarbayev’s rule. It was hardly underground plotting though. The meetings were broadcast live on Facebook.
“What united us was a striving for justice,” Mamet Kabylbekov, a 52-year-old electrician who used to attend, told Eurasianet. “We just raised social questions. We have concerns about what’s happening in the country. We want to live well, in a democratic country.”
The only defendant with a demonstrable link to the would-be jihadi video is Omyrov. In one cutaway sequence also released to the media, he is shown appearing to give stage directions to the masked men.
This has raised questions about Omyrov’s precise role in the drama. The other defendants’ supporters say they knew him only slightly – in Zhumagulov’s case – or not at all – in Abishev’s. They have even suggested he may have been a plant tasked with infiltrating their group.
Omyrov denies these allegations.
To link Omyrov’s walk-on part in the jihadi video to at least one of the other defendants, another piece of video evidence has been produced. This footage is filmed in the same apartment, purportedly on the same day, but this time there is no talk of violence and revolution. The shaky mobile phone clip pans from Zhumagulov to Omyrov and a group of other men as they sit on a sofa and pledge solidarity with an opposition group called Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, or DVK.
As to Abishev, he is not even in this video. He claims never to have stepped foot in the apartment shown and that he does not have a smartphone capable of making or viewing videos. He denies ever meeting Omyrov before their arrest.
To wrap him into the plot, it takes one more step. Prosecutors have presented wired conversations said to be between Zhumagulov and Abishev. In these exchanges, the pair allegedly discuss plans to set up terror cells, obtain funding and weapons and to target law enforcement officers for assault.
Zhumagulov and Abishev have not acknowledged it is their voices in the recordings. It is not clear who taped the conversations and with what authority.
With the chain of evidence seemingly so weak, Sharbat’s testimony feels crucial. He performed poorly on the witness stand, however, squirming under questioning from defense lawyers and defendants. He appeared to have forgotten so many basic details in his account that one exasperated attorney, Ainur Omarova, pleaded with the court to order a psychiatric assessment to determine his fitness to testify.
The judge denied the motion, as well as another request to have Sharbat take a lie-detector test.
Skeptics of the state’s case see this as yet another in a long list of criminal prosecutions designed to target people linked to DVK, the banned group created by exiled opposition figure and disgraced banker Mukhtar Ablyazov – a man despised by President Nazarbayev.
Zhumagulov has made no secret of his support for DVK, which was not a crime until the movement was dubbed extremist in March – three months after his arrest. His Facebook profile displayed the DVK logo, bearing the slogan: “The time has come for change!”
Abishev has expressed sympathy for some of Ablyazov’s ideas, but his dalliance with politics has been expressed primarily through symbolism-heavy poetry. His work has included an allegorical piece containing a Jungle Book-like cast of characters that describes the demise of a personality cult devoted to a lion presumed to be an allusion to Nazarbayev.
The authorities deny they pursue politically motivated prosecutions. Rights campaigners aren’t buying it.
Veteran activist Yevgeniy Zhovtis has characterized this trial of Zhumagulov, Abishev and Omyrov – who face up to 12 years in jail – as “a selective approach against dissidents under the noisy name of fighting terrorism and extremism.”
In his testimony to the court, Ryspek Sarsenbay, an opposition activist who has attended Alash discussions, also identified politics as the impetus for the trial.
“These guys have become sacrifices in the never-ending battle between the president and the fugitive banker, even though they have nothing to do with Ablyazov and even though they haven’t taken any money from him and haven’t carried out any orders from him,” he told the court.
A report published on November 5 by the Poland-based Open Dialogue Foundation bolsters accusations that Kazakhstan is waging war on dissidents. Between March and October, the report found, over 30 people were targeted with legal measures for posting criticism on social media.
Confirming this picture involves just a short walk for the few reporters following the case of Zhumagulov, Abishev and Omyrov. In the very same court building, just down the corridor, another man, Aset Abishev – no relation to Kenzhebek Abishev – is on trial on charges of being a member and financial supporter of DVK.
In that courtroom, prosecutors are making little secret of where the problem lies.
Abishev, the prosecutor argued in court on November 14, “illegally and deliberately published and posted DVK material on his Facebook page, discrediting the head of state, members of his family and the ruling power of the Republic of Kazakhstan.”
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ASTANA (TCA) — On November 15, the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic Peter Pellegrini arrived in Kazakhstan with the first official visit. President Nursultan Nazarbayev received Pellegrini, and a working meeting of the Prime Ministers of the two countries was also held, which followed by a Kazakh-Slovak business forum, the official website of the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan reported.
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DUSHANBE (TCA) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $35 million grant to reconnect Tajikistan’s electricity system to the Central Asian Power System (CAPS) through interconnection with the Uzbekistan system. This will help expand regional energy trade and improve regional energy efficiency among countries connected to CAPS, ADB’s Country Office in Dushanbe said on November 15.
