Leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, informal summit, May 2010. Prime Minister Mirziyoyev is at the far right.
The other day I wrote about Uzbekistan's Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev -- if it really is him -- collecting friends on Facebook.
And the debate continues as to whether it really is him.
A EurasiaNet reader Sarah Kendzior writes on Twitter: "Mirziyoyev is not on Facebook. I wrote about this months ago, and so did others (in Uzbek)."
In July, Kendzior noted that the prime minister's Facebook wall posts were "unironic" but wondered if he was really "...a Leon Panetta fan (?!)".
The article in Uzbek in Vatandosh she references denies that the Facebook page is really his, and cites the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers. Vatandosh also mentioned that some of the photos on the account seem to have been taken from the Internet.
But Uzbek colleagues have pointed out to me that some of the photos do seem to be original and do not seem to be from government sites, and they think the site could well be his. As they point out, why hasn't Mirziyoyev had this site closed down, if it isn't really his? In July, when the article was written, there were 400 friends; today, four months later, there are 1,825 friends so it's getting a lot of attention for Uzbekistan.
Facebook doesn't have a system for public figures to notate their personal account as "validated" as Twitter does, but it does enable public figures to make public profiles to which members can subscribe. Mirziyoyev's account is of the personal type.
The state daily Neitral'nyi Turkmenistan ran an interview with parliamentary officials December 2 that purports to illustrate how elections will be free in Turkmenistan.
The only problem is that the enabling legislation to guarantee a plurality of political parties has never been passed, and every aspect of the nomination process will be at the discretion of local officials.
Last time "free" elections were held in 2007 and Gurbanguly Berdymukhahmedov handily prevailed, there were some opponents permitted to spoke at carefully-choreographed regional meetings on approved topics that gave the public a bit of a chance to vent about mismanaged agriculture or poor education. So we can expect some of that next February in the next presidential elections, but it does not appear at this time as if the all-powerful Turkmen leader will legalize any serious alternative parties, much less allow any real rival to appear on the scene.
Gurbangul Bayramov, chairman of the Mejlis (parliamentary) Committee on Work with Local Representative Government Bodies and Self-Management was interviewed by Neitral'nyi Turkmenistan and asked about participation in the elections by civic groups.
Bayramov cited the constitutional guarantee for citizens to "create political parties" (note the plural) and other civic associations and the obligation for them to "conduct their activity under the law". So in theory, people could just form a group and show up -- except there is no law to govern them. The law on civic associations permits citizens to "create associations on the basis of common interests to achieve common goals." But they must register at the Ministry of Justice -- and there's the hitch -- officials will only legalize those organizations that are loyal to the government.
The International Partnership for Human Rights, a coalition of European and Central Asian human rights groups, has released a new report this month, Central Asia: Censorship and Control of the Internet and Other New Media.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has been praised by Western leaders for increasing Internet access, but it turns out that with the average monthly salary only $285 in Turkmenistan, the $215 monthly Internet fee or even the dollar-an-hour Internet cafe are beyond most people's budgets. In any event, the Internet is heavily regulated, and there is only one state-run provider, Turkmentelecom, which blocks independents sites like gundogar.org and chrono-tm.org as well as Facebook, Twitter, and Live Journal.
Chinese Huawei Technologies and Finnish-German Nokia Siemens Networks have signed contracts with the country’s Ministry of Communications to upgrade the state-owned mobile network and introduce new services. Yet concerns have been expressed that these companies may agree to assist the Turkmen government in monitoring cell phone and internet use in exchange for lucrative deals, says the study.
Although the report is quite bleak describing heavy police control of the Internet and the cancellation of cell phone service for 2.4 million people when the contract of Russia's mobile company MTS was not extended, there are some glimmers of hope. Last July, some citizen journalists came forward to try to cover the explosion in Abadan when the authorities tried to cover it up. While a stringer for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was jailed for his coverage of Abadan, after a worldwide outcry he was released.
Mobile service has continued to deteriorate, says the report, and recent travelers to Ashgabat confirm difficulties in getting cell phone coverage.
Uzbekistan is scraping the bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index again this year, tied with Turkmenistan at the 177th spot out of 182 countries -- just above Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea and Somalia.
In an interview with Richard Solash of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Miklos Marschall, the deputy managing director of Transparency International, says that countries that were performing poorly in the past tended to stay in the low rankings: "corruption is so endemic that that is almost the system. So it's not a deviation from the system, it is the system."
The Arab Spring uprisings show that people are losing patience with their corrupt systems, says Marschall. That "should send an important message to some governments in Central Asia and some other places that corruption can lead to regime changes," he said.
Marschall is rather bleak on the prospects for these countries.
"The really, I would say, dark situation [is] in countries like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where there is hardly any accountability whatsoever. The governing elites have practically no accountability," he says. "There is no political opposition. There is no civil society. There is no free press. So these are basically almost closed societies, and that's why there is no improvement."
That's a bit harsh, as in Uzbekistan, there is a small, hardy core of human rights defenders and independent journalists who do get the word out, and political opposition groups in exile do have some resonance inside the country, although it is difficult to measure.
As Turkmenistan continues to pursue its own pipeline projects -- primarily with Beijing, but also promoting the Turkmen-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and indicating some support for the Trans-Caspian Pipeline -- Russia has become increasingly belligerent. Maybe this is just to gain a bargaining position, as there are indications that Turkmenistan's new gas deal with China will help delay the Trans-Caspian Pipeline between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, designed to circumvent Russia.
But could the Kremlin really start a war over the monopolist Gazprom losing one third of its business due to the TCP, if Turkmenistan really has enough gas -- and foreign investments -- to supply all comers?
The Bug Pit has asked the question of whether Russia would start a war, quoting various Russian analysts including Mikhail Aleksandrov of the Institute of CIS Countries: "Remembering what NATO did in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, Russia has no barriers, moral or legal ones, for the use of force in the Caspian Sea."
The theory is that Russia would need a pretext to start military action -- but past experience shows that Moscow can exploit accidents (or -- as some in Ashgabat darkly hint -- cause them) such as the explosion in April 2009 on a Turkmen pipeline which triggered (or displayed?) deteriorating relations between Russia and Turkmenistan. The two countries are still arguing over whether it was Gazprom's fault for shutting off gas too quickly when it sharply reduced purchases after failing to get a lower price, or Turkmenistan's fault for having aging infrastructure.
Past experience has also shown that Russia can force other countries to allow themselves to be provoked -- as it did with Georgia. Could this happen with Turkmenistan?
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, November 23, 2011, China.
While the European Union was left still fretting over how much Turkmenistan was committed to the Trans-Caspian Pipeline, and while Russia was left fuming that Turkmenistan shouldn't be building a pipeline without its consent (and supposedly didn't have enough gas to fill it anyway), President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov waltzed off to Beijing last week and picked up an order for an additional 25 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas.
The generous purchase from the Chinese National Petroleum Company brings to 65 bcm the amount to be pumped annually from Turkmenistan to China with soft loans of more than $8 billion -- double the volume of gas originally announced when construction began on the pipeline in 2009.
Turkmenistan has had diplomatic relations for 20 years with China. "The Turkmen and Chinese peoples are united by the respect for rich and unique culture and traditions of their countries," said the official Turkmen government website -- in other words, Berdymukhamedov never has to hear about human rights from Chinese leaders. For its part, Ashgabat supports China's "one-state policy" and opposes Taiwan independence in any form.
The Turkmen leader met with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other leaders on November 23 to discuss expansion of trade relations. Hu proposed a five-point plan including "strengthening political trust with high-level exchanges" between the two countries' governments, legislatures and political parties (Turkmenistan has only one; China has the dominating Communist Party but eight other parties under its direction). The Chinese president also suggested the two countries should consult "on major issues of mutual concern"; increase cooperation in non-resource sectors such as transportation and telecommunications; and expand people-to-people cultural exchanges.
In a sweeping maneuver on his trip last week to Beijing, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov simultaneously doubled China’s initial purchase order of gas to 65 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year; undercut Russia which has been negotiating to sell gas to China at a higher price; and
Perhaps this belongs to the department of "if you can't beat them, join them" -- the prime minister of Uzbekistan seems to have a Facebook page. (It could be a spoofed page, but it appears authentic.)
On Facebook, Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev (if it's really him) doesn't just have an automatically-generated public figure page or a fan page that somebody made -- it's his individual page. He has 1,787 friends.
Although Uzbekistan has been trying to control the Internet to prevent any imitation of the Arab Spring, the number of web users has doubled to more than 7.7 million in the last year. The government has even encouraged an ersatz Facebook social network called Muloqot that promises data-scraping by the secret police instead of just by a private company.
From the Facebook page, you can see that Mirziyoyev is inspired by Nicolas Sarkozy, Lee Myung-bak, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and last but not least -- or maybe last and therefore least? -- Islam Karimov.
Under activities, Mirziyoyev has other pages he likes by Leon Panetta, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, MTS Uzbekistan -- and Karimov and Obama again among others.
For his religion, he puts "100 percent Islam," and for his political views he posts "conservative" which comes with a picture of the 18th century Irish statesman and Whig Edmund Burke. What does that mean, exactly, this "like" of a Western conservative? Burke supported the American revolution, but opposed the French revolution.
Mirziyoyev doesn't seem to control the comments on his wall very much -- under his last uploaded photo, which shows him flanked by Lukashenka and other regional leaders, a friend writes, "Except Medvedev, this is a nice shashlyk of gansters!"
Elena Urlaeva and Abdujalil Boymatov with signs calling for President Karimov's resignation in 2003.
Just as Uzbek authorities are reportedly releasing one political prisoner unlawfully held in a psychiatric hospital -- he happens to be President Islam Karimov's nephew -- they are busy threatening a human rights activist with forced psychiatric confinement, a practice still lingering in Uzbekistan from the Soviet era.
Elena Urlaeva of the Human Rights Alliance received a notice last week from Tashkent Psychiatric Clinic No. 2 that her case was being transferred to a court with a request for compulsory psychiatric treatment because she had supposedly violated the terms of her out-patient status, uznews.net reports.
Urlaeva says she was last put in a psychiatric hospital in 2005, after which the court pronounced her unfit to stand trial but then released her. Earlier in 2003, she was examined independently by Russian doctors who certified that she was sane.
The government seemed to drop the psychiatric angle for some years, so Urlaeva has been trying to understand why this notice has been contrived now. There's some speculation that perhaps it's a response to her recent involvement in cases in the city of Yangiyul in Tashkent region, where Urlaeva says she has discovered corrupt and violent police and prosecutors.
Traffic continues to be stalled on the Termez-Kurgan-Tyube line as a result of an explosion on November 17 between the Galaba and Amuzang stations, Choihona reported citing the independent Tajik news service Asia-Plus.
