A government commission has been formed to investigate the explosion on the Termez-Kurgan-Tyube rail line, "for the purposes of determining the reasons and conditions for the crime committed," according to Uzbekistan's state newspapers and the pro-government site gazeta.uz. There were no casualties according to official reports.
The explosion too place in the south of Surkhandarya region, near the Uzbek-Afghan border and not from from the border with Tajikistan.
The semi-official website uzmetronom.com, which often gets leaks from Uzbekistan's power ministries, says an official announcement of the explosion only appeared in the government and parliament newspapers today.
Uzmetronom.com didn't have much more to add to the official announcement, except that the Interior Ministry held an emergency session on the 17th and that their main version of events is that it was a terrorist act.
The Russian daily news service regnum.ru also waited two days to report the Russian Railways announcement of November 17 that tickets would not be sold from Galaba to Amuzang because the line was closed, and also that tickets on the Moscow-Kulyab line would not be sold for Amuzang and Kulyab because "the supports for the rail bridge had been destroyed."
Top: Turkmen human rights defenders, Google Earth; Bottom: OSCE
Top: Seydi exterior, interior, 2007; Google Earth satellite photo; Bottom: OSCE seminar in Ashgabat on penitentiary reform with European experts, November 2011
As Forum 18 News Service and Human Rights Watch have reported, there are at least 11 religious believers in Turkmenistan's Seydi labor camp in the Lebap region.
The photos above were taken in 2007 by human rights defenders who cannot give their names for safety reasons. Google Earth also provides a satellite view. The middle rectangle on the north-western diagonal is the general-regimen camp, where the prisoners of conscience are being held. The upright rectangle on the western side is the strict-regimen camp. The main gate of the camp is on the lower long side, with the road leading down to the southeast.
Imurad Nurliev, the pastor for Light of the World, a Protestant congregation in the town of Mary, is one of the prisoners in Seydi. Pastor Nurliev was sentenced to four years of imprisonment on October 21, 2010 for allegedly swindling funds from four of his parishioners who had visited a shelter run by the church in 2010. All four alleged that Pastor Nurliev forced them to pay a contribution to the congregation, which a trial court ruled as swindling.
Yet as the human rights organizations have reported, one of the alleged victims was in prison for much of the time the alleged swindling was said to have taken place. And in May 2010, the congregants of Light of the World Church were summoned to the Mary city police department, where they were threatened with further harassment, in the presence of police and Ministry of National Security officers, if they did not give evidence against Pastor Nurliev.
Forum 18 reports that ten other religious prisoners are serving sentences for refusal to perform compulsory military service. They are all Jehovah's Witnesses.
An explosion on a railroad on the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan border was a "terrorist act," the Russian news service RIA Novosti reported. The explosion apparently occurred between the Galaba and Amuzang stations on the line between Termez, at the southern tip of Uzbekistan, and Kurgan-Tyube in Tajikistan.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the wheel of a Chevrolet Spark in Tashkent, October 2011.
As expected, General Motors (GM) has formally opened up its new plant in Uzbekistan with local joint venture partner UzAvtosanoat (GM has a 52 percent stake). Like all firms in Uzbekistan, UzAvtosanoat is state controlled and was even founded by President Islam Karimov himself in 1992. The new facility is slated to employ 1,200 people and produce more than 225,000 engines.
GM's plant has become something of a showcase for the US Administration's new Silk Road initiative, and is supposed to be emblematic of the opportunities coming for Uzbek business people/government officials to make money from cooperation with the US. That's why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonstratively paid a visit last month.
At a conference November 14 on Central Asia organized by conservative think-tank Jamestown Foundation, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert O. Blake, Jr. responded to an audience question about why Uzbekistan didn't sign the recent Istanbul declaration on post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan -- first with a dodge (he said he couldn't speak for Tashkent) and then with an enthusiastic appreciation for GM:
Secretary Clinton as many of you know was recently in Uzbekistan and also in Tajikistan. She had the opportunity to tour the General Motors plant in Tashkent. That plant itself is quite an interesting example of how Uzbekistan itself can benefit from greater integration. The plant itself is now producing 200,000 vehicles and drive trains. And most of those or a good portion of those are being exported to other parts of the region.
Yet another trial of devout Muslims is under way in Tashkent region, involving 16 Muslims who worshipped outside strict state controls, the independent site uznews.net reports. The men are accused of "creation or leadership of, or participation in an extremist religious, separatist, fundamentalist or other banned organization" under Art. 223 of the Uzbek Criminal Code, the usual charge against such believers.
Sukrat Ikramov, leader of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists in Uzbekistan, says the number of such cases in increasing with every year, uznews.net reported. The suspects are all tried behind closed doors.
In March 2011, when she came to visit her son in prison, Mirkarimova learned that he had been brutally beaten, and she was not allowed to see him -- he had been thrown in a punishment cell. She was told to return in two weeks, and then later found he still had bruises on his body. In May, her son was moved to a prison hospital in Tashkent, and she brought him medicine, and took some letters from him. In one letter he asked to transmit an appeal from prisoners about beatings in prison which was addressed to an official whose job involved oversight of prison conditions. The official promised Mirkarimova that he would investigate her son's beating, but then he later refused to meet with her.
The Turkmenistan state media has been going full blast with the news of even more reserves found in the already-huge South Yolotan deposits in the southern part of the country. The findings put Turkmenistan in the category of the country with the world's second largest gas reserves; previously it was listed fourth or fifth.
In light of the discovery of "super-gigantic zones of gas deposits," as the State News Agency of Turkmenistan calls them, and for the purpose of linking South Yolotan-Osman, Minara and adjacent fields into a single system, President Berdymukhamedov decreed that the linked reserves should be called "Galkynysh."
"Galkynysh" -- the Turkmen word for "revival" -- is what many things are called in Turkmenistan -- starting with the government-controlled civic movement turned out to perform chores for the state and cheer the president's initiatives, and moving on to various companies and products.
Berdymukhamedov calls the period of his rule "the era of new revival" -- so it seems fitting that this mega-gas deposit should get the same name.
The Chinese government has given Turkmenistan two soft loans of more than $8 billion to extract gas from South Yolotan and ship it in a pipeline via Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to China. That major investment seems to be the key reason why the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation and Turkmen ministries have already built the pipeline and got it pumping already -- unlike Western-backed projects.
News Briefing Central Asia reports that despite -- or because of -- numerous restrictions on civil rights in Turkmenistan, public legal aid is becoming a growth industry.
About a year after Turkmen president Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov came to power in 1997, he began calling for legal advice centres to open. The numbers are still small for a nation of five million – about four centres in the capital Ashgabat and another six in urban areas around the country. Legal advice units also operate within state institutions and some other kinds of organisations, although not all are empowered to represent clients in court.
It's good if more Turkmen citizens can try to get justice when their land is arbitrarily taken from them during some government renovation program
But as NBCA points out, it has its limits -- if citizens tried to raise more challenging issues like access to information, they could find themselves harassed or even jailed.
It's not clear that even those ordinary citizens who fell victim to the blast in Abadan would be able to effectively litigate for compensation that has been slow in coming, for example.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov made a state visit to Pakistan November 14 and cut a gas deal with Pakistan, the State News Agency of Turkmenistan and international wire services reported.
Reuters reported that Turkmenistan and Pakistan had "agreed" on a price for its gas to be sold to Pakistan in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline.
Yet Reuters also cited Turkmen government officials requesting anonymity who said neither the exact price of gas or the volume of the sale were set. And Pakistan's largest circulation daily The Dawn reported more prudently that the two countries had "agreed to expedite energy projects."
That means negotiations could still well drag on, delaying TAPI, despite an agreement by the state parties nearly a year ago in Ashgabat in December 2010. The 1,700-kilometer pipeline, currently estimated to cost $7.6 billion is intended to deliver about 33 billion cubic meters per year, Turkmen Oil and Gas Minister Bayramgeldy Nedirov said recently.
While Neitral'niy Turkmenistan, the state daily, reported on the signing of a joint declaration on the sale and purchase of gas, no more details were provided. When Ashgabat finally signs gas deals -- and it can sign them quickly under the right conditions as it did with China -- the details may not be reported, and the only way you can be sure they are concluded is when the pictures of construction workers start appearing.
Turkmenistan's annual Oil and Gas Conference opened today, with hundreds of energy executives and government officials flocking to Ashgabat to see if the president -- who decides everything -- will do any further "diversifying" of his country's vast hydrocarbons reserves.
In greetings sent to the conference (he typically doesn't attend in person), President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov actually didn't include his usual boilerplate on "diversification" policy, i.e. the drive to create alternative routes to end dependency on Russia, which in any event isn't buying much Turkmen gas these days. He focused more on the importance of acquiring high technology.
And while the Turkmen leader has appeared to specifically endorse the Trans-Caspian pipeline project of late, and even mentioned Nabucco, he didn't mention any concrete projects today, according to the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH):
Turkmenistan's policy is aimed at the leading development of the oil and gas complex, where the main priorities are advanced technology, the latest equipment, in order to ensure the effective exploitation of Turkmenistan's gigantic potential as a world energy power. The head of state expressed confidence that the current exhibit would become yet another good opportunity to determine promising directions for joint work on mutually advantageous terms with everyone who wishes to become a partner of our country.
As the Old Spice man might say, some people who look at the Arab Spring demonstrations, then look at Central Asia, then look at the Arab spring demonstrations, then back at Central Asia, say sadly, Central Asia is not like the Middle East, but it could be if only...people were less timid...or the West stopped supporting the regime ...or if more people joined Facebook groups.
Of course, even with similarities, like a dictator in power for a long time (President Islam Karimov has ruled for 22 years in Uzbekistan), even with the US seemingly interested in downplaying human rights problems over the greater need for a supply route to the Afghanistan war, there are major differences between Uzbekistan and say, Egypt or Tunisia.
The virtual absence of independent local or foreign media in Uzbekistan is one of those differences. There are almost no independent media outlets outside of a few brave web sites or newsletters emailed by dissidents -- and very few civic groups able to function independently. So when people *do* protest, we don't always hear about it -- or at least not right away. The problem is exacerbated when Uzbekistan becomes a foreign policy story and drives the other local stories off the top of the Google news results.
Two weeks ago, about 50 women turned out in the cold weather in the Pakhtakor district of the Jizzak region to protest the fact that gas and electricity had been turned off by authorities in their region for nine days, Radio Ozodlik, the Uzbek Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
