President Islam Karimov's administration in Uzbekistan wants school-age children to be in school and studying. Yet a new rule imposed on schools and universities indicates that officials are worried Uzbek youngsters are learning too much.
China’s top military officer, Gen. Chen Bingde, is making an extended visit to Central Asia in advance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Beijing.
Chen’s first stop on his Central Asian swing was Uzbekistan, where he held talks on May 31 with Uzbek Defense Minister Kabul Berdiev. "Uzbekistan firmly sticks to the one-China policy and supports China's stance on issues related to Taiwan, Xinjiang and Tibet," the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, reported. During meetings with other Uzbek military officials, Chen expressed a desire for an expansion of “pragmatic cooperation” between Beijing and Tashkent, according to a separate Xinhua report.
Also on Chen’s itinerary are stops in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. While in Tajikistan, Chen, who serves as the chief of People’s Liberation Army’s general staff, will attend a meeting of SCO military chiefs on June 7 in Tajikistan, according to the People’s Daily online. He is also slated to attend a SCO-sponsored counter-terrorism exercise in Tajikistan that will run from June 8-14.
Meanwhile, Tajik President Imomali Rahmon, is wrapping up a five-day visit to China that began on June 1. Following the bilateral portion of his trip, Rahmon will attend the Beijing SCO summit on June 6-7.
In Turkmenistan, the former Soviet Union’s conflict with Nazi Germany is no longer “Great” nor is it “Patriotic.”
According to a report distributed by the opposition news website, The Chronicle of Turkmenistan, Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has banned the use of the term “Great Patriotic War” in reference to the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi forces.
State-controlled Turkmen media outlets employed the term in their coverage of Victory Day commemorations this past May 9. But immediately after the holiday, news outlet received instructions from the Ministry of Culture to use the term “1941-1945 war” from now on to describe the Soviet-Nazi conflict, the Chronicle of Turkmenistan reported.
The report went on to quote some journalists who said that some television and radio broadcasts that had been prepared for broadcast before the edict was issued had to be re-edited before they could be aired.
The Great Patriotic War remains the most widely used term in the CIS to describe the conflict. The term was first used just days after Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
A brawl involving groups of Kyrgyz and Uzbek labor migrants in Moscow on May 20 resulted in the detention of 79 individuals. According to one news account, lingering hostility stemming from inter-ethnic rioting in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 spurred the confrontation in the Russian capital.
Police intervened quickly on May 20 after receiving reports that two groups of Central Asian men were menacing each other at about 6 pm. Two Kyrgyz men reportedly were hospitalized, one with a stab wound. There were no other reports of serious injuries in connection with the incident.
Most of those taken into custody were released after providing written statements. The website operated by the Dozhd television channel reported that the Moscow clash was effectively a continuation of the inter-ethnic violence that engulfed southern Kyrgyzstan almost two years ago. Hundreds of people, most of them Uzbeks, were killed amid the 2010 rioting. Thousands of Uzbeks were also displaced.
