Got my Schengen visa today…
now I can get ready for my blogging trip to Berlin 
Bad times for Kyrgyzstan
The situation in Kyrgyzstan is not getting any better after the April events, which took away lives of 85 people. Despite the visible stability and security in the country, it feels like a calm before the storm. People are very skeptical about the interim government headed by Roza Otunbaeva. Nonpublicity of actions and several staff-shuffling in the key positions of the government are making people think that the interim government is busy dividing the power among each other.
Moreover, ex-president (?) Bakiev, who found shelter in Belarus, keeps telling that he will not resign until the situation is stable in the country. In the South of the country, where Bakiev is from, there are rumors that inter-ethnic clash may occur soon. My friends there tell that the tension is rising, as the interim government is doing nothing there.
Southern Kyrgyzstan is like a powder bomb filled with tons of socio-economic problems that is fused by inter-ethnic tension (Uzbeks and Kyrgyz). It can blow up any time. It is a matter of small spark. A friend of mine, who is a journalist for a foreign newspaper, says that yesterday there was a clash between Uzbek and Kyrgyz youth in Furkat village, which is near the city of Osh. There is no information how it ended.
If the interim government will not take urgent measures on these issues in the South, the inter-ethnic conflict is unavoidable. And if it happens, it will not be like in 90s – few houses burnt down and several people died. Then, majority were poor and no one expected the conflict to happen. Today, when there are a lot of rich people and obtaining illegal weapons is not a problem, the conflict, in case it occurs, will be of big scale with great number of victims.
PS. Border with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are still closed due to unstable situation in Kyrgyzstan. It is creating huge problems for Kyrgyz business. Dordoi, the biggest market in Central Asia, is not working properly, as wholesale buyers from Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan cannot come to Kyrgyzstan due to closed borders.
Long Live May Day, comrades!
The Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan (yes, we still have them!) held a May Day rally on May 1 in the Old Square of Bishkek. The rally gathered about 100-150 people, mainly elderly pensioners, who came with portraits of Lenin and Stalin,and with banners that read old Soviet-style slogans like “Energy to People” and “Socialism – the only way out of crisis.”
The Communists spoke about the recent events in Kyrgyzstan and accused the interim government of not protecting workers’ rights. “More than 600 people working in Jogorku Kenesh (Kyrgyz Parliament) lost their jobs after the Parliament was dissolved,” – said Iskhak Masaliev, chairman of the Communist Party. He continued saying that the Communist Party was the only party that had been working hard on protecting workers’ rights in Kyrgyzstan. The rally lasted about an hour, and came to its end with the new party song (with old music), which made some emotional old people cry.
Maybe for these old people the Communist Party still means something, but for generation that grew up in new capitalist and democratic Kyrgyzstan it means just a mere history, the symbols of which have become “cool” recently. Maybe therefore I found the communist rally very entertaining, as you dont see that many soviet things in Bishkek in one day. It felt as if I was back in the Communist Museum in Prague, which I liked a lot during my last visit to Czech Republic.
PS. Personally, I do not agree with some Baltic and Central Asian states that treat their Soviet legacy hostile. It is a recent history, and you can neither change nor erase it. All you can do is learn from the mistakes of the past – it will make you not to repeat them. Therefore, we need to preserve the history, be it good or bad.
For many old people, the Communist Party still means a lot. Not because of the ideology, but because of the mere fact that they lived better under the communism...
Click “read more” to watch the slideshow of all photos from the rally. Read more…
Blogging Germany
Despite the bad sore throat and struggling the consequences of chronic lack of sleep, I went to German Embassy (Botschaft der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Bischkek) today in the morning. The Embassy is located on the intersection of streets Moskovskaya and Razakova, right next to the fancy-schmancy cafe Navigator and high newly built buildings with amazingly expensive apartments.
I was to have an interview at the Embassy at 10 am. I had to leave home late, but due to the light traffic, I could make it on time knocking at the Embassy’s doors at 9:55. The interview was a part of a competetion for the program of the German Federal Foreign Office called “Blogger tour” – a 10-day trip for bloggers/citizen journalists to Berlin aimed at enabling them “to independently discover some aspects of German society while also providing an interesting programme and promoting the exchange of ideas through regular meetings.” Sounds interesting, huh?
I was met by Thomas Arndt, a young cheerful Culture and Communication attaché, who invited me to his big and bright office. We had a long talk about my blogging background, citizen media projects I worked for, the role of citizen media in Central Asia, and of course about Germany and what I like most about it. As Thomas said the German government is doing such programme for the first time, and therefore, it was also interesting for him to be part of it – select a blogger (or even two) from Kyrgyzstan to participate in the programme. The interview went interesting. I was told that they would inform me about the final decision withing couple of weeks (there is another blogger in the competition). So lets keep fingers both crossed and crescented for my success
Honestly, I was pleasantly surprised to know that the German government is trying to communicate with the blogging community of the world. It is a wise step of Germans, I believe, as citizen journalism is becoming amazingly popular lately; and many citizen bloggers have already become opinion leaders in Internet in different parts of the world. Well, it yet again proves the globally accepted fact that Germany is always several steps ahead comparing to other countries in creating and mastering new technologies.
Re-starting the healthy life
Yet another anticipated weekends… Just got back from “weekend jogging”, the first one in 2010. Last time I jogged was in fall of 2009, before it got too cold to run in the mornings.
And It is great that there is a big park nearby, you cant find a better place for jogging in Bishkek, I guess. And the weather was awesome – so warm! Finally spring has come to Bishkek
Emergency help from… 700 km away
… or yet another argument that in Central Asian countries, especially Kyrgyzstan, it is much comfortable and better to live in the capital city rather than in non-capital cities, be them small or big.
Maybe in Europe or in US it does not really matter where you live – in a capital city or a non-capital city, cuz almost everywhere there, you can enjoy at least basic services and products to survive. But in Kyrgyzstan, it is definitely better to live in capital city Bishkek. Not because Bishkek has high new (post-Soviet) buildings, fancy restaurants with cuisines from around the world, newly asphalted roads, modern night clubs, or popular universities… no, not even because your close relative works in the government and can also help you in getting employed by the government…
It is for a simple fact that all Kyrgyz mobile operators’ emergency call service is connected to emergency rooms of hospitals in Bishkek!
A friend from Aravan, my hometown, recently told a story with a fatal end that happened in Aravan, when an old man, who was returning from animal market, had a heart attack on the street and died in a while, because of late emergency help. The reason for late emergency help was a mobile operator, whose emergency call service, which is ’103′ in Kyrgyzstan, was connected to emergency rooms in Bishkek hospitals.
The story tells that when people in Aravan called emergency via their mobile phones and told the address (most probably just a name of the street or intersection of streets), the emergency room accepted the call and told back that their ambulance car would arrive soon. After some time, seeing that emergency help is late, people called emergency room again and asked if their help was coming. Emergency room answered that they made a false alarm, that the ambulance car had been at the given address, and no one needed help there (many street names are the same in most cities of Kyrgyzstan). After arguing for a while, people, who called emergency help, came to realise that they were speaking with capital city Bishkek that is in 700 km away to the North, behind several mountain passes. A person, who had a heart attack, died on the street, as no one could help him on time. Be it in Bishkek or was the mobile operators emergency service connected to local emergency rooms, he might have been rescued…
Click to enlarge
So whenever you come to Kyrgyzstan and visit non-capital cities, make sure that you have landline phone numbers of local hospitals, just in case you need emergency help. Otherwise you have to call Bishkek and get mocked by the emergency room.
Youth Action Fund of Soros to mobilize youth
Spending so much anticipated weekends in the stuffy conference hall of hotel Dostuk, located in the center of Bishkek, packed with young activists throughout Kyrgyzstan. Why? Because I am a winner!
Several months ago “Soros-Kyrgyzstan” (OSI) opened a competition among youth of Kyrgyzstan for small grants projects aimed at educating and mobilizing their peers. As organizers say, there were more than hundred different projects applied, and more than 40 projects were approved. My project, “The Oshington Post”, is one of them 
The purpose of the Youth Action Fund is to identify, inspire, and support small groups of dedicated young people who can mobilize and influence large numbers of their peers to promote open society ideals. OSI created this fund as a flexible way to provide small grants and other support to encourage progressive, youth-driven initiatives that are aligned with OSI’s mission.
My project is aimed at teaching a group of local young journalists in the city of Osh, southern Kyrgyzstan, to new media and online journalism skills. The target group – young journalists – already has its own publication – a students’ newspaper called “The Oshington Post”, where student journalists write on local issues usually neglected by the mainstream media. The particular thing about it is that they write in English, as the project was founded by a US Peace Corps volunteer at the American Center at the Osh State University. The paper is very good, but there is a problem.
The problem is that their publication is on paper, or is so-called a “dead-tree” media. Moreover, the circulation of the paper is very small – about 50 copies per issues – and is distributed among students. And as the paper is in English, the audience of the publication is English-speaking people interested in the issues taking place in southern Kyrgyzstan. Given the huge interest from Western countries in the developments happening in Kyrgyzstan, it is logical to suppose that the paper “The Oshington Post” is not achieving great deal of its target group. Therefore, my project is aimed at onlinizing, if there is a such word, the work of these young journalists via giving them a webpage and a domain name www.oshington.kg. Thus, articles written by them will be available not only to a small group of people in Osh, but bigger audience – everyone arond the world interested in local issues of southern Kyrgyzstan often not covered by mainstream media.
A student at The Oshington Post tried to onlinize the paper, but due to the lack of knowledge in new media and online journalism, his endeavor did not succeed. Therefore, my project aims at giving series of trainings on new media, online journalism and new internet tools to young journalists at the Oshington Post. The final product of the project is a web-site www.oshington.kg, which will be updated by the participants of the project in average 3-4 times a week.
I will post more about the project soon. Now gotta go back to trainings. Seems the weekends gonna be long and interesting
Kashka Suu skiing resort
Kashka Suu is a wonderful skiing resort located in 35 km to the South from capital city Bishkek. Check out some of my photos I made last weekends there.
OMG… the last place in ranking
Olga Reshetkova, one of two skiers representing Kyrgyzstan in Winter Olympics 2010 in Vancouver, came last in qualification race of ladies’ individual sprint classic, held on February 17. Out of 54 skiers form 26 countries, Olga Reshetkova came 54th with the result of 4 minutes and 32,96 seconds, losing almost 55 seconds to Marit Bjoergen of Norway, who later won the gold medal in this race. (click here to see full ranking)
Many started saying that the main achievement is not a victory, but participation (Russian proverb). I personally do not think so, and believe it is a mere losers’ excuse. Well, I hope the other representative of Kyrgyzstan Dmitry Trelevski will do better.
Krultai of Harmony – do we really need it?
Old men in Aksy village (Photo by Fergana.Ru)
The Kyrgyz government is planning to launch the “Kurultai of Harmony” on March 23, 2010, during which 750 community representatives throughout the whole of Kyrgyztan shall gather in Bishkek for direct dialogue with state officials. The Kurultai shall headed by Bakiev himself. It’s intended to to resolve several important problems.
Many people have been wondering — does the country really need it?
My personal answer is no. Why? Primarily because, considering the expense of launching the event, it is yet another unwise decision of spending taxpayers’ money. Today, when every penny must be wisely spent, this will not help the Kyrgyz economy.
There are three other reasons why I think this Kurultai will be a total failure.
Read the full post at neweurasia.
