Work crews and police arrived early June 15 to demolish twelve more homes at the village in Karasai district outside Almaty, Kazakhstan, where an embattled Hare Krishna commune is based. "The houses were literally crushed into dust," Hare Krishna spokesperson Maksim Varfolomeyev said. "By ten o'clock it was all over." The temple remains standing, but the devotees have been ordered to destroy it. Human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis said the local administration chief "doesn't care about the political damage to Kazakhstan's reputation—or to its desire to chair the OSCE." Asked to explain the latest demolitions, one local official told the Norway-based rights watchdog Forum 18: "Here in Kazakhstan the Hare Krishnas are considered to be non-traditional." (Forum 18, June 15) Ironically, the raid comes days after senior Kazakh officials arrived in Romania for an OSCE conference on combating discrimination. (Forum 18, June 6)

Via A-Infos, June 7:

In summer of 2006, during summit of the G8, Russian president Vladimir Putin promised that Russia will join to international program to spread nuclear energy. Russia's role in this project is to be a storage of nuclear waste. Electro-Chemical Industrial Complex of Angarsk (AEHK) was founded 1954, it is located in South-Eastern border of the city of Angarsk, 30 kilometers from Irkutsk and 90 kilometers from lake Baikal. It is a company involved in nuclear fuel cycle, processing concentrate including Uranium to Uranium hexafluoride (UF6), which in turn is enriched to Uranium-235 for the Nuclear Industry. Complex is under administration of Rosatom, Russian Federal Agency on Atom Energy. AEHK is far from uranium mines, nuclear plants and other parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, thus both raw materials and final products of the company will be transferred by the Trans-Siberian railway. Transport of the radioactive materials means additional risks for the people and environment.

A package of constitutional amendments approved May 18 by Kazakhstan's parliament allow President Nursultan Nazarbayev to remain in office for the rest of his life. Under Kazakhstan's current constitution, Nazarbayev—who has been in power since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union—would be required to step down in 2012. Yermek Zhumabayev, chair of a commission that drafted the package, said the elimination of term limits for Nazarbayev was approved in recognition of "the historic role the first president has played in the establishment of our state, as one of the founders of our new independent Kazakhstan." Critics charged that the vote essentially makes Nazarbayev, 66, president for life. "It is a huge step back for the nation," said Aidos Sarimov, a political analyst at the Altynbek Sarsenbayev Foundation, an opposition-linked think-tank in Almaty.

The heads of Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan—Vladimir Putin, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov—met in Turkmenistan May 12 and formalized a decision to build a new gas pipeline along the coast of the Caspian Sea. The new pipeline will carry gas from Central Asia to global markets through Russian territory, shoring up Moscow's position as a main supplier of Europe's energy needs. The project may mean the end of Western plans to build a trans-Caspian pipeline bypassing Russian territory. (New Europe, May 18)

In one of his boldest moves since his swearing-in three months ago, Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has sacked a top security official who helped build the oppressive regime of the late Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. Official media announced that Akmurad Rejepov, head of the presidential security service, is being transferred to "another job," which was not specified. Nor was a replacement announced. Analysts cautiously view this as evidence of a post-Niyazov political opening.

The European Union (EU) has lifted a visa ban on several top Uzbek officials, despite a failure to make substantive advances on human rights in the country [according to international monitors]. [The four formerly on the list who are now free to travel to Europe are; Ruslan Mirzayev, a former national security advisor who is currently serving as minister of defense; Saidullo Begaliyev, Andijan’s former governor; Ismail Ergashev, a former top Defense Ministry official; and Kossimali Akhmedov, the former defense boss of the Eastern Military District, which encompassed Andijan.] An arms embargo and other sanctions are to hold up for another year, however. [Eurasianet, May 14]

"Socialist villages"? Sounds to us more like keeping a restive population under control to faciliate a stable investment climate for tourism and other capitalist development—akin to the "model villages" the right-wing Guatemalan dictatorship imposed on the Maya peasantry in the '80s. Why does the Beijing regime maintain this propaganda charade? Are we the ony ones who grasp the cognitive dissonance? From McClatchy Newspapers, May 6:

The ugly regime in Uzbekistan is certainly giving Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty all the grist they need for their propaganda mill. May 9:

Umida Niyazova fought for democracy and human rights in her native Uzbekistan.

But from a cage in a Tashkent courtroom on May 8, Niyazova made a "confession" that amounted to an apparent repudiation of all she stands for. She even criticized Human Rights Watch, the U.S.-based rights organization for which she had worked as a translator.