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EurasiaChat

Eurasianet

33 episodes

8 months ago

To mark this last-ever edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to take a glance at the health of the media scene across Central Asia. The report card does not make for encouraging reading. Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, kicked things off with Kyrgyzstan, which has been the site of some troubling developments of late. In the latest alarming sign of decline, a court there last week ruled to dissolve independent media outlet Kloop, which has gained particular prominen...

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To mark this last-ever edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to take a glance at the health of the media scene across Central Asia. The report card does not make for encouraging reading. Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, kicked things off with Kyrgyzstan, which has been the site of some troubling developments of late. In the latest alarming sign of decline, a court there last week ruled to dissolve independent media outlet Kloop, which has gained particular prominen...

Show more...

Episodes (20/33)

EurasiaChat

Bowing out with a look at Central Asia’s sad media scene

To mark this last-ever edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to take a glance at the health of the media scene across Central Asia. The report card does not make for encouraging reading. Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, kicked things off with Kyrgyzstan, which has been the site of some troubling developments of late. In the latest alarming sign of decline, a court there last week ruled to dissolve independent media outlet Kloop, which has gained particular prominen...

1 year ago

47 minutes

EurasiaChat

Kazakh Horror hit, strikers marching on, Kyrgyz media in peril

Dastur, a newly released horror movie in Kazakhstan, has been smashing box office records. And so, in this latest edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, we decided to speak to our producer, Aigerim Toleukhanova, to find out what all the fuss is about. First, the plot: the narrative revolves around the fallout that ensues after the wild-child son of a rich businessman rapes a school-leaver walking home after the last day of classes. Her family initially reports the crime to the police. But then...

1 year ago

30 minutes

EurasiaChat

Kyrgyzstan puts out the flags

Kyrgyzstan opened this New Year with a slightly new-look flag. The changes were not, in truth, that great. The colors and the sun-like figure at the center of the standard remained more or less the same. But President Sadyr Japarov, who chivvied lawmakers into proposing this initiative in September, said the sun emblem needed to look less like a sunflower, which he believes to symbolize subservience and weakness. But the details are probably beside the point, as Alisher Khamidov argued ...

1 year ago

30 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Is a green Central Asia a mirage?

On the occasion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Dubai, the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast focused on how Central Asia is meeting the challenge. Turkmenistan made headlines with the announcement that it is signing up to the Global Methane Pledge, a voluntary agreement that commits adherents to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. The country has heretofore earned a notorious reputation through its colossal methane emissions — the dark ...

1 year ago

33 minutes

EurasiaChat

Gender-based violence rears its ugly head again

In this week’s edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, we turned our attention to the problem of gender-based violence. This topic has been in the news of late in Kazakhstan following the killing last month of a woman, Saltanat Nukenova, allegedly at the hands of her husband, a former top-ranking official in Kazakhstan’s government. Kuandyk Bishimbayev, 43, is now in jail pending further investigations. As podcast co-presenter Aigerim Toleukhanova noted, activists are now callin...

1 year ago

31 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: As miners die, officials talk assets

An explosion at a coal mine in central Kazakhstan last month claimed the lives of 46 workers in what has been described as the deadliest industrial accident in the country’s history. This week on the EurasiaChat podcast, co-presenters Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard opened by dwelling on how the public agenda has been dominated by speculation over who will end up owning the company that controlled the mine. Its current owner, ArcelorMittal Temirtau, scrambled after the blast to inform t...

2 years ago

34 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Shrinking Caspian, invisible opposition, elusive pipeline

Central Asia is grappling with another looming water crisis. In this episode of the EurasiaChat podcast, hosts Peter Leonard and Alisher Khamidov delved into the concerning drop in the Caspian Sea's water level, which has dire implications for the ecosystem and marine economy in the region. The decline in the Caspian Sea's water level is a complex issue influenced by both natural forces and human activities. This extensive body of water, shared by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, ...

2 years ago

28 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Border progress, gangster woes, Russia's return

Russia is refocusing its attention on Central Asia. As Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard discussed in the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, last week saw a notable visit to Kyrgyzstan by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was in the country to attend a Commonwealth of Independent States leader summit. Beyond the usual speechifying and deal-making, there was some symbolism of note. As Alisher said, Putin made a point while in Bishkek of laying a wreath at the Ata Beyit memor...

2 years ago

30 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Intrigue in Central Asia's ruling palaces

In the latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, resident co-presenter Alisher Khamidov opened with some questions about a visit that Peter Leonard, Eurasianet’s Central Asia editor, recently paid to Tajikistan. The standard narrative is that the country is in a perennial economic slump. And there is more than enough data to support that idea. Hundreds of thousands of people have to go abroad for work. The government is mired in debt that it will struggle to pay off. Basic services ar...

2 years ago

33 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Speaking truth to (and about) power

In this latest edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, EurasiaNet Central Asia editor Peter Leonard and co-presenter Alisher Khamidov first turned their attention to more bad news about media freedoms in Kyrgyzstan. As they had threatened that they would do, the authorities have gone ahead and ordered local internet service providers to block access to the website of independent news website Kloop. The ostensible trigger for the ban, which came into effect on September 13, was an article on...

2 years ago

31 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: The rough with the smooth in Kyrgyzstan

The latest edition of our EurasiaChat podcast kicked off with some thoughts from Eurasianet Central Asia editor, Peter Leonard, on his experience of doing the notoriously grueling Silk Road Mountain Race. This annual bike race can last up to two weeks and takes participants through some of the most remote and challenging locations in Kyrgyzstan – from cold mountain passes to barren, searing valley floors. Perhaps the most fulfilling aspect of the event, though, is that it offers partici...

2 years ago

36 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Doing business with the Taliban

In this week’s EurasiaChat podcast, co-presenters Peter Leonard and Alisher Khamidov turned their attention to the question of the recent visit of a Taliban business delegation to Kazakhstan. When the militant group seized power in Kabul in 2021, it caused palpable alarm across Central Asia. But that anxiety quickly dissipated, as the continued emphasis on economic ties has shown. Bilateral trade between Afghanistan and Kazakhstan last year rose to $1 billion, twice as much as in 2021. Asta...

2 years ago

29 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Sanctions bind, tourism tensions, and naming struggles

The West’s campaign of trade sanctions against Russia has put Kyrgyzstan in a bind. Last week, the U.S. Treasury announced it had slapped sanctions on four companies in the country for enabling the circumvention of export bans of dual-use material to Russia. As Alisher Khamidov, a Eurasianet contributor based in Bishkek, notes in the latest edition of our EurasiaChat podcast, this may be the price for Kyrgyz officials failing to properly take heed of months of warnings from their West...

2 years ago

29 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Building Central Asia's future with bricks not thought

That Uzbekistan’s presidential election would be won by the incumbent, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, was a given. So in this edition of the EurasiaChat podcast, Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard discussed how this vote came to be and what it implies for the future of Uzbekistan. The authorities insist the election was needed because of the changes made to the constitution earlier this year. “The argument that the authorities are making really is to say: ‘How can we have the same president now that ...

2 years ago

34 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Nyet to Russian singers in Central Asia

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, its cultural exports have been viewed with suspicion all over the world, including in traditionally receptive Central Asia. The latest Russian artist to learn that to his cost is Grigory Leps, a popular singer who has come in for criticism over his support of the war. Leps was due to hold a concert on July 8 at the Macao Luxury Village Resort in the southern Kazakhstan town of Konayev, but that has been shelved amid much public discontent. Leps caused partic...

2 years ago

31 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Tajikistan's press-gang style

Alisher Khamidov opens this edition of our EurasiaChat podcast by dwelling on how military conscript recruiters in Tajikistan resort to extreme lengths to hit their quotas. The mass recruitment drives take place in the spring and the fall. Recruiters resort to devious, not to say violent, methods to round up young people. Around 16,000 young men are enlisted annually in Tajikistan through conscription. Military service is a particularly unpleasant affair in Tajikistan. Living conditions are...

2 years ago

32 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: China, Islam... and love in Philadelphia

In this edition of EurasiaChat, Alisher Khamidov shares some insights on his recent stay in the U.S. city of Philadelphia, which he describes as being like a “new Almaty or new Tashkent” for all the Central Asian migrants that have settled there. Alisher was on a quest to find love, which, unfortunately, ended fruitlessly. What he did find, however, were communities of Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Uzbeks thriving in the service sector. The trucking business has proven a particularly lucrative pursuit ...

2 years ago

35 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Water and work in short supply

In our podcast this week, Alisher Khamidov, Peter Leonard and Aigerim Toleukhanova provide an update on how Central Asian countries may be abetting Russian efforts to circumvent international sanctions, and what Western officials are doing to tighten these loopholes. Senior U.S. officials traveled to the region in late April and issued fresh warnings about a possible fallout from enabling sanctions-busting. In Kyrgyzstan, the government is on the cusp of becoming a monopolist producer o...

2 years ago

39 minutes

EurasiaChat

EurasiaChat: Slave labor and statelessness in Central Asia

In our podcast this week, Alisher Khamidov and Peter Leonard discuss a Kyrgyzstan man held as a slave laborer in Kazakhstan for 32 years. His plight is party the fault of convoluted working regulations in Kazakhstan, where thousands toil without papers, making them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. This is a problem across the region, yet it rarely makes headlines or draws public indignation. How are Central Asian states responding to Western sanctions on Russia, and the carrots and...

2 years ago

30 minutes

EurasiaChat

Sexual slavery in Uzbekistan

In our podcast this week, Aigerim Toleukhanova and Alisher Khamidov discuss how reports of a small group of separatists in northern Kazakhstan have outraged Kazakhs. But how credible is the threat? And why has the group emerged now? Regional governments are good at using fears of separatism to argue that citizens must fall into line, to silence protests and democratic movements. Uzbekistan has been shaken by a horrific tale of sexual slavery in an Urgench orphanage. The perpetrators wer...

2 years ago

23 minutes