EurasiaChat Eurasianet

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 prominence for...

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 soc...

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 in ...

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 side...

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 calling f...

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 the p...