Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

As Turkmenistan celebrates a recent Guinness World Record award for the highest density of white marble buildings, Caravanistan writes about the “weird, sad, and revealing” world records held by other countries of Central Asia.

Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, is very active in social media, and her provocative Twitter posts and photos shared on Instagram often raise eyebrows among the mostly conservative audiences in Uzbekistan and other countries in the region. Blogger Ayana Seidimbek presents a collection of the most controversial posts and images the ‘Uzbek princess’ has shared in social media.

After going offline for about a week, the top Russian-language social network service Odnoklassniki has become available again to tens of thousands of users in Uzbekistan. Blogger Doch’ Bukhari (Bukhara's Daughter) explains [ru] why Internet users in the Central Asian country choose this social network over other ones and why the network is “addictive like a drug”.

[I]n former Soviet Central Asia there is little debate that the root problem [of extremist beliefs] is “foreign ideas,” defined so broadly as to become a target of opportunity for both every political purpose and every local policeman or official’s ambition. Any sign of dissent from state policies or ideology <…> can be enough to bring the wrath of the state, sometimes with great violence.

Uzbek Music Friday is a (rare) feature in which I post a pop music video from an artist in Uzbekistan. It could be catchy, annoying, funny, insightful, brilliant, awful, or anything in between. It’s what’s playing on the radio, what all the cool kids are listening to these days… [It] gives you a glimpse into how pop music is done on this side of the world.

How do people in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan celebrate Nowruz today? NewEurasia.net bloggers have produced a video that gives you an idea.