February, 2007

Stories from February, 2007

Uzbekistan: Perils of Assisting Homosexuals

  28 February 2007

Registan.net covers the latest crackdown on foreign health NGOs in Uzbekistan, which includes action against an organization running an HIV/AIDS prevention program for not just paperwork problems but also because it works with homosexuals. Male homosexuality is a crime in Uzbekistan punishable by three years in prison.

Armenia: Self-immolation

  28 February 2007

In Armenia yesterday, a man died after setting himself on fire in the capital's Republic Square. It is not known exactly why the man set himself alight, but he reportedly was angry at government officials and over unspecified injustices. The CRD/TI Armenia Election Monitor reports on the incident and rounds...

Burundi: Where No means Yes

  28 February 2007

Expat blogger BeneBurundi is learning about local culture (Fr): “Communicating with people from Burundi is all about subtlety and interpretation; for example if you're proposed to and you decline with a ‘no’, it is highly possible that what will be heard will be ‘yes, maybe one day if you insist’....

Senegal: Youssou N'Dour Cinematic Debut

  28 February 2007

California-based Congolese blogger Alain Mabanckou has nothing but praise for Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour's big screen debut in Amazing Grace (Fr):”to see the few clips featuring Youssou N'dour, I think we'll need to to follow him closely. His future is bright if he chooses to concentrate exclusively in this direction...

Ukraine: Volodymyr Shcherban

  28 February 2007

“Who are the prison cells for?” asks Foreign Notes in a post about Volodymyr Shcherban, former governor of the Donetsk and then Sumy regions. Not for those who seem to deserve being there, it appears.

Slovenia: The Erased

  28 February 2007

The Glory of Carniola reports on a rather surreal bureaucratic mishap: “This week marks the 15th anniversary of a now infamous moment in Slovenian history: the removal of 18,000 people from Slovenia’s permanent registry of citizens.”

Hungary: Two-Tailed Dog Party

  28 February 2007

Pestcentric writes about Two-Tailed Dog Party – “a guerrilla street artist (read: creative university student with too much spare time) operating out of Szeged” – and showcases some of his work: “Well, fortunately, there’s now an English-language subsite, where a lot of the written work is actually translated so non-Hungarian...

Ukraine: Tymoshenko in D.C.

  28 February 2007

LaurenceJarvikOnline shares his impressions of Yulia Tymoshenko, who was in Washington, D.C., this week: “She described her nation as ‘in crisis’–and took a number of hostile questions about her legal problems from Russian-speakers in the audience. Tymoshenko handled them with grace and aplomb, didn't bristle, smiled even. She's definitely a...

Iran:Economic illusions of Iranian Goverment

  28 February 2007

Jomhour says that Iranian goverment failed to accomplish its economic promises such as fighting against poverty. According to the blogger, goverment has no reason to accuse “enemy” for its economic failure because 90 percent of country's economy is in the hands of goverment[Fa].

The Balkans: Bloggers Discuss the ICJ Verdict

  28 February 2007

On Monday, after nearly ten months of deliberation, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared that the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre was an act of genocide, but that the pattern of the atrocities committed by Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-1995 war (which claimed more than 100,000 lives) was “too broad” to...