May 2012
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#MyEuro2012: Send Us Your Story
The rise of “ Friendly Ukraine,” warnings of racism, price gouging — the lead-up to Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine is not starved for storylines. Perhaps unfortunately, the soccer and fan experience seem to be largely absent from the conversation. We want to change that. Thousands of fans will travel to Ukraine over the next month, many of them staying with total strangers. We...
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WatchDisadvantaged Afghan Kids Find Home At Music Institute
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Jameel Afridi speaking today (May 28) to Radio Mashaal in Peshawar, Pakistan. Jameel Afridi is the younger brother of Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who was sentenced in Pakistan to 33 years in prison for helping the CIA track down Osama bin Laden.
“This sentence is illegal because he has not done [what they said]. The [Frontier Crimes Regulations] Law is even not applicable to him. I have not seen...
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Kazakhstan: Five Local Police Officials Sentenced In Oil Workers Unrest Case
A court in Kazakhstan’s western region of Manghystau on Monday sentenced five local police officials jail terms from 5 to 7 years for their roles in a deadly unrests in the oil town of Zhanaozen and nearby Shetpe in December. Three of the defendants are high-ranked regional police officials. They were found guilty of...
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WatchWATCH: Violent scuffles erupted in Ukraine’s parliament late on May 24 between lawmakers of the pro-Western opposition and counterparts from President Viktor Yanukovych’s party, which bases its support in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east. (AP video)
“We need to harness the courage and buffoonery [of the parliamentary brawl] and go the people, because everyone says they are...
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“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
Some 30 demonstrators attempted to gather outside Baku’s public television center, but police quickly rounded them up and forced most of them into waiting cars.
The opposition has pledged to stage demonstrations this week as Baku hosts the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in an effort to draw international attention to alleged human rights...
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Kyrgyz President Wants China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Railway
BISHKEK — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev says his government strongly supports a project to build a trans-Asia railway to connect his country to both China and Uzbekistan.
RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service interviews Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev.
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WatchRFE/RL interviews Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Eklil Hakimi during the NATO summit in Chicago…[read more]
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Not 'Borat,' But Not Bad: Baron Cohen Tries...
You’ll have a feel for what you’re getting at “The Dictator” as soon as the curtain rises on a beaming photo of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in whose “loving memory,” we are told, the film was produced.
A poster advertises Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical film “The Dictator” in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. (Courtesy of Rob Cameron). Little...
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Podcast: Street Politics And Kremlin Intrigues
The unrest in Moscow that began on the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration ceremony, when police violently broke up an opposition demonstration and hasn’t let up, with noisy demonstrations becoming practically a daily occurrence in the Russian capital.
In this week’s edition of the Power Vertical podcast, I sat down...
“The main problem is loneliness. Society doesn’t accept you or your...”
– READ: Eurovision Glitz Is Assured, But For Azerbaijan’s Gays, It’s Same Old Song
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RFE/RL Regions Mark International Day Against...
Today is the International Day Against Homophobia, and in parts of RFE/RL’s broadcast regions, activities were marked with conflict. # Despite Georgia’s recent positive ranking in gay rights by the Brussels-based NGO ILGA Europe, gay rights activists in Tbilisi scuffled with counterprotesters associated with the Union of Orthodox Christian Parents. (Watch Radio Tavisupleba’s...
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WatchVideo: Moose Run Loose In Belarus
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It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's...Astana Man?
Every Metropolis needs its Superman, every Gotham its Batman. And now, it seems, officials in the Kazakh capital, Astana, want their own superhero to get in on the act…[READ MORE]
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WatchCzechs Rock Out To Support Russian Punk Protesters
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Pakistani Pilots Die in Midair Crash
Officials in Pakistan say two Pakistani air force planes have collided in mid-air, killing all four pilots on board the aircraft and leaving several people on the ground injured. [READ MORE]
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Gay Protests Not Allowed In Minsk
MINSK— Authorities in the Belarusian capital Minsk have prevented gay activists from holding protests to mark the International Day Against Homophobia on May 17. The owner of an online portal focusing on gays in Belarus, Syarhey Androsenka, told RFE/RL that city authorities had rejected a request from the activists to hold three separate demonstrations — in Peoples’ Friendship park,...
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Two training aircrafts collided and crashed in Rashakai town of Nowshera district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Thursday morning. The area where the crash took place is located close to Risalpur, which is a training academy for the Pakistan Air Force (PAF).
“The two aircraft collided and crashed in Rashakai in Nowshera District. One plane hit the house of Shoaib, who is a...
ICTY prosecutor Peter McCloskey speaking today (May 17) at the trial of Ratko Mladic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
“This was not an army out of control or controlled by someone else. Only an army strictly controlled at the top could have managed to murder over 7000 people in four days.”
“The evidence proving Mladic was...
RFE/RL’s Mashaal Radio reports:
Two training aircrafts collided and crashed in Rashakai town of Nowshera district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Thursday morning. The area where the crash took place is located close to Risalpur, which is a training academy for the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). District coordination officer Ayaz Mandokhail confirmed the news to Radio...
WatchDogfighting Under Scrutiny In Afghanistan
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Mothers of Srebrenica victims speak with @RSE_Balkan in Srebrenica today as Mladic’s trial begins.
“He has better [treatment] at the Hague Tribunal than I can have in the Serb Republic. They do not let us watch it [on live TV] when we want, like it’s not civilization. He cannot get the proper punishment. The mothers [of Srebrenica] should have been his judges – like he was a...
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.@RSE_Balkan interviews Natasa Kandic in Belgrade about the start of Mladic’s trial The Hague.
“When all of the former political leadership was arrested and transferred to the Hague and later convicted, that provoked no discomfort in Serbia, nor did it lead to a debate inside state institutions or the public.”
“Was genocide carried out only in Srebrenica or in other...
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Ratko Mladic’s war crimes trial begins today at the Hague. These are people’s impressions:
Ljubo Mandic from Kralinovik, Ratko Mladic’s hometown, speaking Tuesday to Reuters in Kralinovik.
“He’s never done anything bad in his life. He was just a career [military] man. But he never killed, he never slaughtered anyone.”
Fadila Efendic, who lost her husband...
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ICTY prosecutor, Dermot Groome at Mladic trial opening:
“Two decades ago this past month, Bosnian leaders commenced an attack on their fellow citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Civilians who were targeted for no other reason than they were an ethnicity other than Serb. Their land, their lives, their dignity attacked in a coordinated and carefully planned manner. In some locations, this...
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Wahid Mujda tells @RadioAzadi: [Arsala] Rahmani was the head of prisoners’ commission on the Afghan High Peace Council. And he was working on the issue of who should be released from prison. The suggestion had been made by Rahmani that five [Afghan detainees] at Guantanamo should be released [as part of a confidence building process], and the High Peace Council also had raised the issue several...
Gold and Graft in Azerbaijan, Filtered Fatwas in...
Highlights of compelling, original work by RFE/RL journalists this week. # AZERBAIJAN Khadija Ismayilova’s dual reports uncover the profitable ties of Azerbaijan’s first family to both the massive Eurovision Hall construction project and a gold mine worth about $2.5 billion # IRAN Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently become the latest victim of...
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Critics Of Georgian Game Show Question Thinking...
Quick! Is the measure of a woman down to how she looks, or what she knows? ’
“Women’s Logic” respondents take on questions about history, math, science, and anything else that can get them into trouble.
That’s the question being raised by “Women’s Logic,” a controversial new quiz show in Georgia whose entertainment value rests on watching...
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Investigative Report: Azerbaijani Government...
The contract for the Chovdar gold field in western Azerbaijan, worth an estimated $2.5 billion, was awarded in an opaque process in 2007 to a U.K. consortium, AIMROC, that was hastily created for the project. Newly discovered documents now reveal that AIMROC is actually a shell company controlled by companies tied to President Ilham Aliyev’s daughters…[READ MORE]
Ilham...
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In Moscow Sergei Ivanov, a programmer tells @BalmforthTom: ”I think more and more people are going to come out [on the streets] after they beat women and thrashed everyone one by one yesterday. There is no way back now. It is shameful that OMON [riot police] were carrying out orders to beat women with batons.”
Denis Ivanov, 25 a historian: “We are not going to stop [protesting],...
