I thank Ben who has edited this post and published at Global Voices Online and Neweurasia (Originally published at Global Voices and Neweurasia). It was nice to collect opinions of people through the kyrgyz blogs.

The citizens of Kyrgyzstan, a nominally Muslim country, have an interesting history with Islam: While the nomadic Kyrgyz haven’t really been introduced to the religion before the 18th century, Kyrgyzstani Uzbeks from the Ferghana Valley practice a more traditional form of Islam. During the Soviet era, religion was pushed to the sidelines of society, but Islam has seen some revival since Kyrgyzstan’s independence in 1991, again mostly in the southern rural parts of the country. Read the rest of this entry »

The last three days Kyrgyz bloggers were active on issue of SCO summit. Some of them provided their readers with beautiful photoes of summit participants, others were discussing these theme quoting to Mainstream Media sources. So, I’ll make round-up for the last three days. i hope it’ll be interesting and useful for you, if yes, just let me know.

morrire has just published photoes from today’s meeting of the Central Asian Countries presidents, and their counterparts from Russia, Cina, Iran and Afghanistan. She has over 25 photoes, which include just everything from today’s event.

azzzik also took part at SCO summit as a reporter. He publishes a photo, where all presidents are sitting, and he’s shot from behind. He says, that before he had the same photo, but with Condolise Rise.

Another Bishkek-based photo-blogger, antipodean_wor, posts a small article with photoes, which says about the “extraordinary security measures in Bishkek”. He writes “Because of the summit our provincial Bishkek has been a subject of extraordinary security measures it has never seen in his 150 -year history. The streets are closed along the routes of the presidential cars… each one is accompanied by two helicopters…”.

zigeunerin_kgz and azzzik, photobloggers and journalists of AkiPRESS News agency, presented a photoreport of Aircrafts, came for participation at SCO summit in Bishkek. There are aircrafts of Presidents of China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongoly, Iran, Afghanistan, Ministers from India and Pakistan.

zigeunerin_kgz and azzzik also presented photoreport of August 14-15 meetings of SCO summit participants. There are photos of delegations from China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongoly, Iran, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Today, zigeunerin_kgz was making news from her office from russian TV RTR. At the another post zigeunerin_kgz says about the problem of translation of the China Leader’s speech. She says because of it noone has quoted him among the Kyrgyz News agencies.

markgrigorian made a report for central_asia LJ community about the preparation of Bishkek to the SCO Summit 2007. In his post he says that Kyrgyzstan has never seen so many Presidents in it’s own territory, and because of it the main International Airport in Bishkek was closed.

A day before the summit, abellans was thinking over a new surprizes.

antipodean_wor reported about the “Traffic deadlock on the streets of Bishkek: the main roads had been periodically closed for both traffic and pedestrians. The reason - there is a summit of 6 presidents (Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tadjikistan)”. He had included some photoes of the street.

The another issue bloggers were interested at was the travel within Kyrgyzstan. For instance, talve went to Naryn and after coming made a beautiful photoreport of the place. antipodean_wor reports about the salty lake near issyk-Kul. somurzakov posts pictures of summer Issyk-Kul. nurba, another Kyrgyzstani blogger, who is currently working in Singapore, is going to the Philippines soon and trying to get a visa for it. he publishes photoes of his pilipino counterparts.
That is all. I’m to have met you once again.

I wasn’t able to write a round-up yesterday. Some problems were with money transferring from Osh to Bishkek, therefore I spent all my time for that till 5:30 p.m., then at 6:00 p.m. I went to meet my friend, and we were talking about “everything” till night. So, today I am combining two day’s round-up into one. Let’s read it?!

The main issue for these two days was again SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) summit. People were discussing things of the preparation for SCO summit in Bishkek.

kosmoslkl, blogger www.mylivepage.ru platform, quotes the link about SCO summit preparation in Bishkek. There is written there will be 140 cars and buses working for summit service. The is going to be policemen in each 7-10 meters and helicopters in air.

zigeunerin_kgz publishes exclusive photos from the road over the Philharmonic in Bishkek. I just… recommend you to look at photos of this girl. They say about the post of kosmoslkl, particularly about policemen, helicopters and etc.

A little before khaan and morrire were telling (Morrire, Khaan) to their readers about this, particularly, khaan was telling about the car over the road, which was taken by policemen away, morrire has been telling about the general preparation for SCO summit.

antipodean_wor, blogger from Bishkek, reports, Bakiev has stolen the quote of Confucius and publishes the photo of this slogan.

Ben translated this into English at Neweurasia, ”…perhaps the visiting Chinese delegation could raise some intellectual property rights issues with the hosts”.

diykanov, kyrgyzstani, currently lives in istanbul, published in kyrgyz language a list of SCO summit participants. He also included the information about the place of the participant-countries on population amount.

Djigit, Neweurasia contributor on Kyrgyzstan, made the same, but in Russian language. He says: “Kyrgyzstan has never seen such amount of Dictators in it’s own area”.

These posts were the part of the main issue for last 2 days. There are a lot of other issues, like, kyrgyz bloggers are “simpsonizing”, writing personal stories of a different adventures are not so interesting, I think.

Nevertheless, there were two things I was interested: (1) I’ve found the blog of a Fulbright Fellow in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, called as “One year in Kyrgyzstan“. She is, as she says, “keeping this blog updated for all those interested in my adventures in Central Asia during the the 2007-2008 academic year”. Another one (2) a diary on one russian alpinist, who reports on their trip through the Kyrgyz Rocky and Icy Mountains. As he mentioned, “there were 5 alpinists, who couldn’t come back”, as they are not alive any more…

Photo of antipodean_wor

I have found some other opportunities of improving my English. One of them is writing daily round-ups of kyrgyz (russian-speaking) bloggers’ posts. I think this can make easier the work of different english media organizations, such as neweurasia, registan or CA blog of foreignpolicy… So, this is the first round-up post.

The main issue for Kyrgyz bloggers to discuss for today is Shanghai Cooperaton Organization’s Summit in Bishkek, which will be provided from August 16-19, 2007.

morrire publishes a picture of tree from the road from Manas Airport to Bishkek, and she calls to pay attention how poplars are whitewashed and only that part of trees which is visible from road is painted.

President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiev on August 4, 2007 participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony to launch Reception and Guest houses for the heads of states attending the SCO Summit in August 16 in Bishkek, reports kyrgyzreport.

nuraika shares her opinion about the view of Youth Alley, over Philharmonic in Bishkek. She also tells a funny story when policemen with a big stomach came to them and they talked about ecology in this area without any trashes. She also publishes some photos from that place.

SCO summit will be provided very soon, so the main work of it has finished, zigeunerin_kgz writes a post about the preparation to summit in Bishkek. She says: “Houses for presidents, Congress hall are built, reconstructed the Philarmonic, The city is being more clean”. She publishes photos of Congress hall and Houses of presidents.

kyrgyzreport publishes the RFE/RL interview of Ednan Karabaev, Kyrgyzstan Foreign Minister, where the minister says “Of course, the heads of six member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will attend the summit. They are Kyrgyzstan, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan — there will also be presidents of observer countries Iran and Mongolia, as well as the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan. There will be many other guests, the president of Afghanistan, [Hamid Karzai,] among them. For the first time, Turkmen President [Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov] and the deputy head of the UN chairman on policy issues will arrive upon the invitation of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev”.

All residents of the house, called “Ocean”, the windows of which go to the Philharmonic, where the SCO summit will be provided, were forbidden to open their windows and balcony doors from August 14 to the end of the summit. “It’s for your own safety,” reassured the representatives of the police, “because everyone who appears in the window, will be in a risk of being shot. There will be Russian snipers excluding ours”, writes in her blog lena. She says, that bunch of students were expelled with brushes and others in front of a Philharmony, and they washed stone surface. We were just walking there in evening, so it is purely, well guys, cool. During our walk we’ve met a polite young policeman and he asked us do not allow children to go to a water in the fountain and borders of lawn - order of Bishkek mayor. All for the good of the people, well, just everything, explains lena.

The another interesting case for discussion was the press-conference of the ex-prime-minister, the Opposition leader Feliks Kulov.

shaihutdinov, who participated in his press-conference briefly describes the situation there, and shares his opinion that Kulov is no more famous and respected politician. He thinks the union with Russia will lead us forward authoritarianism, if we will take as a strategic partner some countries from islamic World then we will be oriented to more-islamic values, and at last, if Kyrgyzstan will go towards of joining EU than we will be more democratized.

shaihutdinov writes another post, called “One more Disappointment”, where he tells how Feliks Kulov gave up from his young wing “Kanjar”, activists of which have became asylum seekers.

nuraika publishes photos from Kulov’s press-conference, and is happy as one of her political idols - is him.

There are some other issues that local bloggers are discussing, for instance, the new cell-phone operator Nexi.KG… It is the end of my first report…

Dear reader! I want to inform you, that I do my blog also in russian, http://mirsulzhan.livejournal.com so, if you want to read something ab/ politics of kyrgyzstan you can guest my LJ blog. Mirsulzhan