Author: Aktan Akhmedov

The International Issyk-Kul Marathon of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) “Run the Silk Road” started on Saturday in Cholpon-Ata town of Kyrgyzstan. The start of the marathon was given by Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kyrgyzstan Edil Baisalov and SCO Secretary General Zhang Ming. The marathon is held in order to strengthen cultural and humanitarian cooperation between the SCO countries, promote a healthy lifestyle, improve the sportsmanship of participants and develop internal and external event tourism. Over 3,000 participants from 23 countries and regions registered for the event, which includes marathon, half marathon, a 10km run and…

The plains of Kyrgyzstan are home to nomadic peoples, centuries-old traditions – and wild games of goat polo. It is sunrise in the high mountain pastures surrounding Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Song-Köl, and Urmat Bekkaziev emerges from the small felt yurt where he lives with his wife and baby son, and crosses the still-frozen ground to the pen containing his sheep. He waters and milks them, along with his cows and mares, and then sits down to the tedious work of separating the cream. Meanwhile, his wife, Asel, lights the iron stove inside the yurt, feeding it with bricks of dried cow…

Explore the wonderful and peaceful genre from Central Asia. Music of the Nomads The Kyrgyz people are a nomadic Turkic ethnic group from Central Asia. They are claimed to be the descendants of the 40 tribes Manas united over a millennia ago to fight off the Khitan people. The epic of Manas and its stories of the hero’s battles against groups like the Uyghurs, Chinese, and Afghans is a nationally loved oral history of the country’s people and one of the longest epic poems in the history of humankind. Their folk songs have long been musical renditions of the epic’s…

At least 24 people including nine children were feared dead after a devastating landslide swept through a village in southern Kyrgyzstan early on Saturday, officials said. Scores of emergency workers have been deployed to the site to excavate the village. The landslide happened early on Saturday, when a torrent of mud buried several houses. Local authorities said they had informed people in the area of the risk of a landslide – due to heavy rains – just a few days earlier, and had advised them to leave, but many decided to stay. Deadly landslides regularly hit this central Asian country,…

Kyrghyzstan is a wild and beautiful central Asian nation, where families and clans have enormous influence on society at large, but despite adopting many aspects of the modern world, kidnapping minors for marriage remains a strong tradition. 10% of women are married before they are 18 and one in five underage marriages are the result of kidnapping, despite it being outlawed in 2013. “Ala kachuu, or “taking and running away” is a big problem in Kyrghyzstan. Many claim it is a tradition, but there’s nothing traditional in taking a young girl by force against her consent. It’s the theft of…

Young girls in Kyrgyzstan are aiming to build the country’s first satellite before the end of 2020. Alina Anisimova, 19, is directing a team of young women who call themselves Kyrgyzstan’s “Space Programme”. Their youngest member is just 14-years-old. Anisimova gives instructions to her team members, confidently directing the girls who are working on a miniature satellite called a CubeSat that can be as small as 10 cubic centimetres. These satellites are typically developed by large companies, universities or amateur researchers, and the construction can cost upwards of tens of thousands of dollars. The program heads have to apply for…

LANZHOU, March 27 (Xinhua) — A freight train carrying auto parts, fabrics and other goods departed from a station in Dingxi City in northwest China’s Gansu Province on Saturday, en route to Kostanay in Kazakhstan. This is the first international freight train launched from the city. It will arrive in Kostanay in about nine days after covering a distance of 5,170 km in the entire journey. The goods on the train, worth over 3 million U.S. dollars, were transported from areas such as Shaanxi and Zhejiang provinces. This freight train service is expected to reduce transport time by about six…

Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov has resigned after days of protests following a disputed election that plunged the country into turmoil. “I do not want to go down in Kyrgyzstan’s history as a president who shed blood and shot at his own citizens,” he said in a statement. Kyrgyzstan has been in crisis since parliamentary elections on 4 October. Subsequent protests forced electoral officials to annul the results, and also toppled the government. Mr Jeenbekov becomes the third president of the Central Asian state, which gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, to be ousted by a popular uprising since…

A feminist art exhibition involving naked women in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek has ignited a public row that’s cost the director of the venue her job. The culture ministry condemned the event for using the “language of provocation” and for “disorientating visitors”, according to Kyrgyz news agency 24.kg. The Minister of Culture, Azamat Jamankulov, said a special commission would examine the “scandalous exhibition”, which he described as a “campaign with naked women under the flag of feminism”. Mr Jamankulov said the director of the venue – the National Museum of Fine Arts – had been relieved from duty over the…

A Cleric, Apostle John Okoriko, has called on Christians to pray for God’s divine intervention in the sufferings of Nigerians caused by the Naria redesign policy of the federal government. Okoriko, who is The Founder of Solid Rock Kingdom Church in Akwa Ibom State, debunked speculations that  fathers of faith in the state have received various forms of inducement to support the Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate, Pastor Umo Eno, in the March 11 governorship election in the state.  He spoke in an interactive service in Uyo where he said that the church must unite in prayers so that the current…