Photo from Wikipedia
Homosexuality was legalized in Kyrgyzstan on 1st January 1998, with the repeal of Article 121 of the Soviet Criminal Code, after concerted pressure from international human rights organisations.
Article 130 of the new criminal code – concerning “violent actions of a sexual nature” – punishes “homosexual, lesbian or other actions of a sexual nature resorting to the use of force or to the threat of force against the victim or against other individuals or taking advantage of the weakness of the victim” with a prison sentence of between three to eight years. This is wider than Rape which is covered in a different clause.
The constitution makes no mention of “sexual orientation” when referring to discrimination. More…
It’s odd that in these days of the internet and Information and Communication Technologies, with i-pods, i-phones and i-pads, Blackberries and Bluetooth, the printed word is still in many respects the preferred version of many people when handling documents.
Last week I wrote about an Oral History Project, run as part of a journalism course at one of the local universities – Everyone has a story to tell. Having come across it by accident, I “tweeted” about it on Twitter, posted an entry on my Facebook Wall, mentioned it in the weekly Postcard newsletter as well as writing a separate postcard going into more detail about the idea of Oral History. I wasn’t really expecting anyone to follow it up. I was just really impressed by the project that I wanted to share the news. So, it came as a surprise that amongst the feedback I received this week, there were several comments about how interesting some people found the project. One person was so taken that he even ordered the book from Amazon. More…
People often ask me why Celestial Mountains has so many websites.
It’s a good question, and I usually answer by saying that they each address a different topic. More…
I wrote about Svetlana’s trip to Kashgar … well, she’s given me a report on the trip and I thought I would share with you some of her gems.
At first I thought of revisiting and editing the page to include some quotes – but then I thought it might be better just to give you some extracts.
They show the detail of her powers of observation and also her sense of humour … at least, I hope it is a sense of humour!
I hope you find them interesting: More…
Crossing the border from Kyrgyzstan, over the Torugart Pass, or the newly opened (2002) Irkeshtam Pass, the first major town is the Uighur city of Kashgar – the farthest-west city in China.
Kashgar is most famous for it’s Sunday Market, (“Asia’s most mind-boggling bazaar, a technicolour sea of people…. a photographer’s dream”). The Bazaar is actually open everyday – but on Sundays, it overflows into the streets and surrounding quarters and the population of the town (normally 180000) swells by 50000 with traders – the Barbers, the animal market, household goods, fruits and vegetables, carpets and all manner of goods can be bought … and there are many magnificent opportunities for spectacular photos – bring twice as much film as you think you will need, and then some more. More…
A few weeks ago I wrote about an invitation I had received to attend an exhibition across the border in Kashgar, in China.
I was tempted – very tempted. It is over ten years since I was last in Kashgar and I have heard much about how the city has changed. The Chinese are developing much of the city – and demolishing much of the old city in the process. As well as reading reports on the internet and in the media, I sometimes get comments from clients and those who are returning, (some of them, maybe, after many years but others who have been back and forth repeatedly as Group Leaders or tour guides), who tell me that “it’s changing … maybe for the better, maybe not – who can tell?, Let’s wait and see.” I recently read a tweet on Twitter: “I was told that my second historical homeland (Kashgar) survive the boom in domestic investment in favor of world tourism.” Although providing modern amenities might be good for the population and welcomed by some tourists, I am not sure that destroying something like 80% of the old town and transforming the famous Sunday Market isn’t going to be like “killing the goose that laid the golden egg”. More…
You might expect that, as a former Maths teacher, I do not suffer from Arithmophobia – the fear of numbers. Indeed, one of the books that I brought with me when I cam out here 15 years ago was “The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers.” Oddly enough it has no entry for 57, jumping from 56, (the 6th Tetrahedral number), to 57.296… , (the decimal equivalent of 57 degrees and 18 minutes, the number of degrees in a radian).
This seems to me a little unfair as 57 does have some curious and interesting features … for example it happens to be a “Leyland number”, that is it can be written as xy + yx where x and y are whole numbers bigger than 1, ( for the record: 25 + 52 = 57). There aren’t that many of them!
But it also has other, less esoteric, claims to fame. More…
Some years ago I was having lunch with a guide who had just returned from taking a group around Kyrgyzstan, and he was giving me a report on how it went. During the conversation the conversation was punctuated by gaps as he got out his notebook and started writing something in it.
Intrigued, I asked what he was doing. OK, I knew what he was doing, he was making notes! More…
It is said that everyone has at least one good book inside them …
Apparently, research has shown that over 80% of Americans, for example, think that they have one … but very few actually get to the point of writing one – yet alone publishing it. More…
As I have said before, I enjoy “Trivial Pursuits” – not just the game itself, but simply gathering useless but gathering interesting and unusual facts.
For example – Do you know:
- who won the first ever Gold Medal in the modern Olympic Games in 1896?, (for the record it was: James Connolly of the United States in the Triple Jump), and
- who won the first ever Gold Medal in the Winter Olympics Games in 1924?, (for the record it was Charles Jewtraw of the United States in the 500m speed skate) … and how about
- who won the first Gold Medal at the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010?, (for the record it was Yuka Sato from Japan in the Triathlon event). More…
