Yan Matusevich
@ymatusik.bsky.social
1.8K followers 690 following 1.4K posts
Journalist writing about politics, culture, migration and society in Central Asia and Eurasia more broadly | PhD candidate in Anthropology at CUNY GC | en-ru-fr-de | кыргызча сүйлөйм Words in @economist.com, @foreignpolicy.com, @eurasianet.bsky.social
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ymatusik.bsky.social
Working with great editors has been a life-changing experience. It’s actually helped me get over my perfectionism and fear of making mistakes. If only journalism wasn’t being gutted as profession 😭
Reposted by Yan Matusevich
nateschenkkan.bsky.social
This interview by @vlastkz.bsky.social with Karakalpak activist Akylbek Muratbai goes into great detail about what being a Central Asian activist is like at a time when democratic states are turning away from the concept of refugee protection vlast.kz/english/6671...
Karakalpak Activist Decries Repression in Uzbekistan and Bureaucratic Barriers in Kazakhstan - Аналитический интернет-журнал Власть
Читайте этот материал на русском.
vlast.kz
ymatusik.bsky.social
any ideas? my instinct is to blame user error, but maybe it's something more widespread. The adoption of Signal remains abysmal, unfortunately.
ymatusik.bsky.social
in my futile attempt to get friends and family to use encrypted messengers, I have noticed that the Telegram secret chat function seemingly never works. I know we shouldn't be using Telegram in the first place, but it's become a pattern that I open a secret chat and the contact is never notified
ymatusik.bsky.social
There’s no need to rewrite the 1951 Convention on Refugees as many EU officials have discussed in the past when it has for all intents and purposes been put to rest
ymatusik.bsky.social
IOM and UNHCR are facing budget crisis like the entire UN system. Resettlement is basically dead without the US and Canada (not seeing other countries filling in the breach). Countries like Germany are reneging on their resettlement commitments, the UK is finding new ways to dismantle asylum
ymatusik.bsky.social
The international refugee protection system is effectively on its last legs. Ukrainians will get their status extended in most European countries, but beyond that we’re looking at the end of asylum as we know it.
Reposted by Yan Matusevich
nateschenkkan.bsky.social
This opens the door to more transnational repression
Reposted by Yan Matusevich
emmcollet.bsky.social
Cette semaine dans @lexpress.fr, retrouvez mon reportage à Baïkonour, visité cet été. Situé dans les steppes du 🇰🇿, ce cosmodrome soviétique -d’où s’est envolé le premier homme dans l’espace, Youry Gagarine- et encore loué par la 🇷🇺, fête ses 70 ans cette année www.lexpress.fr/monde/asie/b...
Baïkonour ne répond plus : plongée au cœur du légendaire mais menacé cosmodrome russe
Situé au Kazakhstan, le mythique cosmodrome soviétique fête cette année ses 70 ans. Délaissé par Moscou, il se cherche un avenir.
www.lexpress.fr
Reposted by Yan Matusevich
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
I keep going back to this, but one of the reasons South Korea has an incredibly effective protest culture is because they have *decades* of organizational experience through daily/weekly protesting. it helps a lot to do the routine stuff to be able to pull off the big stuff.
socio-steve.bsky.social
Why doesn't the US have a general strike? Well you can point to culture or whatever but I think structure is of not immediate use here: does the US have organizations and institutions it can use to network, organize and mobilize a general strike? No.
ymatusik.bsky.social
Came across a Chechen AfD member named Noah Krieger (allegedly not his birth name) from Hannover who is all over Instagram promoting pretty cringy fascist content. Feels like the guy was created in an FSB lab

www.instagram.com/krieger_advo...
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ymatusik.bsky.social
The current regime have found a tried and true method of combining symbolic nationalism while maintaining a very close relationship with Russia, particularly between security services.
ymatusik.bsky.social
Now that Jalal-Abad has been renamed “Manas” by the current regime, the next step is renaming the streets after the “Kyrk Choro”, the forty warriors in the Manas epic.

Kyrk Choro also happens to be a nationalist vigilante group that is known for its homophobia and xenophobic violence.
ymatusik.bsky.social
Props to @tumarov.bsky.social for very skillfully describing the cult of raw power being created by Tashiev, the Sopranos-esque head of Kyrgyzstan’s rapidly expanding security services

youtu.be/cQeb5cdHs1I?...
Могу и «отлупить»: культ силы Ташиева
YouTube video by Kloop на русском
youtu.be
ymatusik.bsky.social
I’ve been puzzled with the resurgence of far-right violence in Russia, echoing the bloody 2000s. But I think seething veterans scapegoating migrants for their problems is a big part of the answer
Reposted by Yan Matusevich
nateschenkkan.bsky.social
(Russia has one of the largest populations of immigrants in the world)
kevinrothrock.me
Putin compares Russia to America's "melting pot" (I guess he hasn't heard of the "salad bowl"), but stresses that America is a land of immigrants, where Russia's diversity comprises peoples living on their native soil. Quite an interesting comment.
ymatusik.bsky.social
Not that international law matters much these days, but Kyrgyzstan is a signatory of the Second Optional Protocol to ICCPR on the abolition of the death penalty
ymatusik.bsky.social
Another terrible femicide is causing a public outcry in Kyrgyzstan—and in typical populist fashion President Japarov vows to introduce the death penalty for crimes against minors. Emotions are running high and there’s a lot of justified anger, but this does little to address violence against women
Reposted by Yan Matusevich
joelhs.bsky.social
The comparison of Israel to Sparta is literally what Hannah Arendt predicted would happen back in 1947.
Writing for Hannah Arendt:
"And even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist. The “victorious” Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded inside ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and activities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy; economic development would be determined exclusively by the needs of war. And all this would be the fate of a nation that—no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)—would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors.

Under such circumstances (as Ernst Simon has pointed out) the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large numbers of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland."
ymatusik.bsky.social
It was, of course, Tashiev’s idea to rename the city in honor of Manas. More rumors of him taking over the presidency after the next elections. Unclear whether he actually needs to take on a more formal role since he has so much power as it is.