Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

Kyrgyzstan’s new leadership has hastily written a new draft constitution and set January 10, 2021, the day already named for the presidential election, to also be the day people vote on a referendum on this new constitution.

It has been dubbed the "khan-stitution" by many people in Kyrgyzstan as the new version gives the president seemingly unlimited powers while also curtailing some basic rights, including freedom of speech.

Many questions are being raised about the legality of this document and there is growing public discontent over it.

On this week's Majlis podcast, RFE/RL's Media-Relations Manager Muhammad Tahir moderates a discussion on what the draft constitution contains.

This week’s guests are: from Kyrgyzstan, Saniia Toktagazieva, a constitutional law expert based in Bishkek; also in Bishkek, Nuriana Kartanbaeva, the deputy director of the Soros Foundation in Kyrgyzstan; and from Prague, Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.

Embed share

Majlis Podcast: The Controversy Over Kyrgyzstan’s Draft Constitution

by RFE/RL

Embed share

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

The URL has been copied to your clipboard

---

No media source currently available

0:00 0:49:41 0:00

Direct link

• 64 kbps | MP3

Pop-out player

Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.

Halloween is over, but locals in a part of western Kazakhstan say something scary prowls the roads at night and lurks around their village.

The fear that has gripped the village of Khankol was sufficient to prompt West Kazakhstan Province Governor Gali Iskaliev to send police to investigate reports of a ghost.

The Kazakh news site Tengrinews.kz broke the story on November 11.

“Residents of the small village of Khankol in the Karatobin district claim that in the vicinity of their settlement, the ghost of a woman with light-colored hair appears. The people are very frightened, even men are crying from fear."

Locals have posted stories of the ghost on social networks.

“[The ghost] came toward a freight truck and the man almost got into an accident. Then the girl disappeared. The driver came to the village, but local residents say they didn’t see the ghost. People started reading the Koran,” one post said.

SEE ALSO:

Extreme Self-Quarantine? Georgia's Mysterious Mountain Skeletons

Other stories claimed the ghost knocked on car windows or even appeared in vehicles and attempted to force drivers to veer off the road.

Tales of the ghost spread to neighboring areas.

Talal Kaziev is the head of the nearby village of Zhusandoi.

“I also travel these roads and I have never seen any such thing,” Kaziev told Tengrinews. “Maybe people are exaggerating, but there is a lot of talk about a mysterious woman.”

He and others from his settlement came to Khankol to participate in a sadaka, the ritual sacrifice of an animal, in this case a sheep, to rid the area of evil spirits.

The tales were enough to convince Governor Iskaliev to send police to Khankol to investigate.

“This is undoubtedly unreliable information or someone is playing a joke,” Iskaliev told the local newspaper Nadezhda. “[But] I will order police to go and check it out."

Tengrinews wrote that police are now tasked with trying to discover whether this is a prank, the result of a mass hallucination “and, just in case, how much moonshine is produced per capita in the Karatobin district.”