Arrest of Russian demonstrator on May 31 in Moscow, a protest against the refusal of authorities to permit peaceful assemblies under Art. 31 of the Constitution. Photo published by hro.org
The next round of the reset -- or is it the runaround? -- is coming up next week and the U.S Administration seems especially anxious to showcase Russia as a foreign policy achievement. President Barack Obama will be meeting President Dmitry Medvedev, and the two will go to Silicon Valley together so that Medevedev can get tips on his own controversial Silicon Valley project and then the two will go to the G20 meeting together in Canada. President Medvedev likes to move in tandems!
Bilateralism has grown so pervasive that you even find people fantasizing about the U.S. and Russia joining forces together to intervene in the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Kygyzstan, and stop it. Compounding the might and power -- and abusiveness -- of both militaries -- and Russia is by far the worst -- into a duo strikes me as not only impractical but a bad idea. Yet so widespread is this tandemitis these days, that's the sort of proposal that gets seriously discussed.
The entire human rights dialogue has been seriously strangled in bilateralism and mirror-imaging as I've been saying -- and that means the real human rights message of both the U.S. Administration and the international and Russian human rights movements are being muted as well. This needs to stop, to avoid the repeated trap of moral equivalency and ineffectiveness that has characterized the reset, to the detriment of the human rights cause.
While Obama and Medvedev are having their summit, there's a plan to have an NGO Roundtable of Russian and American human rights leaders at the same time. I've been opposed to the structure of this dialogue, because it takes place in the haze of moral confusion engendered by the McFaul-Surkov Commission, which involves quite a bit of "managed democracy" on both sides of the ocean. I take it as a sign that critics like me are having some effect in diminishing this ill-conceived vehicle because I'm hearing the stress now being placed not so much on the Commission -- although that appears to be having meetings as well -- as on a *separate* NGO Forum. This follows the model of the Moscow trip of the U.S. State Department last month, when an NGO Forum organized by Russian activists in Moscow, separate from the coopted and closed Commission talks, were designed to save the soul of the bilateral exercise.
It didn't -- not for lack of trying of Russian activists, but because the U.S. didn't speak out forcefully and validate the concerns raised at the round table, and appeared not to have been very forceful about addressing Russian human rights problems privately, either. To be sure, the Moscow NGO roundtable was visited by Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president on Russia at the U.S. National Security Council, but it was dissed by Kremlin advisor Vladislav Surkov.
Now the plan is to have some of these same Russian activists come here for the U.S.-Russian summit, in a delegation led by Yuri Dzhibladze on the Russian side and with Tom Malinowski on the American side from Human Rights Watch, both of whom are described as being chosen by their peers for this purpose (depends on what you mean by peers). Both of them pride themselves on their human rights diplomacy, which Nezavisimaya gazeta has aptly called participation in the "international human rights vertikal".
I'm less enthusiastic. Here's why. Real issues are not getting talked about at these asymmetrical sessions, and false parallels are being made -- with not everyone who should be at the table -- and without a vocal and forceful messaging on Russia's most acute human rights problems, which remain:
o the killing of journalists, human rights activists, and other civic activists for their work, such as Nikolai Girenko, Anna Politkovskaya, Stanislav Markov, and Natalya Estemirova.
o deaths in prisons from mistreatment, such as the death of Hermitage Capital Mgt. lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, lack of due process in numerous cases, symbolized by the Khodorkovsky case, and police brutality (such as against Vadim Korostylyov).
o suppression of independent media and state manipulation of news and commentary
There's certainly a debate to be had about what kind of agenda such a bilateral civic round table should have, but since it's not an open one, and its organizers are generally of the opinion "leave the driving to us" when it comes to "international human rights diplomacy," there's little one can do except point out what the obvious big issues are, in the face of rather vapid notions of "removing our stereotypes" or "peace education".
But there's another question afoot, and that is whether the President of the United States of America should receive these Russian activists in the Oval Office, or perhaps, in a lesser variant of the POTUS blessing, drop by their meeting to shake hands and perhaps even have some photo ops -- and say something.
At a meeting in New York recently to discuss Obama's foreign policy and human rights, George Packer of The New Yorker, who has been writing on this subject regarding Egypt and the Middle East, asked a State Department official pointedly why this Administration doesn't meet with dissidents -- or when it does, as with the Dalai Lama of Tibet, the president makes it "closed to press" and "off the record" and meets in a back room, so as not to frighten the horses. Writes Packer:
Yesterday, I spoke on a panel at the Jacob Blaustein Institute with two human-rights advocates and one State Department official. The latter described the Administration’s efforts on behalf of human rights in multilateral forums and bilateral talks. She defended its record as well as she could. But it’s becoming clear that, to the ordinary activists who live in places like Cairo and Tehran, the gap between Obama’s words and America’s actions has been disappointing—to say the least. And that’s worrying.
So it's a good thing for the media and human rights advocates to ask Obama and his staff why they don't meet with dissidents -- both Republican and Democrat presidents did this routinely -- and what he thinks he is achieving, having pursued the "quiet diplomacy" route for a year now since his Cairo Speech and since the Russian "reset".
And on the whole, I think it would be a good thing if Obama greeted Russian human rights activists, thereby acknowledging the important role they play in their own society and in the global sense, and also said a word about Russia's most urgent issues, which would include topic like the need to investigate and prosecute the murderers of human rights activists to send a message that impunity is not tolerated and protection of such workers is required; the need to halt the second, punitive trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the businessman who has been made a special scapegoat of the Putin regime and whose case involves many issues of violation of due process; and a call to tolerate free media, including national broadcasting of such issues as the miners' plight, the automobile drivers' movement, the violence in the North Caucasus.
That's a big mouthful for Obama, who a year ago regretably said that he didn't want to interfere in Russia's internal affairs in the Khodorkovsky case although he was concerned by it. Perhaps after a year of doing this vaudeville act with the Russian tandem without much results in the human rights field, he might be willing to be a bit more outspoken?
Now here's where it gets more complicated, this being Russia, which can never be understood with the mind alone.
It's been suggested to me by some petulant and manipulative sorts that if I'm so critical of the McFaul-Surkov, er, process, and find even the "separate" roundtables compromised by the silent summit's magnetic field, then I shouldn't be for the President dropping by such a discredited venue. Indeed, it is troubling, given everything, but of course I would err on the side of trying to protect beleaguered Russian human rights activists in any way possible, even though they've chosen this particular compromised and bipolarized field to operate in and make their case.
The President should meet and greet such dedicated and brave people, but he should also say something coherent and useful that doesn't just reinforce their constraints by implying that the rest of the world can't get involved in Russia's internal affairs because they are..."complicated". Or because we shouldn't "lecture". Or because we need to..."share". (I think there's a Facebook button on this blog somewhere if you feel that urge coming over you...)
Please. We are now in a world where President Medvedev has met with Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch, a widely-respected expert on the North Caucasus, and had a very frank conversation about the brutalities there. And we have seen Vladimir Putin meeting with rock star Yuri Shevchuk and other artists in St. Peterburg to hear some frank talk about the lack of press and intellectual freedom. Neither of the tandem tap-dancers melted -- no police arrived to haul away the dissidents, as they did May 31 for those who chose to demonstrate on the street outside the conference halls of government palaces. So they can take it.
Here's the point -- if Tanya Lokshina, who has taken on extraordinary risks for her work, can talk straight to President Medvedev, and if Yuri Shevchuk, who was told by bureaucrats "not to raise pointed questions" before his dinner with Putin but ignored the advice, so can President Obama, and so can her fellow human rights activists from both Russia and America when they all round-tabling it together in the U.S. They don't need to default to quiet soft options like "children" or "trafficking", as valid as those topics are in their place.
Now, will these symbolic gestures turn out perfect, if Obama drops by and shakes human rights activists' hands and talks some turkey with Russia? (and it would be good if he talked straight about how you can't build a Silicon Valley without a free press, either -- for extra credit).
I'm concerned that it won't -- and not only because Obama may wilt, unlike Medvedev, who was compelled to meet with his critics, but because the last time Yuri Dzhibladze came to the U.S. and met with Obama he raised not the urgent issues of Russia, but...Guantanamo. In a public essay published on Huffington Post, he called on Obama...to close Guantanamo -- even though I can think of a lot of Chechen prisons in particular that could use some closing through many more thousands of people have passed, some of them disappeared.
Sorry, but I call "foul" on this sort of "human rights diplomacy". And that's not because Guantanamo doesn't need to be closed -- it does. But there are plenty of people making this point at home and abroad, and Obama has been dilatory not because he doesn't hear it from Russian human rights activists. The reasons for that have to do in part with being unable to find takers for the inmates, some of whom, when released, went back to jihad or proximity to jihad, which stirred up the Amnesty controversy leading to the resignation of the gender advisor.
So these are complex issues, that have been done and overdone, and will not benefit from sound-biting in the bipolarized field. Meanwhile, a sharp and clear moral call to stop Khodorkovsky's unlawful and punitive second trial, illustrative of the notion of "double jeopardy", which otherwise will be over in a matter of weeks and keep him imprisoned many more years, could be helpful, as could a firm stance on prosecution of murderers of human rights activists and press freedom like this one taken by Vaclav Havel and other leaders.
So I hope that Yuri Dzhibladze will feel he has already gained his membership in the international justice elite by appearing internationalist and does not have to bring this particular teapot to Tula, and that he can talk about Russia. Why? Because when Obama and his officials go to Russia, they don't. They give very muted, nuanced, forcibly mirror-imaged comments. When they do things like visit Khodorkovsky's lawyer, they don't publish a press release, as if people like that are sick and you must visit them in the dead of night and not spread an infection.
You would think this simple moral call -- to stop an unfair trial, to get more attention to the murders that are so awful people keep trying to forget them, to get some more space for press freedom -- would be doable by everybody concerned, without a fear that...nuclear weapons agreements will go astray or we will "lose" Russia's cooperation (thin as it is) on Iran. It's that sort of "progressive movement" thinking that has hobbled the Obama Administration, a deep conviction that you cannot get peace except by dropping human rights criticism, first working for peace and economic justice, and then "adding back in" the civil rights of free speech and free association later. I've never, ever seen that work -- anywhere. And certainly not in Russia. And Sakharov was right to tie the two issues together intimately, and history has shown us that attempting to achieve peace without human rights in the Soviet Union didn't work, and for that matter, attempting to achieve democracy without peace in Iraq didn't work, either, and that you have to pursue both simultaneously without sequencing and expensing one versus the other.
As I've debated this topic with those in and around and out of government, I've found the following arguments used against me:
o You can't even discuss things like who the president will meet, as that will kill it off
To this I say -- we live in the era of openness, Facebook, Twitter, and increased civic participation, not less in foreign affairs. Deal with it. Are we resetting relations or are we creating a new bilateral elite that gets to decide everything undemocratically? Elected and not-so-elected leaders need to hear from a variety of voices on what they are doing with foreign policy, which ultimately is supposed to be not a politically-correct set piece to bolster individual careers, but to improve life for both countries.
o A meeting with the U.S. president is a kiss of death for dissidents overseas
Oh, please. That notion went out with the Cold War, and wasn't even true then. And if you think that a blessing from the Community-Organizer-in-Chief isn't still a recognized coin of the realm of international opinion, even among dictators, you're not reading the headlines. Like I said, Russian leaders were just forced to meet with their own dissidents (and yeah, I get that we aren't supposed to call them "dissidents" anymore).
It would be nice if we could believe in "alchemy". That the machinations of the McFaul-Surkov Commission somehow made this possible. If that were true, I'd be happy to eat my hat. But...it's not. The Kremlin dialogue happened completely for its own internal dynamic reasons, and McFaul-Surkov only distracted from and hindered it. The role of such a commission should be backing up such an achievement and then following up to keep feet to the fire --but it's lost the plot. The reality is, next week and next month, Russian leaders *won't* be meeting with dissidents -- and they appear to have mainly exploited the meetings for PR purpose and also to acquire in their "inspector general" arsenals yet another weapon -- the irate human rights monitor who can nip the heels of recalcitrant local officials not doing Moscow's bidding. The issues need to keep being raised.
o Gestures like the presidential handshake or the State Department or White House condemnation of human rights violations are outmoded and merely make Americans feel good about themselves.
Er, I don't need to feel good about myself, and I think there aren't many Americans that even follow such statements, although the few from this Administration sometimes get into mainstream media. But human rights monitors in Russia need protection. The reality is time and again, we have found that making a moral statement on principles and in support of those whose cases exemplify them save lives -- and help uphold those principles. Full stop. That this has to be debated lets us know how far the moral slide is going. There is nothing immoral about making morality a central tenet of foreign policy (although you would think there is to hear some tell it) and doing this not by "lecturing" or "feeling superior" but by showing basic human solidarity to victims of human rights atrocities in the spirit of universality.
I understand the Administration is discussing a microsite, if you will, called humanrights.gov This is more Gov 2.0 sillyness, that is part of what they think is Google juicing the Administration and making a "Content Management System" more effective. Some Drupalist is probably billing the whopping overtime coding hours on this "free software" as we speak. I'm wary of this concept as I think it will ghettoize human rights -- and I think they know that, and that's why they're doing this. If they can just put all that stuff "over there" for the consumers of it who need it, they can placate people and feel good about themselves, and keep it out of sight, out of mind.
But that's not what such statements are for. They belong in the news feed on state.gov and whitehouse.gov, and they belong next to other statements about nuclear weapons and peace. Oh, I quite understand that with the BP disaster, the global economic crisis, and far worse humanitarian disasters from Sudan to Kyrgyzstan, that every Russian jailing can't get a message. No matter. *This summit* can get one, and regular *enough* statements can continue to come out vocally.
o This method of documenting and condemning human rights violations has not worked for the last 10-15 years and something different has to be tried.
Yeah, I get it that the geeks want us to simply friend Russia, delete its ARs and griefing bans, and "reset" to a "new game" primarily so they can run things without interference from pesky critics.
But as I said, we've had a year since Cairo. We've had a year of Russian "reset". We haven't seen progress. There are no individually solved cases. Quiet diplomacy is supposed to yield at least that much. And even if you favour that method, you can admit that having a vocal denunciation outside the process can strengthen the hand of those inside it -- unless, of course, they see it as their mission to manipulate and silence their critics.
I don't look for instant successes on documenting and condemning human rights violations in Russia. In fact, in some areas on some issues, I think this is fairly futile or terribly risky, and young people understandably want to move away from futility and risk and find something more productive to do, picking up more acceptable or "moderate" issues like "corruption" or "transparency" or "children". Even so, you can't lose sight of the constraints Russian activists are under when they make those choices -- and we don't have to make them along with them.
Sadly, the spinmeisters of the Kremlin have seeded a powerful meme to dissuade people from criticizing in Russia (and we see some of it in Washington, as well). And that is their claim that if you will not cooperate and be constructive with the Kremlin, you will be *marginalized*. You will become one of the dreaded marginaly of Russia, who are usually wild-haired cranks with holey sweaters spraying their words. Marginal! The horror!
I think some people need to stop worrying about becoming "marginalized" or becoming "marginals" but worry more about principles and morality. I've seldom seem people who have *really* stuck to those basics ultimately be marginalized. Sakharov went from an elite position as a nuclear scientist to being a "marginal" -- until he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his principled and vocal stands which were constructive -- but critical. Sometimes it's ok to remain a "marginal" in your lifetime, and still do the right thing. There's enormous stress being placed on Russian media and intellectuals these days to be "constructive" and "effective" and "not be marginal". I think there has to be pushback that tells the Kremlin's bullies that they are the ones that belong on the margins, not these people of principle.
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