Different Stans

OMG, Berdymukhamedov's Song Plagiarism is *Even Worse* Than We Knew!

Berdymukhamedov totally coopts a Turkmen singer -- and his song.

Remember when Bruce Pannier of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty blogged about how shamefully Turkmen President Berdymukhamedov plagiarized a tune and sung it as his own during his birthday celebrations on TV?

It turned out the song that Berdy said he had penned himself, "For You, My White Flower," was in fact visible on Youtube back in 2009, sung by a Turkmen crooner named Dovlet Amanlykov, and called "On My Wedding Day".

I remember listening to both of the videos and thinking, wow, not only is the song exactly alike, the voice sounds exactly alike! How does he do it?

Well, it turns out that the reason they sound so alike is that the Turkmen leader may have actually had the same guy on stage while he was singing. Can you imagine?! This is what is revealed from another video uploaded in December from another time the president played "his" song.

Here's a clip from the 2009 video of Dovlet singing:

And here's a screenshot from the 2011 video where he is shown signing again, on stage, with Berdymukhamedov, apparently for a New Year's concert (there's a tree on stage):

Amazing!

Someone named ramzayi1 posted this video of Berdymukhamedov's concert on Youtube (see above) in December 2011 that has much more close-up footage, filmed right near the stage.

In the June version of the song, uploaded by the same user, ramzayi1 and published by RFE/RL, you see a lot of lights and smoke and a large screen of Berdy playing, but you never see what else is on stage. In fact, right when Dovlet in fact seems to come on (if you listen closely), the camera pans over the adoring fans in the crowd practically swooning to Berdy's song. This is all for state TV.

In ramzayi1's later version above, which he calls Turkmen president singing ver 2.0, you see the drummer playing a long "Drums and Space" type of Grateful Dead lead-in, then you see a paunchy Berdy in his chartreuse golfing sweater appear and strum along, and then you see him stand up at the end of the drum solo, and walk out on stage with his guitar, but his mouth isn't moving. Yet singing is coming out!

The camera then pans to a plump-faced fellow in a red bow-tie -- that's Dovlet! It has to be -- not only does it look like him, it's clear that it's his voice (when you compare to the 2009 video).

Then what the Turkmen president does is lamely sing along in a duet. That seemed like dubbing when you couldn't see how it was put together; now you see what it actually is.

Much of rahayi1's footage even blocks out Dovlet -- there's a large New Year's tree and other decorations in the way.

Now why did the Turkmen president bring Dovlet on stage for the New Year's concert, after stealing his song? (And did he even have him on stage in June?!)

Probably because it got to be such a meme among Turkmen music-lovers, who manage to see Youtube at least in small numbers despite it being blocked entirely in their country, that he had to think up something to account for himself!

So Dovlet is doubly coopted -- his song is taken, and then he is brought on stage to sing an unacknowledged duet with the president -- that he may have also sang in June. The lamer, older voice of the president can be heard in the forced duet. So sad!

What Did Berdymukhamedov Swear His Oath of Allegiance To?

Turkmenistan the Golden Age: Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov at his inauguration.

When President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov took his oath of office after his landslide 97 percent election win, what did he swear to?

I can't seem to find a precise description of this in the official media or wire services -- does anyone know?

There's obviously the scene where he is kissing the Turkmen flag -- that's in the state media. Then there's this photo above where he stands before two books.  I'm betting that one of them is the Constitution of Turkmenistan, and the other is the Koran. I'm figuring they've ditched the Ruhnama.

In his inauguration in 2007, Berdy put his hand on the Constitution -- Turkmenistan is a secular state. He then bowed to the Koran as a sign of respect to its traditions -- this was deliberate. And I think he then either kissed or bowed to the Ruhnama, which is an amalgam of state cult ideology and religion.

Now it seems he only has these two books. Which is at his left hand and which is at his right?

The Ruhnama is usually shown with a green and pink colour cover, so I'm guessing what we're seeing here are the Koran and the Constitution.

RFE/RL's Turkmen Service has a video clip showing some more elements -- Berdy both kisses the flag and holds it to his forehead. Then, he goes to the podium and holds up a little green book with a picture -- is that him? Is that his certificate of presidency...or something? He is already wearing a large green medal with the 16-sided star of Oguz Khan that is Turkmenistan's state symbol.

Then, one of those elder folks in the large hats like the guards in Wizard of Oz come up to shake his hands. That's supposed to signify that the elders of the country are the ones who support/chose him -- he works for "the people" as signified by those wise men. But unfortunately, the clip shuts off before we see what he does with which book...

 

Will the US Ever Succeed in Converting its Afghan War into a Central Asian Anti-Drug War?

US Marine Corps. Marine guards a poppy field in Marjah, Helman Province.

I've often wondered if the great powers will just convert the US war in Afghanistan following the Russian war in Afghanistan as a big anti-drug war by everybody.

Yesterday in Vienna there was a ministerial-level conference of the Paris Pact, the largest international forum on counter-narcotics related to Afghanistan, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported February 17.

While Kommersant ran the story with the headline "Anti-Narcotics Initiative Blocked in Vienna: Russia Succeeds in Freezing Discussion of the American Project," the article was reprinted in Central Asia news sites like for.kg with the headline, "US Wants Access to Information from the Intelligence Agencies of Central Asia; Russia Outraged"  Each to his own.

The US rolled out a proposal that was characterized as enabling access to "sensitive information" from Central Asian countries. Russia views the drug problem as one of the main threats to its security, but didn't want the US grabbing intelligence from countries it views as part of its sphere of influence. "As a result, Russia for now has managed to talk its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) out of participating in [the American plan]," says Kommersant.

The Paris process was started in 2003 to unite countries affected by narcotics transit out of Afghanistan. The second summit was in 2006 in Russia, which has a big stake in the issue. More than 30,000 Russian citizens die of drugs every year. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov acknowleged that opium production had increased from 3.6 thousand tons in 2010 to 5.8 thousand tons in 2011 so the goals were not being met. He blamed NATO and the US which is not sufficiently combatting opium fields in Afghanistan and doesn't want to establish anti-drugs cooperation with the CSTO. Of course, with drugs, it takes two to tango -- yes, the US stopped eradicating fields so as to give farmers susceptible to Taliban recruitment a livelihood to fall back on while they concentrated on eliminating the Taliban strongholds (only partially successfully). Yes, there were plenty of Russian drug overlords available to pick up the excess opium now available on the market.

Evidently the US was trying to trump this situation with an offer of cooperation to include everyone, including the CSTO. The Central Asian Anti-Narcotics Initiative was unveiled in October at the General Assembly by William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs who previously served in Columbia and Venezuela. Five countries were to be included: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, all members of the CSTO, and Turkmenistan, which isn't. The US was going to pay for a special unit to combat the drug mafia and was going to announce the initiative at the conference with the participation of the Central Asian countries, Russia and Afghanistan.

But Russia threw a wrench in the works, complaining that the special  agent were envisioned as having broad powers, and that would mean access to operational and classified information in the other countries' intelligence agencies, unnamed Russian officials told Kommersant.

As we know from WikiLeaks and the reporting of Joshua Kucera at EurasiaNet, the US already has some of this access with its special forces that help Central Asian governments with military and security issues. We just don't know how much.

"In Moscow, officials fear that [such access] will give the US the opportunity to collect sensitive information and then with the help of such information, blackmail the governments of the countries in the region," the  sources told Kommersant. Of course the US denied this.

The Russians also made the practical argument that there was no need to reinvent the wheel if there was already the CSTO, among whose missions is fighting the drug trade, and already Russian-led initiatives.  "Why don't the Americans just join  them if they really want to combat narcotics traffic? Why do they insist on bilateral dialogues with the Central Asian republications, demonstratively ignoring Russia's interest in the region?" wailed the sources.

Well, I'd say that's because they want to demonstratively ignore Russia's interest in the region? And because the anti-narcotics is just a kind of narrative under which the real task of forging the military relationships and trade ties is accomplished. It's the glue for the New Silk Road.

The US had contacted the Central Asian counterparts before the conference, and the Russians got to work, too. They told all their Central Asian allies about the risks that would be involved in accepting the US offers. I wonder if they mentioned the risk of WikiLeaks revelations!

Whatever the Russians invoked, it had the effect -- Kommersant's sources say they believe the reason Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't come herself to this ministerial-level meeting and sent her deputy William Burns is because of the Russian's disruption on the eve of the conference.

The US used the conference to keep talking to their interlocutors from Central Asia, says Kommersant, but still didn't find any takers. It's likely that they fear angering Russia -- Kyrgyzstan depends on Russia for security and fuel and injections of development assistance and all the others have trade, energy relationships, and remittance economies all dependent on the Kremlin. What can the US offer?

Hmm, this is a tough one, because Russia is corrupt, and corrupt in the drugs department big-time, so cooperating with Russian means all your secret stuff gets misused and you don't really combat drugs anyway; but if you don't get Russia on board, as much as you have to distrust it, they will block your progress in Central Asia.

The US is not going to win this one just by invoking its "expertise" or "capacity" or "good will". It likely has to pitch a harder game where it makes very bleak prognoses about the drug trade boom that will occur when the Taliban surge comes after the departure of US troops, and all the security issues that go with it, and ask Russia what it reallly wants out of this. Is the revenue for its own drug mafia really worth the deaths of 30,000 people and the recent 10 percent increase in the spread of addiction and AIDS, not to mention the turmoil and devastation of the even more fragile societies of Tajikistan and other poor Central Asian countries?

Like everything else in Russia, this is not going to get better because of Russia's determination to thwart the West which is cultural and imperial. So the situations with Syria or Iran; START; anything you care to name are not going to improve. This is why you need a containment strategy to go along with the futile multilateral cooperation efforts.

Oh, here's a bad English translation of the Russian piece for some more and here's RFE/RL's story.

#WikiLeaks: How the #Kazakhstan Government Played Everybody on the Zhovtis Case

How the Kazakh government played everybody regarding the Zhovtis case!

It's awful to read this WikiLeaks cable of September 18, 2009, revealing the awful cunning and cynical manipulation of the Kazakh government -- and how everybody seems to have bought it at the time, seriously hindering the defense of Zhovtis.

Shouldn't they have learned long, long ago that you never believe the Soviet-type secret policy when they tell you "be quiet, it will go well for you."

I realize the people involved may have meant well -- or at least some of them. But why wasn't anybody questioning this lose-lose strategy? I can't help thinking of Zhovtis himself had not been locked in a jail cell at the time, he might have counseled more protest.

As the New York Times reported at the time, Zhovtis paid $15,000 compensation to the family of the man he accidently struck and killed, and we know the family had originally written a statement saying they were not pressing charges. So what happened?

From the cable, we learn:

Convicted human rights advocate Evgeniy Zhovtis' lead lawyer, Vitaliy Voronov, predicts Zhovtis will not be acquitted at his appeal hearing but that his sentence might be reduced.  Voronov said he had been told that "someone high up in the government" had triggered the trial by telling President Nazarbayev that Zhovtis had been drunk when the auto accident happened.  Kazakhstan remains hypersensitive to any criticism about the Zhovtis case.  To benefit Zhovtis, we recommend that any public statements and private conversations with Kazakhstani government officials hue strictly to advocating a fair and transparent appeals case that fully respects the rule of law.

Does that explain the rather mild Soros statement? But since when does OSI do what a US diplomat tells them to do? They might defer to the judgement of the lawyer in this case, but why didn't experience with this region dictate to them otherwise, that the bluff on this had to be called?

It's really awful to watch this unfold, because every muted and muffled statement and delayed action and effort to refrain from ruffling the Kazakh official's "sensitivities" cost Zhovtis more time in jail.

Voronov thanked the Ambassador for the statement the U.S. Embassy released on September 4 and characterized it as "balanced and correct."   He also thanked the Ambassador for working quietly with high-level Kazakhstani officials to express concerns about the way in which the Bakanas court and the local prosecutor had handled the case.  Voronov cautioned that it would be inadvisable to "politicize" the case at this time, although it would be appropriate for all interested parties who want to be helpful to Zhovtis and his supporters to continue to express hope that the procedures and ruling of the appeals court will be fair.

If anything, the "politicizing" came in muting the response of the case. From previous cases we know (i.e. Sergei Duvanov) the Kazakh officials often resort to thuggery and violence or trumped-up criminal cases. They were clearing testing the waters to see what they could get away with.

The idea that the false version of Zhovtis supposedly being drunk somehow convinced Nazarbayev to try him and "follow the law" really seems contrived. The prosecutors knew he was not intoxicated. They had the evidence. So where did the "version" come from that he was drunk? The KGB's successor, the Committee for National Security (KNB)? More likely than not -- but then it may have been with the president's consent or consent of other high officials. It's all hearsay passed to the lawyer -- and yet he buys it.

Under the sub-heading "Something Happened," the cable writer describes Voronov's account of the case taking an odd turn:

 4.  (C) As they discussed the case in detail, Voronov told the Ambassador that initially, immediately after the accident, the investigation had been conducted fairly and professionally.  Zhovtis had provided the investigator with a copy of a written statement from the victim's family that acknowledged Zhovtis had helped them "with financial and moral support" and that requested no charges be brought against him.  Subsequently, however, Voronov said, the prosecutor "cheated" Zhovtis by not including the statement in the documentary evidence for the case.  Voronov added that Zhovtis, too, had made a "stupid mistake" by not insisting on a receipt for the document.   In any case, likely under pressure from the prosecutor, the investigator unexpectedly changed Zhovtis' status from "witness" to "suspect" without notifying him.  Further, during the trial, the prosecutor denied that he had ever received a copy of the document from the victim's family requesting that no charges be filed against Zhovtis.

Well, wait. Stupid mistake? If the relatives wrote such a statement, and a copy of it was  given to the prosecutor, and he failed to give a receipt, couldn't they re-submit it? Why wouldn't subsequent appeals allow the re-submission of this vital document? I realize it's Kazakhstan and all kinds of things go wrong or are deliberately obstructed, but it seems strange to blame the problem on Zhovtis' failing to get a receipt for a document that he likely assumed was obvious and self-explanatory. Was the family pressured not to ensure it was re-submitted?

What's more likely than not is that this situation was manipulated by the KNB so that the paper was "lost".

A section on Zhovtis' high-level friends even invokes Saudabayev:

5.  (SBU) Voronov made clear that Zhovtis is widely respected by a number of high government officials.  Voronov told the Ambassador that in recent days he had spoken about Zhovtis with State Secretary-Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev and several other senior Foreign Ministry officials, all of whom openly expressed respect for Zhovtis.

Yeah, so much respect, that later, as we know from another WikiLeaks cable, in his conversation with Holbrooke, he compared Zhovtis to Roman Polanski (!) and refused to budge on his case.

The Kazakh government was lucky in having Zhovtis as their chief human rights defender, as he is principled and "correct" as they say in Russia, i.e. polite and decent. They had someone who didn't become riled or give into provocations but was just quietly articulating his honesty, with a help of a lawyer who doesn't appear to be a tower of strength against the regime in this instance, but that's likely too much to ask:

 He said that Zhovtis is "a very correct person, who has never had a conflict with the President."  Asserting Zhovtis is practically the conscience of Kazakhstan and a human symbol of Kazakhstan's democratization, Voronov claimed that no one could wish to silence him, "not Nazarbayev, and not anyone else in the government."  Voronov said that, in his opinion, the court case occurred because Zhovtis refused to plead guilty, which would have meant the case would never have gone to court. "But according to the law, he is innocent," Voronov declared and, therefore, Zhovtis was taking a principled stand to prove that he had acted appropriately after the accident.  If he had pled guilty, Zhovtis feels he would have lost public credibility and would be unable to continue his work as a human rights' defender.

Really?! Not Nazarbayev or anyone else in the government? Yet we were just told that some agent falsely reported to Nazarbayev that Zhovtis was drunk -- and the impression is created that Nazarbayev was going to do the right thing, but then learned this "detail," regrettably, with a world-weary expression on his face, could not let Zhovtis go. Doesn't this make you sick??? Why do people buy this crap???

"So whodunnit?" asks the cable writer -- who was responsible for the decision to put Zhovtis away? Exactly the question.

If it's true that "no one wanted to silence Zhovtis," the Ambassador asked Voronov, what, in his view, had really happened to cause the government to file the case that eventually led to Zhovtis' conviction and a harsh, if legal, sentence.   Backing off from his earlier statement that no one in the government could have wished to silence Zhovtis, Voronov confided he had met with Presidential Domestic Policy Adviser Yermukhamet Yertysbayev who was outraged by the Zhovtis case.   According to Voronov, Yertysbayev said that apparently someone told the president, when Nazarbayev enquired about the case, that Zhovtis had been drunk when the fatal accident happened.  Nazarbayev reportedly responded, "OK, in that case, follow the law."  When the Ambassador asked who would have done this, Voronov replied it would have had to have been someone at the "top" of either the Committee for National Security (KNB) or the Presidential Administration  -- i.e., KNB Chairman Shabdarbayev or Head of the Presidential Administration Musin.  Voronov added, "I am inclined to believe it was most likely the KNB.  Maybe it was the Chairman acting on his own."

Well, if you believe that, you believe in the tooth fairy. Naturally in these Soviet collectivized governments where the Party works hand in glove with the KGB, they cooperated on this, one suggesting the scenario, the other authorizing.

Voronov continues to play down the case -- speculating that his client might be released after only two years, or only put under house arrest, or even released under an amnesty. Why did he do this?!

The lawyer speaks incorrectly of the case possibly "reaching the UN Human Rights Council" -- but that's not how it works. It might reach the UN Human Rights Committee, the human rights treaty body, because Kazakhstan signed the optional protocol permitting its citizens to make such complaints. The Human Rights Council is the political body of states that takes up issues and countries, but they wouldn't take up a single case like this.

This revelation by WikiLeaks of a conversation within the US Embassy in Astana also sheds light on the secret workings of OSI:

10.  (C) On September 11, during a meeting on other issues, the Ambassador informed Deputy Foreign Minister Kairat Umarov that the Open Society Institute planned to send prominent U.S. lawyer Scott Horton to Kazakhstan to consult with Zhovtis' legal team.  The Ambassador emphasized that this was a private-sector NGO initiative and not in any way sponsored by the U.S. government.  He added, "I want to make clear there are no official fingerprints on this," and reiterated the private-sector NGO nature of this initiative.  Umarov replied that the Horton visit would be counter-productive and viewed by some as "a provocation."

Given that Zhovtis' own lawyer and the post were telling OSI to go slow, that may account why they did produce such a cautious statement in September 2009, and delayed Horton's trip (and there may have been logistics issues with short notice, but a decision seems to have been made at the time not to have a high-level presence at the trial.)

And when people hold you hostage that way, implying that any of your more radical protests might harm the very person you are hoping to help, boy can you be persuaded. Yet these people are all savvy and experienced with how these lying thuggish regimes operate. Horton came anyway, but not for the days of the trial, and the other cable says the Embassy briefed him on September 25 about the court hearing their staff person had observed.

And now, read this far-fetched portrayal of Kazakhstan -- Kazakhstan ! -- suddenly becoming all pious and literalist about making sure that "no one is above the law" -- even a revered human rights activist. Right!

Voronov's version of why the Zhovtis case went to trial might explain Kazakhstan's hypersensitive reaction to international pressure on this issue, a reaction that sharply emphasizes that no one is above the law.  If indeed Nazarbayev actually said, "OK ... follow the law," all subsequent talking points would flow from Number One's rather off-hand comment.  More interesting to know would be, if in fact it happened as Yertysbayev told Voronov, what Shabdarbayev or Musin had in mind.  Silence a human rights critic during Kazakhstan's OSCE chairmanship?  Damage Kazakhstan in the eyes of the West?  Both are reportedly hard-core, old-guard, and pro-Moscow.  To benefit Zhovtis, we recommend that any public statements and private conversations with Kazakhstani government officials hue strictly to advocating a fair and transparent appeals case that fully respects the rule of law.

So two and a half years later, let's review this. This sort of cautious, quiet approach DID NOT WORK. The Kazakhs did not budge. It did not help Zhovtis. He served 2.5 years in prison, and the level of his freedom now that he is released isn't at all certain.

Why do I dredge up this old cable and this old story of the early days after Zhovtis' arrest? Because we can see where it all went wrong, and will go wrong again. Right now, some people are following the same tactics with those arrested now, invoking "sensitivities". Indeed, as I outlined with the trip to Kazakhstan from the representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, no statement was made at all about Zhanaozen, and a pledge to allow in investigators that was not sincere and never forthcoming unfortunately was taken at face value and enabled the media to spin the government positively on the eve of elections.

 

 

 

The Zhovtis Case and the Soros Mission in #Kazakhstan

I'm glad Yevgeny Zhovtis was freed early from his four-year jail sentence for involuntary vehicular manslaughter. It was an unjust case from start to finish, and I hope he will be able to resume his important human rights work after recuperating and getting his bearings.  He returns from his isolation in a prison colony 1,000 miles from his home to a country that is worse off, human-rights wise.

Ironically, it was Zhovtis himself who recommended that the West give its blessing to the notion of having Kazakhstan as the chair of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE); he thought it might put his country into the glare of international scrutiny and bring about human rights reform.

It didn't. Things got worse, with the passage of a worse press law, the jailing of a journalist, harassment of independent media and NGOs, and in the end, a  highly compromised NGO parallel conference at the official summit (limited in its numbers and forced to accept Kazakh officials and GONGOs on the speakers' list) -- which produced nothing, and ended in a stand-off.

Since then -- one could argue that Astana's sense of impunity with the chair set the stage -- the human rights situation has dramatically deteriorated, with the shooting of at least 14 striking workers by official admission (and credible reports of possibly as many as 64), and the jailing of journalists and opposition members. I think we're going to see this situation get worse before it gets better and it opens up the question of the extent to which human rights groups can function there -- including Zhovtis and the Kazakhstan Human Rights Bureau he has headed for years. They've weathered many a storm; they will survive. But it will be tough. How can the international community help?

That brings me to the issue of the Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan of which Zhovtis was former chair from 1999-2002, and was also a board member of OSI’s Central Eurasia Project. The Kazakhstan Open Society Foundation is now looking for an executive chair, as sadly, the former chair, Anna Alexandra, passed away from cancer at an early age.

INITIAL CAUTIOUS OSF RESPONSE TO ZHOVTIS CASE

At the time Zhovtis was arrested, for various reasons, from what I gather, both the local office and the international overseers in New York decided not to have an OSF presence at the trial. Apparently, there was concern that if the "Soros" brand was too visible and close to this trial, it would actually make things go worse for Zhovtis. At home and abroad, the Soros name is inevitably tied to conspiracy theories by conservatives -- likely the tactic was to keep this kind of thing away from the case.

I couldn't have disagreed more. I thought that in his hour of need, the people who had in part put Zhovtis at risk with this regime by having him on their board should stand visibly by his side, with the highest level they could muster in their operation. There was always the tension of the local office versus international norms -- these local Soros foundations are often forced into compromises with the powers-that-be merely to preserve their presence. In Russia, this discrepancy between local pressures and international expectations eventually led to the closure of the office, as it appears to be doing in Azerbaijan. Soros has tended to pull back in recent years due to a tidal wave of backlash about his alleged involvement in financing "colour revolutions" -- by what's to be ashamed of, really? I'm for challenging this strategy.

While there wasn't a campaign in Kazakhstan, OSF did put out a statement on Zhovtis in New York. It was masterfully drafted, likely with legal as well as political advisory staff, and stayed away from declaring Zhovtis as innocent, or pronouncing his case as trumped-up to silence him on the eve of the Kazakh chairmanship of OSCE, and didn't demand his release.

Thirty years of New York human rights movement saddle-bag balancing and 50 years of European diplomacy went into this remarkable statement:

It is in the spirit of the values and standards to which Zhovtis is devoted, that we wish to convey our hope that Zhovtis will enjoy full rights in accordance with the law of Kazakhstan and international conventions to which Kazakhstan is party. His position as a leading rights defender does not entitle him to have any fault on his part overlooked. Nor should it result in any attribution of fault or harsher treatment than is warranted by the evidence.

Thanks, guys! One wishes, oh, the state of Israel enjoyed such kid-glove treatment from the Soros-funded Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch.

I think that sort of equivocating shouldn't have been in the statement, because the task at hand was human solidarity, not legalities. International human rights doesn't cover everything; and OSF should never have implied that you can get a fair trial in Kazakhstan with its wimpy "hope" for one. There's a fiction we all engage in when we call on these states to abide by their international obligations, but when it comes down to your very colleague on your very organization's board going to jail for a long time, the fiction shouldn't be indulged. The CEP leadership should have attended his trial, made multiple vigorous statements, and put out something less limp than this signed by the Brussels office. They didn't.

The Brussels statement opened with the same curiously elaborate apology to the victim of the accident, which may have been dictated by either the government of Kazakhstan itself, or Kazakhstan foundation leaders who felt this was the best approach to take.  Yet it's just plain odd to begin first with condolences to a pedestrian who completely accidently was killed when struck by the car Zhovtis was driving, and then as an afterthought, add condolences to Zhovtis. In a normal country under the rule of law, if you were not DWI and you were not at fault, striking dead a pedestrian would not lead to a jail sentence. That it did in Kazakhstan (and doesn't for everyone as we know) was a function of the regime's desire to pounce on this fortuitous situation to muzzle Zhovtis.

This very strange and stilted statement was possibly designed at someone's advice to "make things go better for Zhovtis" and possibly just a desire by lawyers to limit liability for litigation or association with a situation that would cost their entire presence in Kazakhstan.

RTP: the Insidious Doctrine

Sadly, David Rieff pretty much gets it right with his provocative article this morning, "Save Us From the Liberal Hawks" (whose URL contains the phrase "Syria Is Not Our Problem."

As he says, in argument against military intervention to stop crimes against humanity in Syria:

If the looming victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the failure of the democratic project in Iraq, and the fact that the most significant political outcomes of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya have been instability and the victory of political Islam have not chastened them -- and clearly they haven't -- nothing will.

I agree. Human rights activists have to think of this, and be accountable. With largely uncritical support of the Arab Spring, with support of the NATO intervention in Libya, and now support  of some military intervention in Syria, they are helping to usher in systems through massive violations of human rights. This has prompted Brazil rightly to talk now in the UN Security Council about "responsibility WHILE protecting." When we intervene, then we have ownership of these governments that are then more massively violating human rights than the previous autocrats. That should pose more of a challenge to the human rights ethos than it does.

As I wrote in 2009 in objection to Gareth Evans on Open Democracy, Responsibility to Protect (RTP) is an insidious doctrine as it implies that bad actors will act to protect their own people, which they won't, and that good actors will somehow avoid massive human rights violations in waging RTP wars, which they won't -- or that the results are pretty -- which they have never been.

We should at least wait to see if any of these other situations where we intervened and are losing ever improve before trying it again.

The religiosity of RTP has prompted Ken Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, now to call for us to "nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam" as if we can count on such rights-respecting.

The obsession with RTP intervention is preventing us from thinking about other means, such as putting pressure on China and Russia in other ways.

This is in sharp contrast to Anne-Marie Slaughter and other enthusiasts of RTP who have been strenuously calling on Twitter to "do something," with urgent argumentation against the realpolitickers like Joshua Foust -- who doesn't then have another plan to put pressure on Russia (or China) because he's generally uncritical of Russia (for him Georgia is always worse, etc.)

The massacres in Syria should be among the many reasons we really review the terms of the "reset" with Russia (and certainly not do things like "abolish" Jackson/Vanik when we can just simply declare that Russia has graduated from it). While it's unglamorous, we should return to the more patient type of human rights of the Cold War era when we had to combine rhetorical condemnation and documentation and incremental progress with arms talks. We should let the Arab League do the heavy lifting on dealing with the murderous regimes in their own region. No, it doesn't provide an immediate salve to the conscience -- the regimes resulting from intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan haven't either for the last 10 years, and we should be mindful of that.

If this seems callous, go back to the half dozen failures mentioned at the top -- they should be chastening. I say "sadly" about Rieff's doctrine because I don't take any smug joy about it as some will, because it's so bleak. Nobody wants to stand by while people are murdered. But we might find ourselves in a proxy war with Russia or at least Rosvoorouzhenie (the Russian state arms supply company) in Syria that will make things worse.

As I said, an unseemly byproduct of the RTP doctrine and political human rights these days is Ken Roth's call on us to "nurture" Islamic states. He does this in much the same way as my friend Sergei Kovalev has always imagined that you could still have a socialist state even like the Soviet Union that might still be imagined to obey international human rights law. There's always been an assumption among such liberals that we can be agnostic about the social system of countries and pretend that one social system versus another isn't better about respecting basic civil rights and liberties. We'd all like this to be true. We can all show it to be false simply by looking at the Freedom House or Transparency International surveys.  That doesn't mean we can argue backwards and decide to go soft on human rights criticism of Western liberal capitalist democracies because their systems ensure rights better (the Jean Kirkpatrick debate of the 1970s).  But we can go to where the violations are, and admit that they should deserve the lion's share of our resources and attention.

The feminists who have challenged Amnesty International's disturbing doctrines in support of "defensive jihad" and jihadists who support the abrogation of women's rights have challenged Roth now, too, in a petition.

Normally I sign their petitions, for example, in defense of Amnesty's gender advisor who was forced to leave over these issues, but this particular open letter to Roth just had a problem for me in the invocation of the idea of the "right" to separation of church and state. I agree this is a good thing to have, but it's nowhere enshrined as a "right" in international law, although it is in the US in the First Amendment. I'm all for it, I just think in the international context you have to find a different way of saying this. And I do think then you have to talk about the assumptions that certain social systems (i.e. religious or socialist) are "better" or "not good" for promoting human rights.

Roth's essay is offensve because it attempts to guilt-trip liberals reticent about endorsing the Arab Spring results as "Islamophobic":

Rather, wherever Islam-inspired governments emerge, the international community should focus on encouraging, and if need be pressuring, them to respect basic rights—just as the Christian-labeled parties and governments of Europe are expected to do. Embracing political Islam need not mean rejecting human rights, as illustrated by the wide gulf between the restrictive views of some Salafists and the more progressive interpretation of Islam that leaders such as Rashid Ghannouchi, head of Tunisia’s Nahdha Party, espouse. It is important to nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam while standing firm against repression in its name. So long as freely elected governments respect basic rights, they merit presumptive international support, regardless of their political or religious complexion

God speed to Rashid Ghannouchi, but Ken really ought to be more intellectually honest here and talk about the disaster that is Egypt. What are we getting in Egypt? Or for that matter, Libya? No government merits "presumptive international support". Hamas was freely elected and then didn't respect basic rights at home or abroad. Israel's government is freely elected and has a basic system of respecting human rights which Ken Roth doesn't really acknowledge given Human Rights Watch's obsession with Israel/Palestine. This is politics. Let's not pretend it's human rights. Or let us say that in fact human rights are always in fact political and drop the mask.

Roth then goes on to construct a notion of Turkey that tends to undermine his own theory:

Perhaps the most interesting new presence in the region is Turkey. Despite its distinct history, it remains a powerful example of a country with a religiously conservative elected government that has not used Islam as a pretext to undermine basic rights. Turkey has capitalized on its growing stature by entering the political fray of the Arab world. More vigorously than its Arab neighbors, Turkey denounced the political killing in Syria, championed democratic change in Egypt, and opposed Israel’s punitive blockade of Gaza.

Turkey has done those things, of course, for its own geopolitical interests and to satisfy growing conservative domestic constituents -- not because it has gotten human rights religion. And where's the bar for "rights-respecting" in the test for whether we should embrace Islamic governments, if "Islamic-inspired" Turkey still has so many problems?

Yet Turkey faces several challenges if it is to live up to its enormous potential in the human rights realm. Will it use its growing influence in multilateral arenas to oppose the outdated view of India, Brazil, and South Africa that it is somehow imperialistic to stand with people who are risking their lives to protest repression by their governments? Will Turkey press for democratic change not only among the uprisings of the Arab world but also in Iran, which crushed its Green Revolution in 2009, and the stultified and repressive countries of post-Soviet Central Asia? And will Turkey clean up its worsening human rights record at home–including persistent restrictions on freedom of speech and association, a flawed criminal justice system, and long-term mistreatment of its Kurdish minority—so it can be a less compromised proponent of human rights abroad? Turkey can make a positive difference on human rights in the region—if its leaders take the bold decisions at home and abroad needed to advance this cause.

The idea that Turkey should be the engine for democratic change in Central Asia is about as useless as having Russia, China, or for that matter the US as the engine. In most Central Asian countries, the Turkish influence has now been greatly challenged with the expulsion of not only Turkish businesses but the Turkish schools related to the Nurchilar movement. Both are seen as covers for extremism. (I'm for endorsing the rights of religious schools or "inspired" businesses such as those associated with the Gulen or Nurcilar movement, which has been expelled from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, while also calling on this more liberal form of Islamic organization not to impose the violation of women's rights and other civil rights.)

What all of these problems come back to today is Iran, and the inability of liberals to have a reasonable containment program for Iran, rather than silly things like hoping that Turkey is going to reform Iran, or hysteria about Israel bombing Iran. You know there's a thing that you do when you can't have a hot war, and invade countries and kill thousands of people or install shakey governments that then kill thousands more people. You have a cold war.

 

 

 

Released From Prison, Kazakhstan's Human Rights Leader Zhovtis Vows to Continue His Work

Prison gates. Photo by Kazakhstan Human Rights Bureau.

Kazakhstan's leading human rights defender Evgeny Zhovtis was released from prison today, having served about more than half of his four-year sentence for involuntary vehicular manslaughter. His case was widely believed by local and international human rights advocates to have been manipulated to keep him from vocal human rights activity during Kazakhstan's chair of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe in 2010.

Zhovtis' colleagues from the Human Rights Bureau were there to meet him.

He had a statement to make (which I've translated):

I would like to thank the mother of the victim, Rayhan, for her words of forgiveness which mean a lot to me.
 
Great and invaluable support in this difficult period, besides my family and close friends was given by the staff of our Human Rights Bureau especially the founders of the Bureau, Zhemis Turmagambetova, the leaders and members of the unregistered party Alga, the Azat OSDP, the Communist Party, Kazakhstani and international human rights organizations, journalists from the newspapers Golos Respubliki, Vzglyad, DAT, Pravda Kazakhstan, and especially the newspaper Vremya and many other civic activists and ordinary people both in Kazakhstan and abroad.

In turn, I would like to say a word of support for those in imprisonment: Natalya Sokolova, Aron Atabek, Vladimir Kozlov, who has been arrested, as well as Igor Vinyavsky, Serik Sapargali, Ayjangul Amirova, Roza Tuletaeva and other political activists, human rights defenders and journalists who are the "culprits" in various criminal cases. I wish them courage, stamina and hope for justice, even in these futile situations.

In the last two and a half years, I did not change my views in any way, or my attitude to the processes occurring in our country and the world, or my conceptions of freedom and justice, and I intend to defend them further.

At the same time, a prison colony is not a sanatorium, and I need to rest a little and restore my health. Before returning to active work, I need to take a look around, get up to speed, and understand better what is happening. For that, some time will be needed.

Evgeny Zhovtis
February 17, 2012
Ust-Kamenogorsk

Uzbek Muslim Women Lose Appeal, Face Heavy Fine for Religious Teaching

Muslim defendants from Parkent and human rights defender Rustamov.Photo by Elena Urlaeva.

Elena Urlaeva of the Human Rights Alliance writes this week of women put on trial for their religious teaching in Uzbekistan.

On February 13 at 11:00 am in Tashkent Regional Court, the appeals trial took place for a criminal case involving four Muslim women: N. Ashirmatova, M. Rahimhujaeva, Mirzukurova, and M. Holmatova.

Judge M. Mirzayev of Yukorichirchik district had tried the case against the women, which human rights defenders believe to be fabricated, on charges of "violating the procedure for teaching religious beliefs" (Art. 241).

Urlaeva and Shuhrat Rustamov, another member of the Human Rights Alliance were able to observe the hearing, presided over by Judge Malikov, who conducted the trial without benefit of the participation of the judicial assessors, prosecutor and state attorney for the defendants. That's common in Uzbekistan -- as Human Rights Watch's latest report on Uzbekistan relates, lawyers often can't even find their defendants in the unjust justice system, or don't get proper notifications of hearings. That the ersatz jury (the assessors) and even the prosecutor didn't show up seems particularly egregious, but they figure it's a done deal already.

Writes Urlaevya:  "Twice during the proceedings, Judge Malikov spoke on his mobile phone, ignoring a statement from Nasiba Ashirmatova that Judge Murzayeva had not provided the decision of the court, and only after a picket, 20 days after the verdict, he had been forced to supply a copy."

Judge Malikov also did not invite to the trial an expert on the lawful definition of prohibition on religious literature which had been confiscated during a police search.

I wonder what this "teaching" involved. They may have only met in their homes or existing legal mosques.

Judge Malikov ruled to leave Judge Mirzayeva's decision in force, and now the Muslim women are facing a fine of 5 minimum wages which will be supervised by the mahalla (neighbourhood leader) and police. I don't know whether that means $150 or something like that, but it's a terrible penalty in a country where minimum wages are low.

The Human Rights Alliance said they intend to keep defending the Muslim believers, who are from the city of Parkent in Tashkent region.

Urlaeva also includes in her dispatch a photo of the ripped seating and cracked floor of the courtroom, which sort of says it all about the state of Uzbek justice...

 

HTTrack, Central Asian Edition -- and The Open Sourcerers Should Worry More About Privacy

Well, when the software is free, you get what you pay for.

The developers of HTTrack, a gizmo to copy websites easily, should worry more about its privacy exposures of its hapless "customers".

I'm familiar with this sort of hard-drive info exposure from Second Life third-party viewers -- this is the sort of thing that would get your third-party viewer axed from the accepted list.

The problem is that some people's folders merely say "My Computer" or "Mom" or something like that, but some people have their computer named with their first or even full name or company  name.

Hence, poor Nathan -- undoubtedly Nathan Hamm because I don't think it's Nathan Detroit -- busy copying my website for reasons unknown, got caught by HTTrack's carelessness. Here's my blog visitors' log:

Gosh, this is a security analyst?! Usually he goes to the trouble of using hidemyass.com

Now why is he so frantically copying EVERYTHING on my website?

It's not going anywhere and it can be accessed here. Of course, Nathan may be collecting kompromat for his "lawsuit" -- a recurring theme of his is that somehow, I am writing "libelous" material because I...criticize his site.

I do wonder about our nation's security, with people like this doing the analysis of it. But fortunately there are HORDES of these people (I never had any idea how many!).

It's a fairly trivial matter to fix up your software so that when people use it on a website to copy it, it doesn't leave a trail with your c:/ drive information. But I suppose it's just as well to have a sense of who is obsessively copying you.

TweetEffect -- Central Asian Edition

There's a fun little tool called "Tweet Effect" which tells you how many Twitter followers you gain or lose for your recent tweets.

It's a great thing to plug in after a Twit-fight!

@Registan_net which is apparently run by Nathan Hamm should likely think a little bit more about their followers lost by intemperate speech on the Internet.

Calling me a bunch of names and saying a bunch of nasty things to me cost them followers 11 times!

To be sure, they gained followers 6 times as well, but some of them were just rubber-neckers. (The tool doesn't show you how many followers and who they are unless you sign up for mailings later.)

The red-lined tweets with the down arrows show where Registan_net lost followers and the green and up arrows show where they are gained:

But there's no question that Registan_net only had a net loss by harassing me on Twitter -- here's another page of unfollows and follows:

 

It's interesting to see what makes people unfollow you. Sometimes it's news links that make them leave, but sometimes it's the opposite. There isn't always a reason because people hit the ceiling of 2000 in most cases and then have to revise their follow lists.

Here's my stats from the same interchange -- one loss, one gain over that particular round:

Joshua Foust didn't have any recent changes, but there's a few things he's said that made people peel off -- apparently it's his cooking announcements.

and even more followers lost by Registan_net:

Sarah Kendzior was unchanged. Plug in some of the other pals and see how it works -- it's fun!