Three-card monte, Paris, 2006. Photo by Nelson Minar.
Sarah Kendzior's at it again -- first re-telling the Uzbek suicide student story yet another time, and yet another time not conceding that it may well have been an SNB (secret police) disinformation plot to discredit the opposition and the human rights movement. Then, she re-warms her academic theory once again on the coals of Registan.net implying that if "everybody's a spy" and there is such deep lack of trust between people in Uzbek society, then...we never really have to face the fact that the SNB really *does* do bad things, because it's just "paranoia" seeping into the society.
It's the PERFECT theory for the regime symps and protectionists around Registan.net and it's the sort of thing that becomes very compelling to the "progressive" mind. The progs always hate it when people see fundamentalist Islam behind every bush or exaggerate the threat of regimes in such a way as to distract what they see as the main problem of the world -- the US. So if they can get an anthropologically-validated theory of "SNB-as-metaphor" -- merely affecting people's psychology and not what-it-is -- why, we can dispel this silly belief that the secret police are really terrible.
Kendzior even manages to turn Arendt inside out even as she quotes Arendt:
"In a system of ubiquitous spying,” the philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote, “everybody may be a police agent and each individual feels himself under constant surveillance."
Yes, they do. Because...they are (in states like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union about which Arendt wrote).
But then Kendzior turns around and renders that actual police state and that actual constant surveillance as merely "virtual" (a sleight of hand not unlike three card monte):
On the internet, Uzbeks can access censored information and debate controversial topics like politics and religion – though not without awareness that they are being watched. They can operate in relative secrecy, cloaking themselves in anonymous avatars, or connect through semi-closed social media networks. What they find harder is shaking the SNB’s long shadow, its psychic hold. The SNB inhibits whatever space it inhabits – physical, psychological, and virtual.
See how that worked? Real secret police -- and then just people *imagining the secret police when they might not really be there*. Real secret police -- and then just a "psychic hold" which is merely about the "anthropology" -- how people perceive their state and surroundings, without really caring anymore what the reality is.
The story of the students questioned by the SNB told earlier this week which I questioned thoroughly here is recycled yet again, to become more persuasive in the telling (Kendzior used the same technique in establishing the suicide girl story, then appearing to be very cautious about *not* debunking it; then taking her time to debunk it; and never admitting that it might be an SNB plot.)
Every day, there are human rights violations in Uzbekistan and a hardy human rights community and independent press that reports on them. Registan never, ever covers those stories. There are the trials of religious believers charged with extremism about which we know very little, but whose relatives come to complain about torture. People picketing injustices. Harassment of journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, cultural people in all kinds of contrived ways. None of this EVER captures the attention let alone the imagination of Registan because it would carve too close to the bone on the regime - and Registan is never really about questioning the fundamental power of the Uzbek establishment (or the US government and foreign policy establishment that now supports it).
So instead, we get *this* story. A story that -- as I pointed out already -- even if true, is being put to a certain use. That certain use is to let people in official US educational programs like FLEX know in no uncertain terms that they better watch out -- they better completely scrub even the benign human rights topics that seem pre-approved like HIV/AIDS or trafficking or child rights -- and shut up.
We get it that people are asked to work for the SNB all the time. In fact, it's assumed that many of the people who remain publicly active in some way in Uzbekistan have at least agreed to report certain things to the SNB or to agree to have "conversations". Those who don't are the ones jailed or tortured. The point isn't to question THAT the SNB does this sort of thing; the point is to question the uses to which Registan is putting it now, with academic backing from Kendzior and others on the site.
The entire Gulsumoy Abdujaliova story could have been contrived by the SNB itself; indeed, I supply good arguments for why it likely could have been. (And also explain how carefully a human rights leader worked to research it and ultimately disprove it.) Yet Kendzior once again blames NOT the SNB, but people who "have fabricated claims of SNB abuse in order to discredit others or promote their own agendas."
There's no evidence for this insinuation that emigres made up the story to gain attention or some kind of bizarre street cred as victims. The opposition leaders said they were fooled and in fact conceded the exposure of the story. And we are still left with this: the woman who told the story says she herself was put up to it by the SNB.
Here Kendzior deflects real concern about the SNB's machinations once again, talking about fake asylum claims and the purported fear that "Uzbeks seeking asylum will make false claims about SNB intimidation in order to obtain residence abroad, thereby trivializing the real plight of persecuted individuals". The reality is, many, many asylum claims are in fact inflated or outright bogus.
Has Kendzior ever worked on an asylum claim? I have -- dozens of them. And I've always had a good success rate because I only pick good cases of people I actually know and worked with and whose story I can really vouch for. The real victims of persecution don't go around with the fear Kendzior claims that the fakesters are undermining their case -- they generally can make their case because people know their cases -- there's a track record. Sure, there might be some with this concern, but ultimately what does Kendzior once again succeed in doing here? Dissipating the scrutiny on the SNB and its machinations, and turning the discussion into one about "paranoid mentality" of emigres.
"It is hard to prove one was persecuted by the SNB, because it is hard to prove anything about the SNB," concludes Kendzior handily. Um, no. Actually, when people are harassed and jailed and tortured, their relatives see the signs of torture -- they're real -- and they report them. Often there is a trail of complaints to local human rights groups or even foreign embassies or organizations by that time. It's not as if you can't tell when the SNB has acted and it's strange to be setting up a proposition that "you can't prove anything". Has Kendzior not read Human Rights Watch's reports? Ample documentation of a very real SNB that subjects people to all the most outrageous forms of torture, for which there is physical evidence.
Is Dmitriy's story true? I don't know. It may very well be, although the question of why he is then allowed to leave the country to go and tell the tale of his persecution is an open one.
I think he could have helped build his credibility by running not to Registan, where there is everything from soup to nuts, academics bent on minimizing the SNB and outright regime sympathizers or operatives in the comments, but to Human Rights Watch or Human Rights First (which specializes in political asylum claims and is very experienced in separating out the fake stories) or even the State Department's Department of Human Rights, Labor and Democracy.
Perhaps he ran to Registan because that's where the cool kids go (although I endlessly keep finding people in this field who never heard of it). Perhaps those Peace Corps types, who seem a world and a culture unto themselves (starting with Nathan Hamm) just stick to their own kind with something like this -- there's even an ex-Peace Corps man named "Peter" who appears today in the comments to vouch for Dmitriy -- and of course then help spread the message likely desired with the entire caper in the first place -- to get all those taking part in US programs to stop talking about human rights or opposition to the regime.
But the story should be researched not by blogging academics but by experienced professional human rights lawyers.
Kendzior is also far too lenient about the creeps in the comments -- notably Will and Metin (who appear together but are said to have different IP addresses). They're both pretty toxic and pretty vicious to anyone criticizing the regime, so their bona fides are more than suspect -- it was trying to repeatedly spar with these two anonymous pro-regime commenters that I was banned from Registan. We're told 100 times that we can never suspect them of actually being secret police or regime tools or risk being told maliciously that we're McCarthyites. So what? It needs to be said again and again that the Registanis *are* protective of the regime and therefore they *do* need to be debated, and it's not important whether they come by their views "naturally" or as paid provocateurs. The net effect -- trying to distract and demoralize those criticizing the regime on this website -- is the same. But then, that's how Joshua Foust likes it. And Kendzior ultimately defends them:
This concern, while understandable, nonetheless reflects the paranoid mentality of Uzbekistan’s political system, in which – as one Uzbek exile once put it to me – “‘suspicious’ is the same as ‘guilty’”.
So, see how we're done here now? We've argued away the reality of the SNB. You can never prove anything about it. Your suspicion of other people as agents of the SNB is wrong, because you can't prove it, you might be wrong, and if you make them guilty, you're tearing the fabric of civil society. It was really just all your paranoia anyway -- so stop it! Dmitriy's story might be true, and you'll now think three times before ever talking about human rights again, but the REAL problem in Uzbek society isn't the SNB, but your paranoia...
Moral relativism is Registan's specialty, and Kendzior doesn't disappoint in conclusions: "If belief without proof is unfounded, then suspicion without proof should be equally unfounded." Oh, snap, we can never "prove" anything about Dmitriy's story, but only triangulate among various people, including "Peter". So what? We get to question it and the uses of it to which Registan is putting it.
And Kendzior again handily distracts the debate from her main thesis, which is a scientific and academic one! That is, that young people telling their tales of police abuse on the Internet drive down Internet use, discourage people from using social media, and actually then obstruct more incremental reform. It's not a proven thesis, but Registan will conspire in any way to make it so.
