Different Stans

Joshua Foust's Proposition of Radical Realpolitik is Immoral -- and Unnecessary

Joshua Foust has a deliberately provocative article on PBS, where he has a regular column, about which he further victory-dances about on Registan.net. Even Registan moderator Sarah Kendzior professes to be shocked on Twitter, commenting to @joshuafoust:

Sarah Kendzior ‏ @sarahkendzior

@joshuafoust That's some title. Maybe for a follow-up you can wave a red flag in front of a bull, or throw a lit match into a gas tank

@joshuafoust I'm kidding around. The article is not nearly as inflammatory as the title -- which is just asking for trouble

@joshuafoust And when you're done strangling, you can write about how their rights  didn't matter

@joshuafoust HR matter to those who have to fight for them. Their stakes matter too. But I also wonder about choices, leverage in Uzbek case

Here's my entry at PBS (below), in case it is deleted. Nobody likes to have their propositions called "immoral" or their attacks on human rights groups "immoral". But immoral is exactly what it is -- and calculatedly so. It's not just professionally cynical or establishment-pragmatic -- it's deliberately, nastily, aggressively provocative. It's part of a very long-running assault on the human rights paradigm and the civic groups that espouse it. The origins for the motives of eliminationist animus that Foust has on this just aren't clear. As I said, he's more cynical than the Germans with their own Realpolitik which finds ways to raise human rights issues and more cynical than the Central Asians who at least feign human rights framework.

Inclusion of human rights is a moral precept; exclusion is an immoral precept (there's a debate to be had about how much the human rights obligation can prevail in international relations, but Foust simply excludes it.)

My intervention:

Joshua Foust's proposition of radical Realpolitik is immoral -- and unnecessary. America puts great stake on its reputation for moral governance. So to demand that human rights be retired is immoral because in fact human rights are a moral part of liberal democratic governance which have been part of US foreign policy at least since the Clinton era. In fact, as a principle, they have never been jettisoned, even if the implementation is skewed by geopolitics and America's own sanctioning of torture has blackened its global reputation.

Calling for human rights not to be "paramount" is also entirely unnecessary, as the US and EU and other countries forthrightly make human rights a part of their foreign policies and policies in multilateral institutions. Furthermore, the Central Asian countries that routinely and massively violate human rights also feign the incorporation of human rights policy as the coin of the realm.

Foust always posits an imaginary government that is faced with an imaginary dilemma of having to entirely junk its human rights advocacy in favour of grim geopolitical necessity -- and equally posits an imaginary human rights lobby that demands absolutism in human rights and boycott of all regimes that violate them. Neither of these imaginary creatures exist. In fact, Angela Merkel raised the latest urgent human rights issue of an investigation of the shooting of workers in Zhanaozen *publicly* when she visited Kazakhstan. That's actually more than Hillary Clinton did on her trip to Uzbekistan in November. Both leaders also engaged in quiet diplomacy and the resolution of at least a few political prisoner cases is credited to such diplomacy. The early release of prominent human rights advocate Evgeny Zhovtis is credited to repeated advocacy for him since his arrest in 2009 and a recent trip to the US by a Kazakh delegation came as his release was announced.

As massive human rights violators, the Central Asian regimes are more cynical than Foust in dumping human rights, but when it comes to international relations, Nazarbayev and other Central Asian dictators at least feign the human rights paradigmn, wanting to be seen as "respectable" by the international community. Kazkh officials recently met with a representative of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights about the killings of workers, and Interior Minister even claimed that he welcomed an international investigation (the Foreign Minister then "considered it" but never issued the invitation to the UN investigators). While such manifestations of ostensibly human rights cooperation are made in bad faith by the Kazakh regime, the West can use the game to try to incrementally get concessions and progress. And they do, there are constant efforts in this regard, although most of them are in the realm of quiet diplomacy.

For their part, human rights groups like Human Rights Watch call not for boycotts but engagement of these regimes with public human rights condemnation as part of the mix. They seldom get states to do this, but they do *some* of it and it's a constant effort. There aren't any groups that call for such rigid conditionality with the Central Asian regimes that in fact they should forego the Northern Distribution Network -- Foust's main concern -- the route to deliver cargo to NATO troops in Afghanistan. They recognize the exigencies but call for more public statements -- in fact, US officials do sometimes make them as do Germans and other Europeans.

Underlying Foust's brand of Realpolitik of the likes that not even the original inventors of the term (the Germans) maintain is the premise that human rights advocacy just doesn't work -- it's pointless to try with these authoritarian regimes because they are cynical and do nothing. For one, the individual cases resolved or small incremental steps are worth it, but even in Realpolitik terms, Western states realize they cannot repeat without consequences the indifference they showed to civic struggles in the Arab world for decades while they propped up dictators. That's why the conversation has changed. That's why it's no longer about the binary think-tankian "either/or" of "human rights or geopolitics".

And again, even in Realpolitik terms, there's a realization to be had that without at least more basic human rights compliance, business propositions are doomed to failure, too. If the idea, as Foust is suggesting, is to drop human rights in favour of pragmatic business transactions, they don't work, either. Ask Germany,  which is still trying to collect debts from corrupt Uzbek state businesses and has suffered raids on their business properties in Uzbekistan and even the hassling of the German ambassador. Ask the UK, where Oxus Gold, a British company, had its assets seized and its chief engineer arrested and sentenced falsely for espionage, and was forced to flee. Ask Turkey, which has had its businesses summarily closed on grounds of "religious extremism." Everyone knows how tremendously corrupt and dangerous business is in Eurasia, and its precisely for the same reason that makes for a bad human rights climate: absence of the rule of law. Especially since the destruction of the independent bar in Uzbekistan, the very same justice system that sanctions torture is unavailable to stop state corporate raids or extortion.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tried to make this proposition herself to the Uzbeks, in a speech in November from the floor of a new GM plant outside Tashkent, that human rights and democracy progress will lead to more prosperity on the "new Silk Road". While this premise runs the risk of putting the business cart before the human rights horse, at some level the Uzbek regime itself knows that modernity is related to things like increased Internet penetration, which is why they cautiously begin to allow this albeit with heavy censorship -- censorship that their increasingly savvy population gets around at least in some small degree.

In the case of Germany's transaction to get the rare earth metals, this is a pragmatic one in which both Kazakhstan and German have a vested interest, for different reasons, to want to avoid further dependency on China. I don't think you can say that Germany now looks for cheap goods especially to Central Asia merely because they are in debt-ridden Europe and need cheap goods -- their paramount interest in Central Asia is about gas and oil resources and the NDN route.

I was supposed to work in the 1980 Olympics and wasn't able to when the US decided to boycott it over the invasion of Afghanistan.  As I lived through this era as an adult I don't recall at all that this was  a "bitterly controversial" move (Foust is merely cutting and pasting Wikipedia here) even if it had its critics. The boycott was not a significant factor in Carter's failure to gain re-election -- the Iran hostage crisis was, along with domestic issues of the economy. The boycott could never have succeeded without significant popular support, as we have only to compare it to the Beijing Olympics where even mass movements of concern for Sudan (where China has oil interests) and Tibet were insufficient to cause a boycott.

While human rights groups always raise human rights concerns at the time of trade agreements or transactions, they seldom insist on radical conditionality. In the article in the New York Times linked by Foust, one source says, "“I don’t see a problem in signing contracts with Kazakhstan as long as we keep human rights on the table,” said Nico Lange, director of the Kiev office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation." While never as strong as human rights groups would like, Merkel *did* keep human rights on the table.

“Business should be, as much as civil society, interested in governance on the rule of law, transparency and accountability,” said Ms. Aidakulova and Mr. Artemyev of the Soros Foundation. “This sets the environment in which business interests will be effectively protected.”  Indeed.

Human rights remain paramount, and not only for human rights activists; governments, even Central Asian governments concede them, and the "balance" of international relations is not one achieved without them.
In fact, every day officials in bilateral and multilateral settings don't just wring their hands helplessly but keep pushing the envelope and having some modest successes -- it is not a static situation.

Indeed, the US does have leverage which it never publicly articulates. If the Central Asian governments truly are interested in not having a spillover of the Taliban and other extremist groups across their borders, then their assistance is required to the US in winding down the war and establishing post-war security. Are they truly interested in preventing post-war conflict or not? They always claim to be working against terrorism even as they round up thousands of innocent devout Muslims. Are they really going to stop cooperating with the NDN if we call them out on their torture? Just because one WikiLeaks cable shows Karimov threatening to pull cooperation on the NDN over a State Department prize going to an Uzbek dissident doesn't mean that we can't keep using this leverage to push for human rights progress. The whole reason Uzbekistan signed ILO conventions against forced child labour or introduced habeus corpus or other reforms is because they feel the pressure for at least the semblance of progress, which occasionally has a by-product of reality.

All of the regional governments are uneasy about the US presence, but they handily play it against another presence even more vexatious to them -- Russia -- and against a new economic partner they also remain very ambivalent about -- China. All these governments also get handsome fees through the NDN and lucrative business contracts. So they are not going to be dumping the US because they raised the issue of political prisoners, publicly or privately.

#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.

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

So Wait: Clinton Can Criticize One NDN Partner Publicly But Not Another?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Kazakh Foreign Minister Feb. 2 in Washington, still from video at state.gov.

Here we go again with this dubious instrumentality regarding the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) -- and a curious double standard where the US can criticize one Central Asian regime but not another

The Kazakh foreign minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov is in town and met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Evgeny Zhovtis,  a human rights leader is being released from prison, so we're supposed to believe that somehow the "transactional relationship" is being "sweetened". I don't think so.

Of course, Kazakhstan could have let Zhovtis out long ago if they wanted to be sweet -- and since they got the Astana summit agreement from  the US back in 2010, they should have let him out -- President Obama himself (!) asked publicly for Zhovtis to be released back then, and NDN overflight permissions were being negotiated then in the summer before the summit -- and granted without any movement on Zhovtis' case (no incentive). The Kazakhs didn't release Zhovtis back then, out of spite, or maybe because they didn't get Obama to come to the summit, but only Hillary. 

(This was a case, like the ill-fated Durban World Conference Against Racism, when, as it was explained to us once aptly by an NSC staffer, "the prestige of the presidency of the United States should not be lowered" -- and rightly so in both cases.)

What's just as fascinating about the meeting this week, however, is that Clinton is being forthrightly and publicly critical about Kazakhstan's human rights record. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the minister Wednesday. She urged Kazakhstan to expand freedom of the press and religious freedom—and to hold an open investigation into the strike violence and ensure that responsible officials are held accountable, according to the State Department.

It's good that the US is doing at least that much, while the events are still fresh in the mind -- the US has given up such live, public mentions of the need to investigate the Andijan events since Obama came to office, although it is still mentioned passively in the State Department's Country Reports.

It's also interesting that Clinton could also mention press and religious freedom so explicitly -- despite depending 100 p ercent on Kazakhstan's transit to the war in Afghanistan, as we know from EurasiaNet.

So why can Clinton criticize one NDN partner on whom the US fully depends, but not another, on whom the US equally depends? Is it because Tashkent is more touchy and grouchy about these things and Astana more sophisticated and cynical?

Kucera then quotes Caspian energy envoy Richard Morningstar on what he likes to call the "right" way to raise human rights problems (soon we'll hear Joshua Kucera finally explaining that this is in fact what he meant all along about what human rights activists were "doing wrong"):

“Problems in the human rights area will have an effect overall on our relationship. But I also think that we need to do a better job of how we frame that issue. Countries don't like to be preached at,” said Richard Morningstar, the US special envoy for Eurasian energy issues, speaking at a January 31 conference on US-Kazakhstan relations in Washington. “The issue needs to be framed in terms of, what's in their interest. Whether you're Kazakhstan or anyone else, all you have to do is look around the world at what's happened over the past few weeks, and how do you avoid that? What steps can you create to make a more open society that can avoid those types of situations?”

This is accommodationist and even moronic. Let's not be silly here -- it's not in the interests of an authoritarian regime to allow free press and free association -- that will create alternatives and bring down the government, or at least significantly weaken it. The lesson of every democracy movement in the world in the last 30 years ought to teach us that, if nothing else. It's faux-collegiality and duplicitious 21st Century Statecraft to claim  that not jailing critical press and opposition is going to "help" the regime. It won't, and we all realize that. This is a constructed fiction.

And if anything, the lessons from "looking around the world the last few weeks" might run like this, "Let's keep the army strong because even if the leader topples the regime can remain in place with its armed men" or "let's not let these revolutionaries get out of hand, they might usher in extremists."

The sell-by-date for touting the Arab Spring as a "lesson learned" for the Central Asian regimes is likely past, even though I believe it continues to be a worthy discussion -- and even if it's more about the US itself continuing to "learn lessons" from it all. But the Central Asian regimes can afford to let it pass, or make the same moves that those in power in the Middle East ultimately have made. Let this one go, keep that one.

BTW, the Wall Street Journal gives a nod to the alternative reporting of Elena Kostyuchenko on the death toll (although mistakenly saying "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" when in fact it was Novaya Gazeta -- unlike EurasiaNet (which reported only the official death count and never covered Kostyuchenko's report) or Registan (which actively agitated to undermine Kotsyuchenko's reporting):

The arrests come amid increasingly bold challenges to Mr. Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since 1989. On Dec. 28, Ruslan Sembinov, the local head of the opposition party Alga! in Astana, the capital, was arrested and accused of possessing drugs. On Jan. 23, Vladimir Kozlov, president of Alga!; Igor Vinyavsky, editor of an opposition weekly, Vzglyad; and activist Serik Sapargali also were arrested and charged with inciting social unrest, which carries a penalty of up to seven years, drawing a protest statement from Freedom House, the Washington-based nongovernmental organization.

The three were accused of involvement in riots that unfolded Dec. 16 in the western town of Zhanaozen, where an oil-workers strike has been under way since last May. The government said 16 people were killed that day, but a reporter for the independent Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted a witness as saying she counted 64 bodies at the hospital morgue.

 **

I'm just a wee bit concerned that Clinton keeps showing up for these meetings both in Central Asia or with Central Asian leaders in the exact same nubby white and blue suit. Is it silk? Below, Clinton at a town hall meeting in Dushanbe in November 2011. Photo by State Department.

Kazakhstan's Catch-and-Release-Program

Kazazh Fisherman, 2006. Photo byvoixsynthetique.

The Kazakh Bureau for Human Rights had some very good news yesterday -- long-imprisoned human rights defender Evgeny Zhovtis is due for release in two weeks -- welcome indeed after the years of efforts by Western diplomats (including Richard Holbrooke) and human rights groups to get him out. 

As Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanovis is in town visiting Hillary Clinton for talks, there's a tendency to see Zhovtis' release as some kind of "sweetener" for Kazakh-US relations -- as Joshua Kucera writes on EurasiaNet.

That's hardly the case, as the Kazakh government is very busy with its "catch-and-release" program like good fishers of men -- they may have let out Zhovtis -- and that was for a planned 20th anniversary amnesty anyway -- but they're busy putting more people in jail. And on more serious charges that are demonstrably political in nature.

Zhovtis' jailing on charges of vehicular manslaughter when he was sober and the victim was intoxicated shouldn't have led to 4 years of jail in any event; and getting out after more than 2 years shouldn't be seen as any kind of "concession".

The Kazakh regime had to put Zhovtis away during its chairmanship of the OSCE, as he is the leading human rights critic of Kazakhstan. He could be safely let out as a fake gesture when the issue was no longer human rights criticism, but opposition protests during the rigged parliamentary elections -- so under Kazakhstan's conservation program, one can be thrown back into the sea of indifference, and several more can be caught and held as bargaining chips -- or not.

And today there are still more arrests in Kazakhstan -- Bolat Atabaev, theater director and Janbolat Mamay, head of the Ruh pen til club, were arrested and charged with "incitement of social enmity" -- whatever that is -- and forced to sign a pledge not to leave town, the Kazakh International Bureau of Human Rights has reported.

Oksana Makushina, deputy editor in chief of Golos Respublika was brought in for questioning for six hours by the KNB. The secret police wanted to know who organized the press conference for the arrested editor of Vzglyad, Igor Vinyavsky, and showed her a leaflet that is forming the basis for the case being cobbled together against Vinyavsky.

The Human Rights Bureau has described the case as  "crudely put together". Lawyer Sergei Utkin has also been summoned although he is abroad.

Authorites are now confiscating the computers and office equipment, the Bureau and the Committee to Protect Journalists report.

Kucera wonders whether Zhovtis' release could "bury the mounting bad news"? Huh? How could it do that? It's the bad news Zhovtis himself would be reporting more of if he weren't in jail. When he gets out in two weeks let's see how much he is able to get back to his previous level of human rights monitoring and criticism.

Here's the leaflet Vinyavsky is incriminated with -- it says

Kyrgyzstan Got Rid of The Thieving Bakiev Family; That's Enough; Throw Him in the Garbage

Hardly the inciter of "social unrest" imagined, as the Bakiyev story stands as a warning to all dictators in the region even without any posters.

Ah, but we can see how this is going. Kazakhstan is maturing! Measured criticism on human rights may be ok now -- within its limits. But actual opposition agitation actually to challenge the powers-that-be -- no. And the journalism that enables it.

 

Interview with Russian Journalist Elena Kostyuchenko about Zhanaozen Shootings

Amateur video uploaded by OSCE KZ to Youtube of Zhanaozen shootings.

Elena Kostyuchenko is the young investigative reporter with the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta who traveled to the city of Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan scene of workers' unrest and the shooting deaths of 14 people in December during riots on Independence Day. She wrote a series of articles about the events for Novaya Gazeta.

From the beginning, when independent Kazakh bloggers and activists and then Russian reporters began saying there were many more killed than the initial 10 claimed by authorities, networked naysayers ranging from the Kazakh authorities to Western correspondents to regime sympathizers began discounting the higher death tolls reported and impugning the work of Russian journalists, particularly Kostyuchenko.

Most vocal in this hatchet-job was Registan, in articles by Joshua Foust and comments by others, such as Alima Bissenova, who echoed him and fueled further doubts about Elena's and other's reporting using their country knowledge (i.e. suggesting that doctors wouldn't operate on makeshift tables even in an emergency, or that there might not be crematoria in Kazakhstan's towns).

The Exile took up a furious rebuttal of the Foust debunking, making some errors on the way, and that incited another round of disconcerting disparagement of Kostyuchenko and troubling defense of Foust by Michael Hancock-Parmer on Registan.

I took up a thorough defense of Kostyuchenko's work, which I thought credibly pointed to reliable information that indicated a greater death toll and a more serious situation in Zhanaozen than officials admitted.

Hancock-Parmer's mistreatement then triggered another round of outrage from The Exiled in defense of Kostyuchenko, but in the blogosphere frenzy, the story of people killed in a remote area of Kazakhstan was getting lost.

I then approached Kostyuchenko directly and asked her a number of questions based on the elements of her three-party series in Novaya Gazeta which were engendering the most questions. She replied right away that she would be happy to answer my questions, but she was very busy and said she would take awhile. (Some of my questions might seem to veer off to tangents, but it was intended to see what clues we could find to the reliability of the main eyewitness).

In the meantime, another helpful interview with Kostyuchenko came out on Campaign Kazakhstan which deals with the overall story of the riots and the history of the striking workers. Her answers to my questions, intended to bring out some of the human rights fact-finding aspects of the story, are an important supplement from Elena.

Note: Kazakhstan's prosecutor has released a report today indicating only 14 in the death total now, and 67 wounded; two said to have died in relationship to the rioting are now declared as not associated.

After the Elections: Unregistered Party in Kazakhstan Raided, Journalist Detained

Kazakhstan's Newspapers. Photo by Esther Dyson, 2006, who commented at the time "Only Respublika carries news of the opposition."

This is like that old Soviet joke about how in fact you did have freedom to demonstrate in Red Square; you just didn't have freedom after demonstrating in Red Square.

So much for those soi-disant democratic elections in Kazakhstan. And now it's after the elections, and it's not so free.

The offices of the unregistered party Alga! were raided today, says fergananews.com. The homes of Vladimir Kozlov and other leaders were searched as well.

And Igor Vinyavsky, a journalist at an independent publication, Vzglyad [Viewpoint] has been detained by the KNB (Committee for National Security or secret police), says Respublika.

This looks serious, as a criminal case has been opened and he is charged with Art. 170-2, "calls for the violent overthrow of the state or change of the constitutional order". The punishments range from fines to 2-7 years of imprisonment. His wife has reported on Respublika's Facebook page that Igor has been told he will be held 72 hours.

I remember Kozlov speaking at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw in 2010, in the run-up to the Astana summit, struggling to get on the speaker's list with dozens of fake GONGOs elbowing him aside. As he spoke, the Kazakh chair of the meeting tried to gavel him down even before his time was up. He continued and said that while the government was persecuting the opposition today, "someday the opposition will come for you, and you will answer for your crimes," he said.

The Kazakh ambassador began to warn him that he was violating Kazakh laws restricting speech and was inciting unrest.

Afterward, I met with Kozlov, got a copy of his speech and we discussed it -- it really didn't seem to be inciting any harm to tell an oppressive government that someday they would have to answer for their human rights violations. Oppositions the world over make statements like this all the time.

It was one of many chilling moments at the OSCE meeting where I marked down direct threats made by the Kazakh delegation -- they even brought a prosecutor along to make the statements more convincing -- and later I wrote to State Department officials urging them to follow up on these people after the summit and after Kazakhstan's chair ended to see how they would fare.

As one fellow in the comments put it, "They said it wouldn't end with Zhanaozen. We must support people!"

 

 

Registan Winds Up on Regime's Side with Crafty Kazakhstan Election Analysis

Photo by  OSCE/Jens Eschenbaecher

This post by Casey Michel on Kazakhstan's fake elections is a good example of the Registan formula:

1. Seem to be admitting that criticism of a Central Asian regime is legitimate

2. But then turn yourself into a human pretzel outlining various hypotheses that actually serve the regime's interest while appearing as if they are merely being studied impartially;

3. Then wheel around at the end -- after you've poisoned the discourse with pro-regime jaw-flapping -- to pretend that you're merely a dispassionate observer and keen analyst and are allowing the reader to judge for himself.

4. Then wave your arms angrily if anyone calls you on your back-handed craven regime-symping

So I do  call out what's going on here once again, which is lots of air time for ridiculous pro-regime and anti-Western notions. I'm all for debating with hypotheses, but the outlandish scenarios that Michel makes in this piece maligning and impugning the West and undermining Western credibility -- deliberately, and diabolically -- wind up bizarrely serving as an endorsement of the regime. That's wrong.

The old notion of "who will watch the watchers" is invoked here with the "monitoring the monitors" meme, implying OSCE might be less than impartial. But there's nothing whatsoever to suggest that OSCE monitors are in fact biased. After all, OSCE and ODIHR have decades of experience monitoring hundreds of elections and have elaborated a very solid body of guidelines and jurisprudence about how to make judgements. They do go soft sometimes for political reasons -- one thinks of the Kyrgyz elections in 2010 after the pogroms -- or they are hard when they need to be -- Russian elections -- but then suffer the consequences of harassment for years.  By and large they are credible -- proof of their credibility is in fact the enormous efforts that the Central Asian regimes go to, in order to try to simulate democracy and comply with OSCE norms. They know the true value of the coin of the realm even if Registan pretends not to care.

A key reason Russia is always so busy trying to undermine ODIHR by trying to defund its budget or challenging its every activity or finding or judgement call is because they want to make it sufficiently weakened to be able to call the 2012 Russian presidential elections as "free and fair". And the Kremlin may succeed in doing so.

There's no serious quarrel with OSCE's election-monitoring ability anywhere -- the "watch the watcher" theme has already been mined heavily for ages by less-than-democrats and Russian cynics have pushed for spending resources on monitoring US elections, for example, so that we can all be sure that everything is "balanced".

Yet in this Registan blog post by Casey Michel, everything but the obvious and the most likely is stated: that the reason OSCE found Kazakhstan's election "falling short of standards" is because... it did. Opposition parties are harassed and may have trouble registering. Journalists are in jail (one just released right before elections but intimidated); a harsh new press law was passsed. The opposition has lack of access to media and is attacked -- and worst of all, at least 16 workers were shot in a provincial town where elections for 50,000 people were then cancelled. The government tried to minimize all this and placate the striking workers and fire some of their own cronies or relatives, but the fact that elections could be suspended even for a relatively small percentage of the population naturally is going to affect the judgement about its fairness.

Yet none of these things are mentioned by Casey Michel, yet another former Peace Corps volunteer at Registan. I thought that the Peace Corps was supposed to help exemplify and impart basic liberal American values and know-how to people in other countries. Yet it seems sometimes that instead of doing that, this veteran institution is imparting queasy-making reverence for authoritarian regimes masked as "cultural appreciation". Perhaps we need a pre-Peace Corps session that first imparts it to our young cynics going abroad. Perhaps the Peace Corps needs an Arab Spring of its own.

On the way, this deliverer of democracy shows his "progressive" hand by taking down recognized liberal authors of conscience like Bill Bryson because, well, I guess Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan are just so much more men of action, you know?

Michel describes Kazakh friends of his: "a series of Kazakhstani friends came out in defense of the electoral results. Or, perhaps they didn’t defend it, so much as lambast the OSCE’s decision (gall?) to stand as the lone major organization opposed to the electoral process."

If your own values haven't hopelessly eroded by this point from either your poor American education, social media inanities, and a sort of Stockholm syndrome (these countries are always threatening to expel Peace Corps volunteers), that's when you stand up and challenge your friends to justify why they think an election could be sound if one area of unrest couldn't vote and opposition didn't have access to the media and the new media law sucked.

Or you would say back to your friends: "Small wonder, when the other two monitoring agencies are the Russian-dominated CIS or the Chinese-dominated SCO -- no friends of democracy." And add that OSCE is credible, they call it right, and muse about how oppressive regimes always stay in power as long as they do because classes of people who benefit from their proximity to power or their support of the regime -- like these very friends.

Michel gets it about the CIS and SCO observers, but he won't accept the basic Western consensus about the impartial nature of OSCE -- which is, after all, a hybrid East-West organization -- and he won't admit that Kazakhstan is venal here:

However, such legitimacy as an observational organization seems to extend only so far. The locals with whom I’ve spoken see shades of imperialism, of a West carrot-and-stick-ing its way to cajole Kazakhstan into their ranks. (They also see the Kazakhstani political opposition as either hustlers or farce – and, without having vetted any of the opposition candidates to the same measure you’ll find States-side, perhaps they are. But whether or not they are worthy of the vote doesn’t matter in this context.) These locals refuse to believe that the OSCE didn’t carry underlying and underhanded motives, that their verdict is evidence of something altogether dishonest. And they’re entitled to those views. Still, the fact remains that the OSCE – again, the only organ of legitimacy in the monitoring – slammed these elections as a failure of progress and promise. The illegitimacy of Kazakhstani democracy perdures.

Disgusting. Hustlers? Really? All of them? And, um, what sort of vetting beyond what the Kazakh secret police already do is required?

Farce? Because they dare to run against a brutal tyrant?

And imperialism? Huh? Why is monitoring an election and describing it as unfair "imperialist"? It's just applying the same standards to which Astana ostensibly is bound in the Copenhagen and other OSCE agreements. Standards about free media (which Kazakhstan doesn't have), about registration of parties (problems for sure), and, you know, not shooting workers.

Casey then embarks on "scholarship" worthy of the permutations of Michael Hancock-Parmer, speculating that maybe OSCE has a burr in its saddle left over from the awful Kazakh chairmanship. No doubt they do -- and that's ok, given that Kazakhstan only worsened on its own watch, jailing the chief human rights critic and a critical journalist, and then did nothing during the Osh pogroms. It helped keep Turkmen dissidents out of the review conferences leading up to the summit, and locked down Astana to make it impossible to go there freely -- all hotel space was controlled by the state, and the NGO conference was forced to make a series of compromises even to go ahead, like having the Kazakh state-sponsored GONGOs and ambassador speak on their platform.

Michel then tries to hypothesize that it might be a;; about oil (the vulgar Marxism of the young and the Peace Corps-trained!), but then settles on the idea that the bad call on the elections was payback for Putin having the temerity to make a Eurasian Union -- which our newly-baked geostrategist tells us "isn't really" reassembling the Soviet Union. Um, okay.

And then here's the final pretzel twist -- if the West (really OSCE, but he thinks of it as merely a thin scrim for "the West") really wanted to pressure Kazakhstan more successfully, they've gone too far, because Nazzy only reacted by announcing that he will block all future monitors. That should be your cue to definitely realize the elections weren't fair, if you were having trouble before with the propaganda blizzard from the regime and its sympathizers, but for Casey Michel, it's his cue to Blame the West First.

Now the Peace Corps pundit winds up for the pitch:

Now, it is entirely possible that the OSCE did manufacture the results, and that the (short-term) result simply backfired. Perhaps they were banking on Nazarbayev’s ego to force him to jump through the OSCE’s hoops, and that some off-hand, middle-run political gain can be found after he’s calmed down. But that’s not simply risking much reputational capital – it’s also sorely misreading the situation. As seen time and again, Nazarbayev and Astana prefer (and construct) appearance over substance, and jabbing Kazakhstan’s image can only result in a tightening of Astana’s ranks

Of course we're now so far removed from reality, and so deep into the toxic bad faith for which the odious Registan is infamous, that it's hard to know right from wrong anymore.

So it's important to get back into touch with that reality, and read what OSCE said. They didn't call this election unfair because they are evil imperialist running dog oil-seeking haters who also can't be as subtle and crafty in influencing events as the gang at Registan *cough*. They called it unfair because it wasn't -- and as the Hungarian dissident writer Haraszti eloquently put it, if they really had the pluralism they claimed, they wouldn't have to fake it so much:

This election took place in a tightly controlled environment, with serious restrictions on citizens’ electoral rights. Genuine pluralism does not need the orchestration we have seen – respect for fundamental freedoms will bring it about by itself,” said Miklós Haraszti, the head of the Election Observation Mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

 

 

"The 70" of Zhanaozen: What We Know And Don't Know

The first thing we know about the situation in Kazakhstan is that we do not know everything. That's because it's a closed society. To be sure, we've gotten a lot of information about the situation from Western and regional journalists, but they've been compelled to visit the scene on officially-organized trips where their movements are controlled. They can and do make efforts to get information around these blockades. But their visas in the country depend on their maintaining the government's good will, such as it is. So it's a tricky situation and not a new one for this region.

From the early days, a certain propaganda ruckus was kicked up around the issue of "the 70". In fact, no one was claiming there was a confirmed 70 dead and the number was never "swimming" all over the Russian media as claimed. From the beginning, Novaya gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper, was among the first to report it. They said that *they did not know* the full story and that the official death count was 10 (at that time) -- they faithfully reported the limited news with complete journalistic integrity saying only the 10 were confirmed officially, but *they also reported sources* that said there were more. These included a British socialist, an Kazakh TV journalist and an independent journalist in Kazakhstan related to the opposition -- and then in subsequent reports, various other workers and eyewitnesses.

So Novaya Gazeta was providing a fuller picture for its reader to make their own judgements by citing other sources outside the official list of 10, not claiming there was 70.

On Registan, we can find a lengthy piece called strangely "Critical Journalism and Janaozen" although it doesn't really discuss the difficulties of journalism in a closed society per se or define what is meant by "critical journalism". There's a curious double-speak quality to the piece that I suppose can be explained by its academic nature, but its entire purpose seems to be to exonerate Joshua Foust of charges of minimizing the tragedy of Zhanaozen, such as I've made, as well as others. That has the effect, intentional or not, of reducing the gravity of the Nazarbayev regime's complicity and ultimate responsibility for this event, and that's why it's troubling.

Mark Ames at The Exiled has only done a disservice to finding the truth of this story by mixing into the discussion of the facts of the Zhanaozen shootings a wild take-down of Joshua Foust. It's vicious and mean, and therefore ineffective, as it will only serve to make Foust feel more the martyr and make others rush to his defense. Ames also mixes in a typically lefty Marxist sort of analysis -- if an American oil company was even present in the country doing business at the time of police killings of this nature, then it must be "to blame" somehow. He offers his Marxism as an answer to Foust's glib realpolitik claim that Chevron had "nothing" to do with Zhanaozen.

OIL CAN WHAT?

Of course, it's more complicated than that. The "progressives" are always claiming that oil companies are responsible for human rights violations -- it's been a stock methodology of radical movements to try to pin egregious human rights abuses on oil companies as part of making more vivid their critique against corporations and capitalism and "neoliberal policies" in general. To be sure, there are actual cases where oil companies have been aptly condemned -- and even appear to have acknowledged responsibility for human rights abuses, like the story of Shell in the Niger Delta and the Ogoni people's struggle -- a situation about which we know 100 times more than we're likely ever to know about Kazakhstan.

In Kazakhstan, the question isn't just about the company's ownership or level of presence or "what did they know and when did they know it." It's also about whether they were part of the decision- making process or part of the physical security response. In this case, it appears Chevron was not, but we do not have enough information.

Yet the larger question in a country where the oil workers were said to be striking *because they didn't have pay equal to foreign workers* is what Chevron did know about *that* situation months ago, and what, if anything, it could have done to mitigate it. We may never know, and maybe there isn't a practical way to ask, but in a country where oil workers have been striking for months, we need to look at what the policies of foreign companies were in this regard and what relationship they had to that situation. We can take this rights-based approach without forging false connections of complicity that ultimately only undermine the cause of gaining accountability from the extractive industries.

What's more readily apparent, however, is the need first and foremost to look for accountability from the Nazarbayev regime. They are, after all, the powers that be. Kazakhstan is designated an authoritarian state because they control everything, or try to. Whether the tragedy of Zhanaozen turns out to be a story of cynical neglect and refusal to enable real justice, or a more sinister order to stifle unrest before it spread further, the Nazarbayev regime is at fault.

IGNORING THE CENTRAL CLAIM OF A BODY COUNT

The most curious thing about Michael Hancock-Parmer's exegesis of Ames is that he doesn't directly confront the reality of what Novaya Gazeta's Elena Kostyuchenko said and did: she found a credible source who said *she herself* allegedly counted the 64 dead bodies and was told of *another 23* who died on operating tables.

Note: by following both Ames' version of this and Michael Hancock-Parmer's quotation of Ames, I initially conflated the journalist and her source, too: they spoke of "Elena Kostyuchenko, who reported counting a total of 64 dead bodies in the main hospital morgue in Zhanaozen" -- although it was not the journalist herself but her source.

But that doesn't change my essential analysis of this story simply because the journalist trusted the source and the source sounds credible -- it doesn't fit in with the narrative H-P is trying to establish, so he discards them as mere social-media noise.

Hancock-Parmer sets up distrust of Ames' account and even his translation by finding discrepancies, but they don't seem relevant to this central point: the counting of bodies by this journalist's source. [Again, Ames conflated the two but as you can easily see in the original itself, although the story is so long you might miss the quotation marks within the long narrative, Kostyuchenko quotes a source, Kokel, who said she visited the morgue.]

The story wasn't that she heard there were 70, or somebody said "desyatki" (dozens) were killed; she interviewed a person who counted them and decided to trust that source.

So accordingly, we can either take her word and her first-hand report on faith, since she comes from a reputable independent newspaper with a long history of investigative journalism and even the assassination of four of its journalists. Or we can explain how her source might have made an error this big (67 not 16). I don't think the option is to say that she irresponsibly or unprofessionally "made stuff up" or practiced "social reporting" (sometimes people call this "community journalism" or "citizens' journalism" but that's not what it was -- she was reporting a credible source). We can't say that -- not when Elena faithfully reported initially that only 10 were confirmed, and other accounts existed and were being checked; not when she interviewed lots of people from the scene, and decided to publish this account of Kokel's.

I'm always open to finding out any truth like that in a setting where journalism is a weapon of all kinds of powerful forces from governments to oil companies. If someone can compellingly show that Elena was all wrong, and even deliberately falsifies the data, or that the witness Kokel or others are just making stuff up, please do so. Michael Hancock-Parmer does not do that. He never addresses the question of the authenticity of Kostyuchenko's source who claimed to have counted the dead.

Instead, he completely dismisses this highly-detailed account with this, after also calling into question the authenticity of Novaya Gazeta as an independent source:

He [Ames] misinforms his readers as to the nature of the Novaia Gazeta story – accidentally or willfully. The reporter does not claim to have seen anything herself and merely relates the anecdotes she collected after the fact. Elena Kostiuchenko, as far as I can tell, wrote a typical piece of social journalism, the kind for which the eXile itself used to be famous. She goes in, describes what she sees – she is very clearly separating personal experience from hearsay. She tries to define each source in turn. She acknowledges the lack of evidence for the claims of her informants. In short, I certainly don’t hold Elena Kostiuchenko responsible for Ames’ characterization of her article.

But Kostyuchenko is a journalist, an experienced one who has made her way into an area closed off to media where social media was turned off. Social journalism, really? She interviewed a witness who had ample details of the event which tracks with other eyewitness reports, and she reported it -- while acknowledging, as she did in her first reports, that there was lack of confirmation, she doesn't impugn this source the way Mark Hancock-Parmer does -- if she had, it wouldn't have been printed. Here's what she writes, which Hancock-Parmer leaves out of the account on Registan:

Korkel is one of the few people who managed to get into the hospital that day. Korkel herself lives in one of the auls [villages] outside of Uzen, but they had come to visit her sister for those days. Her sister's husband is an oil worker, and her sister had gone to strike on the square. But Korkel took her niece, a student of School No. 3, to a strange morning assembly, where they had to "dress warmly." Together with a column of children, she had come to the square.

So this sister, who had family who were part of the striking workers, herself went to take part with a child in the state-orchestrated school-children's participation in the official independence day celebration.

"I heard the first shots. I said: we aren't going there. But my niece said -- mama's over there! Well, we went ahead. When they began shooting, the wounded and killed were dragged back. Five people were lain at my feet. Four were killed, one was still alive. Then people began stopping a van going by and loaded both dead and alive people, and I went along with them and went to the hospital"

[Note -- several mistakes in Michael Hancock-Parmer's translation:  it isn't that "the wounded were pushing us back. Five people fell at my feet" because it's genitive plural, and then third-person plural past tense -- it should be "the wounded and killed were dragged away" "ubitykh i rannenykh ottaskivali nazad" and then it is not that the dead "fell" at her feet, rather:  "people lay the dead at her feet" ("k moim nogam polozhili 5 cheloveka," i.e. other people placed the dead at her feet). Also, it wasn't 3rd grade, although the child was presumably young, but school no. 3 "3-i shkoli".]

She then follows with the story of counting bodies in the morgue. So she's someone who is not herself a striking worker, but has family who are; she is someone who went along to an official apparently compulsory school program and who saw shocking events she recorded. There doesn't seem to be any reason to impugn her narrative. People were shot and we see videos of the dead and wounded dragged away. She wasn't in the midst of the strikers such as to be motivated to exaggerate, even with family. She took part in an official event with a child, and was moved by a sense of the horror of the situation to come to the hospital because dead people had literally landed at her feet.

Given this alternative narrative -- let's call it that, in the absence of corroboration everyone is happy with -- I think we have to say this: while the Nazarbayev regime has acknowledged 16 deaths, due to significant independently-obtained information there may be more, and impartial and credible national and international investigations should be held.

HAVE YOU EVER STAYED ALL NIGHT IN A MORGUE COUNTING DEAD PEOPLE?

Now, how could you count 64 people in the morgue if there weren't really 64 people (the officials now say there are only 16). It's not out of a desire to maliciously lie and defame another country or one's own -- that doesn't seem to be operative to here. That's why the claim that Russian or Kazakh journalists reporting alternative narratives to the official one using sources they find credible aren't "hysterical" or "wildly irresponsible" -- and I resent when they are called that, given their good-faith effort to get at the truth. That is, I resent it simply based on my own experience for years with these courageous people, and I await a possible other explanation than their own cynical manipulation.

If Hancock-Parmer can distract from the bold fact of Kostyuchenko's source who said she personally saw the bodies and counted them, and try to impugn this account by a host of other distracting factlets (like the supposed telling failure not to repeat that it was independence day?), I'm going to push back and say this in defense of the witness and Kostyuchenko's choice to trust her, as a good-faith explanation of how they could have been mistaken, even if credible: Strange, even such a seemingly simple thing like counting people in a morgue after you've gone through the shock and horror of having five dead people lain at your feet can get muddled under the stress and chaos of a fresh scene like this; you could count rows twice. Not likely, but one hypothesis. For another the morgue may not be an official morgue but can be a temporary morgue or merely a receiving area in a hospital where dead and wounded are mixed, or where dead from some other reason, like natural causes, could be mixed with the dead from this incident. We don't know all the details that would help us figure out whether that kind of mistake was made.

Usually when "too many" dead are counted, it's because wounded are counted, too. And in the translation of the story Hancock-Parmer supplies, there is a line about "70 wounded" that instantly suggests that could have become the line about dead, mistakenly. (Kostyuchenko actually reported at least 400 wounded) -- if reporters were only going by verbal accounts from officials or eyewitnesses on the scene.

In all the weeks of discussion at Registan, the link to all of the Novaya Gazeta articles were never supplied and still haven't been. Here is the first story.

HOOLIGANS DID IT

When you hear a story about "hooligans" or youths breaking free in a choreographed state function like independence day, the first thing you think of in the Soviet and post-Soviet context is  "provocation" -- that the security police agitate people to commit violent acts as an excuse to crack down, or to discredit the movement. At least, that's the first thing you think of if you are a human rights activist or a political dissident of some kind like me. The governments always blame unspecified "hooligans"; sometimes those "hooligans" are legitimate protesters, sometimes they are police plants.

It's not what you think of when you are an academic or a think-tank fellow, and there you might take the rioting youths first as being rowdy members of the movement itself. That's because you're trained to look for narratives from the authorities, not the resisters.