Kazakhstan is Off to a Bad Start With Its Chair

The Commission on Security and Cooperation will have a hearing on Kazakhstan's chairmanship of the OSCE today which you can watch on a webcast.

I think we can all agree -- can't we? -- that Kazakhstan is off to a bad start in its chairmanship of this lumbering and distended but sometimes helpful organization.

There's the case of Yevgeny Zhovtis, about whom Astana has remained unmoving. That's disgraceful. They are manipulating this case, and they need to make a very credible, transparent, and good-faith review of it, and ameliorate the basic conditions. Other countries need to ask Kazakhstan to do this, not just at the OSCE, but at the UN.

There's the closing down of the 14 Internet sites -- please, do you think we wouldn't notice? First the bad law, now this.

There's the murder of a journalist, Gennady Pavluk, for which the Kyrgyz KNB are blamed, but it still happened on Kazakhstan's soil and they need to answer for the case, too.

Then there's the continuing persecution of journalists, even if all they do is try to defend other journalists.

There are likely other things that people following other issues might note like harassment of religious believers (tolerance seminar, anyone?)

There are those in Washington who make the point that we shouldn't judge a country by its police blotter. Don't these sorts of cases happen all the time? Why, evil Hillary is blocking SMS texting, did you know? And people fall out of windows or get killed all the time, it's a tough world out there.

Well, no, not when they are journalists or the head of the leading human rights group and not when their country is chair of the OSCE.

It's doubtful we can expect much traction to come out of criticism of Kazakhstan unless it begins to penetrate up to Morningstar, and the Eurasian energy track and the Eurasian human rights track, such as it is, are parallel lines that never meet these days.

Even so, we can keep a crime file. And we can point out that there should not be the one-sided and security-heavy summit that Kazakhstan (Russia) wants to have. Please vote on the poll below regarding your opinion of the summit.