OSCE Unbound

What the Irish Should Do On Their Watch at OSCE

 

Ireland is now the chair-in-office at OSCE, and I imagine in some quarters, there is a certain sigh of relief, after the chairmanship of two post-Soviet nations. First, there was the awful chair of Kazakhstan, which did nothing to improve human rights in that Central Asian country. Then there was the better, but still problematic chair of Lithuania, which made some strong efforts on press freedom in particular, but left the unfortunate legacy of not only a president who hoped Lukashenka would win the elections in 2010 to maintain stability, but a bank that complied with the outrageous request of Lukashenka's henchmen and abetted the unlawful prosecution of a leading human rights defender, Ales Bialetski.

Irish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore has already presented what his country expects to do during their term in 2012. 

First, there's "the inclusive approach in tackling modern security challenges." I'm really not schooled enough in OSCE-speak or EU-speak to understand what this really means -- and I hope it doesn't mean caving to things like Russia's demand for a new negotiated OSCE charter or a brand-new security architecture or over-arching concept for OSCE that doesn't include what Andrei Sakharov called the "indissoluble link" among peace, progress, and human rights.

Then, there's this, which all sounds fine:

Emphasizing that “the continuing threat to fundamental freedoms and human rights in a number of OSCE participating States is a cause of real concern,” Deputy Prime Minister Gilmore said that the full implementation of OSCE human dimension commitments by OSCE participating States is a top priority. A specific area of focus during the Irish Chairmanship will be the importance of protecting freedom of expression in the digital age, and working with civil society organizations and business to safeguard these freedoms online.

The media focus picks up from the best work of Lithuania during its tenure on giving a high profile to the issues of protection of journalists and defense of free speech online. I do hope this doesn't involve sliding off into issues of the copyleftist's agenda to undermine commerce and intellectual property rights online, through opposition to anti-piracy legislation or promotion of baggy notions of "net neutrality" and all the rest of it. These are distractions from the real core set of issues for online life in the OSCE countries that most violate basic free speech norms.

Then the Irish Foreign Minister had this to say:

A further priority for Ireland will be to seek ways to make progress towards lasting settlements of protracted conflicts in the OSCE area. Deputy Prime Minister Gilmore welcomed the resumption of the official 5+2 talks in the Transdniestrian settlement process, and offered his full support for the Minsk Group Co-Chairs to address the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and for the Geneva Discussions dealing with the August 2008 conflict in Georgia.

“We in Ireland know all too well the devastating cost of conflict.  Through negotiation, compromise and the dedication and imagination of the two Governments involved, and leaders on both sides of the divide, a lasting settlement was achieved in relation to Northern Ireland.”

I think it's wonderful that Ireland's truly valuable and hard-won experience in conflict and its resolution will be brought to bear on the protracted "frozen conflicts" of OSCE. But countries large and small, rich and powerful or poor and weak, have come and gone in OSCE in the chair or as neighbours, and they all failed to solve these long-standing conflicts.  I think it's safe to say that Ireland, even with its very best efforts, is not going to resolve them, either, and it won't be its fault.

These conflicts -- all of them -- at a very basic level have to do with the central problem of Russian aggression and imperialism. That is, sure, they're complex and they involve blame on both parties in the conflict and they have been coiled and convoluted and more about themselves at times than about the Kremlin. But there is no question that if the Kremlin changed, if Russia changed, then these conflicts would change dramatically, too.

I'm sure Ireland will give its best shot to these conflicts, but mindful of the very experience that the Foreign Ministry cited, I want to suggest another important task for Ireland: taking on Kazakhstan.

Here's the thing. The US, with all its power and might, can't seem to take on Kazakhstan. Remember this awful Congressional hearing?

Remember when, on the eve of its chairmanship, Kazakhstan said this, and nobody challenged it? (It sure sounds chilling now):

Just recently, on the 29th of January [2010], in his state of the nation speech, President Nazarbayev launched a massive program of legal reforms, which is aimed at bringing Kazakhstan's judiciary closer to international standards. This year the Parliament will adopt a law that stipulates total public and legislative control over the activities of the law enforcement. This signifies our ongoing work to further strengthen the protection of rights and liberties of our citizens.

Maybe too many Kazakhs have bought out too many US congressmen, journalists, think-tanks, etc., sometimes for a song. Maybe the US is just in too deep with Kazakhstan because it needs oil, and because 100 percent of the traffic for the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) ferrying supplies to the war in Afghanistan goes through Kazakhstan now. Maybe it's because China is buying up a lot of Kazakhstan in the form of shares in enterprises, and the US is terribly in debt to China.

Russia isn't going to take on Kazakhstan, either, despite its large fellow Russian population there -- or because of it -- and due to Moscow's aspirations for the Eurasian Union and Customs Union that Kazakhstan and Belarus have already joined with Russia. Russia doesn't take on its allies, anyway, but is highly selective or even tendentious in its application of human rights-related intervention.

Ireland really then does have a role to play now vis-a-vis Kazakhstan, in starting to undo some of the harm that OSCE and its betters did in enabling Astana to become the chair. There's no question in my mind that the impunity that Nazarbayev gained by being handed that extraordinary gift -- and the summit as well -- are part of the circumstances that made it possible to shoot workers dead in Zhanaozen.

As far as I know, Ireland doesn't have the problems of the US and some other European countries where Kazakh lobbyists and business people and former and present officials go around buying some people and bullying others, sometimes with lawsuits. So Ireland should definitely take up the case of Zhanaozen, and invoke the chair's prerogative for talks, and the Moscow mechanism, and any other OSCE thing, to demand a full, credible and impartial investigation of these horrible events -- and prosecution of those at the highest levels responsible.

As I've noted, Nazarbayev has been very clever in pretending to invite the UN in to investigate -- but not really. Headlines talked about an open invitation, but it really was only under consideration by the Foreign Ministry. Journalists and human rights investigators have been blocked from the area. We still don't have all the information from these events, and the labour unrest that stretches back over the last year. While authorities give an official death toll o f 16, there are Kazakh civil society activists continuing to give the higher number of 46, as yet without a list of names, and possibly even more (eyewitness reports compiled by Elena Kostyuchenko of Russia's Novaya Gazeta gave a figure of 67 in December, which has not been confirmed).

What matters is not a numbers game, but an investigation. And that takes more than NGOs, it takes states.

The experience of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, where troops shot dead 26 people, affecting the course of events dramatically for decades afterward, has some similarities (although important differences) to the events in Zhanaozen.

There is no question that when government troops fire on unarmed demonstrators, the break in trust with the government, already absent when people are desperate enough to demonstrate, fuels further violence on both sides and is difficult to end.

In the case of Bloody Sunday, an important role was played by American lawyer Sam Dash, who performed an investigation for the International League for Human Rights at the time of the events. He obtained independent forensic evidence that showed that some people were shot as they crawled away from the scene and documented crucial victims' and eyewitness reports; he produced a report titled "Justice Denied", challenging Lord Widgery's report of the era. Years later, the British government under Prime Minister Tony Blair opened a Bloody Sunday Tribunal under Lord Saville, and struggled to cope with the testimony and the evidence (helped by Prof. Dash's report) -- and are still coping (the report was published in 2010).

All of these efforts point to the importance of validating the victims' narrative; documenting and publishing the reality of what happened; coming to grips with the need for acknowledgement of guilt and apology.

In an environment where figures like Lord Fraser, chairman of the British Kazakh Society and a member of the House of Lords, are contemplating "How Kazakhstan Can Continue Its Success Story" and minimizing the tragedy of Zhanaozen, the willingness of this particular chair-in-office to keep publicly asking about investigations and accountability for Zhanaozen will be crucial. It could be among Ireland's greatest contributions to OSCE and to the people of Kazakhstan.

 

Is the Summit Less than the Whole of Its Parts? Part 1

This poster recently appeared pasted on a street sign near the State Department in Washington, DC.

The run-up to the summit in Astana has been a debilitating and demoralizing process, and the diplomats and NGOs who stuck it out to the end to try to keep waving the Helsinki flag are to be commended. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Astana and was scheduled to speak at an NGO event. All well and good.

Even so, participation in this entire distended fandago has come at a cost, and it has involved some erosion of our principles and some compromise, and a little bit of that frog-boiling-in-water syndrome that OSCE enterprises always seem to involve.

Some observers believe that the U.S., which has long had a cosy relationship with Kazakhstan for energy and geopolitical interests, sold out to Astana last spring when it was negotiating participation of Kazakhstan in the Northern Distribution Network that delivers non-lethal supplies to the troops in Afghanistan via Central Asia. In fact, the U.S. dragged out these negotiations for months, tried to do what it could -- and surprisingly, even deployed President Obama himself to publicly raise the case of jailed human rights leader Evgeny Zhovtis. It's not every day that you use up the chit of having the leader of the Western world raise a single case like that -- and not win it -- but in this case, losing was winning, because it only served to point up to the Kazakhs that Obama himself was willing to take up the rights of an individual, and it only highlighted the unacceptable obstructivism of Astana on the case.

Yet, in the end, the exigency of the NDN overflight needs, energy and trade concerns, and a fear of undermining an organization in which in fact Clinton had renewed U.S. engagement all conspired to create the less-than-moral concession to Astana to hold the summit. According to OSCE, only 38 of the 56 participating states sent their heads of state  -- and that's all to the good.

Next summit, in free Minsk in 2020?

Zhovtis was put away in jail on the eve of Kazakhstan's assuming the chair, and kept out of action so as not to influence it -- although he was able to smuggle out some statements and appeals (his last one noted that he had begun to be punished for doing so). It was Zhenya's idea to have Kazakhstan chair the OSCE in the first place, in the belief that it might shine a spotlight on human rights abuses and possibly serve as a spur to improve them.

It didn't.

Turning back on Live Journal hardly counts if one of the main opposition blogs on LJ is still blocked. As the OSCE rapporteur on media has protested, a journalist, Ramazan Esergepov, still remains in prison (his "state secrets" being nothing more than reporting on a criminal case that in a normal country would be open to reporting by the press). And on and on.

When I say our principles became somewhat tattered, I mean that we were forced to paper over the lack of human rights progress and the shocking negligence in responding to the pogroms in southern Kyrgyzstan in order to do business with people of ill will, and their GONGOs -- which was one of the most odious features of all these review conferences, spread in time and place over three cities in three months -- and I'm not sure, to the benefit of human rights.

The Turkmen human rights activists who have been coming to OSCE were jerked around, and while some were let in finally in Warsaw and Vienna, some were not, and ultimately none of them got visas for Astana. There was the blunt and thuggish message, regrettably tacitly conceded by being also relayed by Western diplomats, that "their safety could not be guaranteed," i.e. they might have to be extradited back to Turkmenistan on a trumped-up Interpol request from Ashgabat. Shame on them. The Turkmen dissidents have sent out an appeal. Chief among their points is that the OSCE office in Ashgabat has long since stopped trying to promote democracy and is merely simulating it -- if it were doing its job probably, I say, it would be kicked out. And that would be ok, as it could then decamp to Vienna and serve as the office-in-exile until such time as the government is willing to normalize.

The parallel summit -- oops, I mean the...parallel conference did in the end come off, with 177 participants, 59 of whom were from Kazakhstan, and an additional 11 of whom were ODIHR staff  (among the guests was -- I'm not kidding! -- Nina Belyayeva, the Russian lawyer and expert on associations (I'll say!) who was appearing in her capacity as an ODIHR expert on NGO law. She advocated that the police and NGOs work together).  Of course, quite a few out of the 59 from Kazakhstan and a certain number of others were GONGOs.

At least some of the worst OSCE problems were mentioned -- the killing of journalists, ideas for how to try to gain more solidarity, education, and action for threatened reporters, and the harassment and killing of human rights activists, and how to get better protection for them.

But it must be said: the NGOs compromised in having their meeting in Astana. In part, it was about the things that didn't get said that were "too big" -- the failure of OSCE even to land a police mission in Osh, the failure to cope with the violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, and the spillover and implications of the war in Afghanistan. To be sure, someone raised Askarov's case and at first got an unacceptable response....

I personally think it would have been more honourable to have the meeting outside of Kazakhstan, and on better terms -- without GONGOs and without Kazakh government officials taking up the scarce air time.

What Kind of Investigation -- and Ongoing Monitors -- Does Kyrgyzstan Need?

Soviet tank in Prague on August 21, 1968. Photo by Dusan Neuman on america.gov

Kyrgyzstan is still in a crisis, with ethnic clashes occuring in which Russians and Meskhi Turks were reportedly attacked and five killed. Ex-president Bakiyev appears to have landed in Minsk, according to Belarusian dictator Lukashenka; while the Kazakh chair-in-office could engineer Bakiyev's departure, the prospect of hosting what might be an opposition-in-exile right next door was likely not one President Nazarbayev, who was trying to take credit for everything, wanted to live with for long. It *is* a problem where you put ex-dictators, so that they aren't lynch-mobbed but don't continue to harm others.

Human Rights Watch has admirably gotten a report out right away about what's happening, based on interviews with 30 people and review of videos and photos, which is a kind of first draft of human rights history with the basics of the events, the standards by which international inquiries should be held, and recommendations to the Kyrgyz government.

It's very important that Kyrgyz human rights groups, perhaps in a consortium with other regional groups like Russia's Memorial Human Rights Center, also document and publicize their findings, as it is their country and their future.

When you have a revolution with violence on both sides like this, as well as ongoing sporadic outbreaks of violence and vulnerability for worse to occur, investigations are important, and you shouldn't worry about redundancy. Other international impartial inquiries need to be made, and here we have to depart the world of abstract perfection contained in Human Rights Watch recommendations and footnotes, and ask what is politically possible, and what is doable.

The goal of human rights inquiries is not merely to produce reports that illustrate abstract international legal principles but to remedy a sense of impunity and injustice in a country, to validate what witnesses have seen, to tell right from wrong, and to create conditions for domestic institutions to be strengthened on that basis. The reports prepared by the U.S. attorney Sam Dash about the events of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland did not persuade judges at the time to carry out justice but they came in handy even 26 years later when the UK finally mounted a tribunal in 1998 to review the tragedy. The failure of British authorities to adequately deal with the shooting of 27 demonstrators in Derry back then, 14 of whom died, enabled the IRA to step up its recruitment and terrorist activity for years to come. Justice might seem optional for a government facing many other pressures, but the time and care spent on it generally pays off in the long term.

The UN has a certain amount of respect and credibility in this region, in part because the Soviet Union built up its credibility over the years (and for the wrong reasons -- it paralyzed the human rights agencies of this body for decades until the collapse of the USSR). The post-Soviet independent states have taken great care to sign all the relevant treaties and cooperate with the UN in a variety of ways and the treaty body review of the Central Asian countries have been an important adversarial process that they do not face in their own countries regarding their records. All to the good.

Even so, everyone who works in this region knows that the UN has not served this region when it comes to human rights. UNDP and UNICEF and other agencies actively cooperate with oppressive governments merely to keep access to perform basic programs; special rapporteur visits, while increasing over the years can be spotty, as those same rapporteurs visit the US 14 times or the UK or France numerous times. The old discredited UN Commission on Human Rights and the new Human Rights Council (HRC), barely distinguishable, are not venues where you will get countries in Russia's "sphere of influence" much scrutiny. Indeed, it is difficult these days to get *any* country except Israel reviewed by the HRC.

Ideally, if the world were a more perfect place, and the UN functioned as it was supposed to, some ambassadors at the HRC would call for a Commission of Inquiry to be launched to Kyrgyzstan. But even in an ideal world, which we don't have, this would be hard to justify, given that situations with many more killings and much more trouble, like Sri Lanka, did not reach the consensus to assure action. The High Commissioner could make a trip or send an envoy, which seems advisable; the various special rapporteurs could be issued invitations and travel, say the mandate on "summary executions".

The problem, again, even if some of the better rapporteurs deploy swiftly is that their reports, in the machinery of the UN, will take a fairly long time to surface, and may not have an immediate and effective outlet in the Human Rights Council. Much can depend on variables like staffing or language capacity or advocacy ability of various countries -- well, it's not going to happen. That is, by all means, the Kyrgyz government should show its good will and issue standing invitations to the special rapporteurs on relevant topics such as executions, torture, freedom of the media, violence against women, whatever fits. But that cannot be the only remedy.

There is no way that the Security Council will respond to this crisis, at least now at this stage, and if it were by some miracle, Russia's veto would knock out any actual response. Ditto the General Assembly or ECOSOC or the Third Committee (which meets only in October-November, so comes too late to this crisis). 

Ban Ki-Moon's visit to the region was likely as good as it gets for this part of the world, and it cannot and will not be sustained. Ban Ki-Moon did a lot more than was expected by departing from the usual UN script on issues like water and sustainable energy, and confronting authoritarian President Karimov of Uzbekistan to start delivering on his promises, but he stopped short of demanding, for example, an independent investigation of the Andijan massacre of 2005, a staple of all Western dealings with Uzbekistan until the EU dropped it with the end of sanctions earlier this year and the U.S. dropped it with rapprochment of relations in the quest to build the Northern Distribution Network to ferry supplies to the war in Afghanistan. If Ban could not raise a massacre that happened 5 years ago when hundreds of demonstrators protesting corruption and injustice were shot by police, how will he get involved with past and ongoing violence in Kyrgyzstan, where are events on a smaller scale but with some of the same dynamics?

OSCE then becomes the "indispensable organization" as Madeleine Albright once called it (although she tended to call the UN more "indispensable" and also to speak of America's role as "indispensable").

Is Sunlight the Best Disinfectant for Kazakhstan in the OSCE Chair?

I asked a "new Europe" ambassador the other day what he thought of the Kazakh chair of the OSCE, and potential for concessions from Kazakhstan -- the Kazakh foreign minister was in New York reporting to the Security Council.  The ambassador said that Kazakhstan would be under a spotlight, and this sunlight shining on its deeds would have an ameliorative effect. This is the belief of many diplomats -- and NGOs -- and there's something to it, as far as it goes -- as long as somebody can lay on the supply of sunlight regularly and often.

I'm not aware that Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev got any human rights questions in New York, but the meeting wasn't open; OSCE, as a "regional arrangement," reports regularly to the Security Council, and while Afghanistan and Georgia were likely topics of interest -- they likely didn't get any rigorous treatment, as the main objective of the Kazakh chair was to push the OSCE security summit.

I've always been a believer in the mantra, attributed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, that "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," but I don't accept it with uncritical, magical thinking. "Transparency" alone isn't enough to effect change (one of the errors of the entire gov 2.0 movement now in the U.S. which substitutes openness of information -- coders' dumps of files -- for liberal democratic participation in decision making -- very different things, and the one cannot ensure the other).

The reason I don't buy it uncritically is that information is usually not the problem in any given human rights situation. The light has usually been shone on the abusive government's bad deeds by the time we hear about it and begin to warble about sunlight's detergent qualities. The point is that political will is needed to change, and political will is needed to pressure another government to change -- and we don't have sunlight or detergent on those processes usually.

Of course, there's going to be a tendency to take out our microscopes and see any good thing happening in Kazakhstan as either a result of a heightened motivation to "make good on commitments" or a heightened sensitivity to "pressure from outside" -- although if Kazakhstan *weren't* in the chair now, we might be more sanguine. We might say that it has always been the tendency of this manipulatve government to float terrible laws, make us all gasp with horror, tell a few experts that if they agree to a confidential relationship they can be in on the revision of said horrid law -- and then after the bad parliament or agency has passed this law or edict, the president or court can swoop in deus ex machina to right the wrong and show that reform has triumphed. It's a bit of a racket.

We can only hope that this recent piece of good news, with a reversal of a court injunction banning reporters from reporting on the president's son-in-law, is sincere and representative of actual progress.

Bear-Hunting With the Politburo

Prived', medved'...

The Kennan Institute Woodrow Wilson conference on the Jackson-Vanik amendment was first-rate (my summation here) and afforded the opportunity to catch up with a lot of Russian, European, and American colleagues present who follow OSCE. And since I've been developing this blog, I've been checking in with more friends in Europe and Eurasia and hearing their thoughts on OSCE.

Interestingly, Europeans I know have expressed concern and even revulsion over this hearing, where some of our more colourful congressmen were on display. I try to reassure them and say this: look at who actually votes, and what they vote on, and what their work is in the CSCE, and what they write. That matters more than any particular posturing in the hearing. Still, the video is upsetting, prompting some to wonder if our representatives are "bought by Kazakhstan" (it's not that crude but you can go here and here to follow some of it). The transcript is demoralizing not only for the gushing over Kazakhstan, and it veering off topic to create a forum on the war in Afghanistan (something I've happy to have, but not at the expense of human rights in Kazakhstan), but because nobody debated this one-sided approach. Regrettably, Sen. Cardin was not in the room, as he had to attend a funeral.

Definitely there's a corrosive effect that happens when our elected representatives simply buddy up with non-democratic leaders who aren't elected by or accountable to our civil society counterparts, and gush like this uncritically.

I call it "Bear-Hunting with the Politburo". This was a common approach in the Soviet era and even after. There's actually even a book by that name, but what I mean by that Soviet-era phrase is the sense that some Western politicians and businessmen had then -- as now -- that they must establish personal rapport, and appreciate the "human side" of their counterparts, and do manly bonding-like rituals like hunting (which was a favourite sport of the old Soviet CP leaders) and make excessive praise of their counterparts in order to engage in international relations. Like I said -- corrosive effect, as no one needs you to bear-hunt and bond to get the People's work done here.

Interestingly, Europeans -- and Eurasians especially from some of the more oppressive states -- may not have anything remotely as outspoken as our CSCE, with anything even approaching the frankness and specific human rights advocacy of the CSCE members, but they expect -- demand -- more of America. This American security umbrella concept that held so many years with the nuclear shield, for better or worse, seems to hold for interpersonal dealings with Russia and its aggressive allies in the CIS as well when it comes to human rights advocacy: let the Americans be way out in front, let the Americans take the flak for criticism, and Europeans with the same values and same concerns about human rights can hide behind that -- and then get upset if Americans seem to pull their punches.

What all this comes to now is to figure out what the "benchmarks" or "deal" is with Kazakhstan, and what we can expect.

This interview in Foreign Policy and others make reference to a notion that there have been some kind of "assurances" given by Kazakhstan about what it will do during its chair. Kanat Saudabayev, the foreign minister, tells FP the following:

Just recently, on the 29th of January, in his state of the nation speech, President Nazarbayev launched a massive program of legal reforms, which is aimed at bringing Kazakhstan's judiciary closer to international standards. This year the Parliament will adopt a law that stipulates total public and legislative control over the activities of the law enforcement. This signifies our ongoing work to further strengthen the protection of rights and liberties of our citizens.

This is all double-talk, and only those who have been bear-hunting with the Politburo would take it on anything remotely resembling good faith. Kazakhstan's judiciary is not going to spring free of executive fiat any time soon; the case of Yevgeny Zhovtis and many other such cases are a good window into that truism. Total control over law-enforcement? But while laudable, whatever that *really* means, that's not how you get control over abusive police. In the West, and in the East, this is done by an independent judiciary, independent bar, and free human rights groups more than it is some bureaucratic legislative commission -- from a parliament not elected under free conditions.

Sen. Cardin raised Zhovtis' case which FP references, but gets back total double-talk from Saudabayev:

In this situation we don't speak about Zhovtis as a human rights defender; we are speaking about the decision of the Kazakh judicial court on the case of a Kazakh citizen who caused the death of another person. Mr. Zhovtis was born and raised in our country and he had not had any problems with the law before but because he was involved in the tragic accident that led to the death of another person, he plead guilty and this is it. I don't even want to comment on this issue. On the same grounds, within that time period 200 people were convicted on the same grounds. The actual penalty foreseen is from three to eight years of imprisonment. Mr. Zhovits was given near the minimum sentence, so why don't you speak about the other 199 convicted?

I have some questions about this:

o why can't Kazakhstan speak about Zhovtis as a human rights defender? He is.

o why was his legal defense material not admitted in court? why is he sent 1,000 kilometers away from his home? why is he being threatened with worse conditions?

o saying that Zhovtis "pled guilty" only tells part of the story; he's a truthful man and does not deny he was involved in vehicular manslaughter in an accident, but he has a number of vital pieces of information that are not being admitted in this defense

o Hey, I'm happy to speak about the other 199 convicted because I bet not everything has gone so swimmingly for them, either. Do you like bilateral commissions? Let's have a bilateral commission and *just* review the way in which cases of vehicular manslaughter are handled, where the defendants are not found by police to be intoxicated or not to be negligent in the case of their vehicle, and let's compare judicial and sentencing practices.

In any event, this is not a serious answer, because the leading human rights activist of the country is in jail, on jail from an accident not of his own fault, that is tragic and should require some responsibility, but not likely the harsh penalty that has been set of three years in a remote labour colony far from home.

Recently, colleagues visited Zhovtis and found that he is living in a dormitory and hoping to be able to move to an apartment and find a job, but there is concern that due to the sort of light infractions that you can be slapped with in a stay in an arbitrary and oppressive jail system such as Kazakhstan has, he could find himself sent to a labour colony with even worse conditions. That's the threat.

As for other "benchmarks," they've been set by human rights groups, but I do want to brainstorm as to what people actually expect they can wrest as a concession out of Astana in this period, when the game has been lost. Even so, I'm for trying to go for the basics, repeal the Internet law, etc. and ensure the modalities for meaningful NGO participation in conferences.

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.

Kazakhstan in the Chair

OK, here we are now, Kazakhstan is in the chair. There was never any serious Western effort to stop this from occurring -- not with such energy and security interests at stake -- and not with Russia backing it. A number of conferences have been held on whether or not this chairmanship will represent a chance to improve human rights, or a device to cover up their ongoing violations -- but not with any serious challenge to Kazakh diplomats themselves, who are often at the conferences -- paralyzing the ability of NGOs and diplomats to do some serious strategizing on their own. Anyone bothering to engage on the issue thinks that they will quietly use the framework of the chairmanship to get some concessions, and never have a better idea.

So...This time next year, Kazakhstan's chair will be over, and we'll have...Lithuania. Remain calm, it will be interesting, and it's going to get better. Activists really *do* have to try to get diplomats to make good on the concept that the framework itself will lead to improvements -- which it might do, at least for some individual cases or issues -- but only if advocates push publicly and not get diverted on soft-option topics like "tolerance" and "gender" and "local governance" into foregoing frank interventions on torture, oppressive media laws, and rights of political parties.

I'll say what everybody thinks about this: Kazakhstan wouldn't likely have changed if the West had tried to use the denial of the chairmanship to extract concessions; it will not change if instead they use a cooperative framework with Kazakhstan in the chair as a means of trying to extract concessions.

Kazakhstan is to OSCE as China is to the world. Plan accordingly. It has its own ideas of "democracy" and "economic reform" and they do not mesh with yours. It is extremely forceful, and has some of the most aggressive and good-English-speaking diplomats on the circuit to crush wavering Eurocrats and ill-prepared NGOs. It is not going to be pretty to watch. It's important to document it -- and I hope blogs will appear that will do this from inside, or closer to Kazakhstan than I can get -- or that those that do exist already will get more visibility.

And I'll say what everybody says in private: Kazakhstan has some real thugs in power. You do not get to be president-since-the Soviet-era by letting intellectuals fill up parliament and TV stations and allowing dissidents to create colour or flora-and-fauna revolutions. The things that happen in Kazakhstan to people -- both foreigners and their own people -- are very sinister. There are decades of stories. The U.S. official cracked over the head. The U.S. media trainer murdered. Opposition members murdered. Trumped-up criminal cases against journalists. The severed dog's head on the doorstep of a leading independent paper. The opportunistic and remote jailing of the country's leading human rights critic *right* as Astana takes the chair. These are all the stories told and retold, even if nobody can really make fully-footnoted document reports proving that any of these dark deeds were done with the consciousness and deliberation of the actual state authorities. But enough of the bad deeds were, or were tacitly approved of by shadowy security forces, or were manipulated by powers-that-be, to create a nasty undertow to the experience of the Kazakhstan chair that we all know about.

Now. Kazakhstan, on the other hand, has a lot of professionalism in its diplomacy and is doing some of the right things to win over some constituencies in the West (i.e. Afghanistan and tolerance as topics). The government has gone to enormous trouble to educate and season a new generation of diplomats. I've seen there are young professionals of Kazakhstan who Youtube and Twitter and can run circles around all the other slackers at the Third or Fifth Committees at the UN because somebody bothered to train and deploy and keep them commanded. Not everyone bothers in the West to do the same thing -- for the U.S., multilateral institutions are where the second-rate or the political plum job seekers are sent to put them *somewhere* -- not where the best and the brightest are schooled for serious work.

Unfortunately for liberal democracy, Kazakhstan bothers to get up early in the morning, well versed in the documents and the drafting and the procedures -- and it prevails. The tyranny of just showing up, when the West hasn't been pushing back in a long time.