A Step At A Time

Via RFE/RL:

A court verdict handing short prison terms to a group of teenagers accused of being involved in the killing of a Tajik girl has sparked public outrage. The father of the slain girl has joined members of the Tajik and Muslim communities and rights advocates in filing a letter of protest to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials.


MOSCOW, March 31, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The father of Khursheva Sultonova, a 9-year-old Tajik girl murdered in St. Petersburg two years ago, today publicly protested the lenient sentences handed to those responsible for her death.

The St. Petersburg Court yesterday sentenced seven teenagers accused of assaulting Sultonova to prison terms ranging from 18 months to 5 1/2 years.

Murder Charges Thrown Out

On March 22, a jury had convicted the teenagers on charges of hooliganism, which carries a lighter sentence than murder charges.

The father of the victim, Yunus Sultonov, told a press conference in Moscow today that he was shocked by the jury's ruling.

"My family and I are in shock," Sultonov said. "They killed my little girl, and the jury pitied the murderers, [ruling] that it was hooliganism. My daughter can't be brought back, but what will other children do?"

In February 2004, Sultonov, an immigrant worker from Tajikistan, his daughter Khursheva, and his 11-year-old nephew were attacked in St. Petersburg by a group of teenagers armed with baseball bats, chains, and knives.

Khursheva bled to death after being stabbed 11 times. Sultonov was badly beaten but survived, and his nephew managed to escape.

Maidan reports that the website of Alexander Milinkievich, the Belarus opposition leader, has confirmed (English version here) the death of one of the protestors in last Saturday's rally on October Square in Minsk.

From www.rsf.org:

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about government harassment of three of Russia’s leading news websites since the start of the March. One, Pravda.ru, was temporarily closed down. Another, Bankfax.ru, is being prosecuted. A third, Gazeta.ru, has received a public warning. All three are accused of spreading extremist ideas.

“It is unacceptable that the Russian security service or any other government agency should be able on their own to close down or filter a website whose content they do not like,” the press freedom organisation said. “Only a judicial authority acting independently should be able to take such a decision.”

Reporters Without Borders added : “The authorities already control most of the traditional media and now it seems they are trying to get control of the Internet, using the need to combat extremism as an argument for censoring the news websites that are still independent.”

In mid-March, the Federal Security Service (FSB) contacted the company that hosts Pravda.ru and asked it to eliminate “all content likely to stir up sectarian hatred.” This intervention resulted in the site being closed for half a day on 23 March. The FSB was supposedly trying to block publication of Mohammed cartoons. But Vadim Gorshenin, the chairman of the Pravda.ru board, told Reporters Without Borders that the cartoons had never been posted on the site.

The prosecutor of the city of Barnaul, in the central Altai region, began an investigation into the regional news site Bankfax.ru on 10 March at the request of the Rosokhrankultura, a government agency that regulates the news media. Bankfax.ru was alleged to have “incited religious hatred” by posting supposedly “anti-Muslim” comments by an anonymous visitor to one of the site’s forums in February. The site, which is very popular with the Altai public, is now threatened with closure while the person who wrote the comments faces up to four years in prison.

It was the Rosokhrankultura that issued a public warning on 9 March to Gazeta.ru, Russia’s leading news website, for posting the Mohammed cartoons. Site editor Mikhail Mikhailin said the cartoons had to be published in order to understand what the controversy was about.

(Via Maidan)

From an eyewitness account of the arrests and beatings on Minsk's October Square, March 25:

"It reminded me of Chernokozovo."

From Jamestown's Chechnya Weekly:

WHAT MADE CHECHEN SCHOOLCHILDREN ILL?

Leonid Roshal, the Moscow pediatrician sought out by the Beslan hostage-takers as a negotiator and who was awarded by the Russian government for his assistance during the October 2002 Dubrovka theater hostage crisis, said on March 27 that he disagrees with the official explanation for the mass illness of children in Chechnya during the last several months—a nervous disorder—and believes instead that it was caused by poisoning.

As Newsru.com reported on March 27, a mass outbreak of an unknown illness occurred in Chechnya's Shelkovskoi district in the middle of last December. The first registered cases appeared between December 7 and 19 among the students and staff of a middle school in the village of Starogladkovskaya. In all, 19 schoolchildren and three adults fell ill. The website of the Gazeta newspaper, Gzt.ru, reported on March 27 that the school children were diagnosed with poisoning. According to the website, a total of 87 people from the villages of Shelkovskaya, Shelkozavodskaya and Starogladovskaya were registered with symptoms that included suffocation, convulsions and "hysterical reactions." Shelkovskoi district head Khusein Nutaev claimed at the time that the cause of the illness was poisoning by a nerve or psychotropic gas. Sultan Alimkhadzhiev, chief of the Chechen Republican Children's Hospital, told the Strana.ru website on December 20 that that all the victims "had the temporary diagnosis of poisoning by an unknown toxin."

The December incidents were in fact not the first reported outbreaks of apparent mass poisoning in the Shelkovskoi district last year. As Prague Watchdog reported last December, on September 13, 2005, 18 schoolchildren from the village of Staroshchedrinskaya were hospitalized with signs of poisoning and another eight from the same school were hospitalized on October 24.

The separatist Kavkazcenter website ran a commentary last September 28 by Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Health Minister Umar Khanbiev that stated: "News that in Chechnya's Shelkovskoi district a large number of schoolchildren were poisoned by unknown military poison substances (presumably nerve gas) is unlikely to horrify the world. I am sure that if they all suddenly die (Allah forbid), the world will be silent and act as if it understood and noticed nothing." Khanbiev wrote that while it was difficult for him to judge exactly what had taken place at the school in the village of Staroshchedrinskaya, the symptoms described by doctors there were reminiscent of those caused by chemical attacks that, Khanbiev alleged, had taken place during July 27-August 1, 2000 in three Chechen villages. Khanbiev also charged that Russia forces had used biological weapons in Chechnya—specifically, bombs and shells containing botulinim toxin.

In an appeal published by the Kavkazcenter website last December 23, Khanbiev called on the World Health Organization, United Nations and other international organizations to "take the fate of the affected Chechen children under special control" and bring in an "independent medical commission" to examine the children, given that "the Russian Health Ministry and the Chechen puppet public health structures are direct participants in the genocide of the Chechen people and are interested in the covering up the crimes against humanity committed by the Kremlin regime on the Chechen soil."

The perception in Chechnya that the schoolchildren had been poisoned reached the point last December that Ramzan Kadyrov, then acting prime minister, asked Gen. Aleksandr Baranov, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, to send a special team from the Russian Chemical Corporation to investigate. That team, headed by a senior specialist doctor at a mobile military laboratory, Captain S.N. Efimov, went to Shelkovskoi district on December 17. Novaya gazeta on January 12 of this year quoted from Efimov's report on the trip, in which he said that the schoolchildren were apparently poisoned by a toxic substance that "was either liquid or solid, releasing toxic vapors" and that was apparently located on the second floor of the main building of their school. Efimov said, however, that it was impossible to determine the nature of the poisonous gas without special equipment and chemicals. Blood samples from Shelkovskoi district schoolgirls who fell ill were sent to the republican Forensic Investigation Bureau in Makhachkala and the Agenstvo natsionalnikh novostei on December 22 quoted Bureau experts as saying "radioactive elements were found in the blood of some children."

On December 23, the Bureau declared that the children had been poisoned by ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in anti-freeze. That same day, however, the Forensic Investigation Bureau's director, Elbrus Porsukov, retracted his colleagues' statement that radioactive elements had been found in the children's blood, while Musa Delsaev, head doctor of the Drug Control Service in Chechnya, said that there had been no poisoning and that the children were suffering from "nervous exhaustion." As Kavkazky Uzel reported on December 23, Zurab Kikalidze, deputy director of the Serbsky Forensic Psychiatry Institute, said that the cause of the disease was "psycho-emotional tension" typical of residents of the Chechen Republic (see Eurasia Daily Monitor, March 2).

The Los Angeles Times reported on March 19 that the list of victims of the mystery illness had grown to 93, including several teachers and janitors, with a small number of cases reported as far away as the Chechen capital, Grozny, and Urus-Martan, 60 miles to the southwest of the Shelkovskoi district.

Leonid Roshal, for his part, said on March 27 that he disagreed with the official explanation that the Chechen children were suffering from a nervous disorder and that he believed they had been poisoned by an unknown substance. "I don't think that it's a nervous illness; it is necessary to continue the investigation," Russian news agencies quoted him as saying. "The fact that no chemical agents were found in the organisms of the children is connected to the fact that we don't know the methods for determining them."

The fact that Roshal contradicted the official explanation for the mystery illness is particularly interesting in light of the fact that the Chechen separatists view him with suspicion. Indeed, some observers expressed surprise that the terrorists in the September 2004 Beslan hostage-taking incident asked for him as chief negotiator, given that during the October 2002 Dubrovka hostage crisis he had helped evacuate children from Dubrovka theater but had also given advice to the Russian security services as they prepared to storm the theater—for which he received a medal from the Russian government. In addition, Roshal later publicly backed the Kremlin's line that the narcotic gas that the security services used during the storming of the Dubrovka Theater, which killed as many as 200 of the hostages, was harmless (see Chechnya Weekly, September 8, 2004). The separatists' attitude toward Roshal was apparent in an item published by the separatist Kavkazcenter website on December 21, which was headlined, "Roshal is summoned to profane the poisoning of Chechen children." It accused Roshal of "serving the official Moscow version in all emergency situations" and quoted him as saying it was necessary to avoid heating up the situation surrounding the mystery illness and to allow the specialists to investigate it calmly.

Following Roshal's latest comments questioning the official diagnosis of the Chechen children's illness, Sultan Alimkhadzhiev, Chechnya's deputy health minister and chief pediatrician, said that numerous investigations of the illness found no evidence of poisoning. "We brought the children to the point of anemia taking from them blood samples that were analyzed in the first-rate clinics of the country—the Center for Disaster Medicine, the Serbsky Psychiatric Institute, the laboratories of the Defense Ministry and the FSB, the laboratories of the cities of Makhachkala and Stavropol, and that's not a complete list. But not one of the results gave an affirmative answer to the question of the presence of poisonous substances in the blood," RIA Novosti quoted Alimkhadzhiev as saying in March 28. Alimkhadzhiev claimed that two months ago he wrote Roshal asking him to bring a mobile laboratory to Chechnya to carry out toxilogical analysis. Roshal, he said, answered that he doesn't have a mobile laboratory but offered to come to Grozny with his specialists and render "professional assistance."

Alimkhadzhiev said that he continues to believe that the Chechen children's illness is the result of "protracted nervous-psychological burden," RIA Novosti reported. "That diagnosis was established by well-known Russian scientists and we thus far have no other [diagnosis]," he said. "Cases of similar children's illnesses are known in the world in countries where various conflicts have occurred or the threat of terrorism has existed." Alimkhadzhiev added that he thought the protracted nature of the illness of the Chechen children was connected to the living conditions of their families. "Our colleagues from other countries and various organizations which we appealed to via the internet warned that in socially adverse regions the process of convalescence can take a long time," he said.

According to Alimkhadzhiev, 15 of the stricken children are currently being treated in a socio-psychological rehabilitation center in Argun, where they are seen regularly by physicians, psychologists and neuropathologists. The children continue to have "attacks," he said, adding that while sometimes a week goes by without an attack, the slightest upset triggers a new bout.

Meanwhile, Kommersant reported on March 28 that the parents of the ailing Chechen children plan to refuse the help of Russian doctors. "They want an independent commission [composed] of foreign specialists to diagnose the children," the newspaper wrote. "The Chechen Health Ministry privately supports the parents, as does the special commission of the Serbsky Institute, which earlier doubted the accuracy of the [official] diagnosis." Kommersant wrote that the deputy director of the Serbsky National Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry, Zurab Kekelidze, told the newspaper that toxicologists and psychiatrists from the Serbsky Institute and the Center for Disaster Medicine were supposed to go to Chechnya on March 24 to examine the children, but that the Chechen Health Ministry suddenly refused assistance from the Russian specialists. "They told us that they were not ready to receive us," Keklidze said. According to Kommersant, the Serbsky Institute's director, Tatyana Dmitrieva, confirmed this account. "The Chechen physicians and parents want to resort to independent expertise and bring in foreign specialists," she said. "This is their right."

Leonid Roshal also spoke in favor of foreign specialists diagnosing the Chechen children. "The Russian physicians did all the known tests, but they didn't answer the question of what the children are ill with," Kommersant quoted him as saying.

Opposition leader Alexander Milinkievich is to appeal to the Belarus Supreme Court against its decision to reject his complaint about the falsified election results. Meanwhile, Lukashenko has congratulated Putin on the 10th anniversary of the Russia-Belarus Union, declaring that it "answers the interests of two brotherly nations."

(gazeta.ru)

The Economist's Central and Eastern Europe correspondent and columnist Edward Lucas now has a blog. Among the first posts is one on sanctions. It's headed "Sanctions work a treat for dictatorships." But, with an ironic twist that's characteristic of this down-to-earth political observer, it begins: "Sanctions are a wonderful subsitute for real politics." Read the whole thing.

From the post's conclusion:

Nobody's talking about sanctions against Russia, yet, but Vladimir Putin's idea of democracy is not much different from Lukashenko's (roughly: sit down, shut up, give me money). And they need the same approach.

The big strength of Western societies is that we are open. That's what we should use in the struggle against autocracy, in Minsk, Moscow and beyond: by demonstrating our openness, to trade, people and ideas.

Charter '97 reports (in Russian) that Mariusz Maszkiewicz, the former Polish ambassador to Belarus who was arrested on March 25 and sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment along with other protestors on October Square, has been taken to the hospital of Okrestina prison under escort, suffering from a suspected heart attack. The transfer to Okrestina was made against his stated wishes.

Via Korrespondent.net


Ukraine and Belarus: Russian Myths

by Lilia Shevtsova

(my tr.)

“The Russian ruling class and its entourage of experts, attempting to react to the events in Ukraine and in Belarus, have created a number of absorbing cliches which may possibly have a reassuring effect on them, and perhaps bolster up their self-confidence, but which in reality cause doubts about the adequacy of their ideas about the world. I will list the most popular arguments to which our ruling elite resorts, interpreting the development of the two states mentioned above," writes political analyst Lilia Shevtsova in Vedomosti, RF.

"The West is destabilizing Ukraine and Belarus"

On the contrary, this is precisely what western governments fear, preferring calm on their eastern borders, even if it is ensured in a not entirely democratic manner. Fearing destabilization in Belarus, the European structures have not risked rendering to the Belarusian opposition the assistance they promised. During the course of the Ukrainian elections the West, and in particular Europe, have attempted to abstain from any actions which could be perceived as interference in Ukrainian affairs. Everything indicates that for the West relations with Russia are more important than support for the pro-Western vector of its Slav neighbours – for the present, at any rate.

"Lukashenko won a victory"

In reality the recent Belarus elections can be considered the beginning of the end of the Lukashenko regime: it no longer causes the same degree of fear among discontented Belarusians as it used to, and the proof of that is the mass demonstrations by many thousands of people in Minsk. But the absence of fear leads to the erosion of personified authority. The Russian elite must realize that the longer it supports the regime of the Belarusian outcast, the more a future Belarusian regime will reject Russia – the regime which will legitimize itself through the overthrow of Lukashenko.

"Russia will stick up for Lukashenko"

This is really a masochistic promise, taking into account the caddish and exploitative attitude of the bat’ka (“father” Lukashenko) not only towards Russia, but also towards Russian authority. America also has "sons of bitches" which it supports, but it forces them to work in its national interests. However, the Kremlin supports Lukashenko’s regime not even for geopolitical reasons, but rather for the sake of a background which helps the Russian political class to appear civilized and to maintain self-reliance in power. But at any moment, when the West demands that it cease financing Lukashenko, the Russian elite will agree, if only not to put at risk its own personal integration into the West.

"The Orange Revolution has been defeated"

Quite the opposite. This revolution has strengthened political pluralism, also among the Orange forces, and it has created a situation in which the governing power was forced to share power with the opposition – if not now, then in the future. This revolution was able to create limits which Ukraine will not cross, whoever is in power, the country will not return to Kuchmism, its political class will not start resorting to violence in the power contest, and it will not want to be the vassal of its large neighbour. Even the failures of the Orange forces have an effect on the Orange Revolution, forcing them at once to consolidate themselves and to negotiate with yesterday's enemies.

“The division of Ukraine is deepening”

Nothing of the kind. The fact that the political class of Ukraine is learning coalition politics indicates that it is possible not to fear the division of this country, much to the disappointment of the Russian observers who are so actively working to divide Ukraine. Even the Eastern Ukrainian elite is today attempting to achieve its interests through Ukraine’s sovereignty, and not through its ties to Russia.

"The weakening of the President’s role will not give Ukraine the chance to carry out a policy of modernization"

Well, has the Russian super-presidency ensured reforms in Russia? Ukraine’s transition to a parliamentary- presidential system compels it to conduct a policy which takes into account a variety of interests, and thus guarantees a more successful development. In any case, the experience of all transitional societies shows that parliamentary and mixed political systems, in outwardly reducing the speed of reforms, make them with steadier and more socially oriented.

"Yanukovych is the guarantee of Ukraine’s Russian choice"

An absolute failure to comprehend political logic and an underestimation of the instincts of Yanukovych himself. Let’s be clear: it was Kuchma, the last guarantee of "Russian choice", who began Ukraine’s move towards NATO. The Donetsk oligarchy, represented by Yanukovych and the interests protected by a Kremlin which is not so loving of its oligarchs, is in reality interested in incorporation into the West, where it has strategic interests and where it places its capital. But it also skilfully uses Russia in order to maintain the Soviet model of the economy which it preserves in the southeast.

"Ukraine is faced with the alternative: to the West or to the East?"

The Ukrainian political class has already outgrown the framework of that kind of choice, which is characteristic of the Russian political class, accustomed to think in linear terms. The Ukrainian elite does not satisfy the Kuchma version of multi-vector politics, which consists in making simultaneous zigzags towards the West and towards Russia. Ukraine is searching for the kind of formula that would facilitate its political movement towards the West, but would also enable it to use relations with Moscow in order to make its integration into Europe less painful. Whoever becomes the new Ukrainian prime minister will follow that trajectory. It cannot be excluded that it is precisely Ukraine that is to play the role of bridge between civilizations which Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov proposes for Russia.

"If Ukraine and Belarus leave Russia’s orbit, they will be threatened by crisis"

Actually, it will be difficult for Belarus without Russian subsidies and for both countries without access to the Russian market to preserve their archaic models of economics. But the whole point is that the Russian orbit only puts off the inevitable collapse of those models – the longer, the more agonizing. But taking into account the fact that Russia itself cannot find its bearings with its civilizational choice and the Russian economy is losing its drive, the call for modernization and integration into the West may together prove to an invitation to become collective marginals.

The way in which the Russian ruling class is reacting to the events in Ukraine and Belarus shows how hard it is finding it to solve the problems of its own survival. There is also the post-imperial syndrome, by means of which the tendency of the Russian elite to retain adjacent states in their embrace is usually explained. The fact is that Ukraine and Belarus are perceived in Moscow as a continuation of Russian domestic policy, and struggle going on there is treated as a factor in the strengthening or undermining of the Russian state. Our ruling elite understands that the successful transition to liberal-democratic principles by Slavic nations which are close in mentality and traditions will mean a blow to the Russian system of absolute rule, since it will prove that the Russians, too, are ready for democracy. It will be harder for this elite to retain power if the Belarusians and Ukrainians who are working today in Russia as guest workers live in future as the Poles do, who 15 years ago arrived in in search of matches and salt.

A Belarus blogger, kapitan_tanaka, has translated a letter from women who were taken from isolation cells in Minsk to a prison in the town of Zhodzina after the crushing of Saturday's protest. An excerpt:

This is how our cell number 5 looks like: 3,65 m long, 1,70 m wide, the window opposite the door 83/83 cm, 1,60 m above the floor. The window is closed by thick bars, which barely let any daylight into the cell. The wooden bed has 2 storeys, one storey for 2 people. The bed’s size is 1,90 m by 70 cm. We have to sleep on bare wooden boards, without any sheets or blankets. The cell is illuminated by dim light throughout the whole day and night. We have a real “parasha” (primitive toilet), which is situated right near the bed, not separated from the “living space” by any walls. Cold water drips from the rusted faucet right into the “parasha”. The temperature in the cell is about 0 degrees, there is a constant draught.

The girls in the cell number 9 have to sleep together on one wooden bed. “The strict” regime backed up today, we are being treated more human, offences have stopped, and this is our big victory. Neither us, adults, nor girls have bent to the pressure of psychological and physical humiliation.

(via Global Voices Online)

Igor Torbakov, on the growing rift between Moscow and Washington:

Most Russian pundits believe the true reason behind Washington's irritation over Moscow's policies is its inability to adjust to Russia's growing weight in global affairs -- particularly after more than a decade of indisputable U.S. dominance. They also see the U.S. democratic proselytism as a policy tool used to further Washington's strategic interests in various parts of world. Furthermore, the U.S. administration's response to the recent election victories of Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Islamists in Iraq, some Russian analysts say, suggests a view of democracy less principled than it sounds.

At the same time, some liberal-minded Russian pundits point to the emerging contradiction between America's security strategy and its economic policies. While Washington seeks to "spread democracy," its global economic strategy leads to the growing economic might of a group of countries that cannot be considered paragons of democratic governance. The policy of "cheap money" that helps sustain economic growth under conditions of huge trade and budget deficits coupled with dramatic price hikes for raw materials have boosted economic development in a number of undemocratic countries including the energy-rich nations of the Middle East and Russia. The latter's drift toward authoritarianism based on state control over extractive industries is directly connected with the sky-high energy revenues it is currently receiving, some independent experts argue.

Naturally, as they become more powerful economically, the undemocratic countries blessed with hydrocarbons seek to enhance their geopolitical clout as well. In fact, the present situation is marked not by just one global conflict -- that between the Western world and militant Islam -- but also by acute competition between two capitalisms: a democratic capitalist system and undemocratic one, according to one recent commentary. This confrontation, the commentary warns, might lead to the return to the full-blown bi-polar global architecture that existed during the Cold War.

According to gazeta.ru, Yulia Tymoshenko has now completed her meeting with President Yushchenko, and is pleased with the result. "We see the same coalition," [BYuT, NU and Socialists] she is reported as saying. She supposed that the PR would be an opposition party in the new parliament, and that it would not take part in the coalition. Earlier, Yushchenko held consultations with PR leader Viktor Yanukovych.

One slightly overlooked aspect of Saturday's savage repression by Belarusian authorities of the pro-democracy protests in Minsk was the treatment accorded to Poland's ex-Belarus ambassador Mariusz Maszkiewicz, who was among the 200-300 protestors arrested before dawn - they had already been on the square for four days. AP reports that Mr Maszkiewicz has been sentenced by a Belarusian court to 15 days' imprisonment:

"I was there. I am proud I was there," Maszkiewicz said after he was sentenced on charges of taking part in an unsanctioned gathering.

----

The Polish Foreign Ministry said it would inform the European Union about Maszkiewicz's jailing and press for sanctions over "such a drastic breach of human rights." "The issue has a deeper context because Maszkiewicz was beaten," ministry spokesman Pawel Dobrowolski told the PAP news agency.

On Sunday, the Polish consul in Grodno, Janusz Dabrowski, was detained at the border because he refused to open the trunk of his vehicle for border guards, the Polish Embassy said. Poland said it was suspending operations in Grodno because Belarus was "hindering Polish diplomats in Grodno from carrying out their consular functions."

Not only is the issue is likely to open up further rifts between Belarus and the European Union (the rifts are by now, in any case, almost total) - it is also going to be seen in the context of the muggings and beatings of Polish diplomats in Moscow in August last year, events which signalled a sharp deterioration between the EU and Russia's government. With Putin publicly congratulating Lukashenko on his "victory" in last weekend's election, the Russia-Belarus axis starts to look more and more like an open challenge to Europe.

Now, however, there are reports that Lukashenko has disappeared without trace - he has not been seen since March 20, and has not responded to any of the congratulatory messages he received, nor to the fairly robust criticisms of the US and EU. He is said by Belarusian administration officials to be "working on documents", and to be "in good health".

Lukashenko's presidential inauguation ceremony has been postponed from March 31 until mid-April. No reason has been given for the postponement.

Update: According to Reuters, Lukashenko did make a brief public appearance at a government meeting today.

UNIAN presents a panel of six political analysts giving their views on the likely outcome of the Ukrainian elections. In general, all the analysts consider that the most probable result will be an Orange coalition. The prominent Volodymyr Polokhalo - a member of Tymoshenko's bloc - expresses the view that "a mixed, symbiotic version of coalition" will lead to "the creation of an illegitimate or semi-legitimate majority", and as a result to the creation of "an illegitimate government". Polokhalo believes that such a coalition would not receive the support of Ukraine's citizens, even though it was supported by oligarchic business interests. Sergei Taran, Director of the Kyiv-based International Institute of Democracy, agrees with the prognosis, believing that the only danger in an Orange coalition will be that power in Ukraine will fall into the hands of a few people, the leaders of the majority fractions, and that the resulting political process will be closed and opaque.

Meanwhile, according to Korrespondent.net, Yulia Tymoshenko has called on analysts to stop discussing the possible creation of a coalition between Orange political forces and the Party of Regions, as "that is not a union of east and west, but really support for the biggest clan - the Donetsk clan, which today dreams of taking power."

RFE/RL:

Talks on forming a coalition government are under way in Kyiv after the March 26 parliamentary elections.

A Socialist Party leader, Yosip Vinskiy, has blamed President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party for delaying a formal coalition agreement.

Presidential aide Ivan Vasyunyk earlier said Yushchenko believed it would be improper to announce a deal before the Central Election Commission (TsVK) releases the final election results.

"It is logical to begin talks [on forming a coalition government] only after the official announcement of the election results and to sign any coalition agreement only the official announcement of the election results," Vasyunyk said. "This is the president's position."

The TsVK says it has counted nearly one-third of the votes.

An updated tally on its website says the pro-Russia party of former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is leading with 26.7 percent. Yanukovych's Party of Regions is followed by the bloc led by another former prime minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko (23.6 percent); then Our Ukraine (16.4 percent); and the Socialist Party (7.2 percent).

Tymoshenko said on March 26 that a coalition agreement between her bloc, the Socialists, and Yushchenko's party is all but certain.

("Ukraynska pravda," korrespondent.net, cvk.gov.ua)

On UNIAN's website, Adrian Karatnycky has an article about the difficulty of understanding Ukraine from afar, and about the myths prevalent in the West surrounding the present political situation in the country:

From the outside, the story is simple. Personal ambitions have undone the Orange camp, slowed reforms and opened the door for the potential return of the old order. But the reality is just a little bit different.

Myth One: The Orange camp is irreconcilably divided and incapable of reconciling.

In point of fact, Our Ukraine, the bloc loyal to President Viktor Yushchenko, and the Tymoshenko bloc may not be as divided as it seems. Much of the harsh rhetoric between them is a fight for the hearts and minds of the Yushchenko electorate.

Read the whole thing.

From RFE/RL Newsline:

...TYMOSHENKO LOOKS LIKE REAL WINNER. Speaking after exit polls showed her bloc coming in a very strong second place, Yuliya Tymoshenko said a coalition uniting the liberal parties of the Orange Revolution is "practically ready," Reuters reported on March 27. Such a coalition would unite Tymoshenko with Our Ukraine and Oleksandr Moroz's Socialist Party of Ukraine, she said. The Socialists won approximately 5 percent, according to exit polls. "I can say that at this moment, our party, the Socialist Party [of Ukraine], and the Our Ukraine party have fully agreed on the text of a coalition agreement," Tymoshenko said on March 26. Tymoshenko also said that her potential coalition partners have agreed that she should lead the new government. "I received very kind words from Roman Bezsmertny, the head of the Our Ukraine campaign staff, who said the bloc that I head has won the election and should take responsibility for matters. We will take that responsibility," she said. BW

According to UNIAN, Ivan Vasiunyk, Yushchenko's deputy chief of staff, has said that the President has ordered Prime Minister Yekhanurov to begin talks for creating a parliamentary coalition.

abdymok notes the bad and misleading reporting of the Ukrainian election and its result by much of the world's media:

instead of portraying the election results as a victory for tymoshenko, foreign reporters are saying the result is a humiliation for yushchenko.

Today is the day of the burial in Tallinn of former Estonian President Lennart Meri. Michael Tarm writes:

To combat the legacy of the Soviet Union's hammer and sickle, Estonian leader Lennart Meri had a favorite weapon: the screwdriver.

Inside his presidential palace and on the streets of the capital Tallinn, the lanky man with thinning white hair waged battle on the vestiges of Soviet-era shoddiness --a screwdriver in his pocket, ready to pounce on the next flawed appliance.

Statesman, survivor and sage, Meri is being buried Sunday, dead at 76 after a life that encompassed the disasters and triumphs visited upon his tiny Baltic country, from being shipped to Siberia in a cattle train when he was a boy, to leading Estonia out of the shadows of Soviet oppression as president from 1992 to 2001.

A writer and filmmaker who survived Stalin's gulag, Meri could be seen tinkering, screwdriver in hand, with a broken coffee machine or light switch in his palace, then delight a visitor with lectures on everything from astronomy to Shakespeare.

"It was the Soviet way, that if you saw one light switch that didn't work properly, you'd say, 'Let's plan to fix all the light switches in a month's time and let's form a committee to organize it,'" he explained in one of several interviews with this reporter during his presidency.

"But no! It only takes five minutes and you should fix it yourself right now."

It was a frequent thread in his cerebral musings: the passionate belief that the legacies of the Soviet past had to be eradicated.

Over the course of his tenure in power, that goal was largely accomplished.

Meri helped transform his beaten-down Baltic homeland into a proud European Union member now nicknamed E-stonia -- for a sizzling economy that's fueled by a cutting-edge Internet infrastructure. Nearly all Estonians, for instance, conduct their banking transactions exclusively online.

Like Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who went on to become president of the Czech Republic, Meri was enlisted to run for president because of his cultural pedigree and the moral stature he had won speaking out against the Soviet regime.

But he proved to be more than just a man of letters.

Applying his fix-it-now philosophy to market reforms, he groomed youthful policy makers who speedily privatized state property, slashed subsidies and unilaterally abolished trade tariffs.

While some Eastern European leaders were groping for ways to rescue their economies, Estonia's gained a reputation as a Baltic Tiger -- with annual growth roaring from minus 14 percent in 1992 to plus 11 percent by 1997.

Similarly, Meri was quick to decide that NATO membership was the way his small, historically vulnerable nation could ensure its security.

"Security is like virginity," Meri explained with his characteristic offbeat wit about why nothing short of full membership would do. "You're either a virgin or you're not. You either have security or you don't."

With similar flare, he also criticized Western governments for offering aid to Russia before Estonia's giant neighbor had shown a commitment to democratic reforms.

"They thought that by feeding a tiger more and more meat, it would eventually turn into a vegetarian," he said.

Meri's preoccupation with the consequences of Soviet rule lasted until his death.

It began more than 60 years earlier, when 12-year-old Lennart awoke to the sound of soldiers' boots outside his bedroom.

After the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states in 1940, it deported more than 200,000 men, women and children viewed as potential enemies of the new regime. The Meris were swept up in a first wave of deportations -- on June 14, 1941.

The troops who came to arrest Lennart, his brother and parents, gave them 20 minutes to pack, then marched them to a waiting cattle train and packed them in. Holes in the floor served as latrines during the 2,000 mile (3,200 kilometer) journey to Siberia.

While many exiles perished in the near-famine Siberian conditions, the Meris managed to survive -- thanks in part to Lennart's adeptness at stealing potatoes from a Red Army food-processing plant. They returned to Estonia in 1946.

The sense of imprisonment Estonians felt in their own country by the time the Meris returned was accentuated by the barbed-wire fencing and searchlights, a virtual Berlin Wall, that lined its coast to prevent anyone from fleeing West.

Meri, who spoke six languages fluently, including English, devoted much of his energy as a young adult literally trying to stay tuned with the West. He fashioned a shortwave radio out of a hodgepodge electrical components, scribbling down whole broadcasts for hours on end, including a lecture on the theory of the expanding universe and speeches by Winston Churchill.

He also wrote several books, including one in 1976 called Silver White. In it, Meri theorizes about how a meteorite that slammed into Estonia more than 4,000 years ago may have affected regional history.

At dinnertime in '60s and '70s, discussions between Meri and his father Georg -- an Estonian diplomat based in Paris and London before World War II -- often revolved around their conviction that Estonia would one day be free again.

"In this sense, you could say that, in our family, there was never an Iron Curtain," he said. "The state of mind in my own family was that the existence of a totalitarian state was something very temporary."

In 1991, events proved the Meris right.

In August of that year, a poorly executed coup in the Kremlin failed after just three days -- ushering in the restoration of Baltic independence virtually over night.

Meri, then the foreign minister for Soviet Estonia's independence-minded government, happened to be in Finland during the coup. But when he returned days later, he epitomized the new confidence that Estonians were in charge now, not the Kremlin.

Arriving by boat at Tallinn Harbor, he looked up at a port tower to see a red Soviet flag still blowing in the breeze.

"I am not going to walk onto Estonian territory under a Soviet flag," he declared, directing a port official to have it taken down. "That's an order," Meri barked for good measure, and the flag was promptly removed.

By the time he left office, tech-savvy, Nordic-feeling Estonia had dramatically transformed. A few years later, it had also achieved what once seemed an impossible dream, though perhaps not to Meri: it entered NATO in 2004.

* * *

And Carl Bildt has a tribute to Lennart Meri here.

(via Leopoldo)

Il n'y a pas d'autre objection à l'attitude totalitaire que l'objection religieuse ou morale. Si ce monde n'a pas de sens, ils ont raison. Je n'accepte pas qu'ils aient raison. Donc...

C'est â nous de créer Dieu. Ce n'est pas lui le créateur. Voilà toute l'histoire du Christianisme. Car nous n'avons qu'une façon de créer Dieu, qui est de le devenir.

Albert Camus, Carnets 1942-1945

Via AFP or AP (and drugoi.livejournal.com)

15.20 GMT: There is a more or less live commentary in Russian and Belarussian at this link (via Neeka's Backlog). The demonstrators are being harshly countered by OMON troops with helmets, shields and batons, and there are reports of casualties among the demonstrators. It is possible that one person has been killed. There are still from 3,000 to 4,000 demonstrators on the streets. The OMON troops are scattering the groups of protesters.

There are many press photos of today's demonstration here.

More photos - some of which are shocking - here.

CNN has an updated report on the clashes.

RFE/RL's latest report is here. There are also WMA files of the sounds of the demonstration.

According to Charter '97, Alexander Kozulin has been detained by Interior Ministry police (the link is currently inactive). Reuters has more here.

United Civic Front activist Ludzmila Graznova has called for Putin to be charged and excluded from the G8, if it can be shown that he stands behind Lukashenko.

According to Korrespondent.net, Alexander Milinkevich has said in a phone call to the Ukrainan news agency UNIAN that more than 1,000 people were arrested and detained during and after today's anti-government march and demonstration in Minsk. He criticized his colleague Alexander Kozulin for leading a breakaway demonstration to the distribution centre where activists are detained, calling it a provocation that would spoil the image of the opposition. Milinkevich also said that the number of casualties is unknown. He announced that in spite of today's tragic events, the Belarusian opposition does not intend to yield, and plans to hold another mass demonstration on April 26.

Milinkevich has declared the creation of a Popular Movement for the Liberation of Belarus.

From BBC:

Russia provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on US military moves in the opening days of the US-led invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report has said.

Russia passed the details through its Baghdad ambassador, the report said.

Russia has made no substantive comment on the claim, except to issue a routine denial.

Another item I recently translated for the Prague Watchdog (March 19):

Why can't they catch Basayev?

By Ruslan Isayev

CHECHNYA - From being the most odious Chechen field commander and principal enemy of Russia, Shamil Basayev is increasingly turning into a figure who is somehow unreal. It is now several years since the Russian special services began their hunt for him.

There have been many reports of Basayev's death, and there was even information that he had gone mad. All of this information was supplied by the Russian special services, which have thereby attempted to shrug off responsibility for the fact that they are unable to catch him, while at the same time hinting at their involvement in his illnesses and poisonings.

On several occasions Basayev has indeed fallen into traps arranged by the special services, but each time he has succeeded in slipping away at the last moment.

Basayev's luck gives rise to the most diverse rumours, not only among the people, but even among some law enforcement officials. And the rumours are appropriate, if we consider that during the last three years Basayev has been almost the only figure under whose command perceptible blows have been delivered to Russia's image.

These rumours include the claim that in 1999 Basayev and his forces left Daghestan under cover of Russian helicopters, and that his actions are coordinated by the GRU, the Military Intelligence of the General Staff of the Russian Federal Ministry of Defence.

Supporters of the version alleging Basayev's "protection" by Russian army intelligence refer, though without proof, to his activity during the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict, where he rose to the post of Abkhaz Deputy Minister of Defence, heading a voluntary contingent from the entire Caucasus.

It is asserted that Basayev was able to form his contacts with the Russian special services when Russia openly took the side of separatist Abkhazia, to which it rendered all its military aid.

There is also another matter: why are the Russian special services, in this case military intelligence, conducting this "dirty" game, and what are its purposes?

Some Chechen political scientists believe that there actually exists in Russia a so-called "plot of the generals", who are trying to weaken Russia to please the countries of the West, with the aim of securing a Russian withdrawal from the Caucasus.

Others think that Basayev is simply endowed with good fortune, and because of his brilliant military talent and wolf-like instinct remains invulnerable to his enemies. Not even a reward of 10,000,000 dollars has managed to trace Russia's terrorist No. 1.

From merely being a thorn in Russia's side Basayev long ago turned into a chronic illness for the country. But that is not the end of it. With more events of the same kind, the processes of this illness will become irreversible. The signs are already present.

RFE/RL's Daisy Sindelar, commenting on the run-up to this weekend's Ukraine elections:

As for Moscow and Washington, [Vladimir] Zharikhin says the countries should strive to tread lightly in Ukraine, which he says is destabilized by its traditional philosophical east-west schism.

"In Ukraine there's truly an enormous contradiction between the global views in western and eastern Ukraine," he notes. "And if you adopt the policies of those who are profoundly Western-oriented or -- on the other hand -- profoundly Eastern-oriented, then the splitting up of the country is inevitable. We would simply pull it into pieces. We need to proceed on the notion that that's how Ukraine is."

Yanukovych, in the end, may have the best sense of how to manage the east-west divide. He has crossed the breach in recent days, making a strategic campaign stop in the western city of Chernoitsi, which in 2004 gave Yushchenko 80 percent of its votes. He switched easily between Ukrainian and Russian, and reportedly drew a crowd of some 10,000 people with promises to use his Kremlin connections to keep gas prices down.

Who was behind such a savvy campaign move? Not Yanukovych's Russian election advisers. The Party of Regions leader has replaced them -- with a team assembled by a campaign expert, Paul Manafort, from the U.S. Republican Party.

Elsewhere on RFE/RL, Victor Yasmann analyses Moscow's silence on the Ukraine elections - a contrast with Moscow's noisy advocacy of Yanukovych in 2004.

Discussion at Garry Kasparov's Internet newspaper Kasparov.ru continues to be lively. Many readers, looking at recent events in Belarus, and the brutal attack on Marina Litvinovich that was evidently authorized - and probably carried out - by the FSB, and of which there are witnesses, are now saying that with the approach of the Russian presidential elections in 2 years' time, the possibility of a revolt along the lines of what has taken place in Georgia, in Ukraine, and now in Belarus, cannot be ruled out. One commenter writes:

What can I say about United Civic Front [Kasparov's party], Kasparov, Khodorkovsky and other figures of the real opposition? Have the courage of your convictions, for the people will support you! The people are terribly tired after 70 years of dictatorship, and you need to understand that. And people need to understand that they themselves are the power, and that it's their own power they elect. And everything else is superfluous!

David Marples, on the ending of the October Square protest in Minsk:

The president finally lost patience. Several hundred protestors were reportedly arrested and many were savagely beaten in custody. Yet more "commemorations" could be forthcoming, such as April 2, a date when the opposition usually denounces the Russia-Belarus Union, and the Chernobyl anniversary (the 20th), traditionally the biggest protest march, on April 26. Lukashenka would prefer that international attention be refocused elsewhere and seems perplexed by the sustained international interest. He could not have ordered a new election under the terms demanded by Milinkevich.

Overall, Lukashenka has been tested. He has attained a pyrrhic victory, but faces new uncertainties and doubts. The opposition is not yet powerful enough to remove him, but its threat has grown. The contrived turnout and vote count, as well as the over-reaction to the opposition campaigns, were in retrospect a blunder by the authorities that served to revive a long dormant civic society in Belarus. The end game -- a massive assault on the small group that chose to stay for a further night on the square -- was predictable. Additional retributions may follow. The Jeans Revolution might have failed, but it marks the first sustained attempt by the opposition to resist the Lukashenka dictatorship.

The opposition has also said that it will go ahead with this weekend's protest rally, timed to coincide with the March 25 commemoration of the short-lived independent state of 1918.

I'm reposting this comment by Jeremy Putley from the comments box of Release Mikhail Trepashkin:

The recent book by Professor John B Dunlop, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, entitled “The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises: A Critique of Russian Counter-Terrorism", contains much interesting information.

In particular there is a reference (on page 149) to Mikhail Trepashkin in connection with the 2002 Dubrovka theatre siege.

QUOTE
A number of questions have been asked by analysts and journalists about whether or not the de facto leader of the terrorists, Abubakar, had in fact been killed. In June 2003, Moscow Prosecutor Avdyukov insisted that Ruslan Abu-Khasanovich Elmurzaev’s [Abubakar’s real name] body had been found and identified. In March 2003, however, retired FSB Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Trepashkin had written that, following the events at Dubrovka, “I proposed to the investigators that they try to identify ‘Abubakar’ in the first days after the event. However, later an investigator telephoned and said that he could not find the corpses of a number of people, including that of ‘Abubakar,’ and therefore there would be no identification.” And journalist Aleksandr Khinshtein has reported: “At first there existed a version that Abubakar died during the storming of the House of Culture [i.e. the theatre] …. But a series of examinations showed that there was no Abubakar in the hall.” Despite Prosecutor Avdyukov’s statement, it appears thus to be an open question as to whether or not Abubakar was killed.
END QUOTE

In fact, Ruslan Elmurzaev alias Abubakar, who was the FSB’s “plant” among the terrorists and who, in his role as double agent, was in complete command of the events at the Dubrovka theatre from beginning to end, is almost certainly still alive and living in Chechnya. In 2003 this was confirmed to film director Sergei Govoroukhin (“one of the volunteer negotiators who had spoken at length with Abubakar at Dubrovka”) by intelligence officers of the Combined Group of Forces of the Northern Caucasus.

Thus it appears that Mikhail Trepashkin is in a position to testify to the effect that Abubakar’s body was reported as not being present following the Moscow theatre siege in October 2002.

With the news that Minsk riot police have broken up the demonstration on October Square, it looks as though the protest may be over - at least for now.

Lukashenko's assault is really one on European democracy, and in particular the ideals and policies of the European Union, which has opened to absorb many of the former Soviet "satellite" states. Timothy Garton Ash, writing in the Guardian, has some suggestions as to how people in the West, and especially in Europe, can help the Belarus protests.

Here, without for a moment confusing wishes with reality, I have an answer. There are many reasons for the different paths followed by Belarus's western and eastern neighbours since the end of the cold war - the Polish way and the Russian way - but one of the most fundamental is this: that the Poles wanted to join the EU and the EU made it clear the Poles could join if they met certain standards of democracy, the rule of law, market economy and so forth. Now it's the Poles - and Slovaks, Czechs, Lithuanians and other recently self-liberated Europeans - who, as new members of the EU, are saying we must do more to sustain the cause of freedom in places such as Belarus. Besides direct support for independent media, civil society and the democratic opposition, and pressuring the country's leaders, the most important thing we can do is to offer that long-term European perspective.

They are right. This is the corner of Belarus's reality we can directly and legitimately change. So if you do give a toss about Belarus, and you are a citizen of the EU, go blog your government till it hurts.

Meanwhile, Russia has blamed the OSCE for tensions in Belarus. Russia's President Putin has already sent open congratulations to Lukashenko. The EU and US are to impose sanctions against Belarus, though the precise nature of these hasn't yet been specified.

From RFE/RL:

A human rights organization has described a St. Petersburg court verdict on March 22 in the murder of a nine- year-old Tajik girl as "a moral catastrophe." The judgment -- eight of the defendants were found guilty of "hooliganism" and the other defendant was found not guilty -- shocked members of the victim's family and the Tajik Embassy in Moscow.

PRAGUE, March 23, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Muhammad Egamzod, a representative of the Tajik Embassy in Moscow, today expressed "extreme disappointment" with the court ruling but said he hopes those responsible for the murder will still be brought to justice.

"We still believe that the killing was a xenophobic and racist act," Egamzod said. "The Tajik Embassy in Russia hopes that the murderers of the Tajik citizen will be brought to justice and punished according to the law."

Khursheda Sultanova was killed in 2003 as she was taking a walk with her father and 11-year-old cousin, who were also wounded in the incident. Natella Ponomareva, the lawyer for the victims, announced the court ruling.

"There will be no verdict of murder, because the only one who was accused of murder was acquitted. The jury decided that he is not guilty," Ponomareva said.

The verdict was a blow not only to family members seeking justice but also to the many in Russia and elsewhere who wanted to see Russian authorities take steps to halt racial hate crimes. Such crimes are one the rise and are mainly directed against those of African and Asian descent. Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of Russia's Civic Assistance human rights organization, expressed surprise at the ruling.

"This is a catastrophe," she said. "This is a moral catastrophe for Russia that in the multinational society of a huge country could bring nothing less than the collapse of the state."

The Attack

On the night of February 9, 2004, Yunus Sultanov, a migrant worker from Tajikistan, was walking the streets of St. Petersburg with his daughter and nephew when a group of some 12 young men armed with baseball bats, chains, and knives attacked them. Khursheda was stabbed and bled to death before medical help arrived. The assailants fled the scene and police launched a search for them.

Nazar Mirzoda of the Tajik diaspora in St. Petersburg credits St. Petersburg police with investigating the crime but questions the court decision.

"[Some] 150 young people were interrogated," Mirzoda said. "People in the neighborhood also told the entire story of how it happened. All eight youngsters confessed that they took part in the beating. They told the court that Roman Kazakov stabbed the girl."

Shock And Disbelief

Yusuf Sultanov was not only shocked by the verdict, he said he was not even told about today's trial.

"No one told me that there will be a trial today," he said. "I did not received any written notice. And it is strange that they confessed earlier and now say they are not guilty. I could not understand. I am completely shattered as to why they do not want to punish murderers."

In the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, Khursheda's Aunt Oim said she believes the lenient verdict was due to the connections of some defendants to Russian officials.

"What can I say? There are the sons of some high-ranking official involved in the killing," she said. "That is why they will be acquitted."

St. Petersburg prosecutors report there were 23 deaths in 2004 listed as racial crimes, and 34 in 2005. In Moscow, the Prosecutor's Office reports that 38 Tajik migrant workers have been killed just this year. St. Petersburg police estimate there are some 20,000 skinheads, often the perpetrators of such acts, in the St. Petersburg region alone.

At Defender Alert Network, a petition for the release of Mikhail Trepashkin, the defence lawyer illegally re-imprisoned by the Russian authorities in September 2005, and still detained in a penal colony under harsh and inhuman conditions:

Trepashkin is not receiving adequate medical care for acute asthma, and his health is deteriorating. Having exhausted all legal appeals of his detention, he needs your help.

According to his lawyers, there is a possibility that Trepashkin could be transferred to a facility with even worse conditions. Instead, Trepashkin must be transferred immediately to a civilian hospital for in-patient treatment.

In October 2003, Trepashkin was arrested just before presenting evidence in court suggesting government complicity in the 1999 apartment building bombings which helped to spark the Second Chechen War. His persecution through the misuse of the legal system appears designed to silence his nonviolent criticism of government policy.

Dozens of leading Russian human rights advocates have issued statements in his support. Please join them and call for Trepashkin's release.

There is more about Trepashkin's case here.

From MosNews:

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the deputy speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament, the State Duma, and the leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, suspects British Prime Minister Tony Blair of being personally interested in preserving the immunity of certain Russian nationals currently living in the UK.

Zhirinovsky is set to appeal to the British parliament with a request to probe Blair’s possible connection to the former Russian tycoon [Boris Berezovsky] currently living in self-imposed exile in London the Interfax news agency reported.

And today, from Itar-Tass:

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office is checking the reports alleging that business tycoon Boris Berezovsky might be involved in funding terrorist activities by Shamil Basayev and other extremists in Chechnya, deputy prosecutor general Vladimir Kolesnikov said on Thursday.

The UK's Times, on London Mayor Livingstone's "go back to Iran" remarks concerning the Reuben brothers:

Ken Livingstone is a fool. Or at least, too many fawning acolytes and the 360-degree view from his eyrie atop London’s most peculiar building have made a fool of him — and not for the first time, his critics will observe. But even his most ardent admirers must have studied their fingernails in dismay when, faced with a potential impasse in negotiations between the developers responsible for building the capital’s Olympic City, Mr Livingstone resorted to crass insult.

The UK Times reports that

An alleged Islamist terrorist accused of planning attacks on targets in Britain was involved in a plot to buy a "dirty bomb" from the Russian mafia, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.

Salahuddin Amin was said to have been entrusted by senior figures in a terror cell in Pakistan to act as a go-between in their planned purchase of the radioactive device.

He is standing trial alongside six alleged accomplices for conspiring to detonate explosives at key sites in Britain, causing maximum damage and fatalities. Among the intended targets were the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, the National Grid, synagogues and a nightclub in Central London, the court was told during the second day of the trial.

However, the plotters did not realise that as they pondered which of many potential targets to strike, their movements were being monitored by police, David Waters, QC, for the prosecution, said. Some of their cars and homes had been bugged. One defendant, Jawad Akbar, allegedly said in a recording: “The biggest nightclub in Central London. No one can put their hands up and say they are innocent — those slags dancing around.”

Mr Amin was said in 2001 to have moved to Pakistan where he attended explosives and weapons training camps with five of the other men and supplied equipment for jihad (holy war).

Mr Waters told the jury: “An indication to the trust imposed in Amin and his position in the Pakistani end of the organisation is gained from the passing of information to him in relation to a radioisotope bomb.”

Referring to alleged senior terrorists, Mr Waters said that Mr Amin was asked by Pakistan-based militants to contact a man named Abu Annis. Through Annis contact had been made via the internet with Russian mafia based in Belgium.

In Yezhednevnyi Zhurnal, Alexander Ryklin writes that in a recent phone-in poll, the Ekho Moskvy radio station asked its listeners a hypothetical question: “Who would you vote for as the future president of Russia - Lukashenko or Putin?” The answer was 82% for Lukashenko, and only 18% for Putin. Ryklin comments:

There is no doubt at all that the main difference between Putin and Lukashenko lies not in the fact that one of them will not accept liberalism on principle, while the other just keeps talking about how Russia needs a special kind of democracy. i.e. - a managed one. Of course, both ideologically and mentally they are very close to each other, and their understanding of the nature of power is more or less the same. It is simply that the situations of their lives have developed differently. Lukashenko isn't faced with the task of legalizing his capital in the West - for him, the West is closed. But Putin, on the other hand, dreams of meeting old age in a quiet, comfortable place not far from a large European city. Hence the dualism in his behaviour. It looks as though our home-grown patriots have already understood this. At least, the voting at "Echo" definitely bears witness to it

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed and exiled "oligarch" now serving a nine-year sentence in a labour camp in Chita, Siberia, has sent a letter to a Russian woman, Irina, in the United States who had written to him expressing her fears for the future of society in Russia. In particular, she drew attention to the widespread political indifference and lethargy in Russia as a whole, and to the fact that now almost the only alternative to the present party in power is the far-right National Bolshevik Party, with the danger of a lurch towards fascism and totalitarianism.

In his letter, Khodorkovsky writes that it is precisely this political passivity and indifference that he is trying to combat, and that his primary aim is to encourage the development of a normal civil society.

It seems that private correspondence is the only way in which Khodorkovsky is able to communicate with the outside world - while only some of his letters (which are censored) reach their destinations, they do at least in some small part lift the information blockade that has been built around him by the prison authorities and the Russian government.

From Moscow Times:

Marina Litvinovich, a 31-year-old political activist and public relations specialist, was walking to her car from the office of Kasparov's United Civil Front on Ulitsa Makarenko at around 9:15 p.m. Monday when she was attacked from behind, Kasparov spokesman Denis Bilunov said.

Litvinovich was unconscious for 20 to 25 minutes before she came to and called Kasparov's office, which in turn called an ambulance, Bilunov said. She escaped serious injury, but two of her teeth were knocked out, he said.

Litvinovich was carrying a laptop computer and money, but nothing was stolen, he said.

"It's quite obvious that this was connected with her political activities," Bilunov said.

Bilunov said the attack had been reported to police and that a criminal investigation had been opened. A police source told RIA-Novosti that investigators were looking into the incident.

Litvinovich is also the editor of a web site called Truth of Beslan (www.pravdabeslana.ru), and she said Tuesday that she believed an investigation into terrorism might have been the primary motive behind the attack.

"I think it's very likely that it was connected with my activities in investigating the terrorist acts at 'Nord Ost' and in Beslan," Litvinovich said Tuesday on Ekho Moskvy radio. "Some new and very interesting facts -- sufficiently serious and important -- have emerged. I think this is the most painful thing that someone perhaps wouldn't like."

BBC reports that

The opposition in Belarus says four of its leading activists have been arrested by police in Minsk during a protest against the election result.

Hundreds of opposition supporters defied a heavy police presence and braved sub-zero cold overnight, camping out in a central square.

Rush-Mush is translating minsk_news, with frequent updates on the development of the protest, which is still continuing.

Lyndon at Scraps of Moscow has more on the assault on Marina Litvinovich.

(via Global Voices.) As Veronica points out, Marina Litvinovich is also chief editor of the BeslanTruth website.

My translation of Marina Litvinovich's interview with Stanislav Kesayev, head of the North Ossetian parliamentary commission of inquiry into the 2004 Beslan hostage-taking and school siege, which concluded that the Russian state authorities have much to answer for, is here.

Marina Litvinovich, an associate of Garry Kasparov, international chess master and Russian human rights activist, was attacked and beaten unconscious in a Moscow street tonight, Lenta.ru reports:

Марину Литвинович около 21:00, когда она выходила из офиса межрегионального общественного движения Объединенный гражданский фронт (ОГФ) на улице Макаренко, жестоко избили несколько человек. Они нанесли женщине удары по лицу и голове, в результате чего она потеряла сознание. При этом ничего из вещей Марины Литвинович не пропало, даже ноутбук и деньги.

Лиц нападавших Ливинович запомнить не сумела. Пострадавшая доставлена в НИИ имени Склифосовского с подозрением на сотрясение мозга. Подробности о состоянии ее здоровья пока неизвестны.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin is on a visit to China.

Back to the future. Via abdymok, a 1997 article by Ted Galen Carpenter and Andrew Stone of the Cato Institute about the modalities of NATO enlargement in Eastern Europe - considered by the authors to pose a potentially lethal threat to European and world security. An excerpt from the end of the analysis, which deserves close attention:

Admitting Poland to NATO involves two related dangers. One is that Poland's highly unstable neighbor [Belarus] may suffer the fate of other states with repressive political systems and moribund economies: a violent convulsion. We have witnessed that development in such places as Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Zaire. It should be noted that, in every case, the chaos created serious problems for neighboring states. If fighting erupted in Belarus--and the ingredients are all in place for a conflagration--it is highly unlikely that Poland would remain unaffected.

Yet there would be multiple risks to NATO if it took action to stabilize its new member's eastern border. In addition to the prospect of being sucked into a Bosnia-style morass, there would be the danger of a confrontation with Russia. Belarus is a weakened [state], Russia's last strategic ally in Europe. Russian leaders would undoubtedly be alarmed by any NATO military initiatives involving Belarus, whether those actions were for the purpose of containment or the more ambitious objective of nation building.

Moscow's reluctant acquiescence in the first round of NATO enlargement was conditioned on what Russian officials considered solemn promises in the Founding Act. One crucial provision states that NATO "reiterates that in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defense and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces." Moscow might well view the deployment of NATO troops in eastern Poland to deal with instability in Belarus as a violation of that pledge. Yet if the alliance failed to act, Poland (and the other new members) would have reason to question the credibility of the security commitments they had been given.

Even the possibility of the United States' becoming entangled in a political and military quagmire on the frontier between Poland and Belarus should be ample reason for the Senate to reject the administration's plan to enlarge NATO. The danger that such a development could result in a confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia reinforces that point. If expansion is approved, the United States risks being blindsided by a conflict that advocates of NATO enlargement never anticipated and that would have no relevance to the security interests of the American people.

Gazeta.ru (GR) is reporting (21:37, you may need to scroll) that the number of demonstrators in the centre of the Belarus capital Minsk is now estimated at around 20,000 - a huge increase in a very short time, and frankly, it seems impossible that the numbers could have jumped that far in the space of five minutes...

Milinkevich has told the demonstrators (there are probably at most 6,000) to "stand to the end" (stoyat' do kontsa) - i.e. until the authorities admit that the election results have been faked. Milinkevich has also made another appeal - anyone who can manage to bring hot tea for the demonstrators should do so. According to GR, some tents have been put up on the square - but, sadly, this could be false reporting. The wait for information goes on.

Neeka's Backlog has some commentary and links.

The danger of a provocation in this tense and media-oriented situation is obviously ever-present.

It seems likely that the police will shortly break up the demonstration. Let's hope it doesn't happen.

Lenta.ru now says that

Правоохранительные органы Белоруссии будут привлекать к административной ответственности организаторов несанкционированных акций в центре Минска, передает в понедельник агентство "Интерфакс".

Also, there's a large picture of blue tents, and then repeated accounts of threats by the authorities to punish the demonstrators. Thankfully, the anticipated attack by "riot police" hasn't taken place at this time.

It's nearly over. No, it isn't.

Echo of Moscow (EM) - a prominent pro-democracy radio station and website based in the Russian Federation, but with correspondents in Belarus - reports at 21:32 that the opposition rally in the centre of Minsk has heard a demand by Alexander Kozulin for new presidential elections to be held in July. Kozulin read out a "Declaration in the name of the Belarusian people".

EM says that the document also contains demands for the release of political detainees, and the establishment of an electoral commission with participaton of the opposition.

The EM correspondent estimates the number of demonstrators on the square at between 4,000 and 5,000 - slightly down on yesterday's figure. So far the police have not made any attempt to break up the meeting.

Alexander Milinkevich has called on the protestors to make the rally a permanent one

My visit to Helsinki to receive the Stora Pris (Grand Prix) of the Swedish-language authors’ association was quite a quick one – it all happened at such short notice. If I’d known a little further in advance, I would have tried to arrange to stay in Helsinki a bit longer – but I have to be back here for work purposes today!

I really enjoyed attending the annual dinner. I hope that the authors took note of the role that Books from Finland magazine has played in presenting Finland-Swedish writing to an English-speaking public over the past thirty years or so, and to Soila Lehtonen’s editorship of the magazine. Many of my translations first appeared in BfF, and it’s through the journal that British and U.S. publishers were able to read them.

It was good to talk to Thomas Wulff, Peter Sandelin, Henrika Ringbom and others, and to meet my old friend Gösta Ågren. I’m looking forward to visiting Helsinki/Helsingfors again before too long.

I am very pleased with the text of the award (in the picture).

I'm back from Helsinki, where I had a great time with the Finland-Swedish writers' association - will try to post something about it tomorrow.

There's going to be a break in posting while I head over to Finland for a couple of days.

As the protests in France against the new CPE labour law continue, it looks increasingly as though Chirac and the French government are going to have to make a radical rethink of their social and domestic policies. The crux of the matter is the government's remoteness from the economic realities of everyday life in French society. It was these economic and social concerns - and not "radical Islam" - that were at the root of last November's riots in the banlieues, and only some kind of new social contract with the youth of France is going to avert a national crisis of the kind seen in 1968.

Carl Bildt observes that

What's happening in Belarus is truly a disgrace to Europe.

There is a need to intensify discussions on how Europe should react to obvious repression in Belarus.

That there certainly is such a need is underlined by today's analysis by Eurasia Daily Monitor commentator David Marples, who writes:

The Belarusian authorities have exacerbated the tension surrounding the 2006 presidential election campaign by declaring that the opposition plans an uprising on Sunday, March 19. KGB chief Stsyapan Sukharenka has warned that any demonstrations will be regarded as acts of terrorism. Participants could theoretically be imprisoned for 25 years, jailed for life, or even face the death penalty for appearing in public on the day of the vote. He cited a false exit poll allegedly confiscated from the Partnerstvo group as well as potential Georgian involvement in an uprising.

Igor Torbakov considers the controversy between Moscow and the West over the death of former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic, and points to a fresh surge of anti-Americanism in Russia:

Both the Russian political class and the broad public were strongly against the 1999 NATO operation in Yugoslavia aimed at stopping what the West claimed was the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. It would seem that now the Kremlin has decided to whip up anti-Western and anti-American sentiments within the Russian population, which was generally sympathetic to Milosevic's role in opposing NATO in the Balkans. "Many citizens of our country don't believe in the genocide of the Albanian people. Milosevic remained in the memory of the majority of Russians as the leader of the proud independent state that the American [war] machine had failed to crush," contends Valery Fedorov, general director of VTsIOM, the Kremlin-connected polling agency.

Independent experts also confirm that the level of anti-American feelings in Russia is running high. The polls conducted by the Levada Analytical Center reveal that over the decade almost one-third of respondents have taken an extremely critical stance toward Washington's foreign policy.

Although nowadays anti-Americanism is not an exclusive characteristic of Russian public attitudes but rather a global trend, Russia's negative perceptions of Washington's policies have peculiar features.

First, having been America's main adversary for over half century, Moscow finds it particularly difficult to adjust to its curtailed global role and Washington's seemingly unassailable supremacy. Seeking to limit what it sees as American hegemony, the Kremlin often finds itself in the company of some unsavory allies, not infrequently outright "rouges," only because those leaders are believed to be capable of standing up to the American might. Remarkably, some analysts draw parallels between Russian attitudes toward Milosevic and Moscow's strategy toward Iran. The Kremlin clearly does not want to see the clerical regime in Tehran armed with nuclear weapons, but at the same time, it treats Iran's leadership, as it did Milosevic, as a potentially useful ally acting as a counterweight to the American presence in the region.

Second, the Russian leadership is using the anti-Western and anti-American sentiments to further their domestic political agenda. The government sees the public wariness of the West as a handy instrument for manipulation and mobilization. The Kremlin likely regarded Milosevic's death as a convenient pretext to step up anti-Western propaganda. In this sense, it is symptomatic that the coverage of Milosevic's death on Russian state-controlled television was overwhelmingly sympathetic toward the late Yugoslav leader, with several commentators defending him and blaming his captors for his death.

Tua Forsström's I studied once at a wonderful faculty - a 135-page volume containing four of her collections of poetry in my translations and Stina Katchadourian's - is now published by Bloodaxe Books, and is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Estland has a roundup of blog reaction to the death of Estonia's Lennart Meri, with assessments of the career of this important figure in European political and cultural life.

There is also a tribute from Carl Bildt.

A Book of Condolences has been opened here.

Former Estonian President Lennart Meri has died, after a long illness. He was 76.

Jens-Olaf at Estland has some photos and reflections.

And Paul Goble writes from Tallinn (March 14):

Lennart Meri, the former president of Estonia who symbolized in his own person the principle of the continuity of that Baltic republic's statehood, died in his sleep early this morning after a long battle with cancer.

Born on March 29, 1929 -- coincidentally the date on which a then very junior U.S. diplomat named George F. Kennan arrived in Estonia -- Lennart Meri was the son of one of Estonia's most distinguished pre-war diplomats and grew up in the Estonian missions in Paris and Berlin where his father, learning not only those languages but English as well to perfection.

When the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940 under the terms of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany the year before, the entire Meri family was arrested and then deported to a village near Sverdlovsk. There, the 12-year-old Lennart perfected his Russian as he made friends with local children and picked potatoes to feed his family.

After the war, Lennart Meri returned with his family to Estonia where he studied at the University of Tartu, subsequently becoming a broadcaster, a film maker, and a writer but in every case using his remarkable talents both for using language and making friend to play what he called "his little games" to present Estonia and Estonians to a broader world.

Like other Estonians living under occupation, Lennart Meri often was put in the position of having to choose between withdrawal from the public sphere - something that was not part of his nature - and among options, most if not all of which entailed risks of being used by the enemies of the Estonian people and the Estonian state.

Because he took those risks, he was regularly accused of having worked for the wrong people. But because he was far more clever than those who sought to exploit him, he invariably succeeded in turning the tables on them, typically in ways that they did not expect and always to the benefit of his country.

When in the 1980s Estonians launched their drive to recover de facto what they had never lost de jure, Lennart Meri was one of the participants in this effort who represented the link between pre-occupation Estonia and this rebirth. Indeed, a consciousness of this link was something that informed both his actions and his statements to the end of his life.

As this effort intensified, Lennart Meri served as Estonia's foreign minister regularly travelling to the capitals of the world with his Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues to force the world to focus on what was happening in these countries and to convince world leaders that they should stand up to Mikhail Gorbachev and support Baltic independence.

After the August 1991 coup in Moscow which opened the way for Estonia to resume her proper place in the international scene, Lennart Meri continued first as foreign minister and then after a brief spell as Estonia's ambassador to Finland - yet another country whose language he spoke brilliantly - Lennart Meri was elected and then reelected president of his country.

As a result, Estonia in the 1990s had one of the oldest presidents - symbolizing the continuity of Estonia with the pre-war republic - in Europe, even as it had one of the youngest prime ministers, Mart Laar, who stood for Estonia's desire to look beyond the Soviet occupation not just to the past but also to the future.

While serving as president, Lennart Meri helped to negotiate the withdrawal of Russian troops, oversaw what many have called Estonia's economic miracle, and reminded Estonians and the world of why their country and its uninterrupted existence as a state from 1920 is important not only for them as a historical fact but for the world as a guarantee of the future.

Lennart Meri has already been the subject of several biographies and there will be more to come his achievements in the all the various spheres of his activity are simply too important for it to be otherwise. But there is one aspect of his life which those of us who were privileged to know him personally must make sure is recorded before people have time to forget.

Lennart Meri had an amazing ability to make friends, to reach out to people be they presidents or the poorest of his countrymen, literary scholars and filmmakers or those who had never read a book in their lives, and to those who began with a basic affection for Estonia and those who had a different set of feelings.

The author of these lines was among those who was privileged to know Lennart, as he was invariably called by his friends regardless of the office he was holding at the moment, for more than 15 years I first met him in Copenhagen on August 15, 1990, when he served as Estonia's foreign minister and I was director of research at Radio Liberty.

I had flown up to the Danish capital with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, then head of the Estonian Service at Radio Free Europe and later Estonia's ambassador to Washington and foreign minister, to meet Estonian Prime Minister Edgard Savisaar and Lennart Meri.

That is a meeting I will never forget, not so much for its content, as important as that was to be for me when I returned to the State Department several weeks later to work on the desk for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but rather for what happened at the very end of that session.

The two Estonian officials had an earlier flight back to Helsinki from where they would travel by boat to Estonia than we did back to Munich As the two Estonian officials gathered up their things, Lennart scurried about gathering up into his briefcase all the bananas in the bowls of fruit put on on the tables of that elegant room.

As he did so, he grinned at me. I did not fully understand just what that grin meant until I moved to Estonia two years ago. But there I quickly came to understand why Lennart had done as he did. In Soviet times, Estonians could not buy bananas, and unless they were able to travel to Moscow or beyond the borders of the Soviet Union, many of them had never actually held a banana in their hands. Lennart simply wanted to take bananas home to his daughter.

Now, with Estonia a full member of NATO and the European Union, Estonians can get bananas and much else besides . Indeed, one often sees Estonian students eating bananas on the street. But many of them probably have no recollection of the times when that was not possible.

During one of the last times I visited Lennart in his hospital room, I told him that rather than bring him flowers, I would prefer to bring him a banana. He grinned at me and nodded -- his illness had already prevented him from speaking. But he knew just what I was referring to and why it was important.

Now Lennart is gone. Along with so many others, I have lost a very dear friend. But I will never look at a banana or indeed many other things without thinking of the man who played such an important role not only in maintaining the continuity of his own country but in the lives of so many others, including my own.

(via MAK)

In the aftermath of the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations committee report, Pavel K Baev comments that

Until very recently the Kremlin dismissed the possibility that Washington might seriously reevaluate the format and style of its relations with Russia. At his extended press conference on January 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin ridiculed the "adversaries" who expressed doubt about Russia's place in the G-8 because, "They are stuck in the previous century." His confidence was based on a unique insight: "I know the mood of the G-8 leaders." Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, returning from an official visit to Washington last week, has to break some very unpleasant news to his boss: The prospects now look rather different from the picture so aptly described by Putin as: "The dog barks, the caravan rolls on."

And, Baev concludes,

Two things spoil the prospects for "selective cooperation" for Moscow. The first one is the fact that the privilege to chair the G-8 in 2006 was granted to Russia as a confirmation of its role of "strategic partner," so the devaluation of this role logically leads to shrinking of this privilege. Moscow attaches enormous importance to organizing a perfect summit in St. Petersburg so even jokes by some British columnists about European guests demonstratively leaving the banquet table before the dessert is served can hit a raw nerve (Financial Times, March 10). The CFR Task Force, however, proposes something more serious: The revival of the G-7 format, which might be complemented by a wider group where Brazil, China, and India together with Russia could be full members (Gazeta.ru, March 9). Such a prospect would signify a devastating blow to Putin's ambitions, particularly if U.S. President George W. Bush would indeed find a good reason to stay home in July, as an increasing number of experts advise.

The second problem with stepping back from partnership to cooperation is that the Russian political elite that appears so tightly united around Putin is in fact pursuing a variety of strategies of personal integration with the West (Kommersant, February 17). Surkov argued that the "off-shore aristocracy" could be transformed into a real nationally oriented elite, but his audience had plenty of reasons to worry for the safety of their private connections with Europe, as Russia retreats into a progressively more "selective" cooperation that increasingly resembles self-isolation (Nezavisimaya gazeta, March 7).

One soothing message for the "patriotic" but intimately Westernized bureaucrats was Anatol Lieven's article entitled "Do not condemn Putin out of hand" (Financial Times, February 28) reprinted in the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya pravda (March 2). His insistence on giving the benefit of the doubt to Putin's courtiers who "will move freely between the state and market sectors, and in the process will be handsomely rewarded" earned scornful condemnation from liberal Russian commentators (Grani.ru, March 6). What makes this kind of argument more convincing is that it is always so much easier not to take demanding steps that would require consistent follow-up, presuming that the ability of the West to influence Moscow is quite limited. It is in fact far greater than even the authors of the Task Force report admit, and Russia's dependency upon the EU energy market provides more instruments for a pro-active policy. It is not too late for President Bush to take a new look in Putin's eyes and re-evaluate the Russian leader's intentions.

Microsoft are currently giving away year-long free registrations to their Visual Studio Express range of developer platforms.

In the UK's Sunday Times, John Follain writes from Rome about Leonid Brezhnev's plot to kill the Pope:

Ever since Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot the late Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 in St Peter’s Square in Rome, investigators have tried to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries: did Agca act alone or was he obeying communist orders? This week an Italian parliamentary commission will officially conclude that Agca was part of a huge conspiracy masterminded by the GRU, the Soviet military secret service, on the orders of the politburo and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist party.

From the article:

Paolo Guzzanti, the commission’s president, said last week that it had come to a “categorical conclusion”. For this the commission, which studied the files of Italian judicial inquiries and questioned investigating magistrates, has relied in part on disclosures made by Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, a French anti-terrorist specialist.

“Bruguière showed us the evidence, based on several testimonies and documents, that the GRU received the order to murder the Pope directly from the politburo and probably from Brezhnev himself. This was not less than two months before the shooting,” said Guzzanti, a senator from the centre-right.

“We had thought it was the KGB, but Bruguière was very precise. He found that the GRU wanted to compromise its rival. And so with one blow the GRU would eliminate the Pope and discredit the KGB because everyone would think the KGB did it,” he said.

Bruguière’s sources, Guzzanti said, included Abu Nidal, the late Palestinian terrorist. They may also have included Carlos the Jackal, the jailed Venezuelan terrorist whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. Bruguière has been investigating him for 20 years. “We know Carlos the Jackal trained in the same places as Agca, in Syria and Sudan,” Guzzanti said.

(via Jeremy Putley)

With the death of Slobodan Milosevic, announced today in The Hague, Vladimir Putin may be wondering, just a little, what the future holds in store for him. Jeremy Putley has just sent me the text of a review he has written of a book of essays on an important, but often overlooked aspect of the Chechen conflict -- the attempt by state authorities to cover their responsibility for genocide and atrocity under the cloak of "normalization".


The Imposition of a Fake Political Settlement in the Northern Caucasus: The 2003 Chechen Presidential Election.

Edited by Tanya Lokshina in collaboration with Ray Thomas and Mary Mayer
Published by IBIDEM, Euros29.90, available from www.Amazon.de



Tanya Lokshina and her fellow-authors have collaborated in writing a book that covers one brief episode in Chechnya’s sad history of warfare and inhumanity since Russia launched its first war on Chechnya in December 1994. The 2003 presidential election, as this book testifies, was a propaganda lie, a travesty, a fake from start to finish. But the strategy of stage-managing parliamentary elections in a climate of all-pervading fear is an aspect of the dishonesty that exists at the core of the Putin strategy for Chechnya. In this respect as in others, the era of Putinism is the inheritor of the traditions of Russian leaders since the time of Joseph Stalin.

Putin’s Chechnya strategy can best be understood by reference to his doctrinal territorial imperative, which bears similarities to the Brezhnev doctrine of the nineteen-sixties. The latter doctrine was that any threat to socialism in one country affected all the states of the Soviet block, which would not stand by, but would instead intervene militarily; this doctrine led to the infamous Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1968. The Putin doctrine is in the same tradition, in which the ends justify the means – any means at all, including all-out war such as was launched in Chechnya by Vladimir Putin in 1999 as prime minister and then carried on by him as president. The faking of elections is a trivial crime by comparison with what preceded them, but they are in an unwavering continuum. There is nothing enigmatic or hard to understand about Putinism.

Faked elections have been central to Vladimir Putin’s long-term Chechnya strategy. In March 2003 Russia imposed a managed constitutional referendum, with results that were transparently unbelievable, in order to make an ostensibly legitimate foundation for the election that took place in October 2003 when the Russian-sponsored candidate, Akhmat Kadyrov, was proclaimed as the victor. This pretence of democracy was followed by the assassination, carried out by persons unknown, of the pretended victor in May 2004. To replace him, a further election took place at which Alu Alkhanov was declared to have been elected president of Chechnya. Subsequently, in November 2005, parliamentary elections in Chechnya were stage-managed by the Kremlin, and the United Russia party is now in a ruling majority in Chechnya’s parliament. That parliament nominated Ramzan Kadyrov, the 29-year-old son of the assassinated Akhmat Kadyrov, to be the prime minister, and the appointment was ratified by Alu Alkhanov in March 2006.

All that has happened is in a sequence which may be summarised as, first, bomb the state capital, Grozny, into a state of total ruin; second, rule Chechnya with a military iron fist, in an era justly described as state terrorism (1), of which aspects are continuing under the regime of Ramzan Kadyrov, and wage a war against the secessionists in which anything goes, including targeted kidnapping, murder, torture, extortion and savagery of a kind not seen in Europe since the Nazi era; third, introduce “Chechenisation” of the conflict, whereby some Chechens are legitimised as a pro-Russian militia, to fight the anti-Russian militants; fourth, make declarations of “normalisation” and claims of an end to the fighting; and as the concluding stage, fake elections. Throughout, the judicial system has been effectively in abeyance, so that crimes were, and remain, unpunished in a climate of savagery and fear.

The strategy, unimaginative and cruel in its conceptualisation as in its carrying out, has been held to rigorously and with a firmness of purpose that has not been affected by world opinion. Neither has the wave of terrorist events that resulted from the implementation of Putin’s strategy – and especially from the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian military – affected the Russian president’s determination to stay the course. In particular it is to be noted that the response to terrorism, under Putin, is to react to hostage-taking decisively by killing all the hostage-takers even if a large number of the hostages are killed or injured as a result, as happened both at the Beslan School No. 1 in 2004 and at the “Nord-Ost” Dubrovka theatre siege in 2002. (The Duma in March 2006 passed an anti-terrorism law to make it lawful to shoot down any plane that has been taken over by terrorists. Anyone thinking of boarding a plane in Russia should be in no doubts as to this being ruthlessly carried out.) Thus the threat of more terrorism would not be likely to cause president Putin to deflect his course. He has always believed that - in his own words - his “historical mission” is to keep Russia whole, and that there are no means that could not be justified to achieve that objective. Putin believes history will judge him favourably.

The Putin doctrine

Vladimir Putin is not the heir to a political tradition. The era in which he grew up and came to pre-eminence was not characterised by either an understanding of legality or adherence to recognised legal norms. Whether or not Putin had some formal education in the law, it was not sufficient to prevent him from ignoring a legal fact of over-riding importance. That fact, which represents the essential bone of contention in the Chechnya conflict, is the status of Chechnya as a separate country, a status that was established on 27 November 1990 when the Supreme Soviet of the Chechen-Ingush Republic adopted a Declaration on State Sovereignty, and lawfully seceded from the USSR. Akhmed Zakayev, the well-known exiled Chechen representative, explained very clearly, at a London conference on 25 November 2005, the implication of this Declaration: “So, by the time the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, the Chechen Republic had existed for more than a year as a sovereign state, recognised in the legal system of the USSR, equal to all the ‘Union Republics’ (Russia, Georgia, the Ukraine, Baltic states and others).”

The war launched by Russia in 1994 against the sovereign state of Chechnya was a war of aggression at the end of which, in 1996, the aggressor acknowledged in effect that it was defeated. Zakayev again: “In January 1997, with the active methodological and logistical support of the OSCE and in accordance with the Chechen Constitution of 1992, Chechnya held presidential and parliamentary elections, officially recognised by the Council of Europe which sent a large number of observers, and the Russian Federation. On 12th May 1997 the most important document in the whole history of relations between Russia and Chechnya was signed. The Peace Treaty laid down the basic principles for relations between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Independent experts consider it both in form and in content to be a treaty between equal entities, and to be clearly international in character. A state does not sign a treaty with its subject.” The election of May 1997 was the last time an election was held in Chechnya that was not an intrinsic part of the imposition of a fake political settlement.

The Chechnya strategy that has been carried out with such determination evolved as a means to ensure that the perceived “territorial integrity” of the Russian Federation was not impaired, and did not recognise that, de facto and de jure, Chechnya was already not a part of the Russian Federation at the time when the latter came into existence. The Putin doctrine of territorial integrity, as far as Chechnya is concerned, was flawed from its conception, in depending on an unwarranted and unlawful breach of a legal status quo ante. In this fact is the basis for denying the validity of, first, the Putin doctrine insofar as Chechnya is concerned, then the legality of the military interventions by Russia in Chechnya since 1994, and now the imposition of a pseudo-political settlement in the country.

Commentators are in general agreement that when President Putin assumed office the tasks he set himself included, as a priority, the return of order to his country, and that there was a challenge to the achievement of this objective in the disorder that was prevalent both within Chechnya and, particularly, as represented by the 1999 invasion of neighbouring Dagestan. “I was convinced that if we didn’t stop the extremists right away, we’d be facing a second Yugoslavia on the entire territory of the Russian Federation – the Yugoslavisation of Russia.” Putin’s nightmare scenario was, then(2), that his presidency would see the break-up of the Russian Federation. This was the background against which the Putin doctrine was formulated. The collapse of the USSR had been a catastrophe; only one thing could be worse, and that was a similar dismemberment of the Russian Federation, with constituent states seceding one after another. Putin and his advisers concluded that regardless of any other consideration the risk of such a break-up justified extreme measures to prevent it.(3)

The measures that have been taken by the Russian authorities – a term which of course includes President Putin as a principal actor and motivator, but which encompasses others in government and in the military – have amounted collectively to a crime of major proportions with many component parts. Putin’s war has aroused worldwide indignation, disgust and outrage. The initial phase involved blanket and non-selective bombing and shelling of towns and villages where peaceful civilians resided – including ethnic Russians – many of whom were killed, while more fled. Lokshina’s book contains an authoritative chapter written by Alexander Cherkasov, of the human rights group Memorial, with the best estimates I have seen of the statistical aspects of the second Chechnya war. “During the first months,” he writes, “up to 350,000 of the approximately 800,000 residents of the Chechen Republic fled its administrative borders.” In the capital, Grozny, in January 2000 after it had been stormed by the federal forces fewer than 40,000 residents remained.

Cherkasov points out that the Russian government did not make any attempt to count civilian casualties in the war of 1994-96, nor after 1999. Many figures have been quoted, some greatly exaggerated; a figure of 250,000 dead in the two wars is sometimes repeated, but without there being adequate substantiation of such a number. Cherkasov’s conclusion is rationally arrived at: “the total number of peaceful residents of the Chechen Republic who perished during the two wars may have reached 70,000.” He admits that the accuracy of these estimates is not high. With reference to the second war, he concludes: “The total number of civilians killed, including those who disappeared, adds up to between 14.8 to 24.1 thousand.”

Of course there is much more to be said about events in Chechnya than the simple statistics of the dead civilians. Their deaths amounted to mass murder - on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War - in relation to which the French newspaper Le Monde observed: “If Saddam Hussein is guilty of crimes against humanity for his treatment of the Kurds, so is Vladimir Putin for his treatment of Chechnya.” This much is clear.

Putin’s war and all of its consequences could have been avoided. The war came about because of a dreadful political inadequacy – political inexperience, a preference for autocratic means, a lack of imagination – in Russia’s leadership. The former British foreign minister, Lord Judd, who has observed events in Chechnya at close quarters, has commented: “A peace process in Northern Ireland became possible only when British governments were prepared to talk to the political representatives of the IRA on condition that, for their part, they were prepared to demonstrate their commitment to finding a political solution.” That this came about showed a will and a commitment on both sides to politics as a means of conciliating different interests. In Chechnya, there was no such will on the Russian side, which long beforehand had decided to adopt a hard-line, totalitarian approach to resolving matters. Tragically, real opportunities were missed of involving the moderate Chechen leader, Aslan Maskhadov, in a political solution. Instead he was branded an “international terrorist” and after years of protracted fighting he was killed in March 2005.

The verdict of history on Putin’s presidency will, I trust, take into account the real nature of his intervention in Chechnya, which – as he himself occasionally seems uneasily aware – may come to be seen eventually in its true character. Much has been done to keep things hidden, and much use has been made of deceptive terminology. The second war which continues sporadically to this day has always been called an “anti-terrorist operation” by President Putin and his ministers, but this is not what it is. The truth of the matter, now and as it has always been, is that it is a war of secession. The protagonists are, on the Chechen side, secessionist fighters whose armed struggle for independence was carried on under the legitimate leadership of President Aslan Maskhadov until his death in March 2005 at the hands of the Russian federal forces, and is now carried on under the leadership of his successor Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev. After his death President Maskhadov was described on Russian national television by the head of the Russian FSB as an “international terrorist”. He was nothing of the kind. He was a properly elected leader engaged in an entirely legitimate struggle for the independence of his country, and his opposition to the use of terrorism was a matter of public record.

The secessionist Chechen fighters are invariably described by the Russian government as terrorists or bandits. Now there have been terrorist atrocities that occurred both before the second Chechnya war and during it, and these have been attributed to, or more often claimed by, Shamil Basayev, whose status as a terrorist is beyond question. There can be no defence for the terrorist attacks that have been carried out against Russian civilian targets, and they are rightly condemned as morally indefensible. They were so condemned by the late Aslan Maskhadov and by what remained of his government. But to state the truth clearly: the emergence of terrorism as a monstrous offshoot of an unequal war of secession was a predictable response to the use of state terror by the government of the Russian Federation, which has thereby itself become the originator of terrorism. It has been a case of terror begetting terror. The terrorist methods of a Shamil Basayev are utterly indefensible; not less so are those of the Putin government.

When a government engages in wholesale kidnap and extortion, torture and murder, the employment of death squads, the burial of victims in mass graves – as deliberately chosen methods of suppressing dissent and creating fear in the population – it does so nominally as the agent of an entire people, who are thereby involved, vicariously, and represented by the actions of the leaders they have elected. That such methods constitute an abuse of authority goes without saying.

To some degree the Russian people have been kept unaware, by deliberate government policy, of the real nature what has been done in their name in Chechnya. Like the rest of us, they have been on the receiving end of propaganda including the misleading characterisation of the war as involving “international terrorism”, a mendacious expression used by Putin repeatedly to disguise the true character of the secessionist struggle of the Chechen people in which fighters are described as “mercenaries” or “bandits”. There have been foreign sympathisers from among the Chechen diaspora in countries such as Turkey and Jordan, who have gone voluntarily to help the Chechens in their unequal fight. Describing them as mercenaries is a typical slur. When one considers the conduct of the war, in particular the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian side, the parallel that comes to mind is the example of the international volunteers who went to fight the Fascists in Spain in the 1930s.

The popularity of Putin among Russians remains astonishingly high. But Stalin too was a popular president until after his death. And just as Stalin had his apologists in the west, so Putin now has the support of writers and politicians who are too willing to forgive crimes that no one has the right to forgive. The conduct of a war against a defenceless, unarmed civilian population, resulting in massive loss of life; the numberless rapes, murders, tortures and ‘disappearances’ perpetrated by the federal forces sent by Putin’s defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, to Chechnya; the similar crimes of the FSB ‘security’ forces sent there by the responsible minister, Nikolai Patrushev; by the policy of ‘Chechenisation’, the creation of a civil war between opposing sides; the abuse of power involved in the imposition of a fake political settlement; the use of force where dialogue was required; the criminalisation of the armed forces; the poisoning of the population and the environment; the destruction of a civilisation – these, and more, are Putin’s crimes in Chechnya. Add to this tally the deaths of Russian soldiers in Chechnya, which now outnumber the dead of the Soviet Union’s war of conquest in Afghanistan. This fact is suppressed by the authorities, for whom the truth is something to be kept from the Russian people. The true figure, for both Chechnya wars, is in the region of 10,000 dead Russian soldiers.

The war for secession has been lost. The silent majority of the remaining Chechens want peace and stability, and they are entitled to it. Putin’s cruel strategy has won its victory, at a terrible cost. Chechnya remains part of the Russian Federation, subject to the joint, uneasy rule of the Russian army of occupation and that of prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov, who, like the war criminal Vladimir Shamanov, has received from the Russian president the Hero of Russia medal. Ramzan the torturer, Ramzan the kidnapper, Ramzan the murderer – Ramzan, Hero of Russia.

When the leaders of the Group of Eight meet President Putin in July; when the leaders of the Council of Europe recognise Russia’s accession to the Presidency, in May; when writers and commentators discuss Russia and Russian affairs; when politicians and heads of state welcome the Russian leaders to their countries and their councils – what Russia has done in Chechnya to defile our new century should be remembered.

_____________________
Notes

(1) On state terrorism, André Glucksmann, the French philosopher, was reported as having said the following, at a Berlin meeting in November 2005: “The problem is that if there is a predetermined seizure of hostages, torture and murder of the civilian population, carried out by the army, this army is a terrorist organisation. Such are the day-to-day activities of the Russian army in Chechnya and this is a well-known fact. The essence of their activities does not change because these criminals are wearing military uniform. They are deliberately carrying out terror, using weapons against women, children or unarmed adults…. They may perpetrate acts of terrorism in the name of nationalism, patriotism, racism or on orders of their government, but this changes nothing. The armed violence against unarmed people, which is being committed by the Russian army in Chechnya, comes under the true definition of terrorism.” (BBC Worldwide from the Chechenpress website)


(2) In an interview Putin gave to the Dutch media on 31 October 2005 he was asked: “Do you often wake at night with the thought that Russia could disintegrate?” to which he replied: “I never wake with such a thought. I do not even consider the possibility.” The thought no longer occurs to him as a possibility because the Putin doctrine, now fully internalised, implies that he would take all measures to prevent it, just as he unlawfully intervened in Chechnya to reverse its secession.


(3) In an interview in early 2000, Putin asked: “What’s the situation in the North Caucasus and in Chechnya today? It’s a continuation of the collapse of the USSR” He continued: “This is what I thought of the situation in August [1999], when the bandits attacked Dagestan: If we don’t put an immediate end to this, Russia will cease to exist. It was a question of preventing the collapse of the country.” These quotations are from First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President (New York: Public Affairs, 2000) quoted in Matthew Evangelista’s The Chechen Wars: Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? (Brookings Institution, 2002).

Andrew Osborn writes that

Young girls in war-ravaged Chechnya are complaining of a mystery illness, stoking suspicions that Russia has used the republic as a testing and dumping ground for nerve gas and other poisons.

Yesterday, it was reported that four women and two teenage girls have been taken to hospital with the symptoms, bringing the number of people to fall ill with the condition since mid-December to almost 100.

The symptoms are extreme: blackouts, fits, breathing problems, nosebleeds, crazed laughter and hallucinations.

Some of the girls who have been afflicted have had prolonged violent fits and spasms up to 25 times a day and have become so disorientated that they could not recognise their own parents.

See also: Biomaterial
Biomaterial - II

In ChickenBones, Rudy Lewis interviews jazz violinist John Blake:

Rudy: I recently found that many consider August Wilson a "black nationalist." You are of the same generation. Do you want to make a revolution? Do you think black music can heal the ails of America? Has that been the project of the black arts?

John: I desire a spiritual awakening for mankind. There is too much hate, greed, and selfishness in this world. Man has made very little progress in this area. My goal in life is to let my light shine in every way it can. I ask God to lead me this way during my life on this earth. I want my life to work towards a better world each and everyday I live. I might not see man evolve to this higher place in my lifetime, but I want to serve in some small part in making it happen.

God is shaping me into who I should be through the gifts and insight He keeps giving me. It will perhaps take many years, for change to take place in the hearts of men. The good works and the love we show others does bring about change.

The standoff with Moscow over the new international trading regime introduced by Ukraine and Moldova on their common border seems to be heading for some kind of escalation (EDM):

On the political front, Moscow officials try to build a case that Ukraine and Moldova are "blockading" Transnistria so as to inflict a "humanitarian catastrophe" on the population. Russian state-controlled television networks similarly propagandize the "blockade" thesis. However, as the United States and the European Union point out -- most recently in the March 9 session of the OSCE's Permanent Council -- Tiraspol's authorities have themselves blockaded railroad and highway transport in and out of the enclave (documents of the OSCE PC session, March 9).

The report also points out that Russia now appears to be making a connection between Transnistria and South Ossetia:

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov links the developments in Transnistria directly with Georgia's effort to change the Russian-dominated negotiating and "peacekeeping" formats in South Ossetia. Lavrov accuses Chisinau and Tbilisi of trying to cause social unrest those two theaters and to "sabotage the existing mechanisms." He sees "one system" operating in both situations and demands that Chisinau and Tbilisi return to the existing formats and mechanisms in both cases (RTR Russia TV, March 9).

RFE/RL reports that

Hundreds of Czech communities raised Tibetan flags today, despite an attempt by Chinese diplomats to block the annual human rights protest.

The Dalai Lama's Statement on the 47th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day is here.

In 1999, the Russians again went to war against Chechnya – a war which is still ongoing. It was started by the President Elect, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who had been recruited from the position as head of the Russian secret service, FSB – formerly known as the KGB. More than 200,000 Chechens have been killed, among them 42,000 children. The country has been bombed to smithereens. This is genocide, - this is state terrorism - and the FSB is the world’s largest terrorist organisation.

The Russians have engaged, and are engaging, in extermination and suppression, torture, murder and rape of the Chechen people. The only thing that is new - is the name of the war. Since September 11, 2001, they have been calling the violations ”war against international terrorism,” thereby giving themselves an alibi for their continued crimes.

The Russians have also murdered three Chechen presidents in a row; Dudaev with a missile to his located satellite telephone in 1996, Yandarbiev with a car bomb in Qatar in 2004 (such acts are rightly referred to as international terrorism)– and president Aslan Maskhadov, who was lured into ambush and executed in Chechnya in March of last year. May they rest in peace.

All of this is allowed to take place without the international community reacting as we are supposed to according to the UN Charter and the human rights conventions. The international community, including the Norwegian government, has placed itself on the sideline. This is a gigantic betrayal of a suffering Chechen people, and it sets a terrible precedent for international conflict solving.

Ivar Amundsen, Oslo

Press Release

Protest against the genocide in Chechnya - the international community must act now!

One year has gone since the mean Russian murder in 8 March, 2005, of Chechnya's last democratically elected President, Aslan Maskhadov.

The worst ongoing war and forgotten genocide in Europe still shows no signs of ending. "Everyday" in the Chechen war ghetto is horrible: military clashes, terror, murder and kidnappings. Putin's allegations about a "normalization in Chechnya" are an insult to all who can watch and read free media.

Since the cowardly murder of Maskhadov, many more killed Chechens have been added to the terribly long list of people lost during more than 10 years of war. Almost 1 of every 4 Chechens has been killed - 250 000 people, a startling number. The life and health of Russian soldiers, too, is destroyed in a criminal way by the continuing bloody and pointless colonial war in Chechnya, waged by the Putin regime.

Maskhadov was murdered at a moment when he had declared a unilateral ceasefire without any preconditions.

Instead of negotiations, Maskhadov was deliberately murdered. The Kremlin rulers thus killed an adversary who always condemned terror against innocent people and constantly offered negotiations about an armistice. One can doubt in this context if peace is a priority for Putin at all.

Recently a number of former political leaders, headed by former President of Czechia, Vaclav Havel, issued a strong appeal to "break the silence on Chechnya". 10 years of war and genocide can never become an "internal affair", something which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan confirmed after the barbarism on the Balkans.

The suffering Chechen people deserves all possible help to break this silence. The current leaders of the international community must take effective action and become involved in order to guarantee the Chechens' right to live.

Denmark is a member of the UN Security Council. When will the Danish government present Vaclav Havel's message to that forum - and break the unbearable silence?


8 March 2006

DANISH SUPPORT COMMITTEE FOR CHECHNYA

Thomas Bindesbøll Larsen


Chairman

Contact info:

Mobile phone +45 26 64 24 00

Latvia's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga is mentioned as a possible United Nations secretary general, to replace Kofi Annan when his term expires in December this year:

During a visit to Washington last week, Vike-Freiberga accepted the Baltic Statesmanship Award. Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright said in introducing her Saturday night at a U.S.-Baltic Foundation dinner: "Democracy is known for producing miracles, but this one was a dandy."

"One of the most precious gifts that the Baltic community brings to the community of democracies is a living memory of having lived without freedom," Albright said. "President Vike-Freiberga has proven throughout her career that it is possible to deeply care about your nation's history and culture while still championing the freedoms that are the rightful heritage of all humankind."

March 7th 2006 · Prague Watchdog

Russian troops shell outskirts of Kotar-Yurt

By Umalt Chadayev

(my translation)

CHECHNYA - On the morning of March 7, Russian soldiers subjected the environs of one of the villages of Chechnya’s Achkhoy-Martanovsky district (in the republic’s southwest) to a concentrated artillery bombardment.

"At approximately 4 a.m. today, Russian soldiers shelled the outskirts of our village with cannon,” said one of the residents of the village of Kotar-Yurt. “The fire was very concentrated, and windowpanes were knocked out in many of the houses, mainly on the outskirts. The women and children were terribly frightened, and many waited out the bombardment in the cellars because of the fear that shells would land on their houses. Luckily there were no human casualties."

According to some information, Russian soldiers carried out a so-called targeted special operation in this village yesterday. The soldiers arrested the owner of one of the private houses situated in the centre of the village; his wife and grown-up son were also taken away.

At the military commandant’s office of the republic it was stated that the artillery of the federal forces is used exclusively for inflicting strikes "on previously revealed bases and points of accumulation and possible accumulation of guerrillas."



www.watchdog.cz

A spokesman for Poland's President Lech Kaczynski has characterized the failure of the Russian Chief Military Prosecutor's Office to recognize the victims of the Katyn massacre as victims of Stalin's repression as "shocking", MosNews reports:

Lopinski stressed that Poland was very interested in improving relations with Russia but that those relations had to be based on truth. “Truth on Katyn is paramount to our relations,” the spokesman said.

The Sejm (Polish parliament) Speaker Marek Jurek also called the decision shocking, as, in his point of view, peace and security can be built only on the condemnation of evil.

He believes that the decision of the Russian prosecutor’s office was a “very unpleasant moment in Polish-Russian relations” and added that the Russian authorities do not have to defend the Soviet policy as Russia was the first victim of communism.

(Via Marius)

Attending the now annual pan-Nordic get-together of publishers, editors, journalists, authors, translators and government cultural project directors held in conjunction with the London Book Fair last night, I was struck by the conviviality of the atmosphere. This year the party was held in the Norwegian ambassador's residence at 10 Palace Green - a fine historic building which really is a small piece of Norway, and where during World War II King Haakon VII held Council meetings with the Norwegian government in exile. Unusually at such receptions, where the only solid sustenance on offer is likely to be a tray or two of canapés, there was a full buffet dinner prepared by the residence's chef, and this was a welcome accompaniment to the champagne.

Only a decade ago events of this kind, hosted by all the Nordic ambassadors, were a rarity - the assumption invariably being that there was too much rivalry between the countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland for co-operative ventures, even ephemeral ones, to be possible. It seems that with the accession to the European Union of several of the Nordic countries (only Norway and Iceland remain outside) the impulse towards collaboration has grown stronger. This can only be a good thing.

From today's RFE/RL Newsline:

PUTIN AIDE SEES 'COLOR REVOLUTIONS' AS THREAT TO RUSSIAN SOVEREIGNTY.

Vladislav Surkov, who is an aide to President Putin, told a recent meeting of the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party that three primary threats to Russian national sovereignty are "colored revolutions" like those in Ukraine and Georgia, international terrorism, and an inability to compete economically, RIA Novosti reported from Moscow on March 3. He argued that revolutions using modern "Orange methods" and involving a "soft takeover" take advantage of the local authorities' limited ability to respond and pose a "very real threat to sovereignty." The way to prevent more such "colored revolutions...[is to] form a nationally oriented leading stratum of society" in each country in question, he maintained. Surkov argued that Russia must develop its economic competitiveness, adding that "the idea of Russia as an energy superpower is...fully consistent with this approach." PM

Open Letter

To the Federal Security Bureau and
anyone else whom this does not concern


I, Svetlana Alexeyevna Gannushkina, Head of the “Civic Assistance” Committee, Council Member and Director of the “Migration and Rights” Network of the Memorial Human Rights Centre, and also Member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, wish to make the following confession:

Since 1990 I have undertaken activities which may be considered by the addressees of this statement as espionage.

From the institutions of the United Nations, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and certain private Western foundations and public organizations, I have received financial resources for the bank accounts of NGOs, resources which in accordance with previously-planned actions have served to purchase food products, personal items and medicaments for internally displaced persons and refugees. The acquired foodstuffs may have contained genetically modified components causing a persistent aversion to the special operations known by the name of "cleansings" [zachistki], and hallucinogens that create a false picture of the troubles in our country and, in particular, the Chechen Republic.

We have also carried out consultations on legal problems – which do not exist in the Russian Federation – and have provided defence at the trials of socially unprotected persons, even though the need to defend them has never been confirmed by an objective checking of the facts at our disposal by the law-enforcement agencies.

For our part, we have supplied international organizations and foundations with reports containing information about persons who have received support, together with photographs of strategic targets – in particular, tent camps and places maladapted for the accommodation of refugees – thus deliberately creating a negative image our country and its leadership.

In connection with the foregoing, I declare that I do not repent of what I have done and intend to continue the activities indicated, while treating with the deepest contempt all rocks stuffed with equipment which was already obsolete in the days of my childhood.

Yours disrespectfully,

Svetlana Gannushkina


[my tr.]

At chechnya-sl, Norbert Strade writes:

On 2 March, less than a week after he was visited by the CoE's Human Rights Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, General Vakhit Murdashev was removed from the Chernokozovo concentration camp by unknown armed men, who took him to an unknown destination by helicopter. His lawyer has issued an urgent appeal in which he says that he fears for Murdashev's life and health and urges the Russian authorities to reveal his whereabouts and to send him back to his current prison. Vakhit Murdashev
is currently registered as a prisoner by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Chechenpress suspects that Murdashev is being punished for his courageous behaviour with Gil-Robles, which the latter attested. (Murdashev demanded among other things that the Russian side must enter into peace negotiations with the Chechen government.).

The whole story in Russian

Human rights organizations ought to protest publicly, IMO. It's just 2 days from the anniversary of the treacherous murder of Aslan Maskhadov, and now they kidnap the remaining witness from his cell. The KGB Fascists never do these things without a script.

The anger felt by students and staff at Leeds University about Frank Ellis shows no sign of dying down:

In a row that has reignited the debate on the limits of freedom of speech, Frank Ellis, a lecturer in Russian and Slavonic studies, sparked anger after stating, in an interview with the university's student newspaper, that he was an 'unrepentant Powellite' who thought that the BNP was 'a bit too socialist' for his liking.

Ellis said he supported right-wing ideas such as the Bell Curve theory, which held that white people were more intelligent than black people. '[It] has demonstrated to me beyond any reasonable doubt there is a persistent gap in average black and white average intelligence.' Repatriation would get his support, he added, if it was done 'humanely'.

Almost unbelievably, Ellis is the author of an academic study of Vasily Grossman.

See also in this blog: Stopping the Virus
Stopping the Virus - II

The bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations committee co-chaired by former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Republican former housing secretary Jack Kemp has now delivered its report. The Washington Post notes:

In a grim assessment of the recent "downward trajectory" under Putin, the Council on Foreign Relations reports that in Russia democracy is in retreat, corruption on the rise and the Kremlin an increasing obstacle to U.S. interests. The goodwill that developed between President Bush and Putin, particularly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has eroded.

"U.S.-Russian relations are clearly headed in the wrong direction," the task force wrote. "Contention is crowding out consensus. The very idea of 'strategic partnership' no longer seems realistic."

The complete text of the report can be read here (pdf file).

See also in this blog: Rethink

Israel's acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has told Vladimir Putin that is was a mistake to meet with leaders of Hamas.

Olmert told Putin that Israel's position was very different from Russia's and
added that Israel would not negotiate with a terrorist organization such as
Hamas.

By George Friedman

Last week was dominated by three apparently discrete events. The al-Askariyah mosque -- a significant Shiite shrine in As Samarra, Iraq -- was bombed, triggering intensifying violence between Shiite and Sunni groups. A group linked to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for attacking a major oil facility in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. And a furor broke out in the United States over the proposed purchase, by a government-owned United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm, of a British company that operates a number of important American ports. Apart from the fact that all of these incidents involve Muslims, the stories don't appear to be linked. They are.

All three stories are commentaries on three things. First, they are measures of the current state of the U.S.-jihadist war. Second, they are measures of the Bush administration's strategy of splitting the Islamic world against itself, along its natural fault lines, and using that split to contain and control the radical Islamist threat against the United States. And finally, they are the measure of U.S. President George W. Bush's ability to manage public perceptions of his plans and operations.

The Fault Lines in Iraq

Begin with the bombing of al-Askariyah, or "the Golden Mosque," in As Samarra.

After the failures of U.S. intelligence and operations in Iraq in spring 2003, the United States adopted a long-term strategy of using the natural split between the country's Shiite and Sunni populations to first stabilize its own position, and then improve it. During the first phase, Washington tilted heavily toward the Shia, doing everything possible to assure that there would be no Shiite rising to accompany that of the Sunnis. Since the Shia had no love for the Sunni minority, given their experiences under Saddam Hussein's anti-Shiite regime, this was not overly difficult. In addition, the Shia were able to take advantage of the U.S.-Sunni war to shape and dominate post-Hussein politics. The Shia and Americans suited each other.

In the second phase of this policy, the United States reached out to the Sunnis, trying to draw them into a Shiite-Kurdish government. Washington had two goals: One was a Sunni counterweight to the Shia. Whatever it had promised the Shia, Washington did not simply want to hand Iraq over to them, out of fear that the country would become an Iranian satellite state. The second goal was to exploit fault lines within the Sunni community itself, in order to manipulate the balance of power in favor of the United States.

By the time this phase of the policy was being implemented -- at the end of the first battle of Al Fallujah, in 2004 -- the U.S.-Sunni war had developed a new dimension, consisting of jihadists. These were Sunnis, but differed from the Iraqi Sunnis in a number of critical ways. First, many were foreigners who lacked roots in Iraq. Second, the Sunni community in Iraq was multidimensional; Sunnis had been the backbone of support for Hussein's regime, which had been far more secular than Islamist. The jihadists, of course, were radical Islamists. Thus, there was the potential for yet another rift; the stronger the jihadists grew, the greater the risk to the traditional leadership of Iraq's Sunnis. The jihadists might increase their influence within the community, marginalizing the old leadership.

The U.S. success in manipulating this split reached a high point in December 2005, with Iraq's national elections. The jihadists opposed Sunni participation in the election, but the Sunni leadership participated anyway. The jihadists threatened the leadership but could not strike; as foreigners, they depended on local Sunni communities to sustain and protect them. If they alienated the Sunni leadership without destroying them, the jihadists would in turn be destroyed.

Thus, after the disaster in December, the jihadists embarked on a different course. Rather than focusing on American forces or Shiite collaborators, the goal was to trigger a civil war between the Shia and Sunnis. The brilliantly timed attack on the Golden Mosque, much like the 9/11 attacks, was intended to ignite a war. There would be an event that the Shia could not ignore and to which they would respond with maximum violence, preferably against the Sunnis as a whole. In an all-out civil war, the Sunni leadership would not be able to dispense with the jihadists, or so the jihadists hoped. Their own position would be cemented and the Americans would be trapped in a country torn by civil war.

The Sunni leadership, of course, understands the situation. If the Sunnis protect the jihadists who carried out the attack -- and we are convinced they were jihadists -- they will be in a civil war they cannot win. Given their numbers compared to the Shiite majority, the Sunnis -- if they were to break with the Shia -- eventually would have to come back to the table and make some sort of a deal. The jihadists are betting that the terms the Shia would impose would be so harsh that the Sunnis would prefer civil war. The United States has an interest in limiting what terms the Shia can impose, and the Iraqi Shia themselves understand that if there is civil war, they will need Iran's help. Getting caught between the United States and Iran is not in their interest.

There is, interestingly, the possibility of what passes for peace in Iraq embedded in all of this. The jihadists, marginalized and desperate due to American maneuvers, have tossed up a "Hail Mary" in the hope of disrupting the works. It is certainly possible that the maneuver will work. But a more reasonable assumption is that the bombing of the Golden Mosque achieves merely a shift in the time frame the Sunnis thought they had for negotiations. What might have taken months now could take much less. Certainly, the Sunnis have been forced to a decision point.

Attempt at Strategic Attack

The al Qaeda attack against the Abqaiq facility has similar roots.

Prior to 2003, the Saudi position on al Qaeda was one of benign neglect. The Saudi regime tried to limit both its exposure to the American war against the jihadists, and to intelligence cooperation with the United States, out of fear of the consequences from al Qaeda. After the invasion of Iraq, however, and the realization that the United States was rampaging just to the north, the Saudis shifted their position, and significant intelligence cooperation began. There were two consequences of this shift: One, the United States was receiving Saudi intelligence and became much more effective than before in blocking al Qaeda attacks and disrupting their operations; and two, the jihadists went to war against the Saudi regime, launching a series of strikes and counterstrikes over the next two years. The United States had split the Saudi government off from the jihadists, and the Saudis absorbed the price of collaboration.

Al Qaeda has been relatively quiet in Saudi Arabia since June 2004. It had appeared to many observers that al Qaeda was finished in Saudi Arabia. Thus, just as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's faction in Iraq had to assert itself or be marginalized, the al Qaeda faction in Saudi Arabia had to demonstrate its continued capability to mount operations -- however dangerous and difficult that task might be. It was Hail Mary time in the kingdom as well. The result was the Feb. 24 attack against Abqaiq, a critical oil processing facility.

This was intended to be a strategic attack. A strategic attack differs from a tactical attack in several ways:

1. It shifts the political equation dramatically by demonstrating capabilities.

2. It involves a strike against a target or resource that, if destroyed, changes the economic or political scene definitively.

3. It requires a substantial commitment of resources.

The Sept. 11 strikes amounted to a strategic attack; a suicide bombing by jihadists in Iraq normally does not. The Abqaiq operation was an attempt at a strategic attack. It was designed to be a shocking demonstration of al Qaeda's continued capabilities -- and to massively affect world oil supplies. Such an operation would involve a great deal of planning and, we suspect, a substantial proportion of trained and available al Qaeda personnel in Saudi Arabia (as opposed to sympathizers).

But the strike was a fiasco. Rather than demonstrating al Qaeda's capabilities in Saudi Arabia, the attackers barely penetrated the first security cordon before they were gunned down by security forces. Certainly, they demonstrated that al Qaeda still has operatives who are willing to attempt a strategic attack, but they failed to demonstrate that they still have the ability to actually execute one. Special operations are always difficult, but it now appears that either the group had been penetrated by Saudi security from the beginning, or the cell was not trained in the arts that al Qaeda previously dominated. All three cars used in the strike appear to have been identified and destroyed before there was any possibility they could reach their targets inside the Abqaiq compound.

In Iraq, two divisions in the Muslim world revealed themselves and were manipulated. The first was the Sunni-Shiite split, the second was the rift between the jihadists and mainstream Sunnis. In Saudi Arabia, the split was between, on one side, the state apparatus and the leaders of the royal family -- who had lost their ability to remain neutral in the face of the Iraq invasion, U.S. bellicosity and the fear of a U.S.-Iranian entente over Iraq -- and an increasingly radicalized faction of the religious establishment that was supporting al Qaeda. Within the kingdom, the latter could not withstand the weight of the former, and the result showed itself last week, with a feeble al Qaeda effort that was followed by bombastic rhetoric.

The Debate on the Ports Deal

The third dimension in all of this became apparent with the ports issue. Washington has tried to draw a line between Muslim states that have cooperated with the United States in due course -- regardless of what their earlier behavior might have been like -- and those states that it still doesn't trust. It distinguishes in this way between, for example, Syria and Kuwait. The former has always been seen as hostile to the United States, the latter has been a mainstay of American strategy since its liberation by the United States in 1991. The rest of the Muslim world is distributed along a continuum between these poles.

Washington's only hope for something approaching a satisfactory outcome in Iraq was to work with factions it never would have spoken to prior to 2003. Its hope for a satisfactory outcome in the global war with the jihadists was in getting Saudi intelligence to work with the United States. That also required actions and compromises that would not have been made before 2003. Finally, in order to reshape the Muslim world, the United States needed to have relations with countries that did not have immaculate records but which, on the whole and for a variety of reasons, now found it in their interest to work with Washington.

For Saudi Arabia, the motivating factor was fear. For the UAE, it was greed. To be more fair, the UAE is something like a Switzerland: Its business is business, and it tilts its politics in such a way that business is likely to be good. The Islamic world is a complex place, and there are many players. If the United States is to be successful, it must divide, manipulate and conquer that world along the lines of its complexity. The Sunni-Shiite fault line is one axis, but the division between countries that are motivated by mercenary considerations, as opposed to those that have more complex motives, is another.

The UAE wants to do business, and it is good at it. One of its businesses is managing ports. Purchasing a British company in the same industry is a natural thing to do in business; the fact that the purchase in question would give the UAE company oversight of ports in the United States is another attraction of the deal. The attraction is not that the UAE could facilitate the movement of al Qaeda operatives into the United States; that is not what the UAE is after, since it would be bad for business. What it is after is the profits that come from doing the business.

Now, some argue that this business deal will make it easier for al Qaeda operatives to get into the United States. We find that doubtful. Al Qaeda operatives -- the real ones, not the wannabes -- if they are out there, will get into the United States just fine by a number of means. And if they try to slip a bomb into a container ship, it won't be one sent from a Muslim country -- the level of scrutiny there is too high. It would be from a place and under a flag that no one would suspect for a moment, like Denmark. At any rate, given what it means to "operate a port," the risk to the United States from having a British company manage its ports is about the same as that from the UAE: Has anyone noticed that holding a British passport these days is no guarantee of loyalty to Western ideals?

The Administration's Strategy

The point here is not to argue the merits of the Dubai ports deal, but rather to place the business deal in the context of the U.S. grand strategy. That strategy is, again, to split the Islamic world into its component parts, induce divisions by manipulating differences, and to create coalitions based on particular needs. This is, currently, about the only strategy the United States has going for it -- and if it can't use commercial relations as an inducement in the Muslim world, that is quite a weapon to lose.

The problem has become political, and stunningly so. One of the most recent opinion polls, by CBS, has placed Bush's approval rating at 34 percent -- a fairly shocking decline, and clearly attributable to the port issue. As we have noted in the past, each party has a core constituency of about 35-37 percent. When support falls significantly below this level, a president loses his ability to govern.

The Republican coalition consists of three parts: social conservatives, economic conservatives and business interests, and national security conservatives. The port deal has apparently hit the national security conservatives in Bush's coalition hard. They were already shaky over the administration's personnel policies in the military and the question of whether he had a clear strategy in Iraq, even as they supported the invasion.

Another part of the national security faction consists of those who believe that the Muslim world as a whole is, in the end, united against the United States, and that it poses a clear and present danger. Bush used to own this faction, but the debate over the ports has generated serious doubts among this faction about Bush's general policy. In their eyes, he appears inconsistent and potentially hypocritical. Economic conservatives might love the ports deal, and so might conservatives of the "realpolitik" variety, but those who buy into the view that there is a general danger of terrorism emanating from all Muslim countries are appalled -- and it is showing in the polls.

If Bush sinks much lower, he will break into territory from which it would be impossible for a presidency to recover. He is approaching this territory with three years left in his presidency. It is the second time that he has probed this region: The first was immediately after Hurricane Katrina. He is now down deeper in the polls, and it is cutting into his core constituency.

In effect, Bush's strategy and his domestic politics have intersected with potential fratricidal force. The fact is that the U.S. strategy of dividing the Muslim world and playing one part off against the other is a defensible and sophisticated strategy -- even if does not, in the end, turn out to be successful (and who can tell about that?) This is not the strategy the United States started with; the strategy emerged out of the failures in Iraq in 2003. But whatever its origins, it is the strategy that is being used, and it is not a foolish strategy.

The problem is that the political coalition has eroded to the point that Bush needs all of his factions, and this policy -- particularly because of the visceral nature of the ports issue -- is cutting into the heart of his coalition. The general problem is this: The administration has provided no framework for understanding the connection between a destroyed mosque dome in As Samarra, an attack against a crucial oil facility in Saudi Arabia, and the UAE buyout of a British ports-management firm. Rather than being discussed in the light of a single, integrated strategy, these appear to be random, disparate and uncoordinated events. The reality of the administration's strategy and the reality of its politics are colliding. Bush will backtrack on the ports issue, and the UAE will probably drop the matter. But what is not clear is whether the damage done to the strategy and the politics can be undone. The numbers are just getting very low.


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Vilhelm Konnander asks:

Finally, has Putin simply invented this attempted coup d'état as a coup de grâce for Berezovsky? Does the Kremlin seriously consider the exiled and immensely unpopular Berezovsky a threat to power? Or is it Berezovsky's mere existence that is unbearable for Putin?

No need for such dramatic speculation. Mr Berezovsky is simply being employed as an irritant to the government of Mr Blair, to the West's security policies, and as a further thrust in the Kremlin's laborious "double standards" campaign.

Via UCSJ:

In an article in "Gazeta" on February 14, Nadezhda Kevorkova described how last summer the FSB (heir to the KGB) forced a group of Muslim women to submit to a rigorous psychological test designed to prove that articles by a Muslim cleric were "extremist" and then demanded that they sign a declaration that they had done so voluntarily. Her article is titled "Soviet Punitive Psychiatry Is Being Reborn in Tatarstan - This Time Against Muslims."

To Paul Goble, a retired U.S. government expert on nationalities in the former USSR and now vice dean at Concordia-Audentes University in Tallinn, Estonia, the FSB program recalls "one of the most odious features of Soviet treatment of dissidents a generation ago." Other observers add that in the 1990s, the Serbsky Institute subjected Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals to similar psychological examinations.

Kevorkova's article described that the women were given one second to answer each of 70 questions about the content of articles by a Muslim cleric, and when they suffered stress as a result, the FSB investigators concluded that the articles were "extremist" because reading them produced stress. That is what the FSB, who made use of experts from the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the testing, reported to a court that was trying a person on charges of disseminating Muslim extremist literature after various experts had told the judges that in their opinion, the works in question were not extremist. Kevorkova cited other Muslims as saying that the FSB has induced stress among them by constantly following them and calling them in for questioning. Her article suggested that for the FSB "there is no more dangerous enemy than a believing Muslim."

Goble has tracked down additional details about "other FSB efforts to misuse psychology to gather evidence of supposed extremism" among Muslims in the Middle Volga region. In his blog, he cited "two extensive articles on the Islam-Info.ru website" posted in February. In one of the articles, Goble reported, R. F. Khikmatova told the Muslim news portal that last December she had been summoned by the FSB in Tatarstan and was subjected to a forced psychological examination designed to force her to incriminate herself or her fellow believers.

Volume 6, Number 9
Friday, March 3, 2006

BIGOTRY MONITOR

A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union

In the New Yorker, Keith Gessen presents a very readable and detailed account of the life and career of the great Soviet Jewish writer Vasily Grossman. It's also a review of a new book of Grossman’s war writings— taken from his notebooks and his published pieces— which has just appeared in English as “A Writer at War” (Pantheon; $27.50), translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova.

Keith Gessen's overview of Grossman's last years underlines the tragedy:

He didn’t even know how to go about sending a manuscript abroad. Pasternak, who would have known, had died in 1960, after a nasty campaign against him in the Soviet press. Grossman read Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in manuscript and was ecstatic—at the achievement of the novella, and perhaps because this might mean that his own work would stand a better chance. But “Ivan Denisovich” described only the camps, whereas Grossman’s novel encompassed all of Soviet society. Touchingly, Grossman expected Solzhenitsyn to come and see him. The younger man had heard of Grossman’s book, and he had reached the same place as Grossman intellectually, but he had done so through the camps; by the time he began writing, he was implacably opposed to the Soviet regime. And perhaps there was some contempt for the accommodations that the older writer had made. Solzhenitsyn did not come by.

Life at home was miserable: Grossman was now debilitated by cancer, and got on poorly with his wife and his grown stepson, Fyodor. Olga thought that he should write screenplays, and when he was in the hospital she got rid of his dog. (Grossman, admittedly, had been conducting an affair.) Meanwhile, the people who watched such things continued to watch Grossman. On October 25, 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the Central Committee heard a report from one of its stooges at the Writers’ Union: not only was Grossman unrepentant; he would, when prodded, become “very angry and express hostile views on Soviet society.” The next day, the committee learned that Grossman was at work on another “anti-Soviet” novel. Grossman’s American biographers, the Garrards, suggest that it was Fyodor who betrayed the contents of the book.

Via Neeka's Backlog

I heard this week that I've been given the Stora Pris (main prize) of Finlands Svenska Författareförening (the Finland-Swedish Writers' Association), so will be going to Helsinki for the association's 87th birthday celebration on 18 March, where the award will be made. It's a great honour for me. I'm very pleased, as I've been translating Finland-Swedish poetry and fiction for more than 30 years, and this is a nice way of expressing a mutual greeting.

Via EDM:
LOCALS BELIEVE RUSSIAN MILITARY IS POISONING CHECHEN CHILDREN

By Andrei Smirnov

Thursday, March 2, 2006


Last December 7, Taisa Minkailova, a 13-year-old Chechen girl from the village of Starogladkovskaya in the Shelkovskoy District of Northern Chechnya, complained of health problems. She was gasping for air, experiencing convulsions and headaches, and her limbs became numb. Her parents brought her to a hospital in neighboring Dagestan, but local doctors could not help the girl (Novaya gazeta, January 12).

On December 9 two more Chechen girls from the same village were taken to a hospital in Grozny, the Chechen capital, with the same symptoms. A week later 19 more children and three adults were admitted to the Central Hospital of Shelkovskoy District. All of these patients were females from three settlements: Kobi, Shelkozavodskaya, and Shelkovskaya (Newsru.com, February 21). "All victims had the temporary diagnosis of poisoning by an unknown toxin," Sultan Alimkhadzhiev, chief of the Chechen Republican Children's Hospital, told the Strana.ru news agency (kavkaz.strana.ru, December 20, 2005). Alimkhadzhiev said that doctors did not know how the poison had entered the children's bodies. They needed expert examination in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

Despite Alimkhadzhiev's cautious statements, almost everyone in Chechnya was convinced that the Russian military could be responsible for the poisoning. Just two months earlier, several students from Staroshedrinskaya, a village in Shelkovskoy District, had reported the same symptoms. However, the authorities had managed to hush up the incident (Novaya gazeta, January 16). According to the Kavkazcenter rebel website, a group of unidentified Russians had come to the school in Staroshedrinskaya after the first attacks and taken away a strange item, forbidding school personnel from discussing their visit (Kavkazcenter.com, December 19).

But the number of poisoned children in Shelkovskoy District was so huge (at least 100 victims by the end of December, according to different sources) that it was impossible to conceal. Popular anger became so loud that Ramzan Kadyrov, acting prime minister and the leader of the pro-Russian forces in Chechnya, had to appeal to General Alexander Baranov, commander of the North Caucasus Military District, to send a special delegation from the Russian Chemical Corporation to investigate (lenta.ru, December 21, 2005). Captain S.N. Efimov, a senior specialist doctor at a mobile military laboratory, headed the Commission of the North Caucasus Military District that was incorporated into the Chechen government's investigation.

On December 17, the Commission went to Shelkovskoy. Novaya gazeta published Efimov's report from the trip, which said, "The examination of the victims revealed the following pattern of the poisoning progression. The source of the poisoning is located in the main building of the school (because being in [the school] is the only thing that this group of victims has in common) presumably on the second floor. The poisoning may have been through breathing, but body contact is also possible. The toxic substance was either liquid or solid releasing toxic vapors." Efimov's report said that it was impossible to determine the nature of the poisonous gas without special equipment and chemicals (Novaya gazeta, January 12).

The first reports of mass poisoning had swept through Chechnya until almost no one doubted that the victims had been really poisoned. The only question was by whom. While the Chechens suspected Russian troops, official propaganda pointed to international terrorism. On January 20, the kavkaz.strana.ru website, known for its close ties with the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the military, published an article that said, "Between 1997 and 1999 there was a secret ‘Al-Risal' camp in Chechnya where instructors of Arabic origin used to work with poisons and means of mass destruction. The camp was located in the center of Grozny and it was sponsored with Islamist extremist funds linked to Al-Qaeda" (kavkaz.strana.ru, December 20, 2005).

Blood samples from the poisoned girls were sent to the republican Forensic Investigation Bureau in Makhachkala. On December 22, Bureau experts told the press that "radioactive elements were found in the blood of some children" (Agenstvo natsionalnikh novostei, December 22, 2005). One day later, the Bureau declared that the children had been poisoned by ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in anti-freeze (Kavkazsky uzel, December 23). The North Caucasus Military District chemical laboratory made no comment.

Then, suddenly, all talk of poisoning disappeared. Elbrus Porsukov, director of the Forensic Investigation Bureau, retracted his colleagues' statement that radioactive elements had been found in the children's blood. Musa Delsaev, head doctor of the Drug Control Service in Chechnya, said that there had been no poisoning; the children had a disease called "nervous exhaustion" (Kavkazky Uzel, December 23, 2005). Zurab Kikalidze, deputy director of the notorious Serbsky Forensic Psychiatry Institute, said that the cause of the disease was "psycho-emotional tension" typical of residents of the Chechen Republic (Kavkazky Uzel, December 23, 2005).

Although nobody in Chechnya actually believed this nonsense, the parents of some sick children agreed to send them to a medical institute in Stavropol for further treatment for this "nervous disease." However, this "treatment" only worsened the attacks; now the children's noses would bleed in addition to convulsions and choking four or five times a day (newsru.com, February 21).

Today parents in Shelkovskoy do not let their children go to school and insist that the buildings be decontaminated, but the officials, who insist now that there was no poisoning, refuse. Chechen hospitals are full of sick children and nobody knows how to treat them. Almost all victims are female, either students or teachers, and Novaya gazeta assumes that the source of the poisoning could be hidden in the girls' lavatories (Novaya gazeta, January 16). The source of the poisoning could be the item that the Russians took away from the school in the village of Staroshedrinskaya last fall, as Kavkazcenter reported.

Clearly the Russian authorities are hiding the truth about the poisoning. Their explanations that the children's convulsions were the result of nervous exhaustion are patently absurd. "If the problem is nerves then the whole population in Grozny and Vedeno district, areas of the most intensive hostilities in Chechnya, should lie in convulsions," says Khusein Nataev, head of the Shelkovskoy district administration (Novye izvestiya, December 25).

The question is what the officials are hiding and the answer is the deliberate poisoning of the Chechen young women by security officials. The reason is also clear, but at the same time it is too shocking to believe – the genocide of the Chechen nation.

See also in this blog: Biomaterial

The following is an open letter from Vaclav Havel, Andre Glucksmann, Prince Hassan bin Talal, Frederik Willem de Klerk, Mary Robinson, Yohei Sasakawa, Karel Schwarzenberg, George Soros and Desmond Tutu:

It is extremely difficult for an honest observer to break through the closed doors that separate Chechnya from the rest of the world. Indeed, no one even knows how many civilian casualties there have been in 10 years of war.

According to estimates by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the figure is between 100,000 (that is, one civilian out of 10) and 300,000 (one out of four). How many voters participated in last November's elections? From 60-80 per cent, according to Russian authorities; around 20 per cent, reckon independent observers. The blackout imposed on Chechnya prevents any precise assessment of the devastating effects of a ruthless conflict.

But censorship cannot completely hide the horror. Under the world's very eyes, a capital - Grozny, with 400,000 inhabitants - has been razed for the first time since Hitler's 1944 punishment of Warsaw.

Such inhumanity cannot plausibly be described as "anti-terrorism", as Russian President Vladimir Putin insists. The Russian military leadership claims to be fighting against a party of 700 to 2,000 combatants. What would be said if the British government had bombed Belfast or if the Spanish government bombed Bilbao, on the pretext of quelling the IRA or the ETA, respectively?

And yet the world remains silent in the face of the looting of Grozny and other Chechen towns and villages. Are Chechen women, children and all Chechen civilians less entitled to respect than the rest of mankind? Are they still considered human? Nothing can excuse the seeming indifference displayed by our worldwide silence.

In Chechnya, our basic morality is at stake. Must the world accept the rape of girls who were kidnapped by the occupying forces or their militias? Should we tolerate the murder of children and abduction of boys to be tortured, broken and sold back to their families, alive or dead? What about "filtration" camps, or "human firewood"? What about the villages exterminated to set an example? A few NGOs and some brave Russian and Western reporters have witnessed countless crimes. So we cannot say, "We did not know."

Indeed, the fundamental principle of democracies and civilised states is at issue in Chechnya: civilians' right to life, including the protection of innocents, widows and orphans. International agreements and the United Nations charter are as binding in Chechnya as anywhere else. The right of nations to self-determination does not imply the right of rulers to dispose of their people.

The fight against terrorism is also at stake. Who has not yet realised that the Russian army is actually behaving like a group of pyromaniac fire-fighters, fanning the fires of terrorism through its behaviour? After 10 years of large-scale repression, the fire, far from going out, is spreading, crossing borders, setting the northern Caucasus ablaze and making combatants even fiercer.

How much longer can we ignore the fact that in raising the bogeyman of "Chechen terrorism", the Russian government is suppressing the liberties gained when the Soviet empire collapsed? The Chechen War both masks and motivates the re-establishment of centralised power in Russia - bringing the media back under state control, passing laws against NGOs and reinforcing the "vertical line of power" - leaving no institutions and authorities able to challenge or limit the Kremlin. War, it seems, is hiding a return to autocracy.

Sadly, wars in Chechnya have been going on for 300 years. They were savage colonial conflicts under the tsar and almost genocidal under Stalin, who deported the whole Chechen population, a third of whom perished during their transfer to the Gulag.

Because we reject colonial and exterminating ventures, because we love Russian culture and believe that Russia can bloom in a democratic future and because we believe that terrorism - whether by stateless groups or state armies - should be condemned, we demand that the world's blackout on the Chechen issue must end. We must help Russia's authorities escape from the trap they set for themselves and into which they fell, putting not only Chechens and Russians, but the world at risk.

It would be tragic if, during the G8 summit scheduled for St Petersburg, Russia, in June, the Chechen issue were pushed to the side. This dreadful and endless war needs to be discussed openly if it is to end peacefully.

Anna Politkovskaya writes about a mysterious and sinister illness that has been affecting Chechen schoolchildren since December last year. The government claims that it is the result of a "mass psychosis", but Chechen citizens have their own view of what is wrong:

A war has been raging in the north Caucasian Republic of Chechnya in the Russian Federation since November 1994. Over the years, officials in Moscow have given the war various names. Sometimes it is called "putting the region in order"; since the beginning of the international "anti-terrorist" era, it has become a "counter-terrorist operation". But it is never called a war, despite the fact that an estimated 70,000-200,000 Russian military personnel are conducting operations as if on enemy territory. The civilian population has taken the brunt of the military impact. For the past 12 years, those living and working in Chechnya have been aware that federal forces were testing new types of weapons. The story of what happened in the Shelkovsk district is simply the biggest such case.

Read it all.

KILLING SEVERAL BIRDS WITH A ‘SPY STONE’?

Russian civil society under ongoing attack

By Prof. Vladimir Petrov, Political Scholar, Moscow, Feb 2006


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The recent British spy scandal in Moscow, highlighted by the state-controlled Russian TV, is nearly forgotten, - at, least, no reaction followed from the British government, or other Western governments. The same goes for Russian and Western public, who seem to underestimate the significance of what happened in January.

TV footage did not give clear evidence of espionage – a person called “British Embassy official” was shown from the back, and was not shown as caught on the spot, as they usually do with real spies. But, more importantly, Russian authorities linked the alleged ‘spies’ with the Russian NGO activities, without any substantial justification.

Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, at least twice, that Russian NGOs are being financed by Western intelligence, - again, without any substantiation. The fact that an Embassy official, accused of espionage, was signing papers authorising grants for Russian charities and public foundations, does not mean that the aid was offered by intelligence organisations. Technical assistance, including support to NGOs, has been provided to Russia since early 1990s on behalf British, US, etc. governments, in accordance with bilateral agreements.

Not to say about common understanding among G8 leaders that civil society is an indispensable element of a democratic society and, as such, should not be subject to excessive control. But it looks like Russian authorities, after democratic revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, want to prevent the same developments in Russia by imposing control on any civic activities in Russia.

It becomes evident that the ‘spy stone’ story was used to justify the new Federal Law on NGO activities, which was drafted by President Putin’s administration and pushed through the parliament, despite wide-spread protests in public and the media. Western leaders have also expressed their concern, but Vladimir Putin has finally approved the law on the eve of the visit of German Chancellor, who was prepared to discuss this issue in Moscow.

The draft Law, which restricts NGO activities legally and financially, was launched after the Director of the Russian Security Service accused International Republican Institute (IRI) of subversive activities in Eastern Europe. This logic implies that all NGOs receiving foreign grants should be labelled as suspicious. In the course of the ‘spy rock’ scandal, a number of well-known human rights advocacy organisations, including the Moscow Helsinki Group, were accused of being financed by Western intelligence.

The proponents of the Law on NGOs say that it contains the same provisions, as in analogue laws and regulations of other democratic countries. But, in the absence of independent judicial system in Russia, and in presence of large-scale corruption and heavy bureaucratic control, this Law will make organised civic activities in the country barely possible.

The restrictions on civil liberties in Russia are being imposed gradually, but more and more tightly. Only public awareness in Russia and abroad could reverse this process. The Moscow Helsinki Group has filed a case in court, accusing Russian TV channel of defamation. And even the Public Chamber, created by the Kremlin as an imitation of true public and parliamentary control, tried to improve the Law on NGOs.

Russian civil society will, hopefully, fight for its rights and freedoms. But the rest should also be aware of what is going on in a country which is so proud of its oil and gas, and of claimed economic prosperity and stability. In mid 1990s Russia was admitted to the G7 club in advance, to support its transition to market economy and democracy. Now Western leaders, who will attend the G8 summit in Russia, to discuss ‘energy security’ and other things, are expected to remind their Russian partner that it is society that decides a state behaviour in a democratic country, not the vice versa.

Vladimir Petrov,
Political Scholar
________________________________________
This analysis was submitted to FOREF – Europe.
It is free for publication under the condition of setting a link to www.religionsfreiheit.at

Kevin Sites is covering the Chechen conflict.