Coddling Russia

In an article (subscription required) published in the Irish Times on May 14, Paul Gillespie discussed the division in Russian society that is being caused by different interpretations of that country's modern history. His analysis covered Russian author Viktor Yerofeyev's recent comments on the obvious schisms revealed by the Victory Day celebrations, and also the gloomy prognostications of Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov, who is quoted as saying: "there is nothing else left to take pride in: the disintegration of the USSR and the failure of the post-Soviet reforms, the noticeable weakening of mass hopes, and the disappearance of the illusions of perestroika have furnished the content of a traumatic experience of national failure".

All in all, a rather critical survey of present trends within the Russian Federation. At the end of the article, however, Gillespie seemed suddenly to change tack, and wrote as follows:

The excellent web-based Eurozine, which brings together and translates essays published in various European cultural magazines, deals in its current issue with how a new grand narrative of European history might be created to deal with such deep-seated disagreements.

It includes Gudkov's illuminating essay on the resurrection of Stalinism.

The historian Timothy Snyder writes that while 1945 has a constitutive meaning for the European Union and its founding states, for most of the states admitted to the Union in May 2004 it "meant a transition from one occupation to another, from Nazi rule to Soviet rule".

Eastern Europeans also know "that German occupation policies were incomparably more savage in eastern Europe than in the west. They know that the Holocaust does not nearly exhaust the record of German mass murder of civilians."

It will require considerable humility and a willingness to learn for western Europeans to accept this alternative eastern narrative - even if they cannot accept an equals sign between Stalin and Hitler.

This was acknowledged in the EU statement which said 1989, not 1945, represents the end of dictatorship for many million of Europeans.

But the EU has to temper this acknowledgment with a deep sensitivity to Russia's identity crisis by keeping lines of communication, politics, economics and culture open to its people, as was partly addressed in this week's agreement in Moscow.

Making an enemy of Russia by excluding it would betray that country's European heritage and its enlightened public opinion which takes that so seriously.

It would lay down dangerous paths for the future by not understanding the past.

With considerable justification, Estonian parliamentarian Mari-Ann Kelam makes this comment:

I strongly disagree with the conclusion of this otherwise interesting article... - we MUST NOT coddle Russia. The fact that Russia is the only significant country to have dropped from "partly free" to "not free" on Freedom House's list in December 2004 is stark proof of the dismaying results of coddling Russia. We must take a firm stance and not lie to the Russians. Unfortunately the West continues to give mixed signals to Putin, letting him live in this delusion that he's "fooled the West." Russia is a threat to democratic states in the region and the threat will only grow worse. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia are all front-line states which are being undermined by Putin's government and quasi-private surrogates like the energy companies Gazprom and LUKoil, etc.

Murder in Chechnya

Russia: Court Clears Soldiers Of Murder In Chechnya

By Robert Parsons

A jury in a Russian military court has found soldiers from an elite
military unit not guilty of murdering six Chechen civilians at a
checkpoint in Chechnya in 2002. Unusually, the men admitted carrying out
the killings but denied responsibility for them, saying they were acting
under orders. Human rights activists fear the decision will encourage
further abuses in Chechnya.


Prague, 20 May 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Few will be surprised by the verdict of
Russia's North Caucasus District military court. Human rights abuses by
the Russian armed forces in Chechnya are well-documented, but legal
action against the military is rarely taken -- and even more rarely
successful.

The ruling deals a heavy blow to the hopes of human rights activists
that the armed forces might be becoming more accountable.

"A decision like this by the jury can only mean one thing: that on the
orders of their superiors, our special forces, our elite units, and our
policemen can kill freely, can knowingly kill innocent, peaceful
citizens," Oleg Orlov of the Moscow human rights organization Memorial
said. "In my opinion, this is a terrible decision that has set a
terrible precedent."

Nobody disputes the circumstances of the case. In January 2002, Captain
Eduard Ulman and his unit of elite troops were on an
intelligence-gathering mission in the mountainous district of Shatoi in
southern Chechnya. When a minivan failed to stop at their checkpoint
they opened fire, killing one man instantly and wounding two. Three
others, including a pregnant woman, were unhurt.

Ulman radioed his headquarters to inform them of the incident and seek
instructions. Acting on the orders received, the Russian soldiers shot
the survivors, loaded their bodies into the minivan, and set it alight.

The district military court cleared the soldiers of murder and of trying
to cover up the evidence by burning the bodies. The jury, which
relatives of the dead say did not include anyone from the Caucasus,
concluded that they had acted in accordance with their military duties
and the circumstances in which they found themselves.
Memorial's Orlov says the court's decision shows that the Chechen people
have been abandoned by the state.

Speaking to the Interfax agency, Captain Ulman said he welcomed the
verdict and that all the men involved continued to serve in the Russian
armed forces.

It was not the first time that this particular case had been brought to
court. Last year, another jury, this time in the southern Russian city
of Rostov-na-Donu, also found the men not guilty. But the military
branch of Russia's Supreme Court challenged the decision, forcing the
retrial. The Russian military will now hope that the affair can quickly
be forgotten.

That seems unlikely, however. The case has stirred up widespread popular
resentment and a lawyer for the relatives of the victims says they will
appeal against the verdict. Today, an angry crowd gathered in Grozny to
protest the decision. Perhaps even more alarming for the Russian
authorities, the case has outraged even their supporters in the
pro-Moscow Chechen administration. Taus Djabrailov, chairman of the
Governing Counsel of Chechnya, is demanding justice.

"They killed absolutely innocent people. They were on their way home
after work. Not only did they murder them, they even tried to burn their
bodies. It's an horrific crime! And I think they will yet have to answer
for their actions, given the seriousness of what they have done. That's
the view of both the leadership and the people of Chechnya. I hope they
will be punished for killing innocent people," Djabrailov said.

The ordinary people of Chechnya are unlikely to be impressed, though, by
Djabrailov's expressions of concern. The armed units of his own
pro-Moscow administration operate with no less impunity than the Russian
military. Memorial's Orlov says the court's decision shows that the
Chechen people have been abandoned by the state.

"It's obvious the civilian population feels totally unprotected," Orlov
said. "But it did anyway. In truth, this verdict has merely confirmed
what Chechens already knew: that the Russian state does not defend the
rights of the civilian population of the Chechen Republic."

Winning hearts and minds in Chechnya does not appear to figure high on
the list of priorities of the Russian military. President Vladimir Putin
talks of the need for massive investment in the local economy, of the
gradual normalization of Chechen life, and the need for strengthening
local self-government. All very desirable, no doubt, but this trial has
again exposed the reality of Chechen life and it is starkly at odds with
Putin's vision.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/5/C42FCA79-A056-404C-938C-A555FA55ECD0\.html

Andijan: More Details

A report by Peter Boehm and Andrew Osborn in the Independent on Sunday gives some more details of the bloody crackdown by Usbek forces on protestors in Andijan on May 13:

Two key witnesses interviewed by this newspaper - an "insurgent" who played a key role in the "uprising" and a pro-government former policeman taken hostage by the insurgents - have filled in other gaps in horrifying detail. The crowds, it has been established, were mown down by powerful coaxial 7.62mm machine guns mounted on two Russian-built BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers. Such cannons can unleash 2,000 rounds barely pausing for breath before they need to be reloaded.

A military helicopter was used for reconnaissance purposes and Uzbek troops armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles opened fire on the demonstrators creating a deadly field of fire with the BTR-80s from which there was no escape. The soldiers made sure they had done their work well. After the shooting had finished they went from body to body delivering "control shots" to the back of people's heads and scoured the town's streets for survivors to finish off. Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov contends that nobody gave the order to open fire.

In reality he was in command of the situation having flown to Andizhan from the capital Tashkent and almost certainly personally authorised the use of such deadly force. The "insurgents" themselves were not Islamist radicals as claimed by the authorities but largely devout Muslims following the teachings of a jailed former maths teacher called Akram Yuldashev.

But the report notes that

Far from being spontaneous, however, their "uprising" was meticulously planned and they too were not averse to murdering people. The IoS has learnt that they killed 54 men and women, most of them prison guards, when seizing a local prison to free its inmates.

We have also discovered that the insurgents encouraged the crowd to vent their fury on the 40 or so hostages they had captured - policemen, judges and soldiers. Hostages were beaten and received gunshot and stab wounds before being made to parade through Andizhan's streets, an event that immediately preceded what was to become the now notorious massacre.

The IoS has managed to piece together the most complete sequence of events assembled so far. The "uprising" began in the early hours of Friday morning when at around 12.30 a group of around 30 insurgents attacked a police station seizing weapons. An hour later they attacked a military garrison capturing more weapons and equipment - Kalashnikovs, Makarov pistols, hand grenades and even an army lorry.

Their next stop was the local prison where they released up to 2,000 inmates including 23 prominent local businessmen accused of Islamist extremism. The businessmen's trial was a key trigger for unrest. Sentence had yet to be passed but the insurgents, some of whom were friends or relatives, were sure they were going to be given stiff jail terms, which they considered unjust.

But at the prison the insurgents did their own killing, murdering guards many of whose weapons were actually unloaded, a government-ordered precaution to prevent them from falling into inmates' hands. Taking hostages along the way they then tried to seize three key local buildings, Andizhan's administrative headquarters, the local branch of the Interior Ministry and the office of the National Security Service. They succeeded in occupying the administrative headquarters but met armed resistance at the other two buildings and were repelled. When inside they phoned relatives telling them to join them and that was when crowds that would later swell to several thousand began to form in central Andizhan.

Uzbek Protests Continue

BBC reports that protests are continuing in the border town of Korasuv, as hundreds of residents demand the release of Bakhtior Rakhimov.

There Was No Way Back

From a recent AP report on the massacre in Andijan:

As the unrest entered a second week, Atamatov, one of the prisoners whose escape triggered the first protests, recalled his odyssey from successful businessman to inmate to refugee - and denied that radical Islam had played any role in his woes.

Last June, he said, after three days of brutal interrogation focusing on his business partners, he was charged with religious extremism.

"I told the court that I'm not an extremist," said Atamatov, who owned a small confectionary factory that employed 23 people and was a sponsor of local children's soccer and karate clubs. "I asked the judge: How can a man who implements the president's decrees on creating more jobs, on developing sports among children, be an extremist?"

The trial had opened in February, and by last week, a sentence was due. The trial had already brought thousands into the streets of Andijan for peaceful protests, and the protest leaders promised massive resistance if the men were convicted.

But the sentence never came. Around midnight on May 12, Atamatov said he heard about 10 shots and then someone opened the door of his prison cell with a crowbar. He and another 11 inmates in the cell came out to the street.

Someone there, whom Atamatov said he didn't know, said: "'Those who want can come with us to the governor's office.'" And so he went, and found himself among thousands of people who demonstrated all day.

Atamatov said government troops shot at them in the morning, killing about a dozen people, and opened fire again about noon, killing a similar number. Two hours later, he said, they took aim from a truck and killed a 5-year-old boy who was running along a street. When his mother ran screaming toward her son, soldiers shot her, too, Atamatov said.

He estimated that 150-200 people died on the square when troops encircled it in late afternoon, and that many more were killed as they ran for their lives down a main avenue, Chulpon Shokh Prospect.

"There were three military positions there: when they fired at us at the first one, only a few people died; at the next one another 10-15 died, and at the third position they had armored personnel carriers and snipers sitting in trees - lots of us died there," he said.

After an all-night trek, they reached the Kyrgyz border. A resident of the frontier village of Teshik Tosh said he would show them a way to cross the border, but he led them into an ambush and was himself killed.

"My 48-year-old mother was with me. She was wounded and we had to leave her behind. An aunt was killed on the border," Atamatov said.

Then a local woman came to them and said that the governor of Pakhtabad would let them cross the border, but warned that Kyrgyz border guards might shoot at them.

"There was no way back, so we went ahead," he said.

(via global-geopolitics)

Oppression in the Caucasus

Writing from Nalchik, capital of Russia's Kabardino-Balkar Republic,Telegraph correspondent Julius Strauss describes how Putin's "War on Terror" is tainted by brutality and corruption:

To the West, President Vladimir Putin presents the face of a staunch partner in the war on radical Islam, waging a legitimate fight against extremists in the south of his country.

As evidence of what he is up against he cites the brutal seizure of the school in Beslan last year, the downing of two Russian airliners by Chechen suicide bombers and numerous other attacks that the Kremlin regards as terrorism pure and simple.

But even as he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with western leaders abroad, at home his men are conducting a dirty and brutal war against innocent civilians that, far from combating terrorism, is driving them into the hands of a tiny minority of radicals.

The effect of these policies has been to bring the entire Russian Caucasus to boiling point and create an extremist threat in regions that have no history of militant Islam.

Republics such as Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkessiya may have so far avoided the international limelight even as Chechnya has become a byword for brutality and terror.

But analysts believe each of them is now on the brink of escalating into a conflict that could sweep through the whole region.

Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, said: "The entire Caucasus is ready to explode."

Nalchik, the capital of the small Muslim-dominated republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and the place where Ruslan was born and raised, was until recently a peaceful provincial backwater.

But now, egged on by a Kremlin that will brook no dissent, local security forces are running amok and terrorising the entire population with impunity.

In the vanguard of this new wave of Soviet-style oppression is the local branch of the notorious organised crime squad, known by its Russian acronym UBOP.

It was UBOP officers who beat Rasul to death because he refused to sign a document implicating himself in terrorist activities. His only known crime was to have once met a man who allegedly went on to become an Islamic radical.

At one stage during Rasul's torture he was even hauled, semi-conscious, in front of Anatoly Kyarov, the acting head of the regional UBOP. "Has he signed?" Kyarov asked, according to Rasul. When they answered no, he told the men beating him: "Continue with him then."

Arriving in today's Nalchik is akin to stepping back in time to when Soviet paranoia was at its height.

Read it all.

Russian Apology Resolution

From: The Joint Baltic American National Committee, Inc. [mailto:jbanc@jbanc.org]
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 10:15 AM
To: kelam@neti.ee
Subject: U.S. Senate Passes Russian Apology Resolution
Importance: High


JBANC PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release

contact: Karl Altau/tel. 301-340-1954
May 21, 2005


Senate Passes Russian Apology Resolution


Washington, DC (JBANC) --- The United States Senate has passed a non-binding concurrent resolution on May 19 asking that the Russian Federation issue a clear and unambiguous statement admitting and condemning the illegal occupation and annexation from 1940 to 1991 of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Expressing the position of Congress, the legislation was first introduced on May 12. Reintroduced on May 19 as Senate Concurrent Resolution 35 by Senate Baltic Freedom Caucus co-chairman Gordon Smith (R-OR), it was co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California. Senator Durbin, Assistant Minority Leader, is the other Baltic Freedom Caucus co-chairman.

The companion legislation, House Concurrent Resolution 128, was referred to the House International Relations Committee after being introduced on April 12 by House Baltic Caucus co-chairman John Shimkus (R-IL). H. Con. Res. 128 already has 19 co-sponsors. A vote is expected this summer.

The importance of such action was made clear by the visit of President Bush two weeks ago to Latvia and the Russian Federation. In Riga, President Bush emphasized the importance of making amends regarding past misdeeds, even evoking the memory of an unjust Yalta agreement. He also stated that the captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe [by the Soviet Union] will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history.

President Bush's Riga speech:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/print/20050507-8.html

The May 9 Moscow commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe brought the matter to the international news forefront. There was a great surge in media interest over this legacy.

The Russian Federation, however, has never wavered from the official Soviet view that the Baltics voluntarily joined the USSR. This selective memory has been evident again this month in the words of the Russian leadership and in much of the Russian media.

Following the August 23, 1939 inking of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (MRP) between the Stalins USSR and Hitlers Germany, Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The Soviet Union reciprocated by invading Poland from the east on September 17. Moscow then forced the neutral Baltic governments to cede bases, and on November 30, 1939, the USSR invaded Finland, to begin the four-month Winter War. The Baltic countries were occupied by force in July 1940 and then, following sham elections, were annexed in August that year. The U.S. issued a statement on July 23, 1940 not recognizing this devious takeover.

Support for a Russian condemnation of the MRP was also given by the six-member U.S. congressional delegation that recently visited Lithuania. The delegation included Congressmen Jack Kingston (R-GA), Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Tim Holden (D-PA), David Scott (D-GA), Clay Shaw (R-FL), and Bill Shuster (R-PA).

JBANC, in helping to guide the introduction of the congressional legislation, strongly believes that the occupation of the Baltic countries by the Soviet Union and its resultant terror, mass executions, deportations, and denial of human rights must not be forgotten, glossed over, or distorted.

The Joint Baltic American National Committee, Inc. represents the Estonian American National Council, Inc., the American Latvian Association, Inc. and the Lithuanian American Council, Inc.

###

*****************************

JOINT BALTIC AMERICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, INC.

Representing:
Estonian American National Council, Inc.
American Latvian Association, Inc.
Lithuanian American Council, Inc.

400 Hurley Avenue
Rockville, MD 20850

Tel: (301) 340-1954
Fax: (301) 309-1406
E-Mail: jbanc@jbanc.org
Net: http://jbanc.org

*****************************

Things That Never Change

In FrontPage Magazine, Stephen Schwartz blasts Vladimir Putin's recent attempts to rewrite history and restore the Stalinist legacy in Moscow and Europe:

The United States officially rejected the Soviet absorption of the Baltic states and permitted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to maintain diplomatic representation in Washington until 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet empire allowed their return to freedom. The Baltic peoples had nothing to celebrate about the Soviet triumph in Eastern Europe. Estonia and Lithuania, for instance, refused to send delegates to the recent hoopla in Moscow to commemorate the end of the Second World War.

Putin now seeks to reassert Russian imperialist "rights" in the border countries -- known in Russia as the "near abroad." He is infuriated with President Bush's forthright admission that the Yalta agreement, which divided Europe between the democracies and Stalin, was a tragic error; he is also enraged by the president's solidarity with the Balts and Georgians, and U.S. condemnation of the dictatorship of Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus.

A reflection of Kremlin anger came on May 12 when Russian secret police boss Alexander Patrushev denounced the United States and Britain, along with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, for espionage against Russia. In other words, Bush and Blair are, in the Russian mind, moral equivalents of the Wahhabi terror agents coming from Riyadh and recruiters for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood based in Kuwait. Before 1935, Stalin similarly argued that the democracies and the fascist powers were all the same; the only change is that Islamofascism has replaced the fascists of the past.

Patrushev also repeated the now-common Russian complaint against foreign involvement in democratization of the ex-Soviet republics. But Putin has led the way in the Stalinization of debate over the future of Russia and its neighbors.

According to the Russian president, who calls himself a proud veteran of the Soviet secret police, the Baltic states were never independent and were never invaded or occupied by the Soviets. As quoted by Vladimir Socor of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, the Russian leader declared, "'Russia turned over some of its territories to Germany,' including the territories of what became the Baltic states. 'In 1939, Germany returned them to us, and these territories joined (voshli v sostav) the Soviet Union.'" Socor also noted "the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement of May 5, which similarly claimed that the Soviet Union could not possibly have occupied what it already possessed."

A century and a half ago the Russian liberal Alexander Herzen wrote, "The revolution of Peter the Great replaced the obsolete squirearchy of Russia -- with a European bureaucracy; everything that could be copied from the Swedish and German laws, everything that could be taken over from the free municipalities of Holland into our half-communal, half-absolutist country, was taken over. But the unwritten, the moral check on power, the instinctive recognition of the rights of man, of the rights of thought, of truth, could not be and were not imported." In Russia, some things may never change.

See also: this post

Uzbekistan Appeal

From: Eric Chenoweth [eric@idee.org]
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2005 6:22 PM
To: idee@idee.org
Subject: Uzbekistan Appeal -- Urgent

I am sending to you below an appeal regarding Uzbekistan from Tolekan Ismailova, director of the Civil Society Against Corruption, one of Kyrgyzstan's leading NGOs and a member of IDEE's Centers for Pluralism Network. We ask that you sign the appeal and return it to: "Civil Society Against Corruption" info@anticorruption.kg and also cc: idee@idee.org.

We encourage you to send this message to others who you think would sign the appeal. Time is of the essence.

Thank you very much.

Eric Chenoweth



TO: THE UNITED NATIONS, OSCE, U.S.PRESIDENT BUSH, U.S. CONGRESS, AND TO OUR UZBEK FRIENDS


May 17, 2005

We, the participants in the Network of the Center for Pluralism, and friends -from over twenty countries from Kyrgystan to Serbia and Montenegro, from Lithuania to Crimea - that is from countries which were under communist dictatorships are outraged by the recent events in Uzbekistan and by the lack of adequate response from the democratic countries.

As democratic activists, former dissidents and oppositionists, journalists, human rights activists, members of parliament and ordinary citizens, we do not accept the Uzbek government explanations that the events were provoked by "Islamic radicals", and that shooting unarmed women and children is part of the "global war on terrorism".

We know enough about Uzbekistan to be able to understand unarmed people's protests against injustice and against dictatorship. We know enough history to remember the millions of people murdered as "trockists" in the Soviet Union. Calling the popular protests "Islamic revolts" is a way to gain the West's sympathy and silence about torture and relentless persecution of human rights activists and critics of the Uzbek's regime.

We appeal to the United Nations to put immediately the Uzbek's government repression against its own population on the agenda, to activate different U.N. agencies to act accordingly to their mandate;

We appeal to the OSCE to send immediately observers and monitors to the towns and cities of the Fergana Valley, to the border crossings between Uzbekistan and Kyrgystan and to Tashkent and larger cities were peaceful demonstrations against the bloody government response are broken up by the security services.

We appeal to the OSCE to establish an Inquiry Commission to assess the real danger of "Islamic terrorism" in the Fergana Valley (or lack of it).

We appeal to President Bush to give credibility to his words and denounce the Uzbek dictatorship and to understand that the U.S. cannot be a partner, or a friend of a cruel dictatorship. The Uzbek people have the same aspirations and the same rights as the citizens of Georgia, Poland or the U.S.

We appeal to the U.S. Congress to open hearings on the recent events in Uzbekistan, and to condemn the bloodshed of peaceful demonstrators.

We want to tell the Uzbek people: We know how hard it is to gain freedom and democracy; we know how many sacrifices you have made. We know that you are not standing up for any caliphates, or foreign movements. We know that you are going on the streets because you want to feed your families, because you don't want millions of educated youngster s to leave every year for Russia and Turkey in search of jobs, because you want to elect your representatives, because you do not want to fear the policeman or the secret agent, because you want simple justice and freedom.

We want to tell you that you have many friends all around the world.

For contact and information:
Human rights center "Citizens against corruption", Tolekan Ismailova, info@anticorruption.kg
Institute of Democracy in Eastern Europe, Irena Lasota, irena@idee.org

(Via MAK)

Free Thoughts

A remarkable, vivid and moving series of photographs of the ongoing Cuban Democracy Convention outside Havana has been published by Sardinian blog Free Thoughts.

(via Publius)

The Rose Garden

Until Norm linked to it in an AUT-related post the other day, I actually hadn't been aware of the website of Mona Baker. As a literary translator, it does make me wonder about the political views of some of my colleagues - I suppose that because I don't operate in an academic environment I've been sheltered from some of this political extremism and anti-Israel activity.

Rally in Korasuv

The BBC reports a new protest in Uzbekistan:

Several hundred people have held a rally in the Uzbek town of Korasuv, where residents threw out their leaders last week in a popular protest.

More than 500 people gathered outside government buildings, a day after Uzbek troops took back control of the town.

Unconfirmed reports said up to 80 people had been arrested.

The Uzbek government has rejected calls for an international inquiry into last week's bloody crackdown on protesters in the nearby city of Andijan.

The alleged massacre in Andijan triggered last week's uprising in Korasuv. Although the authorities are back in control of Korasuv, protesters are angry at the arrest of two of the leaders of the rebellion.

Chechnya Rally

Thousands Rally in Chechnya to Protest After Russia Acquits Troops of
Murdering Civilians

Created: 20.05.2005 15:26 MSK (GMT +3),


MosNews

Thousands of people gathered in the Chechen capital Friday to protest
the acquittal of a Russian officer who killed six civilians in the
republic, agencies report.

A jury found a group of special purpose troops commanded by Captain
Eduard Ulman not guilty on Thursday of murdering six civilians in
Chechnya.

The organizers of the sanctioned rally estimate several thousand will
gather in the centre of Grozny, among them students and teachers of
high schools, citizens of Grozny and Chechen villages.

Captain Ulman's unit killed a civilian and subsequently
extra-judicially executed five more in an incident in January 2002. In
April 2004, they were acquitted by a jury, although they did not deny
killing the civilians. They said they had been following orders. The
case is currently being retried with sentencing expected to take place
later this month.

What Happened

GLEN HOWARD: Well, what happened was basically the demonstrations began after the people were released from prison, they gathered there it was an extremely volatile situation after they stormed the prison, releasing about 2,000 prisoners--

MARGARET WARNER: A lot more than the 23 businessmen.

GLEN HOWARD: Exactly. And what happened is many of these people after they had also gone to an armory and they seized large amounts of arms, about 300 Kalashnikovs and large amounts of ammunition. But what happened is that some of these people started mixing with the demonstrators.

MARGARET WARNER: Who had been will there a while, right?

GLEN HOWARD: They have been there demonstrating. President Karimov had flown out to the region; he had apparently met there the day before.

And what begins after that is still unclear. The problem with this unrest and the whole tragedy of what occurred is we're still trying to separate fact from fiction over what transpired.

Many human rights people were there, prominent western organizations were based in the region reported eyewitness reporting said that the Uzbeks who sent their special forces from the police started firing immediately.

MARGARET WARNER: On this crowd.

GLEN HOWARD: On this crowd. And then what responded -- what the Uzbeks came, countered to that is many of these demonstrators were armed, and so they were firing back.

And so with these demonstrations it became very, very difficult to separate what really transpired. But we do know that there were large amounts of casualties, we don't know exactly how many yet and we're still trying to understand the situation.

It's been complicated because the Uzbek government has not been fully transparent, forthcoming in trying to help western diplomats understand what happened there.

Glen Howard, Jamestown Foundation's president, speaking on PBS's Newshour on May 19.

______________________________


Just to be clear here, they're saying that the government troops were mutilating bodies before the people were even dead?

That's absolutely correct. And it was confirmed by several different people.

Who all saw this in the same hospital morgue?

Yes. It's only one hospital morgue, which is rather small apparently, I don't know, I've never been inside, but that's what the witnesses said, and they were saying that people were still breathing, they were still alive.

Do you have any reason to doubt what they say?

Well, actually no, because from what I gather, there were so many dead bodies and injured bodies lying down in the streets, and the government was absolutely desperate to get them out... they were absolutely desperate to get rid of them, and this might be the reason they acted in such a brutal way.


Former BBC Central Asia correspondent Shahida Tulaganova, replying to questions on BBC World Service Radio's The World Today (use the Radio Player on the 22.00 hours bulletin)

Andijan: the Russian View

Writing in EDM, Sergei Blagov gives this roundup of Russian media reaction to the events in Andijan:

As the Kremlin sides with Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov over the recent uprising in the Central Asian state, official Russian media outlets have linked up to back this point of view. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Karimov discussed the situation by telephone on May 14 and expressed "serious concern" over the possible destabilization of Central Asia. But other comments by both politicians and media analysts range from unconditional support to strong criticism of the recent Uzbek crackdown on protesters in Andijan.

Russian politicians appear split over the situation in Uzbekistan. Dmitry Rogozin, head of Rodina party, claimed that Karimov became a target of radical Islamists when he allowed U.S. military bases on Uzbek soil. Konstantin Zatulin of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party argued that Karimov "did it all right" to forestall destabilization. Alexei Mitrofanov, deputy of the Liberal-Democratic party, blamed U.S. interference in Afghanistan for general destabilization across Central Asia.

Yet, Sergei Mitrokhin of Yabloko warned against Russian support for the Karimov regime, which could trigger civil war in Uzbekistan. Boris Nemtsov, of the Union of Right Forces, picked up this notion and argued that the Karimov regime was doomed and that by supporting Karimov the Kremlin had picked a loosing scenario, as it had in Ukraine.

Karimov defended his heavy-handed response and accused radical Islamists of a terrorist attack. He strongly denied that Uzbek troops had targeted civilians in Andijan. Also on May 17, he lashed out at what he described biased media coverage by international and Russian media. Karimov specifically criticized Russia's NTV channel and accused it of intentionally inflating casualty figures.

Russian media outlets were divided over the Andijan crisis. Some, like NTV and RenTV channels, were critical of Karimov's crackdown and questioned the wisdom of the Kremlin's support of Karimov. The second group, notably official media outlets, tacitly backed Uzbek authorities and suggested continued Russian support of Karimov's "secular regime." The third group highlighted broader geopolitical maneuverings as crucial factors behind the Uzbek riots.

Initially, the mainstream media in Russia, notably First Channel and RTR television, appeared to be siding with Karimov and interpreted the events in Uzbekistan mainly as a plot by Islamic extremists.

The one-sided view seen on Russia's major television channels earned a measure of criticism from other Russian media outlets. Izvestiya ran a series of articles, headlined: "Events in Uzbekistan: Popular revolt or extremist rebellion?" The daily described events in Andijan as a revolution, adding that the coverage by Russian official media outlets was somewhat detached from reality. Izvestiya specifically criticized Russian First Channel, which merely followed Uzbek official statements, described Uzbek protesters as extremists, and ignored alternative versions of the Andijan events (Izvestiya, May 17).

Presumably responding to such criticism, the First Channel on Tuesday reported not only the official death toll of 169 for Andijan, but also mentioned unofficial estimate of 745 fatalities (TV First Channel, May 17).

Izvestiya wrote that the riots were sparked by the "poverty fatigue" plaguing the destitute majority of the Uzbek population. The daily also interviewed a number of Russia's newsmakers who happened to be split between strong criticism of atrocities in Uzbekistan and equally strong support of Karimov's hard-line approach. The daily quoted actor Alexander Abdulov, who speculated that the Uzbek riots were probably provoked by the United States. He claimed that the events were the direct continuation of regime changes in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, adding that the ultimate goal of this stratagem was to encircle Russia (Izvestiya, May 17). Abdulov's allegations remain a minority opinion.

However, Trud argued that events in Uzbekistan did not qualify as a revolution nor were they yet another "colored revolution." The daily highlighted a leading role of radical Islamists in the Uzbek riots. Russia does not plan to drop its support of Karimov's secular regime as a cornerstone of stability in Uzbekistan, according to Dmitry Polikanov, an analyst at VTsIOM, Russia's leading polling agency (Trud, May 16).

Independent media outlets strongly criticized the Uzbek crackdown. The Uzbek rebellion was quelled with unprecedented cruelty, wrote Vremya novostei in an article entitled "Andijan slaughter." There is little hope of learning the true scale of the Andijan tragedy from independent sources, because Uzbek authorities did their best not to have witnesses on the scene of the crackdown (Vremya novostei, May 16).

Kommersant (May 16) commented that the Russian authorities strongly supported the bloodshed in Andijan because someone had to stop the popular revolutions from spreading. Meanwhile, Nezavisimaya gazeta (May 17) wrote that Karimov was not going to repeat Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akayev's failures, adding that neither the United States nor Russia was interested in a victory by radical Islamists. The daily speculated that some high-ranking Uzbek officials might have opposed Karimov and had secret contacts with the opposition, thus indicating the possibility of a coup in Uzbekistan.

Geopolitical maneuverings were also cited as factors behind Uzbek troubles. Karimov's policies were torn between the United States and Russia, according to Andrei Makarkin, deputy head of the Center of Political Technologies. Uzbekistan made its choice just a week ago when Tashkent announced its decision to quit the regional cooperation organization, GUUAM. Now Karimov needs Russia's political support more than ever hence Uzbekistan could even join Russia-dominated the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Commonwealth groupings, Makarkin said (Gazeta, May 17).

The official Russian government mouthpiece, Rossiiskaya gazeta, wrote that U.S. diplomacy was in a strange position, as Uzbekistan remained Washington's strategic partner. The Khanabad air base is important for the United States in terms of the "greater Middle East" strategy, the daily claimed (Rossiiskaya gazeta, May 18).

Russia is concerned over the destabilization of Central Asia and would back Karimov's regime. His argument that the uprising against the Uzbek regime was engineered by radical Islamists is difficult to confirm. But the dissenting critical voices raised by liberal politicians and some Russian media outlets are unlikely to affect Moscow's position.

The Trap

I’ve been reading a curious account by Australian ex-diplomat Gregory Clark of his years at the Australian Embassy in Moscow during the early 1960s. The memoirs are strange – and in some ways almost surrealistic - because while on the one hand Clark repeatedly professes his admiration for the Soviet system and the Soviet Union in general, the personal experiences he describes reveal so many of the defects of the system and the society it created that it’s hard to give credence to his enthusiasm. Two extracts may illustrate what I mean. Here’s Clark discussing his view of the Soviet Union, and its leaders:

I often tell people that the two years in Moscow were the best two years of my life.

KGB attentions aside, there was something curiously comforting about living in a society where you did not have to be constantly on your guard against the exploitative tricks and scams of our capitalist world.

I liked some of the Soviet leaders I met – Khruschev and Kosygin for example - and their genuine efforts to improve things. I even got to like Groymko, for whom I once had to make a labored dinner speech interpretation. He is sometimes written off as hardline. But to understand the mind, and integrity, of a very conservative Soviet leader I strongly recommend reading his biography.

Apart from anything else it could make our own hardliners realise just how their own rampantly bad behavior over the years has contributed to the growth of hardline attitudes on the other side. (I also suggest readers should look at a very moving account of how a very ordinary Russian I once met had also reacted to that misbehavior – see Quadrant magazine letter on my website entitled former Western brutality in Russia.)

I also developed a deep sympathy for the wartime sufferings of the Russian people, and disgust for the way we in the West had managed almost completely to ignore not just those sufferings but also Moscow’s desire for a foreign policy that made sure they never happened again.

If the Khruschev liberalisation had been allowed to continue, it is likely Russia would have evolved within a generation into a reasonably free society practicing Scandinavian-style socialism. But as we know, the hawks on both sides made sure that did not happen.

Here, on the other hand, is Clark describing at first hand the nature of “KGB attentions

Few outsiders can appreciate the strain involved once the KGB types decide to turn the screws on you. It is as if the entire population in tightly-controlled society has conspired to trap you. You have no escape. Everything you do is monitored. Meanwhile you have to carry on as if everything around you was normal.

Finally, it all came to a head. On a freezingly dark night of December 1964, in the grubby industrial town of Podolsk on the outskirts of Moscow, the trap had been set. My good friend, Volodya Nikitin, was the bait .

The Trap

I had met Volodya a year or so earlier, on one of my student restaurant excursions. He and his charming wife, Yelena, were sitting at one of the tables I had been made to share. From the start it was obvious he could not be a KGB plant. Apart from anything else the KGB had no idea that I was even dining out that night, let alone the restaurant I would visit.

Volodya had an attractively direct and proletarian kind of openness. Yelena was classy but warm. We took an immediate liking to each other..

Like most of the students I met, they were reasonably patriotic. But they were happy also to talk about faults in the system, and their hopes that things would get better. After the usual rounds of vodka toasts, we agreed to meet again. He was studying metallurgy. She was studying politics.

At the next dinner party, I followed Embassy regulations and made sure I was accompanied. I took J, a rather demure English girl working as a nanny for the Australian embassy ambassador and who had come to Moscow to improve her Russian. . She shared my liking for the Russian people and we had already had become close friends. For well over a year the four of us would meet occasionally for dinner and conversation. We enjoyed each others’ company, very much.

I once quizzed him on 1956 Hungarian events. "Those swine (svolochii),’ he said. It turned out that a friend of his had had his eyes gouged out by Hungarian revolutionaries.

How often in our Cold War disputes do we fret over abuses by the other side without even bothering to ask how and why the other side might have been provoked into such abusive behavior? Volodya was as situation insensitive as the rest of us.

I realised the KGB would not be ignoring our dinner parties. I even discussed it with Volodya. But since it was obvious we were simply people who liked to eat and drink with each other, and that neither he or his wife had any access to anything that even looked like a secret, we assumed we would all be safe.

True, with the fall of Khruschev in October 1964 we knew that the hawks and their KGB friends were back in control (courtesy of the US hawks who had done everything — Bay of Pigs, Cuban crises, U 2 flights etc - to derail Khruschev’s honest efforts to gain détente with the West and to end the Cold War). But by this time I had also discovered that Yelena was the daughter of a highly placed general in the Ukraine. That would be a kind of insurance against arbitrary KGB stunts, or so I thought.

Some time around the end of 1964 Volodya began acting strangely. He rang, wanting urgently to meet me over dinner. He knew that J. had gone back to England. We met, and this time Yelena was not with him.

But I had gone out of my way to take a woman I knew at the British Embassy with me so that I would be covered. It was clear Volodya was rather disconcerted by the unexpected presence of the woman, and after some talk about the problems he was having finding a job after graduating from university, we parted. There was something very unnatural about the meeting. I suspected already that the KGB had put him up to it.

Later the British woman pestered me with demands from her Embassy to find out who Volodya was. I knew the Brits were highly security conscious; they were up to their necks in a host of other anti-Soviet plots, including Penkovsky. But I did not like the implication that I might be trying to lead the woman into a trap.

Soon after I had another call from Volodya. This time he wanted to meet me in Podolsk where some friends were having a party. And this time his voice sounded even more unnatural than usual. I was certain that something was afoot.

I faced a dilemma. If I went I would be leaving myself open to KGB attentions. But if Volodya was acting under KGB pressure and I did not go, he would be blamed. His future career would be jeopardized, and it would be through my fault rather than his since it was I who initially had put him in this situation of danger.

I decided I would go to the station, hear what he had to say, and return promptly to Moscow, taking every anti-KGB precaution. That way he would be covered, since he would have delivered the goods even if they had not been seized. And hopefully I would see an end to KGB attentions.

The moment I met Volodya at the station it was clear that something was indeed afoot. With unnatural enthusiasm and in a high voice he urged me to go with him to the party. But first, he said, we should go to the station toilet. Then in a low voice, he suddenly turned on me — tyi moi vrag, you are my enemy. He was trying to warn me of a KGB trap.

What to do? I had assumed that the KGB plan was to wait till I got to the party before moving in on us. But already I had sensed we were being closely watched by thugs planted around the station premises. If I about-turned and tried to catch a train back to Moscow, it was very possible the thugs would move in on both of us, and push secret documents into his hands - a favorite KGB trick. They would then claim that I had come to this unlikely place to receive the documents.

As well, they would suspect that Volodya had done something to warn me, and he would still be in trouble. So I decided to pretend to accept an invitation to leave the station with him, and at some point enroute to the alleged party find an excuse to do a sudden about-turn, leaving the thugs too disorganised for a simultaneous move in on both of us and allowing Volodya to walk off into the darkness.

The strategy worked. But on the train back to Moscow I was shaking badly.

(via Marius)

A Tragicomedy

At México desde fuera, with the autobiographical reflection characteristic of this blog, a critical analysis of President Vicente Fox's recent public blunder in the field of U.S.-Mexico relations. The blog considers that not only did Fox commit a serious error - he also missed a valuable opportunity of explaining to the U.S. public the real nature of the problems that confront Mexican migrants to the United States, and of setting those problems in the context of the problems that confront the economy of the U.S., and its national security:

El problema de fondo de la declaración de Fox, la razón por la que es racista, es porque se centra justamente en ese criterio, el del color de la piel, para distinguir, para señalar. No sólo eso, es profundamente ignorante, porque los mexicanos no sólo hacen los trabajos que no quieren hacer los negros, sino los trabajos que muchos otros grupos étnicos no quieren hacer. El problema del presidente, más allá de la pobreza de su equipo de trabajo que lo manda desprotegido (a sabiendas de sus dislates y disparates) a hablar del tema sin contar con elementos suficientes para saber que la delcaración obviamente iba a generar una reacción así y, sobre todo, que iba a ser utilizada para golpear al gobierno de México y, sobre todo, a los trabajadores que Fox trataba de defender.

Fox podría haber llamado la atención sobre los problemas que enfrentan los mexicanos aquí de muchas maneras. Esa misma frase con otros identificadores (los mexicanos hacen los trabajos que ... otros no desean hacer; ... ni siquiera los más pobres desean hacer), hubiera logrado un mayor efecto y hubiera tenido una recepción completamente distinta allá y aquí. El problema, sin embargo, es el de la improvisación que ha caracterizado a la gestión de Fox.

Collodi War

An AP report gives an account of a new campaign launched by a Polish magazine, which has urged its readers to send Russian President Putin "a picture postcard depicting him as the long-nosed lying fairy tale character Pinocchio for presenting a 'Stalinist version of history'":

The Wprost weekly campaign comes amid a rise of anti-Russian sentiment in Poland, which was most recently stoked by Putin's speech May 9 in Red Square marking the end of the Second World War in Europe, in which he failed to condemn the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland as many had hoped.

In response, this week's issue of the magazine comes with a pre-addressed postcard that reads "With greetings for Putinocchio" above the computer-generated image.

On the other side, a brief text in Polish and Russian asks Putin to apologize for failing to condemn the 1939 secret Nazi-Soviet pact, which set the stage for the Second World War.

The card also said Poles felt humiliated that Putin thanked the Italian and German anti-fascist resistance but failed to mention the Polish sacrifice.

(via Marius)

Andijan and After

As the crisis in Uzbekistan is still unfolding, it’s probably too soon for anyone to make a clear judgment of precisely what has taken place in Andijan, and why. It is, however, certain that there has been large-scale loss of civilian life, and that this was the direct result of Uzbek government decisions – in particular, those of President Islam Karimov.

The outrage this atrocity has caused in the Western media and in Western public opinion can be compared to the outrage felt in the West at the atrocity in Beslan. In both cases, the sheer scale of the brutality served to bring the situation into the spotlight, and to reinforce the notion that the bloody events were part of the international “war on terror”. Just as at Beslan the blame for the bloodshed was placed by the Russian authorities on “Islamic extremists”, so at Andijan it is “Islamic fundamentalists” who are being blamed for provoking the violence.

It could be salutary to observe one or two points which may have an additional bearing on the events in Uzbekistan.

1) The uprising took place in the immediate aftermath of the May 9 commemoration in Moscow, when President Putin drew a comparison between Nazism and Islamic extremism, and by implication equated his government’s bloody intervention in Chechnya with the U.S. and Western campaign in Iraq.

2) At the same time, and almost in the same breath, Putin launched a fierce verbal assault on the Baltic States, producing an extraordinary and disturbing version of European history according to which in 1939 Germany “returned” the Baltic “territories” to the Soviet Union, and those “territories” became a part of it.

3) As a recent IWPR report points out, American engagement with the Central Asian states – key allies in the "war on terror" - is being misrepresented and exploited by regional governments, whose actions are fuelling instability in the region:

Authoritarian leaders especially in Uzbekistan, the main player, continue to ignore pleas for change in their human rights practices. They are misreading – sometimes wilfully – the signals sent by the United States that political reform is important, too, and continuing in the belief that as valued partners they can do pretty much as they like.

4) After Andijan, President Bush is trapped. As Angela Charlton, writing for RIA-Novosti, makes clear:

Karimov blames the latest violence on a group associated with the Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which the CIA has been tracking and worrying about for years. Bush will look soft on terrorism if he dismisses this charge lightly. But he has staked so much of his foreign policy on spreading "liberty" that he can't ignore the protesters' claims that they're fighting for justice and rule of law, not for Islamic fundamentalists.

Back

I'm back from vacation, but it's going to take a day or two before normal posting resumes here.

For the time being, however, here's some candid discussion of Putin's May 9 performance by Jamestown Foundation analyst Vladimir Socor - I read this while on holiday, and it is certainly food for thought:

From the standpoint of Russia-West relations, perhaps the most consequential aspect of the May 9 anniversary celebrations in Moscow was the Kremlin's verbal assault on the Baltic states, amid complete and even complacent silence on the part of the European Union, NATO allies, and the United States. For the first time since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, the Kremlin boldly tested allied solidarity -- and found it wanting.

Putin made calculated use of insult and vulgarity in this exercise. Russia is ready to sign border agreements with Latvia and Estonia, he said, "provided they do not involve stupid (duratskiye) territorial demands." Falsely accusing Latvia's government of demanding the retrocession of the Abrene/Pytalovo district, Putin called on "Latvian politicians to stop engaging in demagoguery." He then opined, "Estonia's leadership took the wrong decision in not attending the [Moscow] celebrations."

Answering a female Estonian journalist who asked her question in Russian, Putin mockingly imitated her Estonian accent, then put on a show of anger: "What else are we supposed to do, maybe condemn the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact every year? We consider this topic closed, and will not return to it. We [condemned] it once, and that was enough."

Putin then proceeded to give a breathtaking version of Russia-Baltic relations: Under the Brest-Litovsk treaty in 1918, he said, "Russia turned over some of its territories to Germany," including the territories of what became the Baltic states. "In 1939, Germany returned them to us, and these territories joined (voshli v sostav) the Soviet Union." Consequently, "in 1941 [sic] we could not possibly have occupied them, inasmuch as they were already a part of the USSR." "Whether this was good or bad, such was history. It was a secret deal, the small states being a currency of exchange. Such were the realities of life, regrettably," Putin concluded, though not before citing "Europe's past colonial policies" and slavery in America (Russian TV Channel One, Interfax, May 9, 10).

Putin's version implies that the Baltic states were never independent countries, but mere territories passing from hand to hand, and that they "joined" the USSR by consent. More broadly, it demonstrates a completely value-free approach to issues of crime of aggression, war crimes, and Soviet totalitarianism. While also displaying ignorance of history, Putin's version is partly informed by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement of May 5, which similarly claimed that the Soviet Union could not possibly have occupied what it already possessed (Interfax, May 5).

The whole article is here.

I'll be coming back to this subject, and will also be looking at its relation to current "CIS"-related topics, including Uzbekistan.