Insulting the Snowman

On March 21, 2008 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia police arrested five activists for insulting a snowman.

Protesting a series of raids on the homes of non-violent government critics, including against staff members of the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation for the Promotion of Tolerance the previous day, a small group of young activists built a snowman outside the prosecutor’s office. They attached a sign to the snowman that read “The Biggest Extremist.”

The protesters were calling attention to the Russian authorities’ repeated use of the law that is designed to combat violent extremism to prosecute and harass non-violent government critics, including human rights defenders.

The Nizhny Novgorod police did not appear to share the joke. They took five of the protesters into detention saying that they had “insulted the snowman.”

The now released detainees have lodged a complaint for unlawful detention against the Chief of Police. They do not expect much follow up from the authorities.

The supposedly insulted snowman deserves to be remembered as a symbol of the absurd lengths to which the Russian authorities will distort the law in order to stifle dissent. This repressive zeal is having dire consequences for those who dare to speak out against Russia’s increasingly authoritarian rulers. Most recently, on March 20, police raided the offices of the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation for the Promotion of Tolerance, confiscated the computers and sealed the premises, paralyzing the organization’s work. Staff members of the organization believe that the authorities are seeking to build a criminal case against them, labeling them as extremists for their work seeking to expose human rights violations in the context of the conflict in Chechnya and the North Caucasus.

Just as we know that the snowman was not offended, human rights activists who seek to report the truth about human rights violations are not extremists. We wish that Russian police and prosecutors would remember that.

Is the Bush Administration Pushing Pakistan to Abandon the Rule of Law?

March 5, 2008

For months Human Rights First has been urging the Bush administration to speak up in support of the dozens of senior judges ousted by Musharraf last November. Then, after the elections, we began hearing news reports that the Bush Administration was in fact urging Pakistani politicians to abandon efforts to return them to the bench.

As part of our effort to get to the bottom of this, we urged Senators to ask Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte about this matter in a February 28 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Feingold (D-Wisconsin) did just that:

FEINGOLD:

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told a January 29 House subcommittee hearing, quote, "We have urged the political leaders and other leaders in Pakistan to focus on the need for an independent judiciary. I think it's fair to assume they won't really address it seriously until after the election," unquote.
However, immediately after the elections last week, rather than pressing this point, administration officials were reportedly pressuring the new Pakistani leadership to stop their calls for reinstatement of the judges dismissed by Musharraf when he declared martial law.
So what is the administration's policy regarding reinstatement of the judges? And is it consistent with the Bush administration's stated support for democratic institutions?

NEGROPONTE

As far as the question of the judicial reform, this is something that we believe the Pakistanis themselves are going to have to sort out, and I think that it's something that will be taken up in their legislature, and we will watch that discussion with interest.
And we're certainly not trying to block any changes of any particular kind, nor do we have some kind of prescription or formula for how they should go about reforming or improving their own judicial system.
FEINGOLD

Does the administration have a policy regarding the reinstatement of those judges? Are we asking for that or not?
NEGROPONTE:

We have been silent on the subject. . . . To the best of my knowledge, right.

Negroponte’s first answer is typical of the Bush Administration’s response on the question of the judges: vague support for judicial independence and sudden interest in Pakistan’s autonomy after months of trying to broker political deals and, in the views of many Pakistanis, propping up Musharraf at any cost. His second answer is the most explicit to date about the failure to back reinstatement of the judges, and it comes with that interesting caveat.

The media took note of the interesting exchange. A front-page New York Times article noted, “Mr. Negroponte refused to call for the reinstatement of the judges dismissed last year by Mr. Musharraf when he imposed emergency rule. ‘We have been silent on this subject,’ he said. Then he added, ‘to the best of my knowledge.’”

The AP ran an article that cited Human Rights First’s response to Negroponte’s comments: “After the Senate hearing, a rights group, Human Rights First, expressed disappointment that the Bush administration has not pushed Musharraf to reinstate judges. Aaron Zisser, a member of the group, said Pakistan should immediately reinstate the judges, and ‘U.S. foreign policy, including its aid relationship with Pakistan, should support these measures.’”

Reuters also described the exchange in detail in an article that began, “The United States backs the restoration of an independent judiciary in Pakistan, but has no position on whether judges purged by President Pervez Musharraf should be reinstated, a senior diplomat said on Thursday.” It further noted that “U.S. senators in Washington on Thursday expressed concern the Bush administration had backed away from its insistence on an independent judiciary and appeared to be siding with Musharraf in his refusal to reinstate the judges. . . . [Negroponte] rejected the notion that Washington preferred one side over another in Pakistan's debate over the judiciary reform question.” The headline of the article captured the inconsistency of U.S. policy neatly: “U.S. backs Pakistan judicial reform and mum on judges.”

In Pakistan, a popular English-language daily, The Dawn, wrote, “Senator [Feingold] noted that instead of siding with the judges the Bush administration was pressurising the new Pakistani leadership to stop their calls for reinstatement of the judges.”

As Pakistan moves ahead in its efforts to form a new government, we’ll continue to track this important question.

The Brutal Consequences of Unchecked Power

February 12, 2007
For brazen disregard of minimal standards of human decency few things match the Russian government’s vindictive treatment of Vasily Alexanyan, a former vice-president of the Yukos energy conglomerate, currently in prison awaiting trial for alleged money laundering, dying from AIDS. The authorities have been refusing to provide him with the essential life saving medication he needs to treat his illness in an apparent effort to force him to testify against his former Yukos colleagues.

Alexanyan contracted tuberculosis while in prison and has lost his sight. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly called on the Russian authorities to allow him to receive the treatment he needs in a properly equipped medical clinic.

At the end of January, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former Yukos head, declared a hunger strike to protest the denial of treatment to Alexanyan. Khodorkovsky began his hunger strike after being told of Alexanyan's testimony before the Supreme Court, in which he stated that his interrogators said that he would not receive medical attention unless he agreed to provide evidence against Khodorkovsky and others of his Yukos colleagues.

Under mounting international pressure, Alexanyan was eventually moved out of pre-trial detention on February 7, but his lawyers do not know where he is now being held or what, if any treatment he is receiving.

The gruesome victimization of Alexanyan is an extreme example of the kind of extralegal measures pursued by the Russian authorities against Khodorkovsky and his associates for years. The Yukos defendants have been made into the public scapegoats for the economic dislocation of the 1990s, a period that President Putin and his supporters like to contrast with the “stability and prosperity” of the Putin years.

The extent to which Putin deserves credit for Russia’s recent rapid economic growth is the subject of considerable debate, freely outside of Russia and somewhat more circumspectly inside.

Whatever the economic crimes of the Yukos directors, and it is unlikely that in the fevered atmosphere of the sell-off of state assets after the collapse of the Soviet Union they observed every particular of the law, there is little doubt that they are the victims of selective prosecution. Other oligarchs who enriched themselves enormously in the 1990s have managed to retain their fortunes and to maintain close mutually advantageous relations with the Kremlin.

What differentiated Khodorkovsky from other oligarchs was his determination to create alternative power centers to the centralized authority of the presidency. He did this through supporting opposition political parties and through the Open Russia Foundation, which served as a domestic source of support for independent civil society organizations throughout Russia, including many human rights organizations.

Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment in 2003, his subsequent prosecution and conviction and the break up of his company has provided an exemplary lesson of the consequences of daring to challenge President Putin’s increasingly centralized and authoritarian grip on power. One result has been to make Russian human rights organizations more dependent on foreign assistance to support their work, which has conveniently provided the Kremlin with another pretext to criticize them, for serving foreign interests and therefore being anti-Russian.

Faced with a torrent of hostile propaganda, much of it orchestrated from the Kremlin through state controlled television channels, human rights activists are habitually identified in the media with oligarchs and foreign powers, and therefore lumped into an undifferentiated mass of hostile forces that wish Russia ill.

While the world marvels at Putin’s achievements as a consequential leader, and western democracies adapt uncomfortably to the proximity of a newly assertive latent great power, Russian human rights activists feel increasingly beleaguered as the pincers of the super-empowered repressive forces of the state move against them.

Incidents like the slow torture of Alexanyan at least show in clear light the consequences of power unchecked by an independent judiciary or any countervailing force.

Shopworn Excuses From Egypt

January 30, 2008:

Are international human rights agreements worth the paper they are printed on? Recent statements by the Egyptian government with respect to its human rights commitments under the Association Agreement it signed with the European Union in 2004 might seem to suggest that such agreements have little meaning.

The Egyptian government reacted furiously to a resolution passed by the European Parliament on January 17 criticizing Egypt for human rights violations. Even though the resolution contained nothing that the Egyptian government hasn’t heard many times before, the foreign ministry denounced the vote and the Speaker of the Egyptian parliament, Fathi Sorour, protested what he characterized as interference in Egypt’s domestic affairs. Sorour promised retaliatory action and sure enough, the Egyptians canceled a scheduled meeting of the EU-Egypt subcommittee on political affairs, the channel for dialogue between the EU and Egypt on human rights issues.

It seemed to matter little to the Egyptian government that as recently as March 2007 it had agreed to make a priority in its talks with the EU: “enhancing the effectiveness of institutions entrusted with strengthening democracy, the rule of law and the promotion of human rights in all their aspects.” One is bound to ask how canceling the meeting where human rights issues are supposed to be discussed equates with promoting human rights.

I recently had the opportunity to ask a group of leaders of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party about their views on human rights promotion in Egypt and some of the violations, like the closure of human rights organizations, mentioned in the EU resolution. I was a bit perplexed to receive three different answers, but none of them were as vituperative as those prompted by the EU resolution. One official assured me that the party was committed to human rights and the rule of law and while violations might still occur, this was not the result of any policy. Another took a different tack, pleading for more time and arguing that it was unfair to hold Egypt to “western standards.” A third was more combative. He suggested that “there is another side” and advised me to be more considerate of the need to combat the threat of terrorism and Egypt’s many contributions to combating this threat.

Sorour’s fulminations about foreign interference constitute a fourth approach and while his remarks might be singled out for their absurdity and their somewhat sinister appeal to chauvinistic nationalism, none of these responses provide any reason for confidence in the Egyptian government’s adherence to its commitments to promote human rights.

Governments enter into solemn human rights commitments and then proceed to violate them brazenly, while making threadbare excuses and pleading special circumstances. It was ever thus, and it would be wrong to suggest that the Egyptian government is exceptional in its delinquency.
Nonetheless, there is a growing tension between ever more precisely targeted human rights agreements entered into by governments, of which the EU association agreements are among the prime examples, and the continuing failure of parties to these agreements to implement them. This lack of implementation brings human rights themselves and the institutions designed to promote them into disrepute, especially among people who are suffering from protracted deprivation of their basic rights and freedoms, like the people of Egypt.

This mounting tension creates obligations on both sides. Governments, like Egypt, that freely enter into such agreements should take their obligations more seriously –– no one is suggesting that human rights promotion is always easy, but these types of shopworn excuses undermine any effort to work together to achieve mutually agreed upon goals. Institutions, like the EU, responsible for the integrity of mechanisms created under their auspices, need to find more ways to encourage governments to abide by their commitments, and to deter them from shirking their obligations.