Laughter and applause are now subversive acts in Belarus...

A draft law published Friday prohibits the “joint mass presence of citizens in a public place that has been chosen beforehand, including an outdoor space, and at a scheduled time for the purpose of a form of action or inaction that has been planned beforehand and is a form of public expression of the public or political sentiments or protest”, wrote Ilya Mouzykantskii, of the NYT...
Hence in Belarus, Europe's last extant dictatorship, a pedestrian may be arrested by the authorities, for walking down the street, even if all he or she is doing is...walking down the street.
One's mere presence may be construed, at the authorities' discretion, as a form of public expression, which is illegal in Belarus...
Anyone rounded up is liable to be held up to fifteen days in administrative detention...
Since fundamental civil rights such as the right to protest are routinely denied in Belarus, and those brazen enough to insist on exercising such rights beaten, harassed and arrested, activists 
use Facebook and Twitter to invite opposition supporters to attend silent demonstrations.
Participants simply walk together, clap their hands in unison, or as Mouzykantskii indicated, have their cellphone alarms go off together...
President Alexander Lukashenko, reelected yet again after a rigged poll last December, considers these forms of expression to be subversive...(the protetsts that followed his last reelection were brutally repressed. Three opposition presidential candidates arrested in December are still in jail).
Last week, on the seventeenth anniversary of his rule, one such silent demonstration was organized...
After 17 years in power, Lukashenko has brought the country to a catastrophic situation, where people can't even clap their hands, one protester, Artur Stankevich told AP.
Some forty demonstrators were arrested, the security apparatus obviously keen to ensure that Minsk does not become another Cairo or Tunis...
Action and inaction, laughter and applause, coordinated cell phone ringings are now illegal in Belarus...
What will come next? 
Singing, walking one's dog, or maybe smoking a cigarette on a park bench...?
The sheer absurdity of such measures would be laughable, were those accused of such grievous offenses not routinely beaten and abused...
These brutal and inane forms of repression have no place in Europe in the twenty-first century...
The European Union should at the very least, tighten its sanctions against the Lukashenko regime, to ensure that we do not facilitate in any way the brutal repression taking place there... 
Hopefully, the brave Belarus people shall do the rest...
(the photograph of the arrest of a demonstrator in Belarus is by AFP)

Fragile and reversible..?

Invited to speak at the Forum for New Diplomacy in Paris, last week, General David Petraeus, former Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, and now Director of the CIA, considered that NATO’s military campaign in Afghanistan was making progress.
The number of insurgent attacks had decreased in eight of the last twelve weeks, compared to last year, for instance.
Back in March, General Petraeus told the Senate Armed Forces Services Committee that the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.
However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible.
The general thought fit, nevertheless, to reiterate the latter assessment at the Forum in Paris.
Those gains remain fragile and reversible, he stated.
The events of the last few weeks clearly evince that the general was wise to be cautious.
On July 12, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan President’s half brother, leader of the Kandahar Provincial Council, was assassinated by a member of his staff inside his own home.
The assassin, Sardar Mohammed, was then killed by the victim’s bodyguards.
The Taliban took responsibility for the deed.
Sardar Mohammed is a friend of ours, and we gave him the task a long time ago to infiltrate and reach Ahmed Wali Karzai, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, told The Christian Science Monitor.
Ahmed Wali Karzai was the most powerful figure in the Kandahar region.
He was the president of Kandahar. The governor, police chiefs and other officials all had to discuss things with him before they made a decision, a prominent provincial figure, Abdul Samat Zarih, told The Guardian.
A US official told the paper that his demise was first and foremost a setback for Afghanistan as a whole…
Karzai was active on many fronts.
He had long been suspected of thriving from Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade, but also of being on the CIA’s payroll.
In fact, he rented Mullah Omar’s former compound on the outskirts of Kandahar to the CIA and US Special Forces.
AWK (Ahmed Wali Karzai) operates, parallel to formal government structures, through a network of political clans that use state institutions to protect and enable licit and illicit enterprises, concluded one US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
In addition, he seems to have been involved in covert reconciliation talks with the Taliban…
His elimination was a clear blow to the President, and his Western patrons, as well as to the former’s authority in the country.
Five days later, Jan Mohammed Khan, President Karzai’s adviser on tribal affairs, was shot and killed in his home in western Kabul.
A member of the Afghan Parliament, Mohammed Ashim, was also killed in the attack.
Khan had previously been governor of Oruzgan province, dominated by the Pashtun, from 2002 until 2006, when he was forced to resign due to his alleged links to drug traffickers.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, stated that he was murdered because he had been aiding US forces in planning and executing night raids against Taliban militants, raids that have been effective but also very unpopular and denounced by President Karzai himself.
Last Wednesday, the mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, was killed outside his office.
The assassin, concealing explosives in his turban, blew himself up next to the official.
US ambassador in Kabul, Ryan C. Crocker, declared that this series of assassinations did not demonstrate a resurgence of the Taliban’s capacity to strike at the heart of the Karzai regime, on the contrary.
Clearly these are horrific attacks, but they can be signs of weakness, he told the NYT.
Hamidi was among those slated to replace Ahmed Wali Karzai after his murder…
The mayor may have antagonized the Taliban by trying to regain possession of land in the north of the city that he claimed they had been occupying illegally…
On Thursday, or the next day, Taliban militants attacked the compound of Matiullah Khan, the nephew of Jan Mohammad Khan, and a powerful provincial leader in southern Afghanistan, located in Tirin Kot, capital of Oruzgan, north of Kandahar,
A car filled with explosives rammed through the gate of another compound, the Governor’s, and exploded, partially destroying the maternity ward of a hospital located next door. Ten infants and three women were killed.
The attack on Matiullah’s compound, home to the Highway Battalion, his militia, occurred simultaneously.
We have very good security here so they were not able to enter my battalion’s camp, so they attacked the television station instead, Khan, who escaped unscathed, told The Guardian.
Omaid Khapalwak, who worked for the BBC was killed in that attack against the Afghan Television building.
All in all, 21 people were killed, in addition to the perpetrators, and ISAF (allied forces) participation was necessary to restore order.
If the foreign troops hadn’t responded, the fighting would have lasted until morning, one resident told McClatchy, higly critical, apparently, of the local security forces' performance..
Because Khan’s militia controls the highway between Kandahar and Tirin Kot, convoys of supply trucks can reach US and ISAF forces unhindered.
According to The Guardian, Khan charges $1,700 per truck for his services.
Moreover, although his militiamen sometimes support US operations against the Taliban, Khan has been accused of bribing the latter to protect his lucrative activities, which allegedly includes drug trafficking with Ahmed Wali Karzai…
The Taliban are clearly targeting those powerful figures which are nominally allied with the president, and whom he needs to assert his authority in the south of the country, home of the Pashtun and center of the Taliban insurgency…
Eliminating them serves both to undermine Karzai politically but also to discredit him by emphasizing his feebleness: he and his warlords are powerless to prevent the Taliban from attacking whom they please when they please.
No one can protect them, and obviously not, alas, US and ISAF forces whose credibility also dwindles with each attack…
And yet, though purportedly allies and agents of both President Karzai and the West, they have their own agendas to pursue, and constituents and fiefdoms to protect…
As such, their interests do not necessarily coincide with their patrons’.
Promoting Karzai’s government and the West’s nation building and counterinsurgency agenda is not their sole preoccupation and certainly not the paramount one.
Their loyalties are multiple: tribal, economic, provincial, as are their allegiances.
Control of the drug trade also requires their attention.
As such, are they truly allies of Karzai and the West, or their own masters, which we have been compelled to try and co-opt, as we are unable to impose more compliant figures to take their place?
In any case, to base one’s counterinsurgency strategy on allies such as these is a risky proposition at best…
The Afghans will look after their own interests, and do not need us to do so, whatever agenda we may hope to pursue…
What, then, have we accomplished in Afghanistan these last ten years?
We are there to ensure that that country does not once again become a sanctuary to Al Qaeda or other terrorists, Petraeus said in Paris.
This objective has been attained, and the architect of the 9/11 attacks disposed of.
The only way to achieve that is to ensure that the Afghans secure themselves and govern themselves, he added.
That is something that we cannot do on their behalf.
In addition, of the 160 Afghan army battalions, only one is fully operational…
Ten years and billions of dollars to come to this…One battalion!
If, at the very least, we could protect the Afghan people, but we regularly kill innocent civilians, thereby objectively serving the interests and objectives of those we are there to defeat…
Last Wednesday, a French soldier killed three Afghan civilians and wounded three others at a checkpoint in Kapisa, a province in eastern Afghanistan.
A man, a pregnant women as well as a child riding in the car are now dead.
The French officially apologized to President Karzai for the tragic mishap, but the latter simply replied that no apology would be able to bring them back to life
The Taliban’s propaganda department shall undoubtedly make the most of this, and who can blame them for doing so?
Just this month, France lost seven soldiers, one to friendly fire, five in a suicide bomb attack, and one in a firefight.
So far this year, 18 have been killed, the most since France sent forces to Afghanistan ten years ago, and 70 since 2001..
During a formal ceremony at the Invalides in Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy paid them tribute.
You did your duty to the very end, he said, addressing the seven young soldiers, whose coffins rested in the center of the spacious Invalides courtyard, embodying the military virtues of discipline, bravery and honor. You died defending the great cause of freedom.
Yet, are we anywhere nearer to achieving our goals then when we first set foot on Afghan soil ten years ago…?
One prominent French politician, former presidential candidate Ségolène Royal spoke of a useless sacrifice, when describing the death of those seven soldiers.
The prime Minister François Fillon retorted that no one has the right to say that a soldier died in vain if he did so to defend his country and in the pursuit of peace.
And yet, though Royal’s comment was callous, especially for the bereaved, can it be simply dismissed as an opportunistic attack on a political rival?
Alas, I fear not…
Do not the brazen attacks on powerful allies of the Afghan president make a mockery of our efforts and pursuits in Afghanistan?
Is the situation not only reversible, but in the process of being reversed?
What is clear is the following: we shall never be able to build an Afghanistan in our image, nor should we wish to…
We have implicitly admitted as such, since a partial withdrawal of Western forces has been announced.
The US will withdraw 33,000 in the next year or so.
The remaining 88,000 are to leave by late 2014...
The French are to follow suit…
Why wait before sending them all home now, where they belong?
(the photograph above is by AFP)


 

Justice and democracy is the only way...

The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, says his country will "not be intimidated or threatened" by Friday's terror attacks, which left 76 people dead.
The country would "stand firm in defending our values" and the "open, tolerant and inclusive society", he said. "The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.", The Guardian wrote... 
The Norwegians seem to understand that the only viable response to mass murder is not more violence, but more democracy...That is the antidote, and the only one, to violence.
Revenge, it must be said,  is the tool of the feeble and inarticulate...
In this post 9/11 world, only progress, justice and democracy can defeat the extremists, and certainly not military might...
If our values, which we endlessly proffer,  have any significance, then it is in times such as these that we must test them...and uphold them...
And yet, are we worthy of them? Hopefully so, or are the Anders Behring Breivik of this day and age correct to conclude that our present civilization is doomed and must be done away with?
It is in such crises that we must remain true to ourselves...
We can only prevail, for what do the nihilists have to offer?
Yet, shall we be brave enough, shall we have the necessary fortitude to remain who we are, no matter what the consequences?
We are in dire need of leadership...Perhaps, at last, shall we find some, not in Paris, Berlin, London or Washington, alas, but in  Oslo...
(the photograph above is by AFP)

Justice for Natalia Estemirova...

It has been two years already since she was abducted and murdered…
On July 15, 2009, Natalia Estemirova’s body was found in Ingushetia with bullet wounds to the head and chest.
She had been working diligently and tirelessly for Memorial, Russia’s most prominent human rights organization.
In Chechnya (a place Anna Politkovskaya called a small corner of hell), she specialized in cases of kidnapping, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings involving militants and others, cases that should have been investigated by the authorities, had the latter not been complicit…
In Chechnya, however, the security apparatus of Ramzan Kadyrov, the restive republic’s president, is widely suspected of being behind these egregious human rights abuses, part of the brutal campaign to crush the rebellion led by Islamic militants, and instigated by Kadirov’s patron, Vladimir Putin.  
One week before her murder, she had issued a report on an execution involving the Kurchaloi district police that took place in the Chechen village of Akhkinchu-Borzoi.
Was her murder the police’s reply?
Perhaps, for she did have many enemies in Chechnya, particularly among those bent on prosecuting their vicious war against the militants and their relatives on their own terms, contemptuous of both justice and the rule of law…
Two years later, no one has been arrested by the authorities for the man accused  by the latter of having committed the deed, Alkhazur Bashayev, an Islamic militant, was shot dead by Russian security forces in November 2009.
Hence, as far as the Russian authorities are concerned, the case is closed because it has been solved…The murderer having been identified (and killed, conveniently precluding the possibility of a trial), the Chechen authorities are thus absolved of any responsibility in the murder, and, consequently, in any other suspicious killing in the republic...  
Since Natalia Estemirova did not issue any reports involving Mr. Bashayev, Russian human rights activists never took the official version seriously.
As a result, human rights organizations launched their own investigation into the murder in the hope that a credible police inquiry will one day take place…
The report, entitled Two Years After the Murder of Natalia Estemirova: Investigation on the Wrong Track, sponsored by Memorial, the Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, (which published Politkovskaya’s reports on Chechnya) and the International Federation of Human Rights based in Paris, was presented last Thursday by Oleg Orlov, Memorial’s chairman.
According to the report, the examination of DNA samples found on Natalia Estemirova’s body did not match those of Mr. Bashayev or his brother, Anzor Bashayev, also charged in the case.
The latter, currently living in France, provided a DNA sample to Memorial.
The French authorities granted political asylum to Anzor Bashayev, and rebuffed Russian requests to extradite him.
There is no serious proof to really consider the version in which Alkhazur Bashayev is the main suspect in the killing of Natalia Estemirova, Orlov declared.
Human rights groups have accused the Russian authorities of fabricating a case in order to avoid exploring other possibilities, including the following embarrassing and explosive scenario: that officers in Chechnya’s security apparatus, at the behest of the republic’s president, eliminated a dangerous human rights activist that had been relentlessly exposing their criminal activities.
In this particular case it seems Special Forces tried to build a disguise version to take the investigation away from the real murderers, the report claims.
There were very strong circumstances around Estemirova’s murder that suggested that there could have been some official involvement. You know, the threats that had been made against Estemirova and others like her, the threats against Memorial, the timing of the threat, the kinds of crimes that Estemirova had been investigating-all of that pointed to a very strong official interest in seeing some kind of harm done to her, Rachel Denber, of Human Rights Watch, told RFE/RL.
Svetlana Gannushkina, a Memorial activist, presented a copy of the report to Russian President Dimitri Medvedev on July 5...He has yet to issue any comment…
The journalist Tom Parfitt once wrote that Natalia Estemirova was one of the bravest people in Russia. But, she was much more than that, for she knew whom she was confronting, yet plodded on nevertheless…
Significantly, other determined and brave human rights activists inspired by her example yet not deterred by her fate have been pursuing the same cause, justice and the rule of law.
In November 2009, four months after Natalia was killed, a group of Russian lawyers founded the Joint Mobile Group of the Russian Human Rights Organizations in Chechnya (Mobile Group).
The organization sends activists to Chechnya in order to investigate human rights abuses, record testimony and collect evidence.
Two months after its creation, the Mobile Group was asked to investigate the disappearance of Islam Umarpashaev, who was kidnapped from his home in Chechnya, on December 11, 2009, and held at the headquarters of the Chechen Special Task police Force (OMON). There, he claims he was abused and tortured by police officers.
The Mobile Group lodged an official complaint and seized the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. The latter then requested that the Russian government investigate the matter.
Three months after the Mobile Group’s intervention in the case, Umarpashaev was released because, according to one of his abductors, his father went all the way to the European Court and created problems.
The Mobile Group is now demanding that the Russian authorities launch an official and credible investigation into the matter and hold all those who may have broken the law accountable.
In the meantime, and for their own safety, the Umarpashaev family has had to flee Chechnya.
The Caucasian republic, therefore, remains a very dangerous place, particularly for those brazen enough to demand justice.
We have been working in Chechnya for many years. These days, people there are simply paralyzed by fear, not daring to lodge complaints against law enforcement and security officials under de facto control of the Chechnya leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. By persevering in his quest for justice, Islam Umarpashaev is displaying immense courage, Tanya Lokshina, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch, declared.
Needless to say, Mobile Group activists have been threatened and harassed by the Chechen police.
For their efforts, the Mobile Group was awarded the 2011 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
The work of the Joint Mobile Group is an inspirational example of how committed individuals, despite all the pressures that are brought to bear on them, can hold the line in defense of justice, truth and the rule of law. It is the denial of access to justice that enables tyrants to prevail. This is why the work of human rights defenders like the Joint Mobile Group is so important, declared former Irish President Mary Robinson, now President of the Mary Robinson Foundation, upon presenting the award to Igor Kalyapin, founder and head of the organization, at Dublin City Hall.
Two years after Estemirova’s murder, there are more questions than answers about the circumstances surrounding her killing. The Russian authorities need to deliver justice in Estemirova’s case to demonstrate their sincerity about protecting human rights in Chechnya and throughout the Caucasus, Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.
As the Estemirova case has shown (the same, alas can be said concerning the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, killed on October 7, 2006, Putin’s birthday…) the land of Putin, Medvedev and Kadyrov is incapable of delivering justice, and is not the least interested in doing so.
As such, we need not worry concerning their sincerity about protecting human rights.
They are much more interested in power than in justice…
Yet, as the bold and fearless Russian human rights community has demonstrated, the authorities can be compelled to release victims of human rights abuses if there is sufficient pressure exerted from both within and without Russia.
The Russians do seem loath to attract the attention of the European Court of Human Rights and suffer potentially ignominious legal defeats there, and, more generally, in the court of world opinion…
Therefore, it is vital that we all apply pressure on the Russian authorities and compel them to protect human rights activists in the Caucasus, and the Chechen people from violence and abuse…
Amnesty International has launched a campaign demanding justice for Natalia Estemirova.
Let us support this effort (you can sign the petition here).
Do we not owe at least this much to Natalia Estemirova?
(the photograph above is by Vladimir Rodionov RIA/Novosti)