Russia’s Duma is considering a new law that will expand the definition of treason, a move lawyers and activists fear portends a revival of the punitive Soviet approach to dissent. Activists and lawyers suggest that the law is being pushed through in anticipation of increased political dissent and social unrest prompted by the financial crisis and the Kremlin’s economic mismanagement.
Russian law currently defines treason as “hostile actions intended to damage the security of the Russian Federation against foreign threats.” The amended definition would include “rendering financial, material, consultative, or other assistance to a foreign state, a foreign or international organization, or representatives thereof in activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation, including its constitutional system, its sovereignty, its territorial integrity and statehood.”
The proposed law “threatens to revive the Soviet-era habit of placing under suspicion anyone who has contact with foreigners“, the London Times suggests.
‘It is a hint for people to sit tight and keep quiet,’ said lawyer Anna Stavitskaya, who represents the family of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Investigators would enjoy wide discretion in interpreting the new law, she said.
Russia’s ruling elite appears jittery, anxious at the political implications of the financial crisis that is “sending tremors through Russia’s fragile social contract“. The proposed bill signals that the Kremlin is planning to tighten its grip on dissent, Cathy Young reports.
“Is it too much of a stretch to think that this law could be directed against an opposition newspaper or website,” Young asks, “or a human rights group critical of the government, which has received assistance from the USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, or the Soros Foundation?”
She quotes the following report in the Moscow Times:
In a rare example of grassroots political power, angry protests by drivers prompted lawmakers in the far eastern Primorye region on Monday to ask the country’s two leaders to delay raising import duties on foreign cars. The Primorye regional legislature, led by United Russia deputies, voted unanimously Monday to ask President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to postpone the tariffs, which take effect on Jan. 11, according to a decree signed by Putin. Thousands of drivers took to the streets in several far eastern cities and towns Sunday to protest the tariffs, blocking traffic, clashing with police, openly insulting Putin and Medvedev and even calling on Putin to resign.
She also links to reports in the Russian daily Kommersant about similar protests in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono opened the Bali Democracy Forum today, at which some 33 states are expected to address the theme of “Building and Consolidating Democracy: A Strategic Agenda for Asia”. The forum would not promote any single form of democracy, said Hassan Wirajuda, Jakarta’s foreign minister. “Instead we are hoping Asian countries can learn and share experience about democracy from one another,” Hassan said.
“Indonesia’s transformation offers examples to other Asian states of how to consolidate a vibrant democracy,” writes Joshua Kurlantzick, amidst a widespread anti-democratic backlash in the region. In the 1990s, he notes, Asian reformers identified with the United States and “its blossoming democracy promotion outfits, like the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.”
But a toxic blend of corruption, crony capitalism and a failure to develop institutions capable of channeling protest into peaceful channels has discredited democracy. This has provided an opening for quasi-authoritarian forces to offer an ostensibly attractive alternative, with Russia and China “advertising their undemocratic systems … as development models that Asian countries should emulate.”
Asia has also seen the unwelcome emergence of “uncivil society” movements in Thailand and the Philippines, notes Mark R Thompson. “Elite groups have met challenges to their hegemony by claiming to speak in the name of civil society,” he observes, citing the incivility of business-based NGOs and the authoritarian Thailand’s “network monarchy” alliance of bureaucrats, military and Bangkok middle class.
Indonesia’s upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections will determine whether the world’s largest Muslim democracy continues along the path of “uneven but nonetheless substantial reform”, notes Greg Fealy. But he cautions that resilient residues of the country’s authoritarian past are still evident in its culture. “Patronage, clientelism, corruption, intimidation, monopolistic and oligarchic practices, and primordialism remain widespread and continue to distort and undermine further democratic consolidation,” he warns.
The U.S. should maintain financial and moral assistance to Arab reformers, despite concerns that such support provokes a backlash, a new analysis concludes. “The value of programs like the Middle East Partnership Initiative should not be discounted just because they are a legacy of the Bush administration,” say Isobel Coleman and Tamara Cofman Wittes.
“In the end, American support - both direct (through the U.S. government) and indirect (through the National Endowment for Democracy and regional foundations) - should be offered to Arab activists, leaving them free to decide whether they can afford to accept it,” they argue.
Despite the shortcomings of the Freedom Agenda, “regional activists credit American attention to democracy and human rights for creating an umbrella under which they can better press their own demands for change.”
There is considerable scope to marry reform imperatives to wider interests through new partnerships that engage regional states while also empowering independent actors. In Egypt, for example, a strategic dialogue on economic development should be broadened to include counter-terrorism and human rights issues, while new economic assistance should be conditional on Cairo meeting benchmarks for reform.
Hosni Mubarak’s regime has tried to impede democracy assistance to local activists or divert funds to GONGOs and the next president “should insist on the principle that the U.S. government must be the one to determine the recipients of its democracy and governance funding.” Democracy assistance funding should also take advantage of renewed activism in Egypt’s labor movement.
Even in Saudi Arabia, there is potential for promoting a human development agenda and supporting the country’s emerging civil society groups. “While there is potential for backlash against U.S. involvement, reformers within the kingdom are best placed to judge, and they still view U.S. support as important to maintain momentum behind reform initiatives,” they write.
While noting “no Arab leader has made either an unqualified commitment to or any significant progress toward full-fledged electoral democracy,” Coleman and Wittes believe it is imperative that the U.S. continue to sustain support for reform in moderate Arab states like Jordan and Morocco, even if local, bottom-up initiatives will be critical to genuine democratization.
“Wherever possible, reform should be encouraged by supporting the demands of indigenous activists and by using international norms, positive incentives, and societal and cultural exchange and learning,” they conclude.
The success of the misnamed People’s Alliance for Democracy in forcing the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat confirms earlier predictions of a “creeping coup“. Indeed, the pro-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) denounced the Constitutional Court’s decision a “judicial coup”. The PAD is widely considered to be a front for the unholy trinity of Bangkok’s monarchy, military and bureaucratic elite.
But most analysts suggest that the resignation will not resolve the stark social and political polarization underpinning the current unrest and could yet take an ominously authoritarian turn. As political economist Thitinan Pongsudhirak noted in a recent Journal of Democracy article, Thailand’s democratic institutions remain “too weak, divided, and politicized”.
“The stakes for Thailand are very high”, says Brian Joseph, the National Endowment for Democracy’s Director for South and Southeast Asia. He explained the background to the recent protests on the News Hour last night. Download the podcast here.
You can also read the transcript or watch the video here.
Despite the current democratic recession, democracy has no global rivals as a model of government, argues Larry Diamond. Yet the Third Wave generated many new democracies that are not only performing poorly, but remain “illiberal“, he contends in a feature for the Center for International Private Enterprise.
“Outside of the long-industrialized democracies, only a few countries have achieved a stable and liberal democracy of reasonably high quality,” Diamond observes. Three factors will determine the feasibility of a fourth wave of democracy:
- “gradual economic development that lifts levels of education, information, and autonomous citizen power and organization”;
- “the gradual integration of countries into a global economy, society, and political order in which democracy remains the dominant value and the most attractive type of political system”; and:
- democracy must deliver:
The new democracies that have come into being since 1974 must demonstrate that they can solve governance problems and meet citizens’ expectations for freedom, justice, a better life, and a fairer society. If democracies do not work better to contain crime and corruption, generate economic growth, relieve economic inequality, and secure justice and freedoms, sooner or later, people will lose faith and embrace (or tolerate) non-democratic alternatives.
The 2nd edition of CIPE’s web-based OverseasREPORT, is now posted online, featuring success stories from more than 20 CIPE programs around the world, including items on Small Business in Azerbaijan, Pakistani Corporate Citizenship, Entrepreneurship Programs for Egyptian Students, Tunisian Corporate Governance, Jordanian Political Parties, Best Practices in Eastern Europe Iraq’s Media and Private Sector Partnering.
The Uzbek government’s decision to withdraw from the pro-Russian Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) is not only a signal of Tashkent’s commitment to the “Uzbek Path.” It also suggests “a new openness to the West” that may eventually generate openings for reform, says Uzbek reformer Gulam Umarov.
Umarov cited the case of his father Sanjar Umarov, the former head of the Sunshine Uzbekistan Opposition Alliance, amongst others, to insist that it is “extremely important” that human rights be on the agenda of any dialog with one of the world’s most repressive regimes, he told a recent Washington meeting co-hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy and the Center for International Private Enterprise. His father’s condition remains a cause for grave concern after 13 months in solitary confinement.
“Those classified as political prisoners, such as practicing Muslims or government critics, face ill-treatment and torture” while in Uzbek prisons, says human rights activist Mutabar Tojibaeva, herself a political prisoner for several years. “They are subject to verbal abuse, as well as physical and psychological pressure. Prison workers treat them like animals.”
Uzbek dissidents are limited by the realities in Uzbekistan today. Despite these limitations, they seek a dialog that will be effective in assisting with processes that ”open, reform and democratize” the country, such as the programs to improve transparency and minimize corruption on which he had worked with CIPE.
The country had experienced a cycle of tentative openings to the West followed by repression, said Miriam Lanskoy, NED’s senior program officer for Central Asia and the Caucasus. But the strategic partnership agreement with the U.S. was short-lived and the regime had stifled domestic civil society and pressured foreign NGOs to leave even before the Andijon massacre.
Civil society activists had been jailed and exiled, NGOs subsumed into GONGOs, and the few remaining independent actors were limited to “pushing the envelope” of incremental political reform. Youth activism was one sign of hope, said Lanskoy, a welcome contrast to the graying of the human rights community elsewhere in Eurasia.
The regime has a dedicated Center for Monitoring Mass Communications for violations of Uzbek laws and cultural norms. Since 2002, over 10,000 political prisoners have been held on charges such as “encroachment on the constitutional order,” “anti-state activities,” and “infringing the honor and dignity of the president”. In one of his “more comic attempts to disguise his regime from the prying eyes of the west, Karimov once established his own human rights organization, but when its president went to Bishkek for a conference, had him abducted and charged with sedition.”
Engaging such authoritarian regimes is a delicate business. Human rights groups condemned as “a disgrace” the visit of the head of the Uzbek Security Service to Germany in October on the same day that an Uzbek court sentenced a prominent dissident to 10 years in prison on politically motivated charges. Azam Turgunov, the head of an unregistered rights group called Mazlum was sentenced days after the European Union praised Uzbekistan for its “improving rights record.”
But German officials respond to such criticisms by insisting that long term engagement with Uzbek officials and the Uzbek military is a far more fruitful strategy for promoting reforms than publicly criticizing Tashkent, notes analyst Alexander Cooley. In dealing with Uzbekistan, as with other authoritarian Central Asian states, the West must maintain a “precarious balance” between strategic access and democratic values, he argues.
Maintaining such a balance is further complicated by Russia’s “pushback against the democracy promotion agenda of the West”, contesting the spread of transatlantic democratic institutions, and the Central Asian states’ alternative regional mechanism in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Cooley advocates “a more coordinated and reinvigorated transatlantic” approach on the part of the West “to promote both its interests and its democratic values throughout this changing and now critically important part of the world.”
The emergence of a non-democratic model of development could have an appeal to states in the Middle East, a senior U.S. intelligence official suggested yesterday. China and, to some extent, Russia, arguably represent an alternative to liberal democratic market economies, National Intelligence Council chairman Thomas Fingar told a meeting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Previewing the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2025 report, due to be published later this week, he noted that the Middle East and Africa, amongst other places, “historically made the wrong choice in the ’50s and ’60s for the centralized, authoritarian model of development and paid a price.”
The short-lived unipolar moment of U.S. global hegemony had ended. “The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished,” Fingar said. America’s leadership was eroding “at an accelerating pace” in “political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas.”
One consequence of the shift of economic power from West to East is the “end of the Atlantic era”, says French analyst Laurent Cohen-Tanugi. This has profound implications since these new powers are “not only outside the West; they are often non-democratic“, he observes in his new book, The Shape of the World To Come: Charting the Geopolitics of a New Century.
The transatlantic partnership remains central to the West maintaining leadership. “Europe and the United States and generally all democratic and, even beyond that, moderate countries must work together…in trying to shape this multipolar world in an orderly way,” he contends.
The “color revolutions” ushered in democratic transitions, but also prompted a pronounced backlash against freedom of association worldwide, according to a new report from Freedom House. Governments are taking calculated action to restrict nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups and independent trade unions, notes Freedom of Association Under Threat: The New Authoritarians’ Offensive Against Civil Society.
“There are reasons to believe that the current round of restrictions is not a passing phenomenon,” said Arch Puddington, Freedom House director of research. “These setbacks can largely be traced to the emergence of a new breed of authoritarian leaders who employ repressive tactics that are much more sophisticated than those used in the past.”
From 2004-2007, freedom of association deteriorated in almost every region except Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, with the most pronounced declines in the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America, while associational rights were already endangered in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East/North Africa region. The analysis draws on the organization’s Freedom in the World data and includes reports on countries where associational rights are particularly threatened: Algeria, China, Colombia, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
“The officers of NGOs are seldom arrested, placed on trial, sent to gulags, exiled, or murdered, though all these things do happen from time to time,” the report states. “Today’s authoritarians instead rely on legalistic or bureaucratic methods to hobble civil society,” including tax investigations and funding restrictions. “And because the drive against associational rights is conducted largely without violence, it evokes little notice from the outside world.”
The report notes that organized labor has experienced severe constraints on associational rights since the end of the Cold War, not least in Latin America where it confronts a range of challenges, from right-wing death squads in Colombia to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez’s “tried and true Marxist tactic of establishing parallel unions in an effort to bring the labor movement under his political control.”
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- The “closing of political space” in Ethiopia was raised on a recent trip to Addis Ababa by David J. Kramer, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. He drew attention to a draft legislation on civil society organizations that will impose a 10 % threshold of foreign financing and 30% cap on administrative overhead. “Restrictions on the kinds of activities that would be affected by this legislation - basically, any organizations that are considered foreign or receive foreign financing that engage in human rights issues or issues dealing with the rights of women or the rights of children or the disabled, or conflict resolution - all of those things would be at risk under this legislation,” he noted.
- Idasa, the Southern African democracy group, has called for the release of Mario Masuku, leader of Swaziland’s banned Pudemo party who was detained three days ago under anti-terrorism legislation. Masuku has played a “leading role in promoting democracy and free political association and activity,” Idasa notes.
"Great Powers need to radiate influence and where else can they radiate influence of not in their own neighborhood?" Source: wikimedia
In a period of uncertainty, with “a new global equilibrium emerging from the post-post-Cold War”, it is imperative that the U.S. accommodate Russia’s interests wherever they don’t conflict with its own. So argued Thomas Graham, until recently Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian Affairs, addressing a meeting on U.S.-Russia relations in Washington this week.
Relations with Russia should be driven by U.S. national interests and on the critical issues of nuclear proliferation, anti-terrorism and climate change, Russia’s engagement is “indispensable”, he argued. U.S.-Russian relations are being poisoned by events in the former Soviet space, an area which is the source of Russia’s geo-political weight and essential to its sense of security.
“Great Powers need to radiate influence and where else can they radiate influence of not in their own neighborhood?” Graham asked.
The ‘90s were “an aberration, not the rule” for Russia, as far as its new ruling elite is concerned, his fellow panelist Andrei Kortunov of the Moscow-based Eurasia Foundation argued. The assumption that Russia would inevitably evolve towards a Western-style liberal market democracy is no longer current. The financial crisis confirms the Kremlin’s orthodoxy that there are “alternative development trajectories” - a discourse familiar within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - and “alternative forms of social and political mobilization” to those of free markets and open societies.
“The weakening of the traditional democratic model of development has dealt a serious blow to the ideal of political democracy, which has suffered from the economic success of authoritarian nations,” argues Sergej Karaganov of Moscow’s State University Higher School of Economics. “Indeed, at least for the time being, the one and only shining path for humanity has been replaced by multiple paths.”
The Kremlin’s message after the invasion of Georgia is “take into account our interests or we’ll draw the line in blood,” said Fiona Hill, an analyst with the National Intelligence Council. Russia’s neighbors had learned two lessons: don’t antagonize Moscow and the West is unreliable.
Russia was low on the U.S. list of foreign policy priorities because, unlike U.S.-China relations, there is no economic base, suggested Andrei Zolotov of Russia Profile and Harvard University. In the absence of compelling economic interests, the relationship remains vulnerable to ideological considerations and third country interests. Moscow was understandably mistrustful of the West because of the “broken promises” of the ‘90s and the encroachments of NATO expansion.
Yet other observers are less ready to buy the Kremlin’s please of victimhood or defer to the imperatives of realpolitik. The Hudson Institute’s David Satter dismisses Moscow’s fears of Western encirclement. “Russians understand that NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine poses no military threat but are loath to give their real reason for opposition–which is that the example of democracy in former Soviet republics could inspire demands for democracy in Russia itself,” he notes.
Nor should the new U.S. president treat the Russian leader as a friend. Just as “the emphasis on Boris Yeltsin as the symbol of ‘democracy’ led the U.S. to ignore Russia’s complete criminalization–and to become complicit in it, in the eyes of Russians,” so “President Bush’s supposed friendship with Putin freed Putin to build an authoritarian regime and pursue a genocidal war in Chechnya without fear of U.S. political pressure or moral censure.”
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe appears poised to defy the will of the people and regional mediators by forming a new government in an attempt to marginalize opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. His move comes after the latest failed mediation effort by the country’s neighbors in the Southern African Development Community.
Attempts to reach a negotiated settlement have foundered on Mugabe’s insistence on retaining control of the home affairs ministry which oversees the police and monitors elections. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change rejected a SDAC proposal to form a unity government and share the disputed ministry with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF.
The MDC leader said SADC lacked the “courage and decency to look Robert Mugabe in the eyes” and demand that he share power.
“Tsvangirai was hoping the SADC would put the MDC in charge of home affairs and finance,” according to one European diplomat. “They got the finance portfolio - but with a desk and a chair and not much else. As far as home affairs is concerned, it is clear that Zanu do not want to hand over control of the police to the MDC.”
Pro-democracy activists protesting across the country today were attacked by riot police. Amid growing signs that the authorities are preparing to crack down on the opposition, the leader of the National Constitutional Assembly, a pro-democracy NGO, was detained in advance of the protests.
The protesters were calling for “a transitional arrangement that will urgently work towards addressing the desperate humanitarian catastrophe in the country,” according to one student leader.
Activists have been dismayed at SDAC’s failure to force a solution. “The SADC bloc leaders have shown to be an Old Boys association that stands by any leader in office and ignore the opposition,” said Wellington Chibebe, secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
“This was inevitable because the two will never mix, like water and oil as the two parties have a totally different agenda,” he said.
Amnesty International recently reported that 180 people had been killed and at least 9000 injured since March.
