Another group of Crimean Tatars has been sentenced to lengthy prison terms on charges of being members of a banned Islamic group and plotting to seize power in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea that Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden says he has chosen veteran diplomat William Burns, who once served as Ambassador to Russia, to be the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
“Bill Burns is an exemplary diplomat with decades of experience on the world stage keeping our people and our country safe and secure,” Biden said in a statement on January 11.
“He shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect. Ambassador Burns will bring the knowledge, judgment, and perspective we need to prevent and confront threats before they can reach our shores. The American people will sleep soundly with him as our next CIA Director.”
In his 33-year diplomatic career, Burns was also the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and a lead negotiator in the secret talks that paved the way to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under former Democratic President Barack Obama. Burns has said he would restore the nuclear deal with other major global powers that Trump pulled the United States out of in 2018.
The 64-year-old diplomat is currently the president of the international affairs think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has written articles critical of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Biden’s pick to lead the CIA comes as he races to get a national security team into place after the transition was delayed by outgoing President Trump contesting Biden’s November election victory.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Kazakhstan’s ruling Nur Otan party has kept its firm grip on power in parliamentary elections called “uncompetitive” by international observers
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
TBILISI — Billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the leader of Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, says he has decided to quit politics.
Georgia’s wealthiest man said in a statement on January 11 that he decided to leave political activities for good as “my mission has been accomplished” after the Georgian Dream party won parliamentary elections in October 2020.
“I deem my mission to have been accomplished. I have decided to completely withdraw from politics and let go of the reins of power. I am leaving my position as party chairman, as well as the party itself,” Ivanishvili said, adding that in several weeks he will turn 65 years old, another factor in his decision.
Ivanishvili, who has an estimated wealth of about $5.7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, made his fortune in post-Soviet Russia during the 1990s building a collection of iron-ore producers, steel plants, banks, and real estate. He sold the majority of his assets between 2003 and 2006, and the rest in the run-up to his election as Georgian prime minister in October 2012 as leader of the party he created, Georgian Dream.
He left the post in 2013, saying he was quitting politics, but in 2018 again became Georgian Dream’s leader.
The move to step aside may ease tensions in Georgian politics. Ivanishvili is accused by critics of still governing Georgia from behind the scenes and of being close to the Kremlin, something he denies.
The former Soviet republic fought a five-day war against Russia in August 2008, after which Moscow has maintained troops in Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and recognized their independence from Tbilisi.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
An RFE/RL journalist has been expelled from a polling station by local election authorities saying that he did not have a negative COVID test. The incident happened on January 10 in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, as the country held local and parliamentary elections.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Kyrgyz citizens went to the polls on January 10 in an election that is expected to confirm nationalist politician Sadyr Japarov’s hold on power. Voters are also choosing between the current parliamentary system and a presidential system in a referendum. There were technical glitches and delays at some polling stations, including at a university in Bishkek, where officials blamed extreme cold for malfunctioning voting machines. The cold weather was also blamed for low turnout.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A Cuban state-run research institute says it has signed a deal with Iran’s Pasteur Institute to test the Caribbean state’s most advanced COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Iran.
The Finlay Vaccine Institute’s (IFV) January 9 announcement came one day after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned any import of U.S.- or U.K.-produced vaccines, which he called “untrustworthy,” to stop the coronavirus.
Cuba’s IFV said the new agreement cleared the way for a Phase 3 clinical trial in Iran that would help “move forward faster in immunization against COVID-19 in both countries.”
U.S. firms Pfizer and Moderna, as well as Britain’s AstraZeneca, have developed coronavirus vaccines that are already being distributed to millions of people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across the world.
Iran’s Red Crescent said Khamenei’s ban means that 150,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine that have been donated by American philanthropists will no longer be entering the country.
Iran was a major regional hub of COVID-19 transmission early in the pandemic.
It has confirmed nearly 1.3 million cases among its 82 million people, with more than 56,000 deaths making it ninth-worst in the world.
Mansoureh Mills, a researcher for Amnesty International who specializes on Iran, criticized the ban by Iranian authorities on the Western vaccines as “reckless” but “in step with the authorities’ decades-long contempt for human rights, including the right to life and health.”
Tough U.S. sanctions are in place against both the Iranian and Cuban governments, but there are disputes about the extent that such measures — which are supposed leave medicines exempt — might affect vaccine deliveries.
The Americas’ only communist-ruled state has publicly said it wants its entire population immunized with homegrown vaccines by the first half of this year.
Cases within Cuba’s 11 million population are rising, although official case numbers are relatively low, at around 14,000.
Sovereign 02 is its most advanced coronavirus vaccine candidate, with “an early immune response” at 14 days, according to IFV Director Vicente Verez.
He said that broader clinical testing in Cuba had been difficult because of a lack of cases.
Phase 3 clinical trials are usually randomized testing on at least 100 patients that includes control groups and closely monitors for efficacy and possible side effects.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Dozens of activists were detained on January 10 in at least three of Kazakhstan’s main cities, including the capital, Nur-Sultan, amid local and parliamentary elections. Protesters rallied in the country’s largest city, Almaty, calling for a boycott of the vote and denouncing authoritarian ex-President Nursultan Nazarbaev’s Nur Otan, the ruling party since 1999.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — On December 29, the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences held its annual New Year’s gathering for researchers and other employees. The institute’s director and his deputy duly greeted the crowd with traditional seasonal speeches and well-wishes.
But at one point during the proceedings, an unknown man appeared on the dais. He calmly introduced himself as the institute’s “curator,” or resident agent, from the Federal Security Service (FSB).
“We were absolutely petrified,” senior researcher Irina Levinkaya said. “No one expected anything like this, and we were all shocked by his openness. He wasn’t embarrassed at all to say openly that he was monitoring the institute for the FSB. It turns out, he’s been with us since September.”
Levinskaya added that no one among the shocked employees had any questions for their resident agent.
Irina Levinskaya
The incident reminded many of the researchers of the Soviet era, when KGB agents were routinely stationed at academic institutions and other workplaces. They frequently made decisions about where researchers could publish, what conferences they could attend, and what foreign contacts they could have. In addition, they developed networks of informers aimed at weeding out dissent.
Levinskaya says it remains unclear what her institute’s new FSB resident agent will be up to.
“It is hard to say what would interest this man there, but it is clearly not the early periods,” she told RFE/RL. “And it isn’t the Middle Ages, although many of us study that period and we have an amazing Middle Ages archive. I think most likely he is interested in more contemporary history — for instance, World War II.”
Under President Vladimir Putin, the Russian government has sought to enshrine a narrative about World War II that glorifies the Soviet role in defeating Nazi Germany while ignoring the crimes and errors of dictator Josef Stalin and his government. In 2014, Russia adopted the so-called Memory Law, which criminalized the “knowing dissemination of false information about the activities of the U.S.S.R. during World War II” (Criminal Code, Article 354.1).
Among the hundreds of amendments to the Russian Constitution that were hastily adopted last year was one to Article 67 that states: “the Russian Federation honors the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland and guarantees the defense of historical truth. Diminishing the significance of the people’s heroic achievement in defending the Fatherland is forbidden.”
Rewriting History
Levinskaya connects the appearance of an FSB resident agent with an expedition begun in 2019 to the Sandarmokh mass-grave site in the northern region of Karelia. The Kremlin-connected Russian Military-Historical Society began digging in the area in a bid to prove that the bodies did not belong to victims of Stalin’s secret police, but rather to Soviet prisoners of war who were supposedly executed by Finnish forces during the region’s occupation during World War II.
“I see a direct connection,” she said. “Those excavations were absolutely unscientific…. They violated every bit of historical logic. After all, Finland has published all its documents and they have been thoroughly examined. This is a real, repulsive attempt to rewrite history.”
Boris Vishnevsky
St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Deputy Boris Vishnevsky on January 4 sent an official query to the head of the city’s FSB branch, Aleksandr Rodionov, asking about the extent of the “resident agent” program, on what legal authority the initiative has been undertaken, and what exactly are their functions.
“There is nothing for FSB ‘curators’ to do at civilian academic institutions that have no connection to national security and have no access to secret documents,” he told RFE/RL. “There is no legal basis for sending such ‘curators’ there.”
“I am amazed not only that he went there so openly and introduced himself but also that the leadership of the institute didn’t immediately show him the door,” he added.
‘They Are Monitoring Our Loyalty’
The Institute of History is evidently not the only academic institution that has attracted the attention of the FSB. A former ballet dancer who works for the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet says the FSB has never been far from her workplace and that the presence of the security agency increased noticeably when a new director, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, was appointed in 2014.
“They are monitoring our loyalty,” the instructor, who asked not to be identified, said. “People who are regarded as disloyal are almost immediately fired. That’s why I left — I could just tell that the situation was getting dangerous.”
In Soviet times, she recalled, the high-profile defections of dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalya Makarova, and Rudolf Nureyev had harsh ramifications at her institute and other similar academies.
“They held meetings,” she said. “Everyone was implicated, tormented, kicked out. There was no avoiding it.”
“Now, all this has been transferred to the level of personal loyalty to the managers,” she concluded.
‘Our Country Hasn’t Changed’
Inna Saksonova, who recently retired from the Russian National Library, told RFE/RL that the security agencies had always maintained a presence near the public reading rooms.
“There’s a room under the stairs where they sat,” she said. “And when I was just starting work there, still a girl, we accidentally opened that door and saw a man there eating a sandwich while monitoring recording machines…. That room is still there. I don’t think the recorders are still there, but the point is still the same. We got used to it because apparently there is nothing to be done. Our country hasn’t changed.”
Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the Komanda 29 legal-defense NGO, agrees, saying, “Everything is still as it was in the Soviet Union — nothing has changed.”
“They control everything,” he said of the security agencies. “Beginning with military production and ending with ballet. Now this Soviet structure is being reassembled in the worst possible form, with Soviet-style monitoring of everything and everyone.”
“Now the FSB is not under any control,” Smirnov concluded. “It is closed in on itself and accounts to no one. In that sense, the FSB now is more frightening and more powerful than the KGB was.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The year 2020 will always be remembered as the year the coronavirus appeared and spread across the globe.
The virus exposed weaknesses in every country, particularly in health-care systems, but it also affected trade and tested alliances.
The responses from the five Central Asian countries differed.
This was most evident in their official reporting on registered cases and deaths, where countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, even though their figures were often questionable, released statistics that showed the countries were facing a serious health crisis, while countries like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan carefully manipulated figures to ensure an outward appearance of controlling the situation. And then there was Turkmenistan, which chose complete denial and continues its farcical claims that the country has somehow been immune to the coronavirus.
How did the five countries fare in 2020 and, with various vaccines being developed and gradually being made available internationally, how does 2021 look for Central Asia?
On this week’s Majlis Podcast, RFE/RL’s media-relations manager for South and Central Asia, Muhammad Tahir, moderates a discussion that looks at these questions.
This week’s guests are: from Kazakhstan, Gaukhar Mergenova, a public-health specialist; from Kyrgyzstan, Ermek Ismailov, a surgeon at the Clinical Hospital Office of the President and Government of the Kyrgyz Republic; and originally from Uzbekistan but currently a senior journalist for RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, and based in Prague, Barno Anvar; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog.
Listen to the podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis on iTunes or on Google Podcasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Exiled Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has accused Twitter of “an unacceptable act of censorship” in a thread arguing against that powerhouse private social network’s permanent ban on outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump after violence in Washington this week.
The 44-year-old Kremlin foe warned in the 11-point thread that “this precedent will be exploited by enemies of freedom of speech around the world.”
Navalny, who is in Germany after being flown there for emergency medical care from a poisoning in Russia in August, said that during his four-year term Trump “has been writing and saying very irresponsible things…[a]nd paid for it by not getting re-elected for a second term.”
Critics say Trump has often used the platform to spread misinformation, hate, and incite violence, including unfounded accusations that the November election was “stolen.”
Public pressure mounted on social platforms to cut off Trump’s access after deadly mob violence by Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 to interrupt Congress’s certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory in November.
Trump, who had personally addressed the crowd in the hours before the Capitol attack, had also egged followers on via social media.
Facebook later banned Trump from its Facebook and Instagram platforms through at least the end of his presidency later this month.
Then Twitter on January 8 cited “the risk of further incitement of violence” to impose a “permanent suspension” of his @realDonaldTrump account, which had more than 88 million followers.
The company cited a “close review” of recent Trump tweets and cited its “glorification of violence policy” along with “the context of horrific events this week” and “additional violations” since the Capitol was stormed.
Navalny has used Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks to great effect to skirt the Kremlin’s stranglehold on traditional media during years of anti-corruption campaigns and bids to oppose Vladimir Putin’s leadership and his perceived abuses.
Navalny is thought to have been poisoned in August with a toxin from the Russian-made Novichok group of Soviet-era nerve agents.
Russian authorities have rejected Western medical and intelligence information pointing to official involvement in Navalny’s poisoning, while also resisting opening their own investigation.
Navalny dismissed the argument that Trump was banned for violating Twitter’s rules because “I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t ban anyone (not that I ask for it).”
He suggested that Twitter “create some sort of a committee that can make…decisions” on such bans, along with a process for appeal.
Many Trump supporters and some pro-Trump celebrities have publicly criticized the ban as politically motivated.
Trump reportedly still has access to the official @WhiteHouse and @POTUS accounts, but will lose this when his presidential term ends on January 20.
Twitter has a “public interest framework” that is aimed at curbing online abuses while it “enables people to be informed and to engage their leaders directly.”
The company suggested in the Trump context that it feared its platform might be used to incite further violence ahead of Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
“Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021,” it said.
On January 8, Google suspended Parler from its app store over continued postings that seek “to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.”
Parler, a relatively new platform that says it protects free speech and doesn’t censor, has become increasingly popular among the president’s supporters and conservatives.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Iran is being criticized by international rights groups for putting politics above its own people after Tehran banned imports of British and U.S. COVID-19 vaccines.
The criticism comes after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on January 8 that imports of U.S. and British vaccines into Iran were “forbidden.”
U.S. firms Pfizer and Moderna, as well as Britain’s AstraZeneca, have developed coronavirus vaccines that are already being distributed to millions of people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across the world.
But Khamenei claimed on Iranian state television and on Twitter that vaccines developed in the United States and the United Kingdom were “completely untrustworthy.”
Khamenei said, “It’s not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations.”
His tweet also claimed that French coronavirus vaccines “aren’t trustworthy.”
Twitter has hidden an English-language version of Khamenei’s post on grounds that it is a dangerous conspiracy theory and threatens the lives of people around the world.
But a tweet on the Iranian leader’s Persian-language account that makes similar claims was still visible on January 9.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has responded to such claims by urging countries not to politicize the distribution of COVID vaccines.
Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to the WHO’s director-general, said, “It’s really time to put any kind of politics aside and make sure that vaccines get to the people that need them.”
Mansoureh Mills, a researcher for Amnesty International who specializes on Iran, said the ban by Iranian authorities was “in step with the authorities’ decades-long contempt for human rights, including the right to life and health.”
Mills added: “It’s reckless that Iran’s supreme leader is toying with millions of lives by placing politics above people. The Iranian authorities must stop shamelessly ignoring their international human rights obligations by willfully denying people their right to protection from a deadly virus that has killed more than 55,000 people in the country.”
Iran’s Red Crescent said the ban meant that 150,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine that have been donated by American philanthropists will no longer be entering the country.
Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, noted on Twitter that Khamenei’s longtime personal physician, Alireza Marandi, was trained in the United States but he “forbids his population from benefiting from Western medicine.”
“The well-being of the Iranian people has suffered greatly because of this antiquated ideology,” Sadjadpour said.
More than 1.2 million people have already been infected by the coronavirus in Iran. The official death toll in Iran from COVID-19 is more than 56,000.
Iranian authorities say they are developing their own COVID vaccine. They say they began human trials in December and expect to start distributing their version of a vaccine in the spring.
Even if they meet that schedule, their work is far behind the development of vaccines by British and U.S. firms that have already undergone months of extensive human testing before being approved by national and international regulators.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Protesters carrying banned white-and-red national flags marched in parks and residential areas in several towns on January 9 demanding the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and accountability for those responsible for an often violent crackdown against opposition protesters. Demonstrations have been going on since the August 9 presidential election seen as rigged in favor of Lukashenka. In an effort to avoid detention, protesters have resorted to flash-mob tactics and engage in smaller and shorter marches outside city centers as opposed to large-scale demonstrations that have become an easier target for the security forces.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Just weeks before next month’s snap elections, Kosovo’s interior minister and a leading voice in one of its top parties has been accused of taking a sexist, body-shaming swipe at the Balkan state’s most powerful woman.
Agim Veliu said he didn’t know that Vjosa Osmani, Kosova’s acting president and parliament speaker, was “so big that she needs a space as big as the presidency [of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and] that [the leadership] should be removed [in order] for her to come [back and join the party].”
Veliu was referring to Osmani’s demand that the LDK’s top leadership resign before she returns to the party in which she served as a deputy chairwoman. She was expelled from the LDK in June after disagreements with its presidency.
In Veliu’s full comments, published on January 5, a journalist follows up by asking what he means by calling Osmani “big.”
“The way I say it,” he responds.
Asked whether he regards that as insulting language, Veliu says, “She considers herself big if she thinks a [LDK] presidency should be removed [from office] for her to come [rejoin it]. She considers herself to be big.”
Asked to further explain, he declines: “No, no, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want to complicate it further.”
‘Bullying,’ ‘Misogyny’
It’s unclear how perceptions of misogyny or sexism might affect voters in a region where many patriarchal norms and stereotypes against women persist.
“Life in politics is seen as a life dominated by men,” Luljeta Demolli, executive director of the Kosovar Gender Studies Center, told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service. “And it would be better for Agim Veliu to support women entering politics with more democratic language and not such language, because we clearly see that they are afraid of women [and] afraid of women’s votes.”
Osmani has, however, had more important things to think about than Veliu’s seemingly sexist swipe at her.
This week alone, the 38-year-old politician and professor of international law has dissolved the legislature after the Constitutional Court declared the ruling coalition illegitimate, scheduled new national elections, and urged the incoming U.S. administration to review Kosovo’s recent “pledges” to Washington regarding mainly economic issues with Serbia.
But an Osmani adviser, Egnesa Vitia, took to Facebook to demand Veliu’s “immediate dismissal” over the remarks. Vitia said the comments were “unforgivable, intolerable…disgusting” examples of “bullying” and “misogyny.”
Agim Veliu
The National Assembly’s Group of Women caucus told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service that Veliu’s statements were “unacceptable.”
“The use of pejorative vocabulary that insults women is unacceptable and as such should not be used by anyone, much less by politicians,” it said.
While she’s not the first female president since Kosovo declared independence in 2008, Osmani in February became the first woman to serve as speaker of the National Assembly.
Veliu, who is expected to stay in the caretaker government until the February 14 parliamentary elections, is also a deputy chairman of the LDK.
Osmani was also previously the LDK’s candidate for prime minister. She has conditioned a possible return to the LDK on the departure of its top officials, including Veliu.
Osmani also continues to explore the possibility of launching her own political group, tentatively called To Dare.
Scrambling For Votes
The six-week run-up to the elections follows a year of particularly acrimonious politics in the partially recognized Balkan state of some 1.9 million.
Powerful ex-President Hashim Thaci stepped down in November to face war crimes charges at The Hague stemming from Kosovo’s war of independence in the late 1990s and its aftermath, which led to Osmani being made acting president.
And multiple governments have fallen since the LDK and the upstart Self-Determination movement unseated Thaci’s former guerrilla allies in the 2019 elections.
These political uncertainties left a haplessly weak, LDK-led government in charge during landmark U.S. and EU efforts to restart Kosovo’s path to normalization with neighboring Serbia, which still opposes its former province’s independence, declared 12 years ago.
Kosovo’s leading parties — the LDK, Self-Determination, and the former ruling Democratic Party (PDK) — will be scrambling for every vote in February elections seriously constrained by the coronavirus pandemic.
Osmani wrote this week to another pioneering female politician, the longtime speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to congratulate the California Democrat on her reelection for a fourth term chairing the lower house of Congress.
“As a fellow speaker, and crucially both the first women in our respective posts, I cannot stress enough the example we set today for future generations,” Osmani wrote.
‘Sexist Labels’
Osmani is a trained lawyer who led Kosovo’s successful legal defense of its declaration of sovereignty before the International Court of Justice in 2008 and served as President Fatmir Sejdiu’s chief of staff a decade ago.
She teaches international law at the University of Pristina (where Veliu studied law) and has written extensively on gender issues.
In 2019, Osmani wrote a chapter on the origins and effects on society of “stereotypes and sexist labels toward women” for a philological series published by an Albanian cultural and ethnological institute in Pristina.
She cited the prevalence in local language and literature of “hatred, contempt, anger, reproach, irony, ridicule, despair, contempt, resentment, disappointment, disbelief, hostility, envy, jealousy, disgust, and many other attitudes of contempt for women.”
In an abstract of the work, she concludes, “Such negative stereotypes and labels ideologically justify the inferiority of women in society.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Of all the irritants in the U.S.-Russian relationship, for Moscow one of the biggest seems to be U.S. criticism of its records on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in the 21 years since President Vladimir Putin came to power — as well as attendant actions such as the imposition of sanctions.
In documents ranging from foreign policy decrees to his congratulatory message to U.S. President-elect Joe Biden, Putin has stressed that relations must be conducted on an “equal” basis. And at all levels of the power vertical — from Putin to the powerless — complaints about the United States sometimes take the form of a question: “What, are we worse?”
So, when footage of supporters of President Donald Trump storming the U.S. Capitol, clashing with police, and entering congressional offices and auditoriums hit screens worldwide late on January 6, some of the responses from Russian diplomats and pro-Kremlin pundits and politicians seemed pretty predictable.
The first response from Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was a Facebook repost of an American journalist’s comment that the United States “will never again be able to tell the world” that it is “the paragon of democracy.”
Konstantin Kosachyov, a lawmaker from the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party who is chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper parliament house — which, unlike the U.S. Senate, is not a popularly elected body — voiced what may be a widespread view in Russian government circles.
“America no longer charts the course and therefore has lost all right to set it. Let alone impose it on others,” he wrote on Facebook, describing U.S. democracy as “obviously limping on both legs.”
Christmas Message?
Putin avoided direct comment on the momentous events in Washington — but in doing so, in footage outside a church on a still-dark Orthodox Christmas morning, seemed to seek to send a message contrasting that placid setting with the violence and chaos at the U.S. Capitol.
That is a message that is sent assiduously by Russian officials and state media whenever there is unrest n the West and particularly in the United States, and the January 6 events — like the protests over racial inequality and police violence in 2020 — were no exception.
One thing is certainly true: Images of a crowd swarming toward a national legislature, breaching the building, clashing with police must have put millions of people or more in mind of upheaval in many former Soviet republics including Russia since 1991.
Kremlin-aligned commentators suggested that the United States was getting its own “color revolution” following this week’s violence at the U.S. capitol.
For millions or more, the fact that it was happening in Washington was a shock. And for the Kremlin, it fit well into that signaling and into a narrative that the United States is unstable and riven by potentially explosive political discord.
But Kosachyov, Zakharova, and others seemed to provide few convincing arguments linking the chaos at the U.S Capitol to their assertions that, as Kosachyov’s counterpart in the lower chamber, Leonid Slutsky, put it, “The United States certainly cannot now impose its electoral standards on other countries and claim to be the world’s ‘beacon of democracy.’”
Whether they commented while rioters were inside the U.S. legislature or after the area was cleared a few hours later — and after five deaths or fatal injuries — they tended to ignore or gloss over the fact that lawmakers had resumed the formal readout of Electoral College votes and soon reaffirmed Biden’s victory over Trump in the November 3 election. He will be inaugurated on January 20.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (file photo)
Among those who did mention this fact was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose country is embroiled in a nearly seven-year war against Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of eastern Ukraine, while Russia continues to control the Crimean Peninsula after seizing it in March 2014.
“We strongly condemn the unprecedented violence against the US Congress. We are inspired by the resilience of this world’s oldest & greatest democratic institution that within mere hours of this horrific attack held a historic session that affirmed the will of the American people,” Zelenskiy tweeted on January 7.
Checks And Balances
Kremlin-aligned commentators suggested that the United States was getting its own “color revolution” – a reference to political change that has been brought on by massive crowds of people pressing for greater democracy by protesting on the streets of Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and elsewhere in the past 20 years, rattling the Kremlin.
But whatever the individual motives of those in the crowd in Washington, a main goal there was to overturn an election result that stood up to multiple challenges in courts and other venues. In Belarus, demonstrators defying a harsh state crackdown in Belarus are protesting against the authoritarian ruler’s claim of a landslide victory in an August election in a country where no election in more than 25 years has been deemed free, fair, or democratic by credible observers.
Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, suggested that it echoed Ukraine’s Maidan demonstrations, which pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power — and into self-imposed exile in Russia — in 2014. But the massive, monthslong pro-European and anti-corruption protests in Kyiv were mainly peaceful, among many other differences.
And while Kremlin allies suggested that the mayhem in Washington showed that U.S. democracy was “limping on both legs,” as Kosachyov put it, opponents of Putin challenged that idea, arguing instead that the system had showed resilience.
Opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov contrasted the system of checks and balances in the United States with what he suggested was the lack of such safeguards in Russia, where parliament is dominated by United Russia and courts are widely seen as beholden to Putin’s executive branch.
In the United States “there is a president, but there is also a parliament. And then there are the courts. And all these institutions…hold each other by the throats,” Gudkov said in a post to Facebook. “And this is very good.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The UN Human Rights Office says it regrets the inclusion of five Russian citizens on a controversial list of foreign agents that is seen by the West as a way for Russian authorities to clamp down on dissent.
“The UN Human Rights Office regrets the inclusion of the five individuals in the foreign agents list, which targets human rights defenders and journalists and appears to be aimed at limiting their freedom of expression and speech,” Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office, said in a comment to RFE/RL on January 8.
On December 28, Russia said it had placed five people — three journalists who contribute to RFE/RL and two human rights activists — on the Justice Ministry’s registry of “foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent.”
Previously, only foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and rights groups had been placed on the registry, in keeping with Russia’s passage of its controversial “foreign agents law” in 2012. The law was later expanded to include media outlets and independent journalists.
The three listed individuals affiliated with RFE/RL are Lyudmila Stavitskaya and Sergei Markelov, freelance correspondents for the North Desk (Sever.Realii) of RFE/RL’s Russian Service; and Denis Kamalyagin, editor in chief of the online news site Pskov Province and a contributor to RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Prominent human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was also named to the registry, as was activist and Red Cross worker Daria Apakhonchich.
On December 29, the ministry expanded the list again, adding the Nasiliu.net human rights center, which deals with domestic violence cases.
The additions bring the total number of individuals or entities listed to 18, the majority of them affiliated with RFE/RL.
According to Russia’s controversial “foreign agents law,” any individual who distributes materials of a publication or a legal entity recognized as a foreign agent, participates in its creation, and receives foreign funding from abroad can be recognized as a “foreign media agent.”
The Justice Ministry did not explain on what grounds it included the recent additions of the five individuals and one entity to the registry.
Russian officials have previously said that amending the “foreign agents law” to include mass media in 2017 was a “symmetrical response” to the U.S. requirement that Russia’s state-funded channel RT register under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
U.S. officials have rejected that claim, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws differ and that Russia uses its “foreign agent” legislation to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas.
In 2017, Human Rights Watch, a U.S.-based rights group, called the law “devastating” for local NGOs, saying more than a dozen had been forced to close their doors.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as a whole was listed in the original registry in December 2017, along with several of RFE/RL’s regional news sites: the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL Ukrainian Service; the Siberia Desk of RFE/RL’s Russian Service; RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service; Idel.Realii of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service; Kavkaz Realii of RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service; RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service; and Factograph, a former special project by RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America, was also named in the original list, as was Voice of America.
In November 2019, the list was expanded to include Sever.Realii. In February 2020, the Russian Justice Ministry added RFE/RL’s corporate entity in Russia.
RFE/RL has said it is “reprehensible” that professional journalists were among the first individuals singled out by Russia as “foreign agents.”
The Council of Europe also has expressed concerns over situation, saying that the foreign agent law in general — “stifles the development of civil society and freedom of expression.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says the country is in no hurry to see the United States return to an international nuclear deal with major powers after President-elect Joe Biden takes office this month.
“We are in no rush and we are not insisting on their return,” Khamenei said in a televised speech on January 8, reiterating Iran’s demand for a lifting of sanctions that outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump reimposed after quitting the agreement in May 2018.
Trump has argued the 2015 accord did not go far enough and said economic pressure would force Tehran to negotiate a new deal that would address Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, as well as its support for regional proxies.
In response to the U.S. pullout and economic sanctions, Iran, which claims its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, has gradually breached parts of the pact, such as uranium enrichment, saying it is no longer bound by it.
Biden has suggested that Washington may reenter the nuclear deal, under which Tehran committed to limit its nuclear activities in return for relief from sanctions, if Iran complies.
Other parties to the deal, notably Britain, France, and Germany, have pressed Iran to return to its commitments in a bid to rescue the accord.
Iranian officials have said they could quickly return to compliance once the United States and Europeans fulfill their end of the agreement by providing Tehran with the economic relief.
Tehran also says its missile program and regional policies are off the table.
“When the other party meets practically none of its obligations, it is not logical for the Islamic republic to honor all of its commitments,” Khamenei said, adding: “If they return to their commitments, we will return to ours.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Kyrgyzstan is holding a crucial presidential election and national referendum on January 10 to determine if the country should revert to a presidential system.
But because the processes that led to this election day were rushed, questions linger about the legality and legitimacy of decisions that have been made by Kyrgyz officials. It is therefore difficult to escape the feeling that this election will not deliver stability and could even sow the seeds for future problems.
The elections are a consequence of the mass unrest that broke out after the country held parliamentary elections on October 4.
Concerns before the election of vote-buying were confirmed when the results showed the two parties suspected of dishonest campaign tactics, Mekenim Kyrgyzstan and Birimdik, received an overwhelming percentage of the votes.
Unrest then broke out in the capital, Bishkek, on October 5 and a day later the government had been chased from power with the president, Sooronbai Jeenbekov, seemingly in hiding. He would soon resign.
The tumult marked the third time since 2005 that a president and his government had been ousted by protests and most assumed — as happened in 2005 and 2010 — that opposition leaders would cobble together an interim government.
But while many opposition figures and groups were anxious to claim a role in the victory of having the faulty elections annulled, they were slow to cooperate in forming an alliance to take up the reins of power.
A huge power vacuum appeared and a group that did not take part in the October 5 protests came to the fore.
That group then also pushed for this presidential election.
From Prison To President?
There are 17 candidates competing to be president in Kyrgyzstan, the lone Central Asian country where free and democratic elections are held.
The favorite to win the vote is Sadyr Japarov, who woke up in a prison cell on October 5 where he was about one-third of the way through a 10-year prison sentence he was serving for hostage-taking during a protest against a mining operation in northeast Kyrgyzstan in October 2013.
Quickly freed from prison overnight on October 5-6 during unrest in Bishkek, within two weeks he would become acting prime minister and acting president of the country. It is still unclear which powerful figures have backed Japarov’s meteoric rise to power, though there are suspicions organized criminal groups have played a role.
Along with Japarov there are some other relatively well-known people running for the presidency.
Adakhan Madumarov (file photo)
Adakhan Madumarov is the leader of Butun Kyrgyzstan, the only opposition party that won seats in the October 4 parliamentary elections, garnering 13 of the 120 available.
Madumarov was a candidate in the 2011 presidential election when he placed second, and in 2017 when he was third.
Kanatbek Isaev (file photo)
Kanatbek Isaev is the leader of the Kyrgyzstan party, which also won seats in the October 4 elections (16) but was seen as a pro-government party. Isaev was a parliament deputy and served as parliament speaker from October 13 to November 4.
He should have become acting president when Jeenbekov resigned on October 15 but declined, paving the way for Japarov to take the post. Isaev later said he did not want to be acting president because it constitutionally prohibited him from running for president.
Klara Sooronkulova (file photo)
Klara Sooronkulova is the leader of the Reforma party, which was created just before October’s parliamentary poll. She is a former Supreme Court judge and since October has led many of the court challenges against the decision to delay new parliamentary elections, allowing Japarov to run for president despite having served as acting president, and the decision to hold a referendum on the constitution.
Kanybek Imanaliev (file photo)
Kanybek Imanaliev is a deputy from the Ata-Meken party, an opposition party from the parliamentary elections. He was one of only four deputies to oppose holding the constitutional referendum.
Abdil Segizbaev (file photo)
Abdil Segizbaev is a former chief of the State Committee for National Security (UKMK) and, as a presidential candidate, has been one of the most vocal critics of Japarov. He has challenged Japarov about his role as a top official in the anti-corruption agency under President Kurmanbek Bakiev (2005-2010), when billions of dollars were taken out of Kyrgyzstan and several successful private firms were taken over by Bakiev’s friends and relatives.
Nearly all the other candidates have made negative comments about Japarov in a series of debates held on state television in late December.
Japarov is the only candidate still running who did not participate in the debates, claiming he was too busy meeting with voters.
The 52-year-old Japarov has received far more donations for his campaign than his opponents.
According to the Kyrgyz news website Kaktus.media, as of early December Japarov had raised 1.23 million soms (about $15,000), trailing two other candidates: Babarjan Tolbaev (5.2 million soms/$63,000) and Aymen Kasenov (1.454 million soms/$17,000).
Also Read: Plunder And Patronage In The Heart Of Central Asia
But by December 25, Kaktus reported that Japarov’s campaign fund had raised 47.4 million soms ($570,000). The candidate with the next most campaign money is Babyrjan Tolbaev, with 9.35 million soms ($112,000). The other candidates have all raised less than 5 million soms ($60,000).
Japarov has said several times that the money had been donated by the “people of Kyrgyzstan,” but one report said at least 30.9 million soms of his total came from just 10 people and two companies.
The ‘Khanstitution’
Holding a constitutional referendum was an idea raised in late October, but it quickly went from just making some reforms to the document to making major changes that amounted to rewriting it.
By early November, Japarov and members of his Mekenchil party said the current constitution establishing the parliamentary system of government and a division of power between the president and prime minister has not worked. They argued that it is necessary for one person to hold all of the main powers.
A new constitution was drafted that immediately sparked resistance from several quarters in Kyrgyzstan.
The draft would make the president the head of state and head of government while including an official role for a kuriltai, or council, that would be a consultative body able to recommend, among other things, the dismissal of officials.
It was dubbed the “khanstitution” by opponents who said it would legitimize authoritarian rule.
On November 22, the first of a series of peaceful marches against the constitution started in Bishkek. They have continued every Sunday since then.
Acting President Talant Mamytov signed a decree on November 20 to establish a constitutional chamber of 89 members to redraft the “khanstitution” and the group quickly fell into disagreement over many points, for example whether the word “secular” should be stricken from the constitution or the name of parliament, Jogorku Kenesh, should be changed.
In the end, the motion for a referendum on a constitution was adopted by parliament on December 10 — one month before the referendum would be held — after quickly approving it on the second and third readings.
What voters in Kyrgyzstan are being asked to approve on January 10 is simply whether they want a parliamentary of presidential form of government.
A second referendum will need to be conducted, tentatively in March, to vote on a new draft constitution.
Questions Of Legitimacy
From just after the October parliamentary elections until January there have been a multitude of questions and problems about the decision-making processes of Kyrgyz officials.
First off, the parliamentary mandates for the deputies expired on October 28, and though deputies voted to extend them until new parliamentary elections are held, they legally should have not been allowed to vote on any matters involving a major policy change, such as the holding of a referendum to change the constitution.
Therefore every decision parliament approved after October 28 is considered by some legal experts in Kyrgyzstan and many others to have no validity.
Also, Japarov was named acting president on October 16 and officially took up the duties of that office on October 21, but as former parliament speaker Isaev noted, it is banned by the constitution for an acting president to run for president.
On October 26, Japarov announced he would step down as prime minister and acting president so he could run for president.
But two days later, Japarov and other government members took their oaths of office.
Kyrgyz acting President Talant Mamytov (file photo)
On November 14, Japarov finally left his state posts and Talant Mamytov, the parliament speaker since November 4, was named acting president.
Japarov has also said several times that he would not appoint his friends to government positions, but Mamytov and the current head of the UKMK, Kamchybek Tashiev, were co-defendants with Japarov when they were on trial in 2013 for trying to overthrow the government.
They were convicted in March 2013 and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
One of the judges that eventually acquitted the three in an appeals court in June 2013 was Kurmankul Zulushev, who was appointed prosecutor-general on October 21, just days after Japarov became acting president.
Zulushev was dismissed for the decision to acquit the three deputies and two months later the Supreme Court overturned those acquittals but ruled the three did not have to return to prison.
There are also questions about the Supreme Court’s abrupt decision to acquit Japarov of the hostage-taking charges and to overturn the guilty verdict against Japarov, Mamytov, and Tashiev for trying to overthrow the government.
And it is still not clear when there will be new parliamentary elections, even though the annulled October 4 elections led to so much that has happened since then and despite the fact that preparations to hold them began in late October.
Japarov has variously cited “spring” or “before the end of the first half of 2021” as the time when they would be held.
In the end, the populist Japarov is the big favorite to win the presidential election and the proposal for a presidential form of government also seems likely to be approved by voters, largely because of Japarov’s support and promotion of it.
But there are so many aspects of Japarov’s rise to power, and the changes he has been making since then, which are open to legal challenges, leaves many thinking that once his momentum slows and his popularity dissipates — as seems almost certain to happen given the economic and other crises Kyrgyzstan faces — the country is likely to fall back into a political crisis of some kind.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Sadyr Japrov is considered the front-runner in Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election on January 10. A little more than three months ago, he was in prison. He said charges that he took part in an attempted hostage-taking scheme were politically motivated. He was freed during unrest surrounding annulled parliamentary elections in October. We look at the up-and-down career of this populist politician.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has announced a ban on imports of U.S. and British coronavirus vaccines, saying he does not “trust” the two countries.
“Imports of U.S. and British vaccines into the country are forbidden. I have told this to officials and I’m saying it publicly now,” Khamenei, who has the last say on all matters in his country, said in a live televised speech on January 8.
U.S. firms Pfizer and Moderna, as well as Britain’s AstraZeneca, have developed coronavirus vaccines. Other countries, including Russia and China, have developed their own vaccines.
“I really do not trust” the United States and Britain, he said, adding: “Sometimes they want to test” their vaccines on other countries.
Khamenei said Iran could obtain vaccines from “other reliable places” and praised the country’s own efforts to develop domestic COVID-19 vaccines.
Iran, the country worst hit by the pandemic in the Middle East, has reported more than 1.2 million COVID-19 cases, with nearly 56,000 deaths. Analysts have questioned the accuracy of those numbers, with many saying they think the real figures could be substantially higher.
The country last month launched human trials of a domestic vaccine candidate, saying it could help in the defeat of the epidemic given U.S. sanctions that affect its ability to import vaccines.
Meanwhile, Iran’s central bank chief Abdolnaser Hemmati said Tehran had paid around $244 million for initial imports of 16.8 million doses of vaccines from COVAX, a global COVID-19 vaccine allocation plan led by the World Health Organization (WHO).
However, Iranian officials say the country has yet to receive any shipments so far.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Former Almaty Mayor Viktor Khrapunov and his wife, Leila Khrapunova, both sentenced to lengthy prison terms in absentia in Kazakhstan on corruption charges that they have rejected as politically motivated, have been granted asylum in Switzerland.
Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court (FAC) issued a statement on January 7 saying that the decision to provide asylum to “a Kazakh couple who are now divorced” was made because the two “who previously held high-ranking positions in the Kazakh regime, are at risk of being subject to unfair criminal proceedings if they return to the country.”
“This couple therefore has a special profile which would put them at particular risk were they to return to the country. For this reason, the FAC rules that asylum must be granted to these people. These judgments are final and may not be appealed to the Federal Supreme Court.”
Leila Khrapunova confirmed the couple in the FAC statement was her and her husband in a Facebook post on January 7 and that the decision was made on December 29.
Khrapunov was mayor of Almaty from 1997 to 2004. He was later appointed governor of the East Kazakhstan region but was dismissed from that post in 2007 and served for a short time as emergency situations minister.
Khrapunova served as the chairwoman of Kazakhstan’s national television and radio corporation in 1994-95.
Khrapunov and his family moved to Switzerland in 2007 in the wake of a scandal surrounding parcels of land that he was accused of distributed illegally during his tenure as mayor.
In October 2018, a court in Almaty tried the couple in absentia and found them guilty of organizing a criminal group, financial fraud, and bribe-taking.
Khrapunov was also found guilty of abuse of office and of the illegal privatization of property belonging to another person.
The court sentenced Khrapunov to 17 years in prison and his wife to 14 years.
Both have vehemently denied the charges, calling them politically motivated.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
One year after the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane in Iranian airspace, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Iran’s authorities have “harassed and intimidated” the victims’ families instead of conducting a “transparent and credible” investigation into the tragedy.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran’s main airport on January 8, 2020, killing all 176 on board. The majority of the victims were Iranians and Canadians, but Afghans, Britons, Swedes, and Germans were also among the dead.
Iran admitted days later that its forces accidentally shot down the Kyiv-bound plane after firing two missiles amid heightened tensions with the United States.
In a statement coinciding with the first anniversary of the crash, HRW urged Iranian authorities to “commit to a genuinely transparent investigation and cooperate with international bodies to uncover the truth and provide the victims’ families with justice and appropriate redress.”
The government should “promptly pay adequate compensation to the families and carry out a transparent and impartial investigation with appropriate prosecutions regardless of position or rank,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at the New York-based human rights watchdog.
The group said it had interviewed more than a dozen of the victims’ family members, who said that the authorities “had not returned any valuables from their loved ones.”
The authorities also “intimidated and harassed families to stop them from seeking justice outside of the authorities’ own judicial investigations.”
Meanwhile, at least 20 people who participated in peaceful protests over the crash have been prosecuted, according to HRW.
It said two prominent activists among them were sentenced to four years and eight months and five years in prison, respectively, for participating in the demonstrations and posting about it on social media.
Officials from Canada and other countries whose nationals were on board have raised concerns about the lack of transparency and accountability in Iran’s investigation of its own military, and called on the country to cooperate with multilateral investigative initiatives.
In December, an independent report by the Canadian government accused Iran of failing to conduct a proper investigation and said that many questions remain unanswered.
“The party responsible for the situation is investigating itself, largely in secret. That does not inspire confidence or trust,” said a report by Canada’s special counsel on the tragedy.
Iranian officials have said the country never sought to hide the details about the air disaster or to violate the rights of the victims’ families.
There has been no report of senior Iranian officials being dismissed or resigning over the crash.
On January 7, the military prosecutor of Tehran, Gholam Abbas Torki, said experts had concluded their investigations and that “human error” had resulted in the incident.
Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili earlier announced that the trial of several people charged over the crash would begin later this month. He did not identify the suspects.
And Iran announced in December that the government had allocated $150,000 for the families of each of the victims — an offer rejected by the Ukrainian and Canadian governments, as well as some of the families of the victims, who see it as an attempt to close the case and escape accountability.
Canada’s Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said in an e-mail sent to AFP on January 7 that Tehran cannot unilaterally decide compensation for the families and that “substantive discussions with Iran” were yet to take place over the matter.
In the week prior to the anniversary of the incident, Iranian authorities organized several events commemorating the victims of the crash, but Page said “public commemorations do not make up for the intimidation of victims’ families and wrongful prosecutions of peaceful protesters.”
The authorities “should immediately and unconditionally drop charges against those peacefully protesting, stop intimidating families, and direct their efforts to holding wrongdoers to account,” he added.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Champagne, and several other members of the government spoke with victims’ families during a private virtual commemoration on the eve of the tragedy’s anniversary.
Trudeau has recently announced that January 8 would become known as Canada’s National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Air Disasters.
Flight 752 was downed the same night that Iran launched a ballistic-missile attack that targeted U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Tehran’s air defenses were on high alert in case of retaliation.
Iran’s missile attack was in response to a U.S. drone strike that killed the powerful commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Major General Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad five days earlier.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
BISHKEK — A lawyer for the wealthy family of former deputy chief of Kyrgyzstan’s Customs Service, Raimbek Matraimov, who has been implicated in a high-profile case involving the illegal funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars abroad, has been made a judge.
Acting Kyrgyz President Talant Mamytov said on January 6 that lawyer Leila Baidaeva was appointed to the post at Bishkek’s Sverdlov district court.
Baidaeva was one of the lawyers for Matraimov’s extended family and their Ismail Matraimov Public Foundation. She assisted them in filing a libel lawsuit in late 2019 against RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, locally known as Azattyk, its correspondent Ali Toktakunov, and the news site Kloop, following an alleged corruption scandal exposed by the media outlets.
The investigative report showed that a 37-year-old Uyghur businessman from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, Aierken Saimaiti, secretly provided reporters with documents demonstrating how hundreds of millions of dollars were moved out of Kyrgyzstan, much of it via a business network led by Khabibula Abdukadyr, a secretive Chinese-born Uyghur with a Kazakh passport.
Saimaiti, who was shot dead in Istanbul on November 10, 2020, alleged that Matraimov, while serving as Kyrgyz customs’ deputy chief, was instrumental in providing cover for the Abdukadyr network’s cargo empire in the region.
After the joint investigative report was made public in November 2019, several protests were held in Bishkek, where thousands demanded the authorities thoroughly investigate the allegations.
Matraimov and his brother, Iskender Matraimov, have denied all accusations of wrongdoing by the former customs official.
On October 20, 2020, following anti-government protests over disputed parliamentary elections that ousted the cabinet and forced President Sooronbai Jeenbekov to resign, Matraimov was detained and placed under house arrest.
The State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said at the time that Matraimov had agreed to pay about 2 billion soms ($24.7 million) in damages to the state, and that 80 million soms ($1 million) had already been transferred to its account.
On December 9, 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Matraimov for his alleged role in the vast corruption and money-laundering scheme.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Uzbekistan has carried out “some” human rights reforms in recent years, but continues to “severely” hinder the work of independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with “excessive and burdensome” registration requirements.
The government of President Shavkat Mirziyoev should amend the legislation and allow independent groups to register NGOs that seek to work on sensitive issues, including human rights and forced labor, the New York-based human rights watchdog said in a statement on January 7.
HRW said the Uzbek government has taken “some important steps” to ease the registration process since Mirziyoev took over Central Asia’s most populous nation of 32 million in 2016, including reducing the registration fee, cutting the time period for government review of registration documents, and opening a portal that allows submission of applications by independent groups online.
However, “vague and burdensome” rules remain in place despite a commitment made by the president in 2018 to sweep away restrictions on NGOs, according to HRW.
It quoted representatives of six independent groups that have sought registration in Uzbekistan in recent years as saying that their registration applications had been rejected, often “for minor alleged mistakes, including grammar or even minor punctuation mistakes, missing information, or the language used in application documents.”
The legislation includes “excessive requirements for registration and an extensive list of reasons for rejection, making decision-making by authorities appear arbitrary,” according to the representatives.
One of the NGOs was finally allowed to register on its third attempt, HRW said.
Vladislav Lobanov, assistant Europe and Central Asia researcher at HRW, said the Uzbek government needs to respond to international calls for civil society be allowed to act freely.
Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee expressed concern that “current legislation continues to impose restrictions on the right to freedom of association” and over “the small number of independent self-initiated NGOs registered [in the country, and] the high number of rejections for registration.”
The European Union and the United States have also expressed concern over registration barriers for NGOs.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Confusion and intrigue have reigned in Kyrgyzstan since compromised parliamentary elections on October 4, 2020, sparked street protests that brought down the government and forced the president of the Central Asian country to resign.
Now people are scratching their heads over a $1 million international lobbying contract signed on behalf of Kyrgyzstan’s acting president — just days after he got out of jail — by an obscure Bishkek businessman with a self-professed former Israeli intelligence agent living in Canada.
Ari Ben-Menashe, who claims to have worked for Israeli intelligence in the 1970s and 1980s, registered as a foreign agent in Washington in early November 2020 to help Sapyr Japarov — who came to power in Kyrgyzstan after the failed elections and is now a leading presidential candidate — secure meetings with foreign officials and attract international investment to his impoverished country, U.S. lobbying documents show.
Ben-Menashe told RFE/RL he was tapped to help Kyrgyzstan by an acquaintance he met in Russia named Abdymanap Karchygaev, who says he is a successful businessman who heads Renaissance, a newly registered Kyrgyz agro-industrial firm.
The $1 million fee for Ben-Menashe’s services — which was fully paid by December 21, 2020, according to U.S. filings — was partially financed by Karchygaev’s friends in Russia, the Kyrgyz businessman said.
Karchygaev, who began negotiating the contract in September 2020 when Japarov was still serving a prison term for kidnapping, said he hoped the international lobbying effort would help attract $8 billion in aid and investment to Kyrgyzstan. If accomplished, the amount would exceed the country’s total foreign direct investment in the past 25 years, according to World Bank data.
“I had [aimed] to set up around 100 companies under the umbrella of the agro-industrial corporation, to bring back hundreds of Kyrgyz wandering around in Russia and create jobs,” Karchygaev told reporters in Bishkek on November 6, 2020. “Bearing in mind this idea, I contacted this consultancy company. I’ve lived in Russia for 10 years, therefore, these are my old acquaintances.”
Ben-Menashe told RFE/RL in an interview that he met with Japarov in his government office in Bishkek three times in October 2020 to discuss details of the lobbying deal before it was signed by Karchygaev in Japarov’s name.
The contract does not mention any preferential treatment for Karchygaev or his companies though it does seek to attract investment into Kyrgyzstan’s agricultural industry, which could potentially benefit the businessman.
When the $1 million contract became public following Ben-Menashe’s mandatory registration in the United States, reporters in Kyrgyzstan started to ask questions.
Japarov first denied having met with Ben-Menashe and dismissed the deal as a bureaucratic mistake by a novice employee. He added that he could barely remember Karchygaev.
Sapyr Japarov
Japarov said Karchygaev was one of more than 100 investors that have come to his office since October 2020 to discuss investment possibilities.
He claimed that when Karchygaev then appealed to the nation’s investment promotion agency for help with his endeavor, a new employee “unknowingly” signed a letter and sent it to the Foreign Ministry.
“This is just a small shortcoming,” Japarov said. “People who wanted to promote black PR blew up this little thing saying that an agreement was signed. No agreement was signed between them and the government.”
Japarov’s office did not respond to an RFE/RL inquiry — after Ben-Menashe said he met with the then-prime minister — asking to confirm they had met and if he had given his approval for the deal.
Anna Massoglia, a researcher and foreign-lobbying expert at the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, told RFE/RL that U.S. law does not prohibit an individual from hiring a lobbyist on behalf of another person as long as it is disclosed.
“It is not uncommon for individuals who are fugitives, subject to sanctions, or imprisoned to have another person acting as a proxy of sorts and listed as the foreign principal in [Foreign Agents Registration Act] filings,” she said.
U.S., Israel, And Saudi Arabia
Ben-Menashe is, according to the contract, supposed to arrange meetings for the Kyrgyz president with senior U.S. officials “in short order” to discuss improving relations and to obtain grants for technological development, fighting the coronavirus, agricultural investments, and debt-repayment assistance.
Furthermore, Ben-Menashe is to set up meetings for Japarov with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; attract investment from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for highways, mines, and oil fields; and schedule meetings with officials in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
Ben-Menashe will have his work cut out for him on the investment goals.
Unlike its authoritarian neighbors in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan routinely changes governments and has thrown out three presidents in 15 years. It is also beset with deep-rooted corruption.
Furthermore, the country’s largest foreign-investment project, the Canadian-owned Kumtor gold mine, has faced threats of nationalization, riots, and hefty lawsuits for ecological damage, setting a poor precedent for potential international investors.
But there are other hurdles to overcome in Ben-Menashe’s goal of attracting Middle East money for Kyrgyzstan’s natural resources industry, said Ellen Wald, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and a Saudi expert.
Aramco and Adnoc, the national oil companies of Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E, respectively, have never done any exploration or production of upstream assets outside of their own countries, she told RFE/RL.
“Aramco has talked about investing in gas assets outside of the kingdom but Kyrgyzstan, a country that has no known oil or gas assets, would be a very questionable choice to initiate that process,” said Wald.
‘Terrible’ Timing
As for the effort to lobby the United States, it has already promised aid to Central Asia to fight COVID-19 and senior officials hold regular meetings with regional leaders through the C5+1 format.
Eric Stewart, a former Commerce Department deputy assistant secretary who has worked with Central Asian governments, told RFE/RL there are very few instances where it makes sense for a country to hire a lobbyist to get meetings in Washington.
“Only if there is something very specific [in which] they need help with securing something Pentagon related, for example. But to secure meetings — no,” he said.
Stewart, who is president of the American Central European Business Association, called the timing of the contract “terrible.”
The incoming Biden administration will need time to assemble its team and likely won’t focus on Central Asia until late in 2021, he said.
“It’s nothing against Kyrgyzstan, it’s an amazing country, they just aren’t a strategic or economic priority for the [United States]. They are too far away, too small, and too reliant on China and Russia. An Israeli-Canadian lobbyist won’t change their relevance and, in fact, some in the administration will be turned off by it or even less reluctant to schedule a meeting if there are middlemen involved,” he said.
Big January Election
The Kyrgyz parliament eventually named Japarov, 51, prime minister in the chaos that existed shortly after the government collapsed in the wake of street protests over the results of the October 4, 2020 parliamentary elections, in which many votes were alleged to have been bought.
When President Sooronbai Jeenbekov resigned later that month, parliament also named Japarov acting president.
He later stepped down as prime minister and as acting president in order to be able to stand for president in the January 10 election.
Japarov, who was released amid the protests from a Bishkek prison where he was serving a nearly 12-year term for kidnapping, is one of 18 candidates vying for the top post.
Zimbabwe, Congo, And Libya?
Kyrgyzstan is just the latest troubled country that Ben-Menashe has represented since setting up his Montreal-based firm Dickens & Madson Canada in 2001.
His clients over the years have included Zimbabwe’s former authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe; the Republic of Congo’s long-serving president, Denis Sassou Nguesso; Sudan’s military junta; Libya’s Cyrenaica Transitional Council and General National Council; and Venezuela’s left-center Progressive Advance political party.
Ben-Menashe has stated in some of his FARA filings that he would lobby Russia as well as the United States on behalf of his clients, including Nguesso, Libya’s General National Council, and the tiny Venezuelan party. Russia has influence with all three countries.
Ben-Menashe was arrested by U.S. officials in 1989 on charges of trying to sell U.S.-made, military cargo planes to Iran, but was acquitted one year later.
His lawyer told the court that Ben-Menashe was a former intelligence operative who represented Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in an attempted arms-for-hostages deal, according to a 1990 report by The Washington Post.
But U.S. prosecutors said he was only a translator for Israeli military intelligence.
A congressional hearing that looked into arms transfers to Iran described Ben-Menashe as a talented liar, according to a 2004 report in The New York Times.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A European online newspaper has published what it says is a 2012 audio recording of a top Belarusian KGB officer discussing alleged plots at the time to kill in Germany three opponents of Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Citing NATO experts, EUObserver said in the report published on January 4 that the voice on the tape belonged to then-chairman of the Belarusian KGB Vadzim Zaytsau.
The attacks on the three never took place, but the plot discussed allegedly would have involved the use of explosives and poisons, it said.
Read our coverage as Belarusians take to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and call for new elections after official results from the August 9 presidential poll gave Lukashenka a landslide victory.
The fresh revelations come as Lukashenka, in power since 1994, faces months of protests demanding he step down following a disputed presidential election last August. Nearly 30,000 have been detained, and hundreds beaten in detention and on the streets, in the postelection crackdown by the government. The EU and United States refuse to recognize Lukashenka as the country’s legitimate leader and slapped him and senior officials with sanctions.
On the tape, Zaytsau is said to be briefing members of a special KGB elite counterterrorist unit — Alfa Group — about killing three opponents of Lukashenka then living in Germany — Aleh Alkayeu, a former prison director; Uladzimer Baradach, an ex-riot police commander; and Vyachaslau Dudkin, a former anti-corruption police chief. The audio also includes discussions on killing the Belarus-born Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet, who was slain in a car bombing in Kyiv in 2016.
“The president [Lukashenka] is waiting for these operations,” Zaytsau is heard saying in the recording said to have been made in his Minsk office on April 11, 2012.
In the recording, the individual alleged to be Zaytsau says Lukashenka has allocated $1.5 million for the operation, which he stressed must leave no trace of any possible KGB involvement.
NATO experts confirmed to EUObserver that the voice in the recording very much sounds like the voice of Zaytsau.
It “sounds like the same guy,” a contact from a NATO country’s intelligence service who was familiar with Zaytsau and who examined the bugged audio file for EUobserver, told the website.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka
Alkayeu wrote a book titled Shooting Brigade in which he revealed details of Lukashenka’s “punitive units.” He told RFE/RL that police in Berlin in 2012 offered to provide him with bodyguards, saying they had obtained information about possible Belarusian KGB plans to kill him.
According to Alkayeu, Lukashenka’s regime would have wanted to target him since he was a key witness in the disappearances of several political figures in 1999-2000.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Iranian government says the country has resumed uranium enrichment to 20 percent at an underground facility, a level far above limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers.
Government spokesman Ali Rabiei said on January 4 that President Hassan Rohani gave the order for the move at the Fordow facility — the latest of several recent Iranian breaches of the international agreement that eased UN sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
But Tehran has gradually reduced its compliance with the accord since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018 and started imposing crippling sanctions on Iran.
Enriched uranium can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear warheads, with 90 percent purity considered weapons-grade.
There has been no confirmation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about Tehran’s latest announcement.
However, the UN’s atomic watchdog said on January 1 it had been informed by Tehran that it planned to resume enrichment up to 20 percent at the Fordow site, which is buried inside a mountain.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, later said that Iran planned to enrich uranium up to 20 percent purity at Fordow “as soon as possible.”
The step was mentioned in a law passed by Iran’s parliament last month in response to the killing of a top Iranian nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel.
Iran currently enriches its uranium stockpile up to around 4.5 percent, which is above the 3.67 percent cap imposed by the 2015 nuclear pact.
An increase to 20 percent would shorten Iran’s break-out time to a potential nuclear weapon, if it were to make a political decision to pursue a bomb.
The Iran nuclear deal also prohibits Tehran from enrichment at the Fordow facility, buried deep in a mountain to protect against air strikes.
Tehran has always denied pursuing nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear program was strictly for civilian purposes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Iranian government has passed a bill that criminalizes violence against women, including action or behavior that causes “physical or mental harm” to women.
The bill was passed by the cabinet on January 3, Massoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice president for women’s and family affairs, announced on Twitter, saying the bill was the result of “hundreds of hours of expertise.”
The bill, which has been under review since September 2019, will have to be adopted by parliament to become law.
The New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in early December that the draft bill falls short of international standards, despite having “a number of positive provisions.”
“While the draft law defines violence against women broadly and criminalizes various forms of violence, it does not criminalize some forms of gender-based violence, such as marital rape and child marriage,” HRW said in a December 2020 report.
“The draft law also does not tackle a number of discriminatory laws including personal-status laws that lawyers said leave women more vulnerable to domestic violence,” the report added.
Media reported that the bill specifies punitive action, including legal punishments, civil redress, and prison sentences for those threatening the physical and mental safety of women.
According to the bill, the judiciary will be tasked with setting up and sponsoring offices that provide support for women who suffer some type of violence or who are susceptible to violence. The bill also requires the establishment of special police units to ensure the safety of women.
An Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch, Tara Sepehrifar, said on Twitter on January 3 that the Iranian parliament “should waste no time in addressing the remaining gaps and pass the draft into law.”
The bill follows several cases of violence against women that have caused public outrage, including last May’s beheading of 14-year-old Romina Ashrafi by her father, in an apparent “honor killing.”
Days after the gruesome killing, Iran passed a law aimed at protecting children from violence.
Iran is one of four countries that have not ratified the United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Maryam, a school janitor in the northern Tajik city of Khujand, says she often skips meals so her three children can eat “enough food.”
“I cook once a day in the evening — we eat half of it for dinner and leave the rest for the children’s lunch the following day,” she says. The 38-year-old mother doesn’t eat lunch herself.
“Instead I make myself busy with work and it helps me not to think if I’m hungry,” Maryam told RFE/RL. “Also, I make hot tea and put lots of sugar in it. It helps, too. If I ate lunch, we wouldn’t have enough food for the kids.”
Maryam and her family found themselves living on the brink of poverty when her husband, a freight train worker, lost his job in May.
As the impoverished Central Asian nation struggles with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, a significant number of the country’s 9.5 million people are forced to eat less, with many skipping meals entirely and some even going hungry, a new survey by the World Bank shows.
Low wages and price hikes at food markets have exacerbated the plight of many Tajiks during the pandemic. (file photo)
According to the Listening to Tajikistan survey, more than 30 percent of the respondents said they have reduced their food consumption in comparison to pre-pandemic times. More than 5 percent said they had to go hungry because they can’t afford food.
One-third of the respondents to the report — which surveyed some 1,400 households across Tajikistan — said they often skip meals due to a shortage of food.
More than 45 percent said food security along with the health of their loved ones has become their main worry since the pandemic began.
The survey has been conducted monthly in each region of Tajikistan since 2015. Its latest findings were released on December 23 in the report, Tajikistan: Economic Slowdown Amid The Pandemic.
“Hunger was a main feature of the current year. During the survey, the respondents said that they don’t have enough money to buy the amount of food they need, and therefore they’re forced to go hungry,” Alisher Rajabov, an economist at the World Bank office in Dushanbe, said during a discussion of the research.
According to the World Bank, at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis in May, the “reports of reduced food consumption spiked to 41 percent of the population” in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan officially reported its first coronavirus infection on April 30.
But the remittance-dependent country began to feel the devastating impact of the pandemic much earlier when Russia and Kazakhstan — the hosts of many hundreds of thousands of Tajik migrant workers — closed their borders in March.
About 25 percent of the families in Tajikistan depend on remittances sent from abroad. A job shortage is one of the key challenges that the landlocked, mountainous country has faced since gaining independence in 1991.
Low wages and food price hikes have added to many Tajiks’ plight during the pandemic. The majority of ordinary people — teachers, blue-collar workers, farmers, and low-level public-sector workers — say they are spending a larger portion of their income on food this year.
Najmiddin Rahimov works in Dushanbe’s Mehrgon Bazaar, where he carries customers’ groceries in his cart for a small fee.
Before the pandemic, Rahimov used to make up to 100 somonis (about $9) a day from his job. He says his current daily income is about 30 to 40 somonis ($2.6 to $3.5) as the demand has fallen for his service.
Najmiddin Rahimov
“People buy less food now. They don’t need a cart for their shopping anymore, they buy just two bags of groceries nowadays and carry the bags themselves,” Rahimov told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service.
“Currently, all of my income goes to buy food. We don’t buy new clothes anymore,” Rahimov said.
The inability to afford enough food has forced some people to extreme measures.
In some villages, people are reporting the theft of food and coal — an occurrence the villagers say they had only heard of during the civil war of the 1990s.
The World Food Program said in September 2020 that 47 percent of the people in Tajikistan live on less than $1.33 a day and an estimated 30 percent of the population are malnourished.
Future Could Be Bright
The World Bank experts predict the economic situation in Tajikistan could improve and the economy is likely to start bouncing back next year.
But that depends on several factors, such as the population’s access to COVID-19 vaccines and the resumption of remittances from workers abroad and an uptick in foreign trade.
World Bank experts have projected Tajikistan’s economic growth at 3.5 percent next year, assuming these conditions are met.
“Growth bounce-back in neighboring countries, especially China and Russia, will help support trade activities, remittances inflows, and foreign investment,” the World Bank report predicts.
The report forecasts remittances strengthening once travel restrictions are eased and access to labor markets in host countries is restored.
Domestically, the World Bank highlighted the need to carry out “much-needed structural reforms” and to revive the private sector.
Tajikistan is also plagued by corruption, economic mismanagement, and growing income inequality.
Back in Khujand, when asked about her hopes for the future, Maryam said that any improvement for her family depends on her husband being able to find work.
“But for now, I wish the government would provide money to schools for free meals for children from poor families once a day until things improve,” she says.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.