EurasiaNet Civil Society - Kyrgyzstan: Akaev's Acrid Legacy

CIVIL SOCIETY

KYRGYZSTAN: AKAEV’S ACRID LEGACY
Aaron Rhodes 2/25/05
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from TOL

As we write these words, thousands of Kyrgyz are protesting on the streets about the removal of opposition candidates from the race for parliamentary seats. According to the Kyrgyz Committee for Human Rights and to the Kyrgyz branch of the Bureau on Human Rights and the Rule of Law, there are protests in Naryn, Talas, Jalalabad, the capital Bishkek, and other towns.

International human rights groups have dutifully recorded and expressed concern about illegal attempts to thwart opposition campaigns and to manipulate the results of the elections, which will be held on 27 February. Kyrgyz human rights activists say that President Askar Akaev, having already "taken over" the government apparatus, is now trying to take over the legislative branch, after which he can join several other leaders of former Soviet republics in establishing a dynasty for himself and his family. The ground is clearly being prepared: numerous family relatives of the president are running in these elections.

The problem for the president is that, either because of his government’s numerous public statements about the virtues of democracy�statements transparently aimed at pleasing the international community-or simply because of its demonstrated inefficiency when it tries to implement repressive tactics, many citizens seem unprepared to allow the Akaev government have its way in these elections.

Even after the bloodshed in the Aksy region in 2002, when police shot dead a number of protesters�crimes for which no one has been punished, while the officials responsible have been promoted�anxious Kyrgyz citizens do not fear their government enough to play the passive, supplicant role expected by a president who apparently sees himself as a benign father-figure.

At least compared with other countries in the region, civil society is well-developed in Kyrgyzstan. For a period of several years, in the early 1990s, civil society and political pluralism seemed to be making progress. Of course, things were not as good as they seemed, and Kyrgystan’s reputation as the "Switzerland of Central Asia" was based in part on its relative liberalism in comparison to brutally repressive neighbors. Still, there is a saying that once toothpaste gets out if its tube, it is hard to get it back in; in the demonstrations we see now, we can see the justice in that statement.

President Akaev and his cohort have been trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube for the past several years. They have seen that a process was underway that could bring into power a regime more committed to democracy and human rights.

They have tried to repress the independent media, but in a way that would not cause too many problems with sources of political and economic support in the European Union and the United States. They have left a few vocal media critics in place but made it almost impossible for them to get their message out; most recently, electricity mysteriously disappeared from a printing house where independent media are printed, media that had planned to carry election advertisements for several opposition candidates.

They have tried to clamp down on their critics in human rights organizations. They drove one of their harshest critics, Ramazan Dyrldaev, into exile and, using standard Bolshevik replacement tactics, created a GONGO (a government-run "nongovernmental organization") with the name of Dyrldaev’s human rights organization, which attends meetings of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) only to denounce him and to denounce the International Helsinki Federation.

They have ruthlessly kept their most threatening political opponents like Feliks Kulov in prison in charges that are highly dubious, and probably fabricated (although, with no independent court proceedings, it is not possible to say).

All the while Akaev continues to believe he can con international visitors with bogus, self-serving theories about the "special" human rights culture of the region.

The questions for President Akaev now are: Will these tactics preserve his brittle and inefficient regime? Will he and his political clique be able to hold on to power by denying freedom and human rights? Will the United States and the European Union buy their weak justifications for repression, derived opportunistically from the rhetoric of the "war on terrorism" and following the world-view of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin?

President Akaev has ridiculed elections in Georgia and Ukraine, claiming the resulting displacement of authoritarian and corrupt Soviet-era political bosses was the result of "interference" by foreigners. He has further tried to push a xenophobic hot-button, suggesting that criticisms of his policies are degrading to the Kyrgyz people. He has implied that a political change in Kyrgyzstan would threaten economic development. And, of course, he suggests that a campaign for a free and fair election on Kyrgyzstan is "dangerous."

What is dangerous in Kyrgyzstan are tactics that are bringing thousands of citizens onto the streets to protest clumsy attempts to stop opposition candidates. While the Akaev government has all but squandered its potential to be remembered as a progressive force for democracy and human rights, it might itself drag the society into chaos. Free and fair elections do not result in instability and insecurity. At this point, what poses the real security danger to this beautiful Central Asian state is a numb paternalism that blindly assumes that a population hungry for democracy and human rights will remain passive.

Editor�s Note: Aaron Rhodes is the executive director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.

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