Is the Human Rights Situation in Eurasia Worse Since September 11?

A 10-day conference on human rights and democracy convened by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has brought some 500 government officials, international experts, and nongovernmental-organization (NGO) activists together to discuss democracy and human rights. Some NGO leaders travelling from Central Asia to the meeting have a stark message. "With the formation of the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Uzbekistan after the well-known events of 11 September 2001, many people hoped for an improvement in the human rights situation in Uzbekistan. But eventually all these hopes turned out to be illusions," says Abusalom Ergashev, leader of the Ferghana Valley branch of the Human Rights Society, in a statement prepared for the conference. As indicative of unchanging conditions, Ergashev cited the recent cases of women who demonstrated against the torture of their relatives in prison, and wound up in police custody themselves. Ergashev and other Central Asian activists have greater expectations from Western leaders now to put more pressure on their governments to implement human rights guarantees.

There is some sign that they are being heard. OSCE conference spokesman Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher told RFE/RL that one of the major issues of the conference will be the fight against terrorism and its international repercussions on the human rights situation in many of the 55 member countries of the OSCE (see "OSCE: Conference To Focus On Terrorism, Human Rights In Central Asia," rferl.org, 9 September 2002). "There is no specific session on terrorism, but we expect this to be one of the major issues. And not only, of course, as regards the Western countries' response [to it], but also Central Asian countries. For example, using the fight against terrorism as a pretext to clamp down on human rights in their countries," Eschenbaecher said.

Some activists have come to see a kind of "axis of opportunism" emerging as certain U.S. allies in the war against terrorism have used the campaign as a cover to settle scores with their restive minorities and separatist movements, hoping to deflect criticism from the Western democracies. Speaking quite frankly during her last week in office as UN high commissioner for human rights, former Irish President Mary Robinson said the U.S., Russia, China and others were trampling on civil liberties to crush troublesome opponents, AP reported on 7 September. "Everything is justified by that T-word," Robinson said, referring to terrorism. "I hope that countries will put human rights back on the agenda because it tended to slip after 11 September," AP quoted her as saying.

With American military presence in the Central Asia, NGOs are taking a hard look at whether events since last year's terrorist attacks have worsened the human rights situation -- an impression many have but find hard to substantiate in numeric terms -- or whether the rising tide of expectations unleashed from increased U.S. military engagement as well as media attention to the region have made chronically bad human rights conditions more intolerable.

Acacia Shields, Central Asia researcher for the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), told "(Un)Civil Societies" that trends in each country have to be analyzed separately and the relationship to the counterterrorism effort understood in more sophisticated fashion. "The way to understand the last year's changes is that even before [11 September], these countries in Central Asia were already going down the road of worsening human rights conditions and had already mastered the art of repression of their own people. But these governments have definitely been emboldened by the new strategic relationship with the U.S. to pursue increasingly brazen policies with very little lip service to international law or the standards of civil society since [11 September]," said Shields.

"In Kyrgyzstan, every day it is getting worse and worse -- there's no question -- and we can trace back this whole year [to last September] to see when it began to deteriorate dramatically," says Shields. "It's a total lack of public confidence in the government and a lack of trust by the government in the people," she says.

With Uzbekistan, "even before [11 September], we were in a long period with gruesome deaths in custody and there have been thousands of people in prison for their religious beliefs for years. It's hard to say this year has been 'worse' -- what has worsened is the attitude of the government. It's a new form of cynicism and sophistication, especially when reacting to expression of human rights concerns from the West. It is all window dressing. They are releasing a few prisoners, and mainly keeping the rest in the jails," said Shields.

To be sure, in Uzbekistan, for example, there have been small gestures achieved after Western interventions -- the registration of an NGO long denied legal status, the amnesty of some prisoners, the prosecution of some policemen caught using torture, and access to prisons for the International Committee for the Red Cross and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. There is new room to maneuver for democracy assistance programs as well. In a statement released on 20 August titled "Fighting for Fundamental Rights and Freedoms," and published on a website to commemorate the 11 September attacks (http://usinfo.state.gov/911/), the U.S. government outlined programs run by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan (where U.S. military bases are now established) to "promote the growth of democratically oriented political parties," to establish a printing press in Kyrgyzstan "that will ensure access to free and independent information," and a two-year project to "strengthen responsible journalism in Central Asia." With greater urgency now since the attacks, the bureau has "sought to advance human rights and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide in order to change the climate of disenfranchisement and alienation that gives rise to terrorism."

Activists feel it is not enough. "Central Asian governments justify a wide range of repressive actions against political opponents, religious movements, and independent media in terms of fighting terrorism, and they receive less criticism and pressure from abroad," Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), told "(Un)Civil Societies." "What is worse, the civil society communities in those countries, which have committed themselves to democracy, pluralism and human rights, often feel as if they no longer have friends and allies as Western governments take a short-sighted and expedient approach toward terrorism," says Rhodes. The IHF, a Vienna-based group uniting 41 Helsinki and other human rights groups in Europe and North America, has published a number of reports assessing conditions in Eurasia since the 11 September attacks (see http://www.ihf-hr.org).

Activists want to make more explicit a linkage between improvement in human rights and foreign aid. In a statement released on 10 September, HRW accused the U.S. of "rubber-stamping" human rights improvements in Uzbekistan. HRW said Secretary of State Colin Powell had certified under U.S. law "substantial and continuing progress" in meeting the human rights and democracy commitments contained in a March 2002 bilateral agreement, although the actual situation in the country did not warrant it. The determination was required to release $45 million in additional assistance to the Uzbek government, now totaling $173 million this year, some of it earmarked for democracy and human rights promotion.

There has been some argument for pulling back on harsh criticism of Eurasian governments. Will support of democratic groups only cause unrest and untenable challenges for Central Asian strongmen who will see no choice but to crack down violently on citizens' demonstrations? In fact, say observers, such responses only help create the very terrorist movements they ostensibly sought to prevent. "I don't see why we should hand [Osama] bin Laden a victory and allow him to harm the human rights movement. To support repressive regimes in Central Asia constitutes a security threat because those regimes generate and export terrorism," says Rhodes.

As citizens continue to clash with authorities in Kyrgyzstan (see below), for example, human rights activists have warned that it is important not to confuse peaceful citizens' grassroots protest movements seeking redress of grievances and change -- and often provoking the violent backlash of brittle and nervous police states -- with terrorist groups bent on destruction or establishment of a fanatical system that would in turn itself violate civil rights.

Underlying the discussion about the backlash of counterterrorism on human rights is a deeper and often contentious debate both within governments and NGO movements about the hierarchy of types of rights or entitlements, and whether the focus should be on sustainable economic and social development or promotion of democracy and civil liberties. Speaking to a group of NGOs at the UN in New York on 9 September outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Robinson was asked about the ongoing controversy about "root causes" of terrorism, whether they are related to an absence of social and economic guarantees or a dearth of democracy and political freedoms. "A balance is needed," said Robinson. "Both sets of rights are needed to combat terrorism."

Yelena Bonner, chair of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation in Moscow, a veteran Russian human rights campaigner an outspoken critic of President's Putin's continued war in the North Caucasus, told "(Un)Civil Societies" that the situation had worsened considerably in Chechnya in the last year. This week a Russian human rights monitoring group, Memorial Society, discovered another mass grave of persons on its list of disappeared detainees; it was one of many such incidents of atrocities in the three-year war "essentially ignored by the West," says Bonner.

Even before 11 September, Putin's rule was notable for an erosion in media freedom and other backsliding, says Bonner; but particularly since last year's attack on the U.S. "the encouragement of patriotic sentiment has been accompanied by a worsening human rights situation," she says. She pointed to a decade-long downward spiral in all the former Soviet republics. "The Soviet dissidents were occupied with only some of the articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the guarantees for the freedom of speech, and freedom of dissemination of information and movement of people across frontiers. Today, these issues are less important for the average citizen than other articles of the Universal Declaration, regarding adequate social and economic rights such as health care, pensions, and education. Now these social rights are massively violated," says Bonner, noting that most people perceived the standards of social protection to have been greater in the Soviet era. Clearly, the upheavals of the last decade of transition, the resistance of Eurasian regimes to change and the increased expectations of their citizens, coupled with the unintended consequences of the war on terrorism, will pose serious challenges to Western governments still exploring the limits of their policies in the region.