THE OSCE CHALLENGED - NHC/IHF

PART II: OSCE PRIORITIES AND PERSPECTIVES FROM CIVIL SOCIETY
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mr. yevgeniy zhovtis (kazakhstan international bureau on human rights and rule of law)
on civil and political rights in transitional countries:
“We’re facing a human rights crisis”

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Mr. Yevgeniy Zhovtis, director of a Kazakh human rights NGO, paints a pitch-black picture of the human rights situation in the OSCE transitional countries. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan all deliberately flout their citizens’ rights to free speech, free association, and free and fair elections. Mr. Zhovtis gives ample examples of the (often quite ingenious) ways in which these Central Asian countries breach their international obligations to protect civil and political rights, as contained in the main human rights treaties they have joined and ratified.
As the international community, including the OSCE, has not established effective mechanisms to call these countries to order, Mr. Zhovtis perceives a “serious moral and judicial crisis” in the field of international human rights. Furthermore, he seems to suggest that similar infringements by these countries of economic or security treaties would not have been taken as lightly by the international community as infringements upon human rights treaties have been.
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“For me the very difficult task to outline the situation with regard to observation of human rights and civil freedoms in transitional countries of the OSCE region, mainly in Central Asia, the area where I came from. And to describe it in dynamic terms and define the main problems which the newly created civil societies in these countries are facing.
Obviously, when we speak about political rights and civil freedoms, we mean primarily those fundamental rights assigned in the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the main international treaties on human rights.
In view of shortage of time, I’ll confine myself to a short general description of the observance of such rights and freedoms as the right to participate in government, freedom of speech, receiving and dissemination of information, freedom of belief and its expression, freedom of peaceful demonstration and association, and fair trial.
The minimum standards of observation of these rights and freedoms are described in many UN and OSCE documents, most of which were adopted or ratified by the Central Asian countries’ governments, which, therefore, accepted their respective international obligations.
In this respect, one of the theses which I would like to advance, is that a serious crisis of judicial and moral power of international treaties on human rights can be noticed.
All NIS countries (?) joined and ratified the main treaties on human rights, which require them to observe the minimum UN and OSCE human rights standards. But so what? How do citizens of Turkmenistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan or other Central Asian states benefit from the fact that their countries are signatories to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, or, as members of the OSCE, took on its obligations?
If governments do not respect their obligations embedded in treaties which are legally binding, what could be said about declarations, appeals and other documents which have mainly a moral effect? The international community and its institutions, including the OSCE, have not established effective mechanisms of influence on countries violating their human rights obligations. A paradoxical situation is created: the authoritarian leaders of Central Asian countries consider it necessary to observe their obligations in the field of economic cooperation or security, but they violate their obligations in the field of human rights, without any consequences. I have a reasonable question: what would the international community, including the OSCE, do if these countries would violate economic treaties and agreements on cooperation in security? If agreements on human rights are brutally violated, what guarantees do we have that agreements in other fields will be observed?
I think that moral condemnation, or ‘quiet’ or ‘semi-loud’ diplomacy, in order to influence countries violating their obligations, don’t have any practical effect. The international community and the OSCE should create more effective mechanisms and procedures to ensure the implementation of international human rights treaties.

While appreciating the situation as regards observation of political rights and civil freedoms in transitional countries in the OSCE region, I consider a systematic approach suitable, analysing the dynamics of development (or degradation) of legislation, state and civil institutions and respective practices since these countries became independent.
The situation of human rights in the countries of the region, in my opinion, is generally characterized by the negative dynamics of political processes and brutal violation of basic rights and freedoms during the last five to seven years.
I’ll begin with the right to free speech. Defamation (or slander) is considered to be a criminal offence in the legislations of practically all countries. Journalists have become subjects of criminal investigation, initiated mainly by officials of different government levels. Some have been sentenced to imprisonment. Not just journalists have been accused of defamation, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan even solicitors have been prosecuted on the same basis while just defending their clients.
Furthermore, civil lawsuits against journalists and media to obtain compensation for moral damage resulting from loss of dignity and honour are commonplace. Such lawsuits are started by both government officials and prominent businessmen. If they are awarded damages, in general this leads to bankruptcy of the accused media, as astronomically high sums are often involved.
Recently, in the countries of the region the practice spread of judges starting lawsuits, stipulating loss of their honour and dignity in publicity concerning court cases. Remarkable is that these criminal and civil cases are mostly initiated against opposition and independent journalists or media. In recent years, many opposition newspapers, magazines, television and radio companies faced suspension of their activities, closure, or sentences for their journalists.
The threat of criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits resulting in bankruptcy leads to massive self-censorship among journalists, especially when the political leadership or high officials are involved.
Year by year, legislation in the Central Asian countries concerning freedom of speech becomes worse (even compared to legislation that was adopted in the beginning of the 1990s). For example, in the beginning of 2003, the Kazakh government submitted its draft legislation on mass media, which considers not only journalists and editors legally responsible for the content of their publications, but media owners, founders and distributors as well.
Attempts to control the Internet are being made, including denying access to ‘wrong sites’ (from the authorities’ point of view), creation of ‘mirror’ sites, and illegal censorship.
To a certain extent, practically all state institutions in the region are fighting independent mass media: national security bodies, Ministries of Internal Affairs and Public Prosecutors’ Offices. Furthermore, all states of the region have special governmental bodies which control mass media activity. These are named ‘Ministries of Press and Information’, and are mainly ideologically pressuring dependent mass media and trying to control independent mass media. These ministries initiate persecutions of independent mass media and journalists, either by themselves or through the Public Prosecutors’ Office. In some cases, journalists have become subject of a criminal prosecution that wasn’t linked directly to their publications, although in all these cases the political motivation was obvious.
The most recent prominent cases were the cases of the newspapers ‘Assandi Times’ and ‘Soldat’ (both Kazakh weeklies), the Internet-newspapers ‘Navigator’ (Kazakhstan) and ‘My capital’ ('Moya Stolitsa', Kyrgyzstan), the journalists Sergey Duvanov, Ermurat Bapi, Irina Petrusheva (all three from Kazakhstan), Ruslan Sharipov and Olim Toshev (both from Uzbekistan).

The situation as regards the right to peaceful association, including criticism of the government, is not any better. In the countries of the region this right is severely restricted.
For example, according to a Kazakh Presidential Decree on the organization of peaceful meetings, adopted in 1995, ‘peaceful meeting’ means not only a rally, a demonstration or a procession, but also pickets, hunger strikes and indoor public gatherings. Ten days in advance, organizers of such meetings have to request permission from the authorities. The authorities may postpone their decision until the very last day, thereby giving the organizers no opportunity either to inform their supporters or to invite other people (because, if their request eventually would be refused, the organizers wouldn’t have time to call the meeting off). Practically in the whole republic a request form has been introduced on which one has to state:

the organizers of the meeting: public organizations (full names and addresses of leaders) or private persons (the same information);
the purpose of the event;
the planned number of participants;
planned texts of slogans, etc.

According to current legislation, any mass meeting is prohibited that could create ethnic, social or tribal tension (for which terms no legal definition exists). Local authorities are at liberty to interpret what ‘providing civil order and secure interests of other citizens’ might mean. In these conditions it is practically impossible in Kazakhstan to get permission for any serious public event, let alone one where the authorities might be criticized.
Finally, according to the same Presidential Decree, not only the organizers and initiators are legally responsibility for taking part in an unauthorized, hence illegal, event, other participating citizens as well, regardless of the question whether they did or didn’t know whether the event had been permitted by the authorities or not. In some cities, e.g. in the capital of Kazakhstan Astana, or the southern capital Almaty (?), local authorities have designated one or two places for public events. In Almaty, for example, this place is located almost in the suburbs, behind the cinema theater, in a small park. And any procession or demonstration entailing movement from one location to another is practically banned by this decision.
Similar legislation and practices exist in other countries of the region. The police consider participants of rallies, processions, demonstrations or pickets ‘enemies of the state’ and consider stopping such peaceful meetings as their main goal. Participants of unauthorized peaceful meetings face administrative arrests up to 15 days.
For right to free association (e.g. a trade union) the same goes. In the countries of the region all activity of unregistered associations is prohibited. Initiators and participants of such associations, even if they violate no laws, could be subjected to criminal or administrative charges. Complicated registration procedures and high registration duties severely limit the possibilities of civil society development. A new law, adopted several days ago in Turkmenistan, will lead soon to liquidation of the remaining independent NGOs in this country (just about 100 now). As in the case of mass media, NGOs enjoy ‘special attention’ of those in power: of national security bodies, offices of Internal Affairs and Public Prosecutors. In Kazakhstan, for example, since 1993 every city and regional department of Internal Affairs has a so-called Section on Relations with Public Associations, which really plays the role of a ‘political police’, publicly or secretly controlling the activity of the most active NGOs. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, not to speak about Turkmenistan, some public organizations, NGOs as well, have serious problems with their registration and their activities, especially those critically oriented towards the authorities. In Kazakhstan it took a public association called ‘Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan’ 18 months to get registered, in Uzbekistan local human rights organizations fruitlessly tried to register for several years(e.g. the ‘Society for Human Rights in Uzbekistan’). In Kyrgyzstan, the ‘Committee for Human Rights’ has serious problems.
But the most serious problems in the countries of the region are related to the creation and activity of opposition parties. These do not even exist in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan they experience considerable difficulties with registration and legal activity. For example, according to a law on political parties adopted in Kazakhstan last year, any political party that wants to be registered has to submit to the Ministry of Justice a list of no less than 50.000 members. This law resulted in liquidation of practically all opposition parties, including the ‘Republican People’s Party of Kazakhstan.’
Opposition leaders are persecuted by the government, which initiates criminal cases against them, obviously politically motivated. In some countries of the region, some prominent officials joined the opposition. Subsequently, criminal cases were initiated against them, and they were sentenced to various prison sentences, including long ones. In the opinion of human rights defenders and independent monitoring organizations (including the OSCE) the initiating of these criminal cases and the verdicts were politically motivated. Also the accused were denied the right to a fair trial.
The most (in)famous cases of recent years are the cases of the former Kazakh Prime-Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, his former press-secretary Amirzhan Kosanov, former Minister Mukhtar Ablyasov, former Governor Galymzhan Zhakyanov and former Kyrgyz Vice-President Felix Kulov.

The right to participate in government and to fair and honest elections is violated everywhere. Not a single local, parliamentary of presidential election conducted since the independency of the countries of the region were up to international standards. Electoral commissions, appointed by the executive, staffed mainly by employees of enterprises or institutions financed by the government (schools, universities, hospitals, state institutions), have not been able to provide transparency and fairness of elections. Although for the last ten years the international community and OSCE observers have been consistently criticizing elections conducted in the countries of the region, the situation is not improving, it is even deteriorating. During the most recent local elections, election monitors installed video cameras for the constant survey of the voting process in one electoral district (with the authorities’ permission). As a result of the subsequent survey, it was found that more than 70 people, mostly teachers of regional schools, voted several times in different electoral stations. There was no specific reaction of the Central Electoral commission or Public Prosecutors’ Office to this fact. Citizens’ trust in fair elections was considerably undermined, if not lost completely.
In the countries of the region, trust in the judiciary is also undermined. The judiciary is under direct political influence of the executive, considerably corrupted and there are serious doubts as to its ability to ensure the rule of law. The OSCE, as well as the USA, the European Parliamentt, the EU, and other governmental and non-governmental international organizations have expressed their concern.
However we see no improvements.

One could draw only one conclusion from the aforementioned facts: the OSCE transitional countries urgently need political reform. Only then, one might expect some positive development in the field of political rights and civil freedoms. The authorities should stop their persecution of the political opposition and independent journalists, they should release all political prisoners, they should close all politically motivated criminal cases, they should create conditions in which civil society can thrive and they should begin a national dialog to create conditions for a democratic process in observance of their international obligations in the field of human rights.
I hope this conference will help to understand how the OSCE might effectively assist these processes.”

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