The report, presented at a public meeting in Astana, summarizes the results of trial monitoring programme conducted on behalf of the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in 2005 and 2006 in close co-operation with the Supreme Court.
"The right to a fair trial plays a crucial role in the maintenance of order, the rule of law and confidence in State authorities. The purpose of this trial monitoring report is to contribute to that objective," said Mark Guthrie, deputy head of the human rights programme of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, ODIHR, which initiated the trial monitoring programme in co-operation with the Kazakh authorities.
OSCE participating States have made a commitment to accept court observers as a confidence building measure and in order to ensure transparency in the implementation of their commitments to fair judicial proceedings.
"Improving Kazakhstan's compliance with OSCE commitments on the right to a fair trial is crucial in light of the ongoing criminal justice reforms," said Bjorn Halvarsson, Deputy Head of the OSCE Centre in Almaty.
The 25 trial monitors, trained by the ODIHR, monitored 730 court sessions in eight regions. The report includes an assessment of the sessions' compliance with fair trial requirements, statistics and a list of recommendations to the authorities.
"The OSCE Centre will continue to support the government by following up on the recommendations and carrying out a second round of trial monitoring during 2007," Mr. Halvarsson said.
Representatives of the Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Council, the Office of the General Prosecutor, the Ministry of Justice and civil society participated in today's meeting, organized by the ODIHR, the OSCE Centre and the Supreme Court.
Police said he was arrested on February 19 in the Black Sea port city of Varna following notification by Interpol.
Khajiev's supporters said his arrest was politically motivated and demanded his immediate release.
The Watan party said in a statement that Khajiev's family was constantly persecuted in Turkmenistan. Khajiev's sister, RFE/RL reporter Ogulsapar Muradova, died in prison in Turkmenistan in 2006 after a trial described by international human rights groups as unfair.
Watan accused Bulgarian authorities of "deliberately cooperating with one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world." It asked the European Union to pressure new EU member Bulgaria to stop what it called an "illegality."
The main question is why Khajiev, who already stayed in Bulgaria for a longe time, has been arrested by the country's authorities. ETG sources state that the Turkmen President Berdymukhamedov personally sent a request to the Bulgarian Government for arresting and detaining him to Turkmenistan.
Karryev said Berdymukhammedov won the presidency with 89.23 percent of the vote.
The result was universally anticipated.
Inauguration Immediately Follows
The announcement was immediately followed by the inauguration ceremony at a session of the Halk Maslahaty (People's Council), the country's highest legislative body.
As nearly 2,500 members of the assembly and the heads of state or government from Russia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Ukraine looked on, President-elect Berdymukhammedov stepped up to take the oath of office -- and to praise an election that few would argue was fair or remotely democratic.
"The Turkmen people and the whole world have seen that the competition among the candidates for presidency has been held open and confidently," said Berdymukhammedov.
The new Turkmen president begins his term under the immense shadow of former President Saparmurat Niyazov -- who was better known as "Turkmenbashi," or the head of all Turkmen.
Berdymukhammedov might not aspire to wield the power or generate the fear of Niyazov, but he appears to have inspired hope among Turkmen voters that he can rule more reasonably.
Berdymukhammedov has promised to continue along the path Niyazov set for the country. He also reassured countries with business interests in energy-rich Turkmenistan that previous contracts and deals will be honored.
Softening of Regime's Grip Possible
He also pledged during his campaign to restore the education system to what it was before Niyazov cut the term of mandatory study, reduced university enrollment, and made it all but impossible for Turkmen citizens to study abroad.
Berdymukhammedov also promised to restore the health-care system that was gutted by Niyazov, and he said he would reexamine pensions one year after his predecessor cut the number of eligible pensioners by some 100,000 people. Berdymukhammedov also promised the previously unthinkable in one of the world's most closed societies: easing access to the Internet.
Analysts caution that Berdymukhammedov cannot move too quickly -- or too far -- with any reforms. But they suggest that the new Turkmen leader could gain popularity simply by restoring to the public some of the basic services that Niyazov took away.
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By Richard Howitt, Albert Jan Maat and Bart Staes
Published: February 9 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 9 2007 02:00
From Albert Jan Maat, Richard Howitt and Bart Staes, MEPs.
Sir, We are writing to call for European and international support for the postponement of the presidential elections in Turkmenistan due on February 11 in the face of incontrovertible evidence of massive abuse of the electoral process. The death of dictator Saparmurat Niyazov provides a historic opportunity to end years of repression for the Turkmen people - an opportunity that will be missed if unfair and undemocratic elections simply allow a new authoritarian regime to be entrenched.
It is now clear that all six candidates come from the former Communist party and have had to pledge public allegiance to Niyazov's legacy. Both the designated successor and the sole independent presidential hopeful are reported to be under arrest to eliminate them as contenders. Exiled political opposition has been barred from re-entering the country. Security forces are going house to house to coerce voters to support acting president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. Despite the fact that Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, told the European parliament that the instability of the region remains an important threat to Europe, the European Union has remained silent about these abuses.
In addition to calling for postponement of the elections, the EU should call for independent judicial review for the political prisoners, freedom to campaign for alternative political parties, full freedom of expression, including for foreign journalists to report freely on these elections.
As MEPs with a special interest in central Asia, and safekeepers of human rights, political freedoms and democratic values, we appeal to all national parliaments in the EU to call on their governments to press these demands on the Turkmen regime.
Albert Jan Maat, Vice-Chairman, European Delegation to Central Asia, and Member, EPP/ED Group
Richard Howitt, Vice-Chairman, Human Rights Committee, and Member, PES Group
Bart Staes, Member, European Delegation to Central Asia, and Member, Greens/EFA Group
European Parliament
The Financial Times Limited 2007
8 February 2007?European Voice
The European Union was brave, precise and unequivocal when it imposed sanctions on Uzbek officials directly involved in the Andijan massacre of May 2005. In November 2006 the Council of Ministers decided that they would be prolonged for six months and reviewed after three months. It was very hard for observers not to see in that decision a tendency towards softening the sanctions as no clear review criteria were mentioned.
With the review deadline getting near, the EU corridors are again full of rumours about President Islam Karimov’s alleged “good will” and “readiness to make a gesture” towards Brussels.
Around Rond-Point Schuman, Realpolitikers will present many arguments to support lifting “ineffective sanctions”. But has any good news reached us from Uzbekistan in the meantime? Has the repression of journalists, human rights defenders or non-governmental organisation members softened? Has the situation in the prisons, in the court rooms – where allegations of torture are never taken into account – improved? Or in the cotton fields, where children are obliged to work in conditions close to slavery? Has the level of small, daily humiliations Uzbeks must swallow from the heavy-handed police in any way diminished? And has the government accepted that a credible independent commission can investigate in Andijan as the EU has demanded from the beginning?
Unfortunately to all these questions the blunt and short answer is ‘no’. And other questions about free and fair elections, or that the president’s legal mandate ended on 22 January without much notice, are not even being asked. Is the president not himself challenging the constitutional order far more obviously than the thousands of citizens jailed under such a charge?
Diplomacy being what it is and politics having its reasons que la raison ne connait pas there will be voices in Europe ready to consider that perhaps allowing some diplomats to travel to the Ferghana valley would be enough progress to allow the EU to change its policy. All the more so given that the US has not followed the EU on imposing sanctions. We Europeans cannot stand our ground without them, can we?
For what purpose would the EU compro-mise its demands and values when the Uzbek president has done nothing concrete to improve the situation? For economic preferences? Anybody who has worked in that country knows that the ‘business regulations’ are designed as to oblige everybody to operate illegally, a perfect way to keep society under control. For hydrocarbons? Uzbekistan cannot export anything serious further than Bishkek.
Europe will get nothing in return for any ill-placed generosity towards this regime other than scorn. The Union of 27 should care deeply about being treated like a third-rank power by a provincial despot. With 26 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan certainly matters, but Karimov ceased to represent the aspirations of his nation a long time ago and buried the last bits of confidence for its citizens with the victims of Andijan.
And after all, who needs who the most? Is it less comfortable for Uzbekistan to have to limit its external relations to Russia and China than for the EU to keep only the very low diplomatic relationship it now maintains with this country? If Tashkent wants to improve contacts with the EU, it knows exactly what it should do. What the EU requires, at the end of the day, is far from threatening the Uzbek regime. Those in Europe who call for a dialogue with Karimov are either deceiving themselves or ill-informed on his ability to produce anything but long monologues.
The Uzbek nation, which deserves much better than the regime inherited from the collapse of the Soviet Union, will certainly remember how the EU treats it during these years. It will also remember the Russian eagerness to back the regime after Andijan and the US caution, much as Latin Americans remember how Washington too often courted their military dictatorships and vote accordingly today.
The foreign ministers should not shame Europe on 5-6 March by lifting sanctions that might be weak but still send a powerful message to Karimov and all who attempt to behave like him in the region. Softening them now would be a different kind of message, one from a very ‘soft power’ indeed.
Alain Deletroz is vice-president (Europe) of the International Crisis Group.
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The Justice Ministry said on the official website press-uz.info that these groups, including New York-based Human Rights Watch, have not yet submitted detailed reports on their activities and funding.
It did not specify what measures would be taken.
Alison Gill, the director of HRW's Office for Russia and Central Asia in Moscow, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that her organization was making every effort to comply with the law.
"We always try to strictly keep within the law and [in Uzbekistan] we have also tried to comply with the law," she said. "If the Uzbek government wants to create problems for us, it will do that. In fact, they have already created problems by denying a visa to another [Human Rights Watch] staffer."
Tashkent has forced a number of Western-funded organizations to stop operating in the country in the past months.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Turkmen Service, Albert Jan Maat, who is also a European Parliament deputy, argued that the presidential poll might not be a reason for optimism.
"These elections, only with candidates from the former government -- you can't call them real elections, and that is not a [good] start for a more open society," he said.
Maat said he favored a delay for the vote so that the opposition can file candidates and the international community can send observers. There are six candidates in the election, but all are former government officials.
The election is widely expected to fall short of Western democratic standards.
By Isabel Gorst
Published: February 7 2007 02:00 | Last updated: February 7 2007 02:00
In a totalitarian state best known for the bizarre personality cult of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan's former leader, the reforms proposed last month by Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the acting president, came out of the blue.
Observers of the central Asian republic are used to a different flavour of Turkmen politics after 21 years under the rule of a totalitarian president who squandered gas revenues on gilded monuments to himself and built ice palaces in the desert.
The acting president has recommended a democratic transfer of power and professed openness to political dialogue and, possibly, a multi-party system. But few expect real change after polls on Sunday.
Mr Berdymukhamedov will face no more than a mock challenge from five candidates, including four regional governors and a deputy minister of oil. Outsiders have been eliminated from the race and opponents ar-rested. Former officials who fled persecution have formed an opposition coalition in exile but judge it too dangerous to return to contest the election.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe has said that, as the first presidential election to take place in Turkmenistan with more than one candidate, the forthcoming poll "merits support". But it warned that there was "no guarantee of competitive elections" and said it had not had time to organise a mission to decide on the fairness of the ballot.
Little is known of Mr Berdy-mukhamedov, a dentist by training who retained posts as health minister and deputy prime minister for several years in spite of Niyazov's frequent purges.
Niyazov did not name a successor publicly and opposition members say the ailing dictator fixed on Mr Berdymukhamedov as his heir after failing to persuade his son to accept the role of future leader last year.
Ru-mours that Mr Berdy-muk-hamedov, 47, is Niyazov's undeclared son may win him support in Turkmenistan, a country where clan bonds are respected. Jonathan Stern, the head of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said Mr Berdymukha-medov's statements so far offered some room for optimism. "Mr Berdymukha-medov's tone is encouragingly sensible. But these are the earliest possible days. It is hard to know if Mr Berdymuk-hamedov will be a permanent fixture or a transitional leader."
He has promised that travel restrictions will be eased and that the internet will be widely available by 2015 - a bold advance for a republic where even government ministries are forbidden to accept foreign faxes.
He has also promised to prioritise improvements to healthcare, pensions and education, all of which were curtailed during the latter years of Niyazov's rule.
As health minister, Mr Berdymukhamedov was res-ponsible for enforcing Niyazov's orders to close regional hospitals and res-trict medicine imports, is-sued on the grounds that Turkmens were too robust to sicken.
However vague these hopes of political and economic reform, there are still fears that a softening of the regime could unleash unrest.
The authorities are reported to have killed 23 inmates of the Ovaden Dele prison during a riot that erupted after news broke of Niyazov's death. Ovaden Dele houses political prisoners, including thousands jailed after an attempted assassination of Niyazov in 2002.
Wider social upheaval would be more difficult to contain. A crisis is looming in the agriculture sector amid rumours that the government sold off seed after a poor harvest last autumn, an action that would preclude spring sowing.
Martha Olcott, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "There is real danger of social unrest in coming months if these rumours prove true."
Election day is expected to pass smoothly but Turkmenistan's leadership is not taking any chances. General Akmurad Redjepov, the head of the presidential guard, is understood to be overseeing a security alert
The Financial Times Limited 2007
Five Rivals Defer To Acting President, The Presumed Winner
By Peter Finn?Washington Post Foreign Service?Sunday, February 4, 2007; A14
MOSCOW -- Six presidential candidates are barnstorming the country and holding public meetings to talk about improving education, reforming health care, ensuring adequate pensions and boosting agriculture.
It could be Iowa -- if it weren't Turkmenistan.
Acting President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, 49, will almost certainly win when the Central Asian country's citizens go to the polls Feb. 11. His opponents, a deputy minister and four regional officials, are willing foils, according to analysts and exiled politicians.
Murad Karyev, the supposedly neutral chairman of the Central Election Commission, has already said Berdymukhammedov is the best man for the job.
But the modicum of debate in a country that during its 15-plus years of independence lived under the megalomaniacal shadow of president-for-life Saparmurad Niyazov amounts to a slight thaw. For the first time, the country will hold a presidential election in which more than one candidate is running.
Each of the six candidates continues to pledge loyalty to the legacy of Niyazov. But their stump speeches contain some implicit criticism of the late president by acknowledging the need to reverse the erosion of social programs, in particular.
"We know who the winner is already," said Murad Esenov, director of the Institute for Central Asian and Caucasian Studies in Sweden. "However, there are other candidates, and the fact that they have the possibility to speak up is significant and good. I believe there will be certain changes, because everyone realizes they cannot live as they lived before."
The exiled opposition has been prevented from returning to take part in the election. A coalition of exile organizations chose Khudaiberdy Orazov, a former vice premier and head of the Central Bank, to run as their candidate, but he is sitting out the campaign abroad.
"They are trying to create an image of real elections, but of course these are not elections. It's some sort of clownery," said Orazov, who lives in Sweden. "I believe we are entering the second stage of dictatorship."
Agents from Turkmenistan's internal security service, the MNB, are shadowing five of the candidates to ensure they don't stray from their scripts and say things contrary to policies laid out by the leading candidate, according to the Eurasian Transition Group, a nongovernmental organization in Germany that is one of the few with a presence in Turkmenistan.
"The other five candidates have to attend security council meetings, where they receive their orders," said Michael Laubsch, executive director of the German group. "Everything is concentrated on Berdymukhammedov, and the MNB have total control over the other candidates."
For the outside world, the direction Turkmenistan takes will carry profound implications for energy security. The former Soviet republic is becoming the focus of competition among Russia, China and the West as they vie for its natural gas resources.
Most of Turkmenistan's gas is now exported through Russian pipelines. The supply could become vital to the ability of Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, to meet rising demand over the next decade. But Western governments would like to see construction of new export routes that bypass Russia and diversify the supply chain, something Niyazov had resisted.
China has already secured a deal to build a new pipeline that will deliver billions of cubic yards of natural gas annually over 30 years, beginning in 2009.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has embraced Berdymukhammedov. At a news conference Thursday, Putin mused favorably on the idea of an OPEC-like organization for natural gas, although he stressed, "We are not going to set up a cartel."
The United States and the European Union have stepped up contacts with Turkmenistan's new leadership. The opposition-in-exile has expressed frustration at what it sees as muted statements from those countries about the need for real democratic change.
Under Niyazov, who was 66 when he died of heart disease in December, Turkmenistan was one of the world's most isolated countries, subject to the bizarre whims of a leader who squandered vast amounts of revenue from natural gas resources on monuments to himself.
The country's education system, which forced students to study Niyazov's writings, was gutted. The number of years students spent in school was cut, and foreign degrees were not recognized. Pensions for 100,000 elderly citizens were summarily denied. Ballet and opera were banned as alien. Dissidents were jailed or forced into exile.
Exiled human rights activists have taken comfort from the release this week of an environmentalist who was given a three-year suspended sentence, rather than the usual prison term, after being convicted on a weapons possession charge that was widely seen as trumped-up. But that was offset by the ruthless suppression last month of a prison riot at a facility outside Ashkhabad, the capital. Twenty-three people were killed, according to human rights activists.
Berdymukhammedov, a dentist by profession and a former minister of health, has said that he will relax controls on Internet access, among the most stringent in the world, and that Turkmenistan may eventually move toward a multiparty system.
"I would like to be the president of a democratic country where people enjoy freedom and every condition to work and to rest, and where justice, peace and friendship dominate," Berdymukhammedov said, to sustained applause, at a televised meeting last month.
Whether such rhetoric is a short-term ploy to consolidate power by a governing class still unsure of its popular standing is unclear. But emerging regional and tribal concerns, suppressed under Niyazov, could also accelerate the need for broader power-sharing.
In a secretly conducted poll of 1,145 respondents across Turkmenistan after Niyazov's death, the Eurasian Transition Group found that 81 percent of those surveyed want a president who supports democratic reforms, and 55 percent believe their votes will not be counted on election day.
"Berdymukhammedov needs to build up a certain respect, and I believe he will allow some relaxation," said Farid Tuhbatullin, a former political prisoner in Turkmenistan and now the director of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, based in Vienna. "The opposition who live in the West may have a chance to build up a dialogue with the authorities, and then maybe later they may be able to legalize their activity in the country."
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Human Rights Watch said today that the victims submitted their appeal to the Higher Regional Court in Stuttgart last week.
The federal prosecutor had rejected their December 2005 complaint that called for Almetov to be investigated for crimes against humanity.
Holly Cartner, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said by rejecting the original case file by the victims, "Germany's federal prosecutor has exacerbated the environment of impunity that exists for foreign officials accused of crimes against humanity."
The original complaint was filed in Germany as Almatov had been receiving medical treatment there.
The Uzbek government says 189 people were killed when escaped prisoners mixed with peaceful protesters in Andijon and troops were sent in to restore order. Witnesses claim the figure was much higher.
The event sent hundreds fleeing into neighboring Kyrgyzstan, many of whom were relocated by the UN to other countries, including Germany.
With oil prices spiking in recent years, the petrostates' windfall is staggering, and this sort of wealth should be a godsend for impoverished, post-Soviet countries. However, a salutary impact is by no means a given when one is speaking of unaccountable governing systems where small groups of elites control a large part of the resources. With the exception of Norway, which enjoyed the advantage of having accountable institutions in place when it began to develop its hydrocarbon wealth, the track record of lands rich in energy resources is rather poor.
Defining The Petrostate
Much of the study concerning energy-rich states and democratic accountability has focused on the Middle East. However, the recent rise high oil prices have focused attention on the energy-rich lands of the former Soviet Union. Whether the post-Soviet petrostates can escape the poor development outcomes of the earlier generation of countries that relied on oil and gas as their principal economic engine remains a significant question.
With so much money flowing into these countries, the stakes are raised for powerful elites who dominate these countries' politico-economic systems and control these formidable resources.
No less important, and indeed directly linked to domestic-development issues, is how these countries choose to exert their growing international influence.
While there is no ironclad definition of a resource-based economy, one frame of reference is those for which natural resources account for more than 10 percent of GDP and 40 percent of exports. This threshold is easily met in the cases of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. More than half of Azerbaijan's current GDP and 90 percent of its exports are accounted for by oil and gas. In the Kazakh case, GDP is 30 percent and nearly 60 percent of exports come from oil. Oil and gas exports account for about 60 percent of Russia's federal budget revenues and two-thirds of its exports.
The Root Of All Evil
The "resource curse" -- along with associated pathologies of energy-led development -- may in fact already be rearing its head. In each of these post-Soviet countries, there is an increasing dependence on energy as the chief economic driver, as well as a growth of the state bureaucracy and official corruption.
With so much money flowing into these countries, the stakes are raised for powerful elites who dominate these countries' politico-economic systems and control these formidable resources. To protect their positions, they limit scrutiny of their activities by silencing the press and intimidating political opposition, civil society, and other independent institutions.
The crackdown on the press in all three countries has been particularly systematic. Journalists' murders, increasing media takeovers by regime-friendly concerns, and the careful selection of broadcast news to control what ordinary citizens can and cannot see have become standard operating procedure. In 2006 in Azerbaijan, for example, there were a host of measures imposed by the authorities to exert greater control over the media. These included a decision by the National Television and Radio Council to require Azerbaijani broadcast companies to acquire a license to re-broadcast programs from such news sources as the BBC and RFE/RL, effectively taking them off the air as of January 1, 2007.
The Russian authorities too have targeted the local affiliates that broadcast programming from RFE/RL. Meanwhile, Gazprom-Media, a branch of the state-controlled gas conglomerate, has expanded its share of the Russian print-media market. The Internet is coming under greater scrutiny from the authorities.
The increasingly tight control of the information sector serves as a barometer of sorts for the entrenchment of the petrostate and the corruption that is one of its hallmarks. A recent paper produced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) emphasizes the point that in resource-based economies restricted press freedom is among the critical factors enabling corruption to flourish.
International Petro-Politics
The Kremlin, having already effectively muzzled independent organizations and voices at home, is now pursuing an international dimension to its anti-democratic campaign. Russia's leadership has apparently set its sights on limiting the ability of organizations such as the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to scrutinize its conduct. In 2005, Russia launched a campaign to limit the election-monitoring capacity of the OSCE, whose Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has set the standard for evaluating the conduct of elections in Europe and the Eurasian region. That campaign may be aimed at limiting these organizations' ability effectively to monitor upcoming elections in Russia (in 2007 and 2008) and in Kremlin-friendly autocratic states.
In its immediate neighborhood, Russia has also played the energy card to exert pressure on countries that represent the critical test cases for democratic reform in the CIS -- Georgia and Ukraine -- as well as on supposed allies including Armenia and Belarus.
The energy stakes are particularly high for Europe. EU imports of Russian energy,for instance, are expected to grow from 50 percent to 70 percent over the next decade and a half. However, with these petrostates' coffers already swollen with cash and no significant declines in energy prices in sight, the West is likely to confront increasingly assertive petro-diplomacy for the foreseeable future. These factors suggest that the community of democratic states should devise a coordinated response to the challenge, including the pursuit of a serious policy of energy independence.
Meanwhile, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan all have ambitions to be more deeply integrated into the global economy, to expand business with the EU and the Western community, and to be accepted as "normal" countries. They seek the prestige and benefits of membership of Western, rules-based organizations, while typically offering up only the trappings of accountable democratic institutions.
All three countries belong to the OSCE, which Kazakhstan hopes to chair in 2009. Russia and Azerbaijan are members of the Council of Europe. Both Russia and Kazakhstan hope to join the WTO by the end of this year. Those aspirations suggest that these countries should at a minimum be required to live up to the commitments they have made to these rules-based organizations and adhere to their accepted standards both at home and internationally.
Christopher Walker is director of studies at Freedom House. He is co-editor of Freedom House's annual survey of democratic governance, "Countries At The Crossroads."
Nazarbayev was key-speaker of a reception, invited by "Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik" und "Ostausschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft". Both German institutions tried to do everything to give the Kazakh President a warm welcome. Unfortunately the opposition members did their best to destory the nice admosphere. They circulated "an alternative presentation of the situation in Kazakhstan" to the incoming participants of the event. After Kazakh officials were informed about the protest, they called the police for arresting the demonstrators. Realizing that German law does not allow arrests because of criticizing Presidents, members of Kazakh Secret Service tried to possession of the flyers. Afterwards, they took photos of the opposition members.
ETG was asked to publish the paper on its web-site. Interested persons can download the flyer here.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement that a succession of Kazakh printing houses have refused to print the newspaper, in some cases after officials warned the printing houses not to do so.
The CPJ said since December "Uralskaya nedelya" has signed contracts with four separate printing houses, only to receive notice several days later that the newspaper could not be printed.
According to the CPJ statement, the printing house with which "Uralskaya nedelya" signed its most recent contract, Ak Zhaiyk, is printing the newspaper despite the fact that "an official called Ak Zhaiyk and warned its management not to print 'Uralskaya nedelya.'"
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The crackdown on opposition and media in the run-up to the December 2005 election that gave President Nursultan Nazarbayev a new seven-year term barely let up in 2006 and prosecutions for “defaming” him continued, along with closure of opposition papers and physical attacks on journalists. A young French journalist was also murdered in Almaty.
An opposition leader, Altynbek Sarsenbayev, and two aides were shot dead in February and the opposition media joined a protest movement calling for a through investigation. Editor Yergalieva Gulzhan, of Svoboda Slova, was given a 10-day prison sentence in March for saying President Nazarbayev and his daughter (member of parliament Darigha Nazarbayeva) were behind the murders.
Two months later, journalist Kazis Toguzbayev was prosecuted by the committee for national security for supposedly harming the president’s “dignity and reputation” (article 318 of the criminal code) in a 3 May article on website www.kub.kz headed “Mafia regime shadows the murder of Altynbek Sarsenbayev” and accusing the authorities of not investigating the murder energetically enough. His trial began on 23 November and he faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $7,600. He was banned from leaving Almaty.
The regime continued to target the opposition press. Kenzhegali Aitbakiev, a sub-editor of the weekly Ayna-Plus (whose liquidation had been ordered in early April after being sued for libelling Nazarbayev), was attacked and beaten up by a dozen men near his home on 23 April and lay unconscious in the street for three hours before being taken to hospital for an emergency operation for a fractured skull and jaw.
Ayna Plus had only started up in January as a new version of the opposition newspaper Dat, founded in 1998 and several times forced to change its name (SolDat, Juma Times, Ayna-Plus) to keep going in the face of several judicial liquidations, like other publications.
Nazarbayev decreed amendments to the press law on 5 July, setting up a fund to pay libel damages (to which all media had to belong), providing for a three-year ban on working as a journalist for those with a media-outlet ordered closed and a ban on newspapers reusing or partly changing the name of a paper shut down by the authorities. Registration with the information ministry was tightened and re-registration made compulsory whenever a media-outlet changed its editor, address or the number of copies it printed, on pain of heavy fines.
French journalist Gregoire de Bourgues, 24, was murdered at his apartment in Almaty on 2 August. He had been in the country for three months writing an advertising feature for the government. Police said he was the victim of a botched robbery by three men who broke into his apartment and killed him before getting away with about €5,000, his mobile phone and laptop computer. Police arrested two suspects in late August and said a third man was being sought.
Reporters Without Borders went to Kazakhstan in September to investigate, met government officials and investigators and managed to win access for the family’s lawyers to the case files and permission to participate in the trial. The family lodged a legal complaint in France on 8 September and Reporters Without Borders was granted interested party status by the investigating judge.
The regime’s broad crackdown since May 2005 has also targeted local and foreign media. Foreign journalists are seen as agitators and “terrorists” and Uzbek freelances who work with them are prosecuted. Arrests, internment and blocked websites were routine for journalists in 2006.
Repression has become harsher since the 13 May 2005 uprising in the eastern town of Andijan, when about 800 people were killed, according to non-governmental organisations (187 according to the government). Offices of foreign media were closed and their staff forced to leave the country, including those of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the US media aid organisation Internews and Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty.
The government cancelled the accreditation of Obid Shabanov, correspondent of the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in the southern region of Bukhara, on 15 March 2006 and accused him of putting out inaccurate news in a 1 February programme on the station, when he reported that some 30 people had frozen to death in an unheated bus on its way to Moscow.
The government announced on 24 February that journalists working for foreign media that criticised official policies risked losing their accreditation for interfering in “internal affairs” or insulting the “dignity and reputation” of Uzbeks. The procedure for registering with the authorities was extended from 10 days to two months. Foreign and Uzbek journalists were forbidden to work with unaccredited Uzbek colleagues on pain of prosecution. Journalists were likened to terrorists and the decree said those who “called for the overthrow of the state or incited racial and religious hatred” would be deported.
Uzbek journalists were front-line targets of the crackdown. Six reporters on the government paper Pravda Vostoka were dismissed in July after the presidential office called them “politically unreliable.” The journalists (Jamilya Aipova, Olga Fazylova and others) contributed the independent website Tribune (www.tribune-uz.info). Two independent journalists, Ulugbek Khaidarov and Jamshid Karimov (the president’s nephew), were also victims. Karimov vanished on 12 September between his home and the hospital in Jizak where his mother was a patient. His family found out on 5 October that he had been interned in a mental hospital and would be held there for at least five months. Khaidarov was arrested on 14 September and falsely accused of “extortion and blackmail” after a woman approached him at a bus stop and stuffed some banknotes in his pocket that he quickly threw on the ground. Police arrested him a few seconds later. He was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in Jizak on 5 October before being freed without explanation a month later.
Sabirjon Yakubov, former correspondent for the independent paper Hurriyat, was freed on 4 April 2006 after charges against him of “undermining constitutional order” and “involvement with a extremist religious organisation” were dropped. He had been arrested in Tashkent on 11 April 2005 and been imprisoned in an intelligence services (SNB) detention centre.
Internet users were also targeted. All local service providers (ISPs) have been forced since November 2005 to use the state-controlled telecom operator Uzbektelecom, which enables the regime to compile blacklists. The website of independent journalist Sergei Ezhkov, Uzmetronom.com, was blocked in June 2006. He is one of the very few journalists openly critical of the regime.
Alo Khojayev, editor of the website Tribune-uz, decided to close it down in early July, as he and his family had been receiving threats since May 2005, when he posted online news about the Andijan uprising that contradicted the official version. The authorities refused to let him leave the country, even though he had hounded and efforts made to intimidate him, so he stopped working as a journalist.
The regime’s grip on the country and the independent media tightened further in 2006, with several journalists arrested, one killed in prison and their families hounded by the authorities. The death of President Separmurad Nyazov on 21 December revived hopes of liberalisation in Central Asia’s most repressive country.
Three journalists and human rights activists - Annakurban Amanklychev, Sapardurdy Khajiev and Ogulsapar Muradova - who helped French TV station France 2 make a travel programme about Turkmenistan were arrested on 16 and 18 June. There were accused of plotting against ‘The Turkmenbashi” (Father of All Turkmens, as Nyazov called himself) and their detention announced by the president’s Ashkabat TV station. The eventual charges against them were “illegal possession of arms and ammunition” and before their secret trial on 25 August, their families were not allowed to visit them. One witness who saw Amanklychev at the state security ministry said she was almost unrecognisable and was being brutally interrogated round the clock.
After a hasty trail during which the defence was not allowed to speak, Amanklychev and Khajiev were sentenced to seven years in prison and Muradova to 6 years. They said they would appeal and then no more was heard of them until the death of the 58-year-old Muradova was reported on 14 September. She had been the local correspondent for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, had three children and probably died under torture in prison since her body had many bruises, traces of internal bleeding and a large open head wound. No official investigation of her death was made. All three prisoners had reportedly been sent to Odovan Depe prison, where about 4,000 political prisoners are held.
The three journalists, who were also activists for the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, had helped make a French TV documentary called “Turkmenistan: Welcome to Nyazovland” that was broadcast in France on 28 September. Since their conviction, their friends and family have been persecuted, lost their jobs and been constantly watched.
Amanklychev and Khajiev were not among more than 10,000 prisoners amnestied on 16 October by Nyazov on the 15th anniversary of independence including eight of the 50 people jailed for “treason” after a November 2002 bid to assassinate the president. Three journalists among the 50 - Serdar Rakhimov, Batyr Berdyev and Ovezmurad Yazmuradov, who were sentenced to 25 years each - remained in prison and are being held in an unknown place.
Nyazov ironically inaugurated a “House of Free Creativity” in Ashgabat on 17 October 2006. The 10-storey, $17 million building shaped like an open book and shining at night is for regime journalists and, like many other public works in the country, was built by the French firm Bouygues.
Freedom of the media is one of the central OSCE commitments in the human dimension. Indeed, media freedom, including the freedom to criticise those in power, even in an outspoken manner, is a hallmark of and a prerequisite for a functioning democracy.
It is with concern, therefore, that the EU has learnt of the two-year suspended sentence handed down to Kazakh journalist Kazis Toguzbaev on January 22 on charges of infringement on the honour and dignity of the country’s president brought against him by the National Security Committee under article 318 of the Penal Code. In July 2006 another journalist, Zharsaral Kuanyshalin, was given a similar sentence on charges under the same paragraph of the Penal Code. This raises fears of a negative trend in Kazakhstan in this regard.
The EU calls on Kazakhstan to take up the offer of the OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media to assist in bringing legal practice relevant to the media and freedom of expression in line with international standards and best practice. We hope that any future legal amendments being considered by Parliament in this respect will not lead to a further strengthening of legislation against defamation in Kazakhstan. We also hope that discussions on the new draft media law will soon be resumed by Parliament and will lead to tangible improvements of the media legislation in Kazakhstan. We should appreciate any information the Kazakh delegation can offer about plans for amending media-relevant legislation, including the draft law on “publishing activities” introducing a licensing scheme for all printing activities.
The Candidate Countries Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia, EFTA countries Iceland and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as the Republic of Moldova align themselves with this statement.
* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
Source: European Union