Paul Goble
Staunton, October 8 – The 2010 Russian Census which will take place October 14-25 in most places – a few distant locations have already been surveyed – is going to suffer from “a multitude of problems,” experts say, some of which are likely to undercut public confidence in its results and possibly, as happened after the last count, force officials to issue corrections later.
In “Novaya politika” today, Mikhail Diunov recalls what happened during the last census (in 2002) in order to highlight some but far from all of the problems that the current census seems certain to encounter, including official interference, corruption, and both bureaucratic and practical shortcomings (novopol.ru/-vseh-poschitayut-text90949.html).
The 2002 count, he reports, found that “the size of the population did not correspond with the officially declared numbers.” In the Far East and North, officials had overstated the numbers, while in Moscow and Chechnya, they had understated them, differences that led many to conclude that officials had played with the figures.
That some regional officials may have overstated the numbers in order to get more assistance from Moscow, however, was not the only problem. In some places, such as Bashkortostan, the republic leaders actively worked to boost the number of ethnic Bashkirs relative to Tatars for their own nationalistic reasons.
Such divergences generated enormous distrust in the 2002 census results, distrust so deep and widespread that four years later, the Russian statistical agency, Rosstat, was forced to issue corrected data, although in the view of many people the changes were insufficient to overcome “the contradictions between census data and current reporting information.”
Russian statistical officials began planning for the 2010 enumeration in 2007, at least in part out of the hope that such lengthy preparations would allow them to conduct a better and more authoritative enumeration than they had been able to carry out the last time around and thus avoid the embarrassment of having to issue corrections.
As part of this process, Diunov continues, they conducted a preliminary mini-census in the fall of 2008, trying out various survey methodologies on some 300,000 people in the Moscow suburb of Balashikha, the Petrograd district of St. Petersburg, and Khabarovsk, a major city in the Russian Far East.
Then, he notes, the financial crisis hit, and many officials wanted to delay the census until 2013, a move that appeared likely as the government cut back on funding for the enumeration and one that led some to conclude that the upcoming count would show such a decline in the country’s population that Vladimir Putin did not want it to happen before the elections.
But then, either to silence such suggestions or out of a belief that going ahead would ultimately same money, Moscow decided to retain the original schedule, even though it cut financing from its own budget and shifted much of the burden for the count to regional and city governments, whom the center will reimburse only over the course of several years.
“In addition,” Diunov notes, “the central government placed on the organizers of the census limitations which have a perfectly anecdotal character.” It has prohibited local officials from hiring guards for census offices unless those guards are specially certified even though in most parts of the country, there are no such people available.
As a result, many offices where census data are assembled will not be guarded, a situation that almost certainly guarantees that many will suspect that the data on numbers or nationality composition or something else will be falsified by officials or others who have a vested interest in the outcome.
Moscow officials have acknowledged these and other problems and are trying to deal with them and with the problems censuses encounter in every country, and consequently, there is some hope that the results this time around will be accepted more readily than were those from the 2002 enumeration.
But however that may be, there is already a rising tide of complaints about two aspects of the census: its failure to ask about religious affiliation, something that has been done only in two previous censuses (1897 and 1937), and its list of national self-identifications which many see as a form of manipulation as well (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/13844/).
With regard to the former issue, Experts like Vladimir Zorin of the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology argue that it would be a mistake to ask about religion because that would lead to “an excessive politicization” of the question, but others argue that not asking does the same thing, albeit in a different direction.
And with regard to the latter, many non-Russians complain that the Moscow list of more than 1800 ethnic self-designators is designed to divide their communities and thus reduce their power, although increasingly it appears that such multiple listings may affect the ethnic Russian community at least as much, with Cossacks, Siberians and others insisting on their identities.
Russian officials counter that the list of 1800 names is not a list of nationalities, but their arguments on that point trouble many who thus feel that some unknown bureaucrat will group the answers and thus be in a position to determine the size of the various nationalities of the Russian Federation with all the consequences that would have on budgets and politics.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Window on Eurasia: Turkey -- Far More than Iran -- Promoting Growth of Islam in Post-Soviet States
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 8 – One of the most widely and deeply held convictions among Western leaders and specialists in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union was that Iran would promote the spread of Islam and especially its more radical forms into the post-Soviet states while Turkey could be counted on to promote the growth of secular societies there.
That assumption reinforced the commitment of Western governments to seek to isolate Iran from contacts in the region, such as by the use of the OSCE, of which Iran is not a member, in dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and to promote Turkey in the post-Soviet states as a surrogate for the West more generally.
But as some analysts pointed out from the very beginning, there were serious reasons to question this assumption and its utility as a guide to policy. On the one hand, Iran’s brand of Islam had relatively few adherents in the post-Soviet states (only Azerbaijan had a Shiite majority) and Iran’s radicalism put off far more people there than it attracted.
And on the other, Turkey was never as secular as many in the West had assumed and has become less so with each passing year, and Turks because of their linguistic and cultural ties with five of the six Muslim majority former Soviet republics have enjoyed an influence there, on religion as well as on other matters, far greater than Iran.
In the 1990s, for example, Muslims in the post-Soviet states, including the Russian Federation, often travelled to Turkey either to study in medrassahs there or a way station on their route to Muslim educational institutions in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost none of these people went to or through Iran.
And both the Turkish government and Turkish Muslim groups not only provided scholarship assistance to these people and religious literature for those back in the former Soviet republics but also provided enormous funds for the construction of mosques and religious schools in these countries, far more than Iran did.
One result of this difference is that the largest and most prominent mosque in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku was built by the Turks and one of the largest commercial facilities was the Bank of Iran, precisely the opposite of what Western governments and experts had expected and predicted.
Today brought two new reports which suggest that Turkey continue to play a far greater role in the rebirth of Islam in the former Soviet republics, including the Russian Federation. In the first, Gidayat Orudzhev, the chairman of the Azerbaijani State Committee on Work with Religious Structures, presented a report on foreign financing of mosques in that country.
According to Orudzhev, Kuwait has built the most, 71, but Turkey is in second place with 21, while Saudi Arabia has financed only one. He did not mention Iran’s role in this regard, but in the last decade at least, it has certainly been significantly smaller of that of Turkey and Turkish groups however much Iran has tried (www.islamnews.ru/news-27083.html).
The second report highlights Turkey’s role among Muslims in the unstable North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation. This week, a group of Turkish Muslim leaders and businessmen visited Ingushetia along with Bekir Gerek, the counselor for religious affairs of the Turkish embassy in Moscow (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/13837/).
The Turkish group was received by Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of the republic, who discussed with them the building of a new mosque in the republic capital, Magas, something that the Muslims of that republic have long sought. The Turks promised to fund the construction of the mosque as “a gift” to the Ingush Muslims.
The two sides also discussed the possibility of young Ingush receiving Muslim higher education in Turkey, something Gerek and his Turkish colleagues said they backed and would be happy to take full responsibility for funding, something that will make such training especially attractive given the high level of unemployment in Ingushetia.
Staunton, October 8 – One of the most widely and deeply held convictions among Western leaders and specialists in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union was that Iran would promote the spread of Islam and especially its more radical forms into the post-Soviet states while Turkey could be counted on to promote the growth of secular societies there.
That assumption reinforced the commitment of Western governments to seek to isolate Iran from contacts in the region, such as by the use of the OSCE, of which Iran is not a member, in dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and to promote Turkey in the post-Soviet states as a surrogate for the West more generally.
But as some analysts pointed out from the very beginning, there were serious reasons to question this assumption and its utility as a guide to policy. On the one hand, Iran’s brand of Islam had relatively few adherents in the post-Soviet states (only Azerbaijan had a Shiite majority) and Iran’s radicalism put off far more people there than it attracted.
And on the other, Turkey was never as secular as many in the West had assumed and has become less so with each passing year, and Turks because of their linguistic and cultural ties with five of the six Muslim majority former Soviet republics have enjoyed an influence there, on religion as well as on other matters, far greater than Iran.
In the 1990s, for example, Muslims in the post-Soviet states, including the Russian Federation, often travelled to Turkey either to study in medrassahs there or a way station on their route to Muslim educational institutions in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Almost none of these people went to or through Iran.
And both the Turkish government and Turkish Muslim groups not only provided scholarship assistance to these people and religious literature for those back in the former Soviet republics but also provided enormous funds for the construction of mosques and religious schools in these countries, far more than Iran did.
One result of this difference is that the largest and most prominent mosque in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku was built by the Turks and one of the largest commercial facilities was the Bank of Iran, precisely the opposite of what Western governments and experts had expected and predicted.
Today brought two new reports which suggest that Turkey continue to play a far greater role in the rebirth of Islam in the former Soviet republics, including the Russian Federation. In the first, Gidayat Orudzhev, the chairman of the Azerbaijani State Committee on Work with Religious Structures, presented a report on foreign financing of mosques in that country.
According to Orudzhev, Kuwait has built the most, 71, but Turkey is in second place with 21, while Saudi Arabia has financed only one. He did not mention Iran’s role in this regard, but in the last decade at least, it has certainly been significantly smaller of that of Turkey and Turkish groups however much Iran has tried (www.islamnews.ru/news-27083.html).
The second report highlights Turkey’s role among Muslims in the unstable North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation. This week, a group of Turkish Muslim leaders and businessmen visited Ingushetia along with Bekir Gerek, the counselor for religious affairs of the Turkish embassy in Moscow (www.islamrf.ru/news/russia/rusnews/13837/).
The Turkish group was received by Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, the head of the republic, who discussed with them the building of a new mosque in the republic capital, Magas, something that the Muslims of that republic have long sought. The Turks promised to fund the construction of the mosque as “a gift” to the Ingush Muslims.
The two sides also discussed the possibility of young Ingush receiving Muslim higher education in Turkey, something Gerek and his Turkish colleagues said they backed and would be happy to take full responsibility for funding, something that will make such training especially attractive given the high level of unemployment in Ingushetia.
Window on Eurasia: ‘In Uzbekistan, It’s 1937 Again’ with Show Trial of VOA Correspondent
Paul Goble
Staunton, October 8 – The ongoing Tashkent trial of a VOA stringer, Ferghana.ru says, shows that “in Uzbekistan, it’s 1937 again,” with the major difference being that the regime does not feel it has to use torture to gain confessions to crimes those charged did not commit but rather can count on elastic laws and equally flexible “expert conclusions” for the same ends.
Yesterday, the trial of Abdumalik Boboyev (the pseudonym for Malik Mansur, 41) began in the Uzbek capital. The Voice of America Uzbek Service correspondent is charged with slander, libel, illegal border crossing, and “the preparation of materials containing a threat to public security and public order” (www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6754).
Under Uzbekistan law, the severity of the fourth charge is increased because “the crime was committed ‘with the use of financial or other material support received from religious organizations and also from foreign governments, organizations and citizens” – in this case from the US government’s Voice of America. If convicted, Boboyev could face eight years in jail.
The way this case has been handled highlights just how political it is and how little the facts have to do with either the charges being brought or the verdict reached. According to Ferghana.ru, internal evidence from the experts’ conclusion suggests that the case was prepared almost a year ago.
Boboyev, however, was not shown these documents until the end of September and his lawyer withdrew ostensibly because of a crowded schedule. This conjunction of events highlights the political rather than legal nature of the case. But the real evidence for such a conclusion is to be found in the statement of the experts.
Prepared by Rustam Mukhamedov of the Center for Monitoring Mass Communications of the Uzbek Agency for Media and Information – an institution that has acquired notoriety in the past (see www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6472), this document is, in the words of the Ferghana.ru translator, the most “stupid and illiterate” text he had ever encountered.
That 6700-word document, available online as of yesterday in Russian, is Kafkaesque both in the language it uses and in the logic it employs, qualities that are most clearly demonstrated by extensive quotations as the expert who prepared this is nothing if not long-winded.
For example, the expert concludes that Boboyev used materials from the media of Uzbekistan itself without checking whether the facts were correct and moreover took money “from abroad” in order to “distract the population of Uzbekistan, violate good neighborly relations among citizens and awaken in them distrust to the powers that be and judicial system … sow panic among the population, detract from the dignity and image of Uzbekistan among society, create conditions for the commission of crimes” by disseminating “unchecked one-sided information about Uzbekistan, about [its] existing customs and traditions and cultural wealth.”
In support of such sweeping and obviously political conclusions, the expert offers quotations from the broadcasts and web posting that Boboyev made. One of these that the expert argues violates Uzbekistan’s law reported that “Uzbekistan is one of the countries where freedom of speech is severely limited and where officials exert pressure on journalists, In the country has been established full control over television, radio and the press. Independent internet sites are blocked.”
According to the Uzbek expert, Boboyev’s crime in this case reflected his failure to indicate “from what source” he got this information,” which the expert continues both “baselessly shows “the unjust actions of the judicial system of the country” and “openly defiles the employees of the judicial organs and the law enforcement structures of Uzbekistan.”
Such quotations could be multiplied at will to show that the accusations against Boboyev in fact serve as an indictment of the Uzbek officials and the Uzbekistan government who brought them in the first place. But they also call attention to two other realities that deserve more attention than they often receive.
On the one hand, governments like the one in Uzbekistan have learned that they can write and use laws in ways that subvert the very meaning of law with the additional benefit for themselves that many outside observers will limit their criticism of these regimes because it appears that they are law-based. In fact, as this case shows, they are only “law-like.”
And on the other, the attack on Boboyev, for that is what it is, highlights the continuing importance of international broadcasting and the increasing role of the Internet – throughout the Uzbek expert’s document, the web is referred to almost as many times as broadcasts – in limiting government assaults on freedom of information and promoting freedom more generally.
For all those reasons and so that justice will be done in what is clearly an unjust political system, people of good will there and around the world need to support Boboyev in what will otherwise be his unequal struggle against a regime that by its actions shows why courageous people like himself remain so important.
Staunton, October 8 – The ongoing Tashkent trial of a VOA stringer, Ferghana.ru says, shows that “in Uzbekistan, it’s 1937 again,” with the major difference being that the regime does not feel it has to use torture to gain confessions to crimes those charged did not commit but rather can count on elastic laws and equally flexible “expert conclusions” for the same ends.
Yesterday, the trial of Abdumalik Boboyev (the pseudonym for Malik Mansur, 41) began in the Uzbek capital. The Voice of America Uzbek Service correspondent is charged with slander, libel, illegal border crossing, and “the preparation of materials containing a threat to public security and public order” (www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6754).
Under Uzbekistan law, the severity of the fourth charge is increased because “the crime was committed ‘with the use of financial or other material support received from religious organizations and also from foreign governments, organizations and citizens” – in this case from the US government’s Voice of America. If convicted, Boboyev could face eight years in jail.
The way this case has been handled highlights just how political it is and how little the facts have to do with either the charges being brought or the verdict reached. According to Ferghana.ru, internal evidence from the experts’ conclusion suggests that the case was prepared almost a year ago.
Boboyev, however, was not shown these documents until the end of September and his lawyer withdrew ostensibly because of a crowded schedule. This conjunction of events highlights the political rather than legal nature of the case. But the real evidence for such a conclusion is to be found in the statement of the experts.
Prepared by Rustam Mukhamedov of the Center for Monitoring Mass Communications of the Uzbek Agency for Media and Information – an institution that has acquired notoriety in the past (see www.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=6472), this document is, in the words of the Ferghana.ru translator, the most “stupid and illiterate” text he had ever encountered.
That 6700-word document, available online as of yesterday in Russian, is Kafkaesque both in the language it uses and in the logic it employs, qualities that are most clearly demonstrated by extensive quotations as the expert who prepared this is nothing if not long-winded.
For example, the expert concludes that Boboyev used materials from the media of Uzbekistan itself without checking whether the facts were correct and moreover took money “from abroad” in order to “distract the population of Uzbekistan, violate good neighborly relations among citizens and awaken in them distrust to the powers that be and judicial system … sow panic among the population, detract from the dignity and image of Uzbekistan among society, create conditions for the commission of crimes” by disseminating “unchecked one-sided information about Uzbekistan, about [its] existing customs and traditions and cultural wealth.”
In support of such sweeping and obviously political conclusions, the expert offers quotations from the broadcasts and web posting that Boboyev made. One of these that the expert argues violates Uzbekistan’s law reported that “Uzbekistan is one of the countries where freedom of speech is severely limited and where officials exert pressure on journalists, In the country has been established full control over television, radio and the press. Independent internet sites are blocked.”
According to the Uzbek expert, Boboyev’s crime in this case reflected his failure to indicate “from what source” he got this information,” which the expert continues both “baselessly shows “the unjust actions of the judicial system of the country” and “openly defiles the employees of the judicial organs and the law enforcement structures of Uzbekistan.”
Such quotations could be multiplied at will to show that the accusations against Boboyev in fact serve as an indictment of the Uzbek officials and the Uzbekistan government who brought them in the first place. But they also call attention to two other realities that deserve more attention than they often receive.
On the one hand, governments like the one in Uzbekistan have learned that they can write and use laws in ways that subvert the very meaning of law with the additional benefit for themselves that many outside observers will limit their criticism of these regimes because it appears that they are law-based. In fact, as this case shows, they are only “law-like.”
And on the other, the attack on Boboyev, for that is what it is, highlights the continuing importance of international broadcasting and the increasing role of the Internet – throughout the Uzbek expert’s document, the web is referred to almost as many times as broadcasts – in limiting government assaults on freedom of information and promoting freedom more generally.
For all those reasons and so that justice will be done in what is clearly an unjust political system, people of good will there and around the world need to support Boboyev in what will otherwise be his unequal struggle against a regime that by its actions shows why courageous people like himself remain so important.
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