Paul Goble
Staunton, May 21 – South Korea, which lost out to Russia in the competition to hold the Winter Olympics in 2014, is continuing to build facilities for such a competition, apparently in hopes that the Sochi Games will be cancelled either because of construction problems or security concerns, according to Moscow’s “Izvestiya.”
“Izvestiya” correspondents Andrey Reut and Aleksey Severov report that “Korea is continuing to build Olympic sites despite having lost to Russia the right to hold the 2014 Olympiad.” More than half of the South Korean sites are ready, and “the remaining ones are being build at record rates” (www.izvestia.ru/investigation/article3155383/).
Having visited the sites, the Russian journalists say they want to answer the question: “What are [the South Koreans] counting on?” But in fact, the article may be designed to send a message to the international community: Any problems now in the run-up to the Sochi Games are the result of Georgian actions rather than Russian problems.
“Officially,” the Russian journalists say, officials and Olympic activists in Seoul are competing for the 2018 games, in which there are officially three candidates – Germany, France and South Korea. That would be the third attempt to bring the Olympics to South, given that “the previous two have failed.”
Despite that, “the Koreans are all the same actively engaged in construction,” the “Izvestiya” journalists say, “more actively than in Sochi,” and consequently regardless of the results of the voting in the International Olympic Committee, “practically all the Olympic venues” in South Korea are “already prepared.”
“The main intrigue” here, the journalists say, involves the question: “Why spend billions of dollars on games which Korea has not yet won the right to hold?” According to the article, “Olympic officials are not answering this question, but indirectly they confirm: they [still] have hopes for 2014.”
Speaking with what “Izvestiya” characterized as “ironic Eastern diplomacy,” Yang Chung Pak, the secretary general of the Korean Olympic Committee, refused to answer the direct question whether his group was preparing for 2014. “Let us hope,” he said, “that Sochi will hold one of the best Winter Olympics” in that year.
Could it in fact happen, the journalists ask, that the 2014 games could be taken away from Russia and handed over to Korea? There are only “two possible causes,” they say. The first would be a failure of Russia to build all the venues on time, and the second basis “for the hopes of the Koreans” would be “instability in the region.”
The two “Izvestiya” journalists say that “representatives of the Russian special services” tell them that “in Sochi have appeared groups of potential diversionists from Georgia who have tried to settle in as local residents” or to take the guise of “builders” of Olympic sites. And the services add that “it is possible there even exists a program” in Georgia to block the games.
“Georgian politicians have more than once spoken about this,” “Izvestiya” says, beginning in the fall of 2008, after the Russian-Georgian war, when Tbilisi proposed shifting the games to South Korea or to Austria. The motivations for this, the paper continues, were political rather than ecological, despite Georgian claims to the contrary.
Moreover, the Moscow paper continues, there even exists in Georgia “a special commission” which is preparing “a boycott plan,” as the head of that country’s parliamentary committee for diaspora affairs, Nugzar Tsiklauri, has said. “But all this is only words,” the Russian journalists say.
The Olympics have never been taken away from one city and given to another, Russian Olympic Committee officials say, and the Olympic Charter does not allow for it. But apparently, the South Koreans still have “hope for a miracle” in this regard. And because they have the money, they are more than ready to prepare for one.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Window on Eurasia: Recognition of Circassian Genocide Part of Broader Georgian Campaign in North Caucasus
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 21 – The Georgian parliament’s adoption yesterday of a resolution declaring the mass killings of Circassians 150 years ago to have been a genocide is part of a broad Tbilisi campaign to extend its influence in the North Caucasus by undermining Russian control there.
That conclusion is suggested both by the debate preceding the adoption of the resolution and by two other recent developments, one in Georgia involving the expansion of broadcasts into the North Caucasus from Georgia and a second in that region itself where demonstrators invoked Georgian support to pressure local officials.
Yesterday, the Georgian parliament passed a government-backed resolution saying that the “pre-planned” mass killing of Circassians in the 1860s constituted “a genocide” and that those forced to leave their homeland and their descendents should be recognized as “refugees” (www.circassianworld.com/new/headlines/1571-georgia-recognizes-circassian-genocide.html).
Backers of the resolution said that this declaration is “not directed against the Russian people” because “the Russian people should not be permanently living under the burden imposed on them by their leaders in the nineteenth century, the twentieth century and the twenty-first century.”
But many Russians and at least some Georgians are likely to view it otherwise, in part because another deputy from the ruling party, Givi Targamadze, said that the Georgian parliament should also take up “the situation surrounding other peoples” in the North Caucasus, a step he said would “lead us to a powerful and significant Caucasian unity.”
Deputies of the Christian Democratic Movement abstained from voting, arguing that the vote was taken too hastily, but only one parliamentarian spoke against the resolution. Jondi Bagaturia said that while “it is impossible not to show solidarity towards the Circassian people,” Georgians should consider whether that “will not look unfair” to the Armenians.
That is because Armenians have frequently asked Georgia to declare the events of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire a genocide, something Georgian officials and parliamentarians have refused to do, most recently a month ago.
Another deputy, Nuzgar Tsiklauri, chairman of the diaspora and Caucasian issues committee in the parliament, countered that it was “inappropriate” to link the two issues. Tbilisi could address these questions with “Georgia’s two friendly nations,” Armenia and Turkey, “with “a positive dialogue,’ and “meddling in this process would be ‘unjustified.’”
The second development indicating that this decision was very political and directed against Russian interests in the North Caucasus was the launch earlier this year of a Russian-language television channel in Georgia targeted at that region, PIK television, which can be viewed on the Internet ( pik.tv/ru).
Yesterday and today, that channel gave prominent coverage to yesterday’s decision of the Georgian parliament to declare the 1864 killings of the Circassians a genocide and headlined its story, “Georgia has become the first to recognize the genocide of the Circassian people” (pik.tv/ru/news/story/gruziia-stala-pervoy-kto-priznal-genocid-cherkesskogo-naroda).
But a third development this week, although it has attracted far less international attention, may prove to be equally consequential. In Daghestan, members of the Dido nationality on Tuesday organized a demonstration in Makhachkala demanding that their nationality be given official status and their own ethno-territorial unit (www.ndelo.ru/one_stat.php?id=4908).
The meeting, which attracted some 80 people and adopted a resolution sent to both the Daghestan and Russian Federation governments, took place under a banner declaring in Russian “Daghestan Refuses; Georgia Helps,” a message that, if taken up by other groups in that republic and beyond, could further complicate Moscow’s tasks in the region.
Staunton, May 21 – The Georgian parliament’s adoption yesterday of a resolution declaring the mass killings of Circassians 150 years ago to have been a genocide is part of a broad Tbilisi campaign to extend its influence in the North Caucasus by undermining Russian control there.
That conclusion is suggested both by the debate preceding the adoption of the resolution and by two other recent developments, one in Georgia involving the expansion of broadcasts into the North Caucasus from Georgia and a second in that region itself where demonstrators invoked Georgian support to pressure local officials.
Yesterday, the Georgian parliament passed a government-backed resolution saying that the “pre-planned” mass killing of Circassians in the 1860s constituted “a genocide” and that those forced to leave their homeland and their descendents should be recognized as “refugees” (www.circassianworld.com/new/headlines/1571-georgia-recognizes-circassian-genocide.html).
Backers of the resolution said that this declaration is “not directed against the Russian people” because “the Russian people should not be permanently living under the burden imposed on them by their leaders in the nineteenth century, the twentieth century and the twenty-first century.”
But many Russians and at least some Georgians are likely to view it otherwise, in part because another deputy from the ruling party, Givi Targamadze, said that the Georgian parliament should also take up “the situation surrounding other peoples” in the North Caucasus, a step he said would “lead us to a powerful and significant Caucasian unity.”
Deputies of the Christian Democratic Movement abstained from voting, arguing that the vote was taken too hastily, but only one parliamentarian spoke against the resolution. Jondi Bagaturia said that while “it is impossible not to show solidarity towards the Circassian people,” Georgians should consider whether that “will not look unfair” to the Armenians.
That is because Armenians have frequently asked Georgia to declare the events of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire a genocide, something Georgian officials and parliamentarians have refused to do, most recently a month ago.
Another deputy, Nuzgar Tsiklauri, chairman of the diaspora and Caucasian issues committee in the parliament, countered that it was “inappropriate” to link the two issues. Tbilisi could address these questions with “Georgia’s two friendly nations,” Armenia and Turkey, “with “a positive dialogue,’ and “meddling in this process would be ‘unjustified.’”
The second development indicating that this decision was very political and directed against Russian interests in the North Caucasus was the launch earlier this year of a Russian-language television channel in Georgia targeted at that region, PIK television, which can be viewed on the Internet ( pik.tv/ru).
Yesterday and today, that channel gave prominent coverage to yesterday’s decision of the Georgian parliament to declare the 1864 killings of the Circassians a genocide and headlined its story, “Georgia has become the first to recognize the genocide of the Circassian people” (pik.tv/ru/news/story/gruziia-stala-pervoy-kto-priznal-genocid-cherkesskogo-naroda).
But a third development this week, although it has attracted far less international attention, may prove to be equally consequential. In Daghestan, members of the Dido nationality on Tuesday organized a demonstration in Makhachkala demanding that their nationality be given official status and their own ethno-territorial unit (www.ndelo.ru/one_stat.php?id=4908).
The meeting, which attracted some 80 people and adopted a resolution sent to both the Daghestan and Russian Federation governments, took place under a banner declaring in Russian “Daghestan Refuses; Georgia Helps,” a message that, if taken up by other groups in that republic and beyond, could further complicate Moscow’s tasks in the region.
Window on Eurasia: Moscow’s Fight against Extremism Lacks Clear Definitions, SOVA Head Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, May 21 – Russia’s struggle against extremism “does not have clearly defined tasks” because the government “cannot clearly formulate them,” and as a result, various officials, operating on the basis of “their own interests” rather than on the basis of law act in ways that contradict one another, according to the head of the SOVA analytic center.
Not only does that shortcoming undermine the rule of law and the protection of the rights of citizens, but it means that some genuinely extremist materials escape any ban at all while many entirely innocent publications are deemed extremist, thereby sending a chill through the entire society.
In an interview published this week in “Epoch Times,” Aleksandr Verkhovsky says that “in any country, there are legal limitations of rights” when they come into conflict with other rights or goals, but in Russia, such limitations go far beyond that because the state has failed to define the basis for such limitations (www.epochtimes.ru/content/view/47852/54/).
Verkhovsky says that in his work, he encounters what are clearly legally justified limitations on religious texts that are clearly “directed” at inspiring hatred toward others. “Here I understand why they are banning them,” he continues. But “often, I do not understand” because there is no apparent basis for taking this step.
According to the SOVA leader, this is at least partially explained by what he believes is the fact that officials “themselves do not know what they want to achieve” by their acitons. In order for there to be understanding, there is a need for one side to be able to explain its acitons to another.” But in the case of Russia’s struggle with extremism, that isn’t possible.
“The state cannot formulate [these tasks] clearly,” either because it lacks the ability to do so or because it wants to retain maximum flexibility. And consequently, “many various groups of bureaucrats” act independently and often in contradiction with one another because they are “guided by their own interests and ideas” rather than by the legal definitions.
Some officials engaged in these activities undoubtedly are sincere in their stated belief that this or that religious group is “socially dangerous and must be uprooted.” But others appear to be doing so to attract attention, justify budgets or out of personal vindictiveness,m all things that undermine the rule of law.
“The main repressive mechanism” in this struggle is the banning of the distribution of materials “recognized as extremist,” Verkhovsky says. And on the basis of judicial decisions, the justice ministry maintains a list of publications that have been declared extremist. “But one must not use this list” because of a whole range of problems.
There are many mistakes in this list, the result of multiple decisions which sometimes find a particular work extremist and at other times declare it not to be and of the failure of the justice ministry to update the list in an appropriate and timely fashion. And consequently “it is clear that this cannot work in principle.”
And there is another problem, Verkhovsky notes. “In the law it is written how this list is to be added to but nothing is said about the basis on which materials can be removed from the list … [Thus,] this situation is not legal because in this case there are no norms” as any legal arrangement requires.
In the opinion of the SOVA chief, there should be “either an amendment to the law or a directive of the Justice Ministry regulating this procedure or an explanation by the Supreme Court.” But none of these things has yet happened, although he adds that “a resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court” is working on these issues.
That effort, he adds, allows “the weak hope that some kind of wise explanations will be adopted and that they will have obligatory force.”
Another serious problem in this area, Verkhovsky points out, is the use of the charge of extremism by officials without the sanction of a court. That isn’t supposed to happen under the law, but by drawing analogies with materials that have been banned, officials often broaden the scope of anti-extremist actions.
And still a third problem involves the use of expertise in deciding whether this or that item is extremist. Ten years ago, expertise was not widely employed; now, it is involved in almost every case, and Verkhovsky says, it is being misused, with experts expressing their view on whether something is extremist, a conclusion only judges are entitled to make.
The situation of experts on religious or other groups is like that of a specialist on ballistics, Verkhovsky says. The expert can be asked about how a bullet flew or from what gun it came, “but it is impermissible to ask him who killed Sidorov or whether he was killed because of hatred. If such a question is given to an expert, this is a crude procedural violation.”
Staunton, May 21 – Russia’s struggle against extremism “does not have clearly defined tasks” because the government “cannot clearly formulate them,” and as a result, various officials, operating on the basis of “their own interests” rather than on the basis of law act in ways that contradict one another, according to the head of the SOVA analytic center.
Not only does that shortcoming undermine the rule of law and the protection of the rights of citizens, but it means that some genuinely extremist materials escape any ban at all while many entirely innocent publications are deemed extremist, thereby sending a chill through the entire society.
In an interview published this week in “Epoch Times,” Aleksandr Verkhovsky says that “in any country, there are legal limitations of rights” when they come into conflict with other rights or goals, but in Russia, such limitations go far beyond that because the state has failed to define the basis for such limitations (www.epochtimes.ru/content/view/47852/54/).
Verkhovsky says that in his work, he encounters what are clearly legally justified limitations on religious texts that are clearly “directed” at inspiring hatred toward others. “Here I understand why they are banning them,” he continues. But “often, I do not understand” because there is no apparent basis for taking this step.
According to the SOVA leader, this is at least partially explained by what he believes is the fact that officials “themselves do not know what they want to achieve” by their acitons. In order for there to be understanding, there is a need for one side to be able to explain its acitons to another.” But in the case of Russia’s struggle with extremism, that isn’t possible.
“The state cannot formulate [these tasks] clearly,” either because it lacks the ability to do so or because it wants to retain maximum flexibility. And consequently, “many various groups of bureaucrats” act independently and often in contradiction with one another because they are “guided by their own interests and ideas” rather than by the legal definitions.
Some officials engaged in these activities undoubtedly are sincere in their stated belief that this or that religious group is “socially dangerous and must be uprooted.” But others appear to be doing so to attract attention, justify budgets or out of personal vindictiveness,m all things that undermine the rule of law.
“The main repressive mechanism” in this struggle is the banning of the distribution of materials “recognized as extremist,” Verkhovsky says. And on the basis of judicial decisions, the justice ministry maintains a list of publications that have been declared extremist. “But one must not use this list” because of a whole range of problems.
There are many mistakes in this list, the result of multiple decisions which sometimes find a particular work extremist and at other times declare it not to be and of the failure of the justice ministry to update the list in an appropriate and timely fashion. And consequently “it is clear that this cannot work in principle.”
And there is another problem, Verkhovsky notes. “In the law it is written how this list is to be added to but nothing is said about the basis on which materials can be removed from the list … [Thus,] this situation is not legal because in this case there are no norms” as any legal arrangement requires.
In the opinion of the SOVA chief, there should be “either an amendment to the law or a directive of the Justice Ministry regulating this procedure or an explanation by the Supreme Court.” But none of these things has yet happened, although he adds that “a resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court” is working on these issues.
That effort, he adds, allows “the weak hope that some kind of wise explanations will be adopted and that they will have obligatory force.”
Another serious problem in this area, Verkhovsky points out, is the use of the charge of extremism by officials without the sanction of a court. That isn’t supposed to happen under the law, but by drawing analogies with materials that have been banned, officials often broaden the scope of anti-extremist actions.
And still a third problem involves the use of expertise in deciding whether this or that item is extremist. Ten years ago, expertise was not widely employed; now, it is involved in almost every case, and Verkhovsky says, it is being misused, with experts expressing their view on whether something is extremist, a conclusion only judges are entitled to make.
The situation of experts on religious or other groups is like that of a specialist on ballistics, Verkhovsky says. The expert can be asked about how a bullet flew or from what gun it came, “but it is impermissible to ask him who killed Sidorov or whether he was killed because of hatred. If such a question is given to an expert, this is a crude procedural violation.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
