Europe’s verbiage
Kavkaz Center, Turkey
May 31 2004
Former students of Communist party schools in the USSR used to tell
me how during classes teachers would make students polish the right
answers to provocative questions by «mudslingers and falsifiers of
the Soviet reality». Thus, this is the kind of answer that was
supposed to be given to the question «Why in the West there is a
multiparty system, but in USSR only one political party is allowed?»:
«In 1917 our people recognized the Communist Party as the only
people’s party and the vanguard that meets the expectations of the
Soviet people… etc». Then the teachers would offer to quote Lenin,
something like, «Doctrine of Marx is all-powerful because it is
true!»
There are less and less masters of speech of days bygone remaining.
But in Europe there is one man who is still a real master of verbal
lechery, even though he did not graduate from a Soviet party school.
His name is Alvaro Gil-Robles and he works as «Council of Europe’s
Commissioner for Human Rights».
The times are gone, when Chechen refugees would apply their ears to
radios and tell each other the news about another session, meeting,
assembly or conference of international officials, who are allegedly
concerned about violations of human rights in Chechnya.
Alvaro Gil-Robles has been an old participant in all these European
get-togethers. This character with habits of an Armenian shoemaker
from the shop that used to be located between a rifle-range and the
main building of Chechen-Ingushetian State University in prewar
Grozny (now Jokhar, capital of Chechnya) has been playing the role of
a good cop all of this time.
The picture cleared up after his first visits to Russia, when he
preferred to be receiving the reports about things happening in
Chechnya not at the scene of the events, but from the mouth of
Sultygov or Rogozin instead. So, his next visit to Moscow would have
remained unnoticed by those who really need their rights defended,
had it not been for the enthusiasm of Russian foreign minister
Lavrov, who said after the meeting with the EU commissioner:
«We are stating that the Chechen subject is gradually being removed
from the European agenda».
This really is the news, but only for those who have still been
thinking that the Chechen subject was on the European agenda in the
first place. Sure, it was there… just to make it look nice. Civilized
Europe, you know. It requires a status. But this subject is standing
still, just like it has been. And no one is going to get it moving…
so far.
But the European commissioner is still called the «Human Rights
Commissioner», and the status implies being civilized, and this is
why he could not share Russian minister’s optimism so readily. So, in
response he came up with something like an objection to such
optimism, worthy of a graduate of Higher School of Communist Party of
the Soviet Union”:
«PACE members may have legitimate concerns about the situation with
human rights in Chechnya».
Sure, it would be inadmissible for the Russian side to deprive PACE
members of the right to have ‘legitimate concerns’ about the
situation in Chechnya. So, that’s what Russia was encroaching on.
Chechens were naive enough to wait that the four years of concern
would sometime develop into some semblance of an outrage over the
slaughter of 250 thousand European people, — there was nothing more
to be counting on. But it all turned out to be much more complicated,
and Europe has been fighting with Russia all of this time just for
the right to have a ‘legitimate concern’ (!).
Only Doctors Without Borders (MSF) can compete with Robles by the
degree of hypocrisy. Not too long ago they mentioned some pragmatism
(!), because of which they would not press charges against the
Russian side for kidnapping their employee, while they had all direct
evidence on hand. But at the same time they cut the assistance to
Chechen refugees and demanded that the FSB releases their colleague.
All right, let’s leave these shows for theatrical critics to delve
in.
Today you have to be a complete idiot to believe in the fairytale
about evil Putin and good Europeans who cannot find the way to deal
with him. Putin is a puppet, who will not take a single step without
a permission from puppeteers. Only for mentioning the Chechen subject
(anything more is out of the question), Russia is conceding, losing
and has already lost so many positions that even an army outnumbering
the Chechen Army hundreds of times could not have been able to seize
from it.
Even if Putin defeated the Chechens in the war, which Moscow is still
paying the price for, it would still have been a plain defeat for
Moscow. But Putin is not getting even that kind of victory on a tiny
piece of Chechen land. After paying such a high price and after
getting a license for genocide from Europe, Putin is still going mad
from being unable to make his plans come true. And this is exactly
why his face changes like he was just taken out of an outhouse, when
Chechnya is being mentioned.
This is what Russian writer Lev Gunin wrote about the problem of
nations under genocide:
«This is the way this world was made: so that the criticism of one
monster stained with blood of innocent victims reaches the people,
you have to appeal to a similar monster, who would be happy to
overthrow the first one».
But for the Chechen nation or for any other Muslim nation there is no
UN with its human rights activists, or even some kind of a monster,
whom Chechens could ask for help if they wanted to. The difference
between the situation described by Gunin and today’s realities is
that the very process of globalization promotes mergers of all sorts
of monsters into one monster.
The best way out of this situation is not to be counting on any
protectors, however strong they would seem in this world. The best
protection for the Muslims is the protection from the Most High. Only
complete assurance in this protection and accordingly, perseverance
in compliance with His orders gives Muslims the power to resist, and
it gives them the spirit, the courage and the faith in victory.
Aset Ismailova,
for Kavkaz-Center