HARASSMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS IS WIDESPREAD IN CIS — REPORT
Jean-Christophe Peuch

EurasiaNet, NY
Dec 13 2007

The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
has been at the center of a struggle between western countries and
some CIS states that blame it for its critical assessment of most
elections held in the former Soviet Union since 1991. In particular,
Russia and a number of its neighbors accuse the ODIHR of meddling
in turbulent elections that brought new, Western-oriented political
leaders to power in Georgia and Ukraine.

But ODIHR’s activities are not limited to election monitoring. As
its name indicates, it also deals — more broadly — with human
rights and democratization. The Warsaw-based office on December 10
issued a report, the first of its kind, which identifies patterns of
harassment against human rights defenders in the OSCE area between
April 2006 and April 2007. The presentation, which coincided with
the 59th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
took place at the OSCE headquarters in Vienna.

Called "Human Rights Defenders In The OSCE Region: Our Collective
Conscience," the report is unlikely to mollify ODIHR’s critics, as it
clearly identifies Russia and several other former Soviet republics
as countries where restrictions imposed on rights activists are
the most frequent. The report also contains recommendations to OSCE
participating states on how to improve working conditions for human
rights defenders. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Among those experts who helped draft the 70-page document is
Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Byalyatski, whose Vyasna
(Spring) organization has been repeatedly denied registration by
President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s administration.

"This report is no light literature. It is a dramatic document,"
said Byalyatski, who is also vice president of the International
Federation of Human Rights. "The situation of human rights defenders
and organizations and the way individual states react to their
activities are a very precise indicator of how authorities in those
countries consider human rights," he told the panel of OSCE ambassadors
— mostly Western — who attended the December 10 presentation.

ODIHR Director Christian Strohal identified the patterns of violations
affecting human rights defenders — which he said often occur with
the explicit or tacit approval of local governments — as follows:
physical attacks; curtailment of freedom of association; failure
to respect the freedom of assembly; and restrictions imposed on the
freedom of movement.

Among individual cases that were mentioned at the launching of
the report were the October 2006 slaying of Russian journalist and
human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, and the tragic death of
Ogulsapar Muradova in Turkmenistan. [For background see the Eurasia
Insight archive].

A RFE/RL correspondent affiliated with the Bulgaria-based Turkmen
Helsinki Foundation rights group, Muradova died in custody in September
of 2006. Relatives say she died as a result of ill-treatment, but
Turkmen authorities attribute her death to natural causes. They also
deny that Muradova was a journalist, or a human rights activist. At
a closed trial held a few days before her death, Muradova and two
other people had been sentenced to heavy jail terms on dubious arms
possession charges.

Another high-profile case mentioned by Byalyatski is that of
Umida Niyazova, an Uzbek investigative journalist who worked as a
translator for the New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch (HRW)
organization. Niyazova was arrested in December 2006 and charged with
illegal border crossing, smuggling, and fostering civil unrest with
the help of foreign funding.

On May 1, a Tashkent court sentenced Niyazova to seven years in jail.

Following harsh western reactions, a higher Uzbek court later reduced
that sentence to a three-year suspended jail term, but only after
Niyazova agreed to plea guilty and state that she had been deceived
by HRW.

At the time of Niyazova’s release, another 14 Uzbek rights defenders
remained in custody.

Among them was Gulbahor Turayeva. The name of Turayeva, a physician
by training, became well-known after she gave foreign media her own
account of the May 2005 bloody government crackdown in Andijan. Uzbek
authorities arrested her in January 2007 and charged her with
threatening the constitution. Turayeva was sentenced to six years
in jail and released in June after publicly expressing regret for
her activities.

Among other Central Asian rights campaigners who were physically
assaulted during the period covered by the ODIHR report are
Uzbekistan’s Yelena Urlayeva, Bahtiyor Hamrayev, and Rahmatullo
Alibayev. Attacks were also reported on Kyrgyzstan’s Edil Baisalov
and Ramazan Dyryldayev.

Georgia appears in the ODIHR report among those countries where human
rights defenders suffer milder forms of harassment. In February,
Interior Ministry officers visited the premises of the Human Rights
Information and Documentation Center, claiming they wanted to learn
about the organization’s activities, and threatened several employees.

The ODIHR reports also contained information about intimidation
attempts against a non-governmental organization that promotes the
rights of Georgia’s ethnic minorities. Unknown individuals in June
broke into the Tbilisi office of Multinational Georgia and stole
several documents, including the draft of an alternative report on
the implementation of the Convention for the Protection of National
Minorities to be addressed to the United Nations and the Council of
Europe. The incident followed unsuccessful government attempts to
obtain this document from Multinational Georgia employees.

In its latest report on human rights violations worldwide, HRW
took note of repeated instances of government harassment against
the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), a non-governmental
organization that promotes national legislation that is more protective
of human rights. In addition, the group has been critical of President
Mikheil Saakashivli’s policies. For example, then-defense minister
Irakli Okruashvili in 2006 accused the GYLA of misusing foreign funds
and demanded the resignation of its then-chairwoman, Ana Dolidze.

Lawyers engaged in human rights work can also face administrative
harassment, as in Armenia, where three defense attorneys were
prosecuted for appealing the sentencing of three soldiers accused
of murder.

The ODIHR report contains numerous occurrences of harassment targeting
Russian and Belarusian human rights defenders. Violations were also
reported in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and a number of non-CIS countries.

The report additionally includes a summary of written responses sent
by OSCE participating states on individual cases. A simple look at
the list shows that most of those post-Soviet countries which figure
prominently in that document declined to comment.

Also, none of them attended the presentation ceremony.

Summarizing the report, ODIHR Director Strohal said: "The situation
is not improving, to put it diplomatically."

"The situation of human rights advocates and the pressure they have
been exposed to [tells us] very clearly that [we are facing] a major
challenge," he added.

Editor’s Note: Jean-Christophe Peuch is a Vienna-based freelance
correspondent, who specializes in Caucasus- and Central Asia-related
developments.