Moscow’s Triumph Square. Photo: argenberg

November has not been a good month for Russia’s political opposition.

A number of activists have been detained in recent days, including the outspoken writer and activist Eduard Limonov, who was picked up for participating in an “unsanctioned rally” in Moscow on October 31. Limonov is now serving 10 days of administrative arrest.

On Nov. 16, police detained eight other activists who were demonstrating in support of Limonov.

Their arrests may not have been accidental. Activists from the opposition Solidarity movement say they have uncovered a high-level police memo ordering officers to disrupt the protests. The memo, photographed with a cell phone, is posted on the blog of activist Ilya Yashin.

Signed by an officer in the police force, the memo is directed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Center to Prevent Extremism. It informs the Center about plans by Solidarity activists to carry out a series of individual pickets near the detention facility where Limonov is being held, and the police force’s intent to take measures against the “unsanctioned” meetings.

At the center of the controversy: the right to freedom of assembly, as provided by article 31 of the Russian Federation’s Constitution, which states “Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.”

In practice, however, the right to freedom of assembly in Russia has been severely curtailed in recent years. To reassert the public’s right to gather freely, Limonov and his followers have been organizing protests on the 31^st of every month at 6 pm in front of Moscow’s Triumph Square.

What’s interesting about the protests against Limonov’s detention on the 16th is that they were planned as individual actions – pickets by one person alone do not need official approval to proceed.

However, when Boris Nemtsov, former Deputy Prime Minister turned opposition figure, went out on the street to picket, he reportedly was joined by two men in hooded jackets – which brought the number of protesters to three, making it an “unsanctioned” protest. Nemtsov was subsequently detained by police.

But the same two men reportedly then joined activist Vladimir Milov, whom police also detained. The hooded men walked away free, and went on to disrupt two other protesters, Aleksandr Ryklin and Sergei Zhavoronkov. RFERL has posted a slide show of the pickets and arrests.

Meanwhile, the Communist party has taken up Limonov’s cause in Parliament and 34 Russian writers and publicists have published an open letter on his behalf, arguing that “Eduard Limonov…should not have to undergo arrest in order to realize his constitutional right to the freedom of assembly.”

If the police are in fact fabricating protests in order to have a pretext to arrest activists, it’s a sorry state of affairs indeed.

- Christine Kiernan

Over the past decade, their struggle has continued, drawing in Islamist fighters from across the region. Russia has been accused of a heavy-handed response to the insurgency.

Neave Barker of Al Jazeera English reports on the low-level rebellion from Dagestan.

Daljit Dhaliwal talks about AIDS prevention policy in Russia with Rowena Johnston of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. While Russia has made progress in blocking HIV transmission between mothers and babies, Johnston says Russia draws too much on ideology — rather than science — for prevention strategies.

SOUTH KOREA: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates maintained a tough stand Wednesday against North Korea, calling its nuclear threat more lethal than ever. He said, “We do not today - nor will we ever - accept a North Korea with nuclear weapons.”

CHINA: The admiral in charge of the U.S. Pacific Command said Wednesday that U.S. intelligence estimates have underestimated China’s military abilities annually over the past decade. “They’ve grown at an unprecedented rate,” he said.

A UN investigator presented a report to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday outlining some of the worst prisons in the world. It included the West African nations of Nigeria and Togo, cited for gross human rights violations.

SOMALIA: The Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has silenced two independent radio stations in the town of Baidoa. There was no reason given for the decision.

Kazan Kremlin Mosque. Photo: Flickr user pirateparrot

Clinton swung by the predominantly Muslim autonomous republic at the end of her three-day trip to Russia this week. After visiting the Kazan Kremlin, the Blagoveshchensk Orthodox Cathedral, and the newly built Kol Sharif Mosque, one of the largest in Europe and Russia, Clinton praised the republic as a “model for tolerance and coexistence between Muslims and Christians.”

Tatarstan is one of more than 20 ethnic republics in the Russian Federation. Located between the Volga and Kama Rivers some 500 miles east of Moscow, it is home to two million Turkic-speaking Tatars — the largest non-Slavic minority group in Russia. Chuvash, Udmurt, and Mordvin are among the other ethnic groups, alongside ethnic Russians, that make up the rest of the population. Slightly more than half of residents are Muslim.

Tatars are proud of their heritage, and their independent roots run deep. In the 15^th century, they had their own medieval state—the Kazan Khanate, which ruled for more than a century, until Ivan the Terrible brought the khanate under Moscow’s dominion in 1552.

The Sunday before Clinton’s visit, more than 400 people demonstrated in the capital city Kazan to mark the anniversary of this very conquest. Demonstrators took the opportunity to protest Moscow’s policy of “Russification”—targeting a new education law passed this year that advances the use of Russian—and call for the national independence of the Tatars.

Claims to Tatar independence are not new. During the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990-91, Tatarstan was one of many ethnic minority republics within Russia demanding full-fledged sovereignty. Chechnya’s attempts to break away resulted in two wars, and violence continues to flare there periodically.

Blagoveshensky Cathedral, Kazan. Photo: Flickr user LostBob

Tatarstan was luckier. While its attempts to gain independence failed, no blood was shed. Due in part to President Mintimir Shaimiev’s savvy negotiating, Tatartstan walked away with more autonomy than any other republic in the Federation, including a significant degree of control over its economic resources.

Today, Tatarstan is, as the official website boats, one of the most economically developed parts of Russia. Rich in oil, it is also a manufacturing hub. Some of the biggest and most successful Russian companies are based there: the KamAZ truckmaker, for one. Shaimiev’s been successful in creating special economic zones and attracting foreign investment. Both Iran and Turkey, two big investors, have consulate generals in Kazan.

After Moscow and St. Petersburg, Tatarstan is said to be the most prosperous region of Russia. And, despite the prevalence of numerous ethnic groups and religions, and occasional pan-Tatar strivings for independence, actual strife is rare.

While the Tatar President’s claims to educate Secretary Clinton on foreign policy issues may be a bit far-fetched, it’s not that surprising the US State Department selected the region to showcase.

Or perhaps it was the republic’s unofficial motto that served as the decided factor: “We Can!”

Sound familiar, Obama?

- Christine Kiernan

Clinton swung by the predominantly Muslim autonomous republic at the end of her three-day trip to Russia this week. After visiting the Kazan Kremlin, the Blagoveshchensk Orthodox Cathedral, and the newly built Kol Sharif Mosque, Clinton praised the republic as a “model for tolerance and coexistence between Muslims and Christians,” writes Christine Kiernan. http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/10/th_russia_kazan.jpg ]]> http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/10/16/what-hillary-clinton-could-learn-from-tatarstan/7825/feed/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/10/13/in-china-putin-inks-major-deals-on-energy-high-speed-rail/7754/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/10/13/in-china-putin-inks-major-deals-on-energy-high-speed-rail/7754/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:31:12 +0000 Worldfocus http://worldfocus.org/?p=7754 China Central Television is the English-language news service of Chinese state-run television. As part of our effort to show how news stories are reported in other parts of the world, Worldfocus has entered into a partnership with CCTV.   We will air their packages periodically on the broadcast and online.

Here, CCTV reports on Vladimir Putin’s first visit to China since he became prime minister in May 2008. Putin and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao signed $3.5 billion in natural gas and other trade agreements.

Crima has secured enough votes to get his name on the ballot, but Russian opinion vacillates from rejecting him because of his color to interest in his exoticism. The video raises questions on race relations in Russia, and what it actually means to be Russian.

Iran has agreed to a deal that would move most of its declared stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for further refinement, before it is delivered back to Iran for peaceful uses at a research reactor in Tehran.

From Russia’s perspective, it is now a key player in global nuclear politics.

Timothy Frye, the director of the Harriman Institute on Russian and Eastern European studies at Columbia University, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the significance of the new deal and Russia’s motivations.

Headline from an English-language Russian news site.

Worldfocus producer Christine Kiernan writes about the reaction to the recently-released report on the Russia-Georgia war.

This week, the European Union released its long-awaited report on the five-day-war that broke out between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. The conclusions — the result of a ten-month-long mission to investigate the conflict’s origins led by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini — were mixed. The report cites as the immediate cause “the shelling by Georgian forces of the capital of the secessionist province of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, on Aug. 7.”

However, it also acknowledges that Russia had made preparations for armed hostilities by moving paramilitary forces into the Russian-backed republic, and that the shelling was only the “culminating point of a long period of increasing tensions, provocations, and incidents.” The report concludes that all sides violated international humanitarian and human rights laws and warns that the conflict in Georgia continues to threaten peace in the region.

Not surprisingly, both Russia and Georgia seemed to interpret the report’s findings in their own favor. Russian officialdom and media expressed satisfaction, more or less, over the commission’s findings, highlighting as the main conclusion the fact that Georgia started the war. The Russian press secretary said “we can only welcome the said conclusion.”

A headline in the “Gazeta” newspaper read: “The Russian Kremlin and Ministry of Defense welcomed the EU commission’s conclusion that Georgia began the war in South Ossetia.” The article noted that Russia’s ambassador to the European Commission, Vladimir Chizhov, deemed the report  “Pro-Russian.” Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said it was about time the truth came out; the Echo Moscow radio station quoted him as saying Western politicians owed Russia an apology.

You can read an official reaction on the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Web site. There is little mention of the finding of Russian responsibility for ethnic cleansing and of disproportionate use of force by the Russian side, or the report’s refusal to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent entities.

My ability to interpret Georgian reaction is limited. But I did come across an English-language version of an official statement issued by the Georgian government. The Georgian government’s takeaway: “Almost all of the facts in the report confirm the Georgian version of events.” The government’s statement failed to mention that the EU mission put responsibility for the immediate commencement of shelling on Georgia. Instead, it stressed the report’s finding that Georgian civilians and peacekeepers were under attack, on Georgian soil, before August 7, and cited the “most important fact documented by the Commission [...] that regular armed Russian forces and mercenaries illegally crossed into Georgia before August 8, 2009.”

Will the report’s release change anything? Probably not. Both Russia and Georgia will continue to adhere to their own version of events and blame the other side. My main takeaway comes from an editorial written by mission-head Tagliavini and published in Wednesday’s New York Times. In it, she focuses not on “whodunit;” instead, she raises the question of what responsibility the international community bears for failing to prevent the conflict. Are there actions Georgia’s and Russia’s neighbors could have taken to avoid the escalation of tensions? Did the involvement of outside powers harden positions, as Tagliavini claims, rather than build common ground? What is the role of the international community at large in deterring conflicts that arise between nation-states? Perhaps it is questions like these that merit further investigation.

- Christine Kiernan

In 1970, the year the Beatles released their hit single “Let It Be,” Sevastopol — home to the Soviet Union’s legendary Black Sea Fleet — was a closed port. The city answered to Moscow, rather than the Ukrainian administration under whose territory it was located, and in order to enter or exit, a special permit was required. Other cities on the Crimean Peninsula — like Yalta, Sochi and Artek, famed for their Black Sea beaches and resorts — drew elite apparatchiki and ordinary citizens from across the Soviet Union. State radio piped out schmaltzy pop hits by singers like the Ukrainian Volodymyr Ivasyuk, while the music of the Beatles, which the state-run record label refused to release, circulated underground.

Today, Sevastopol belongs to an independent Ukraine. Anyone who wants to can freely visit the city. The Black Sea fleet has been divided between Russia and Ukraine, and in 2017 Russia’s lease on the port will expire, forcing the fleet to leave what has been its home for more than three centuries. While new international borders and an end to state-financed vacations may have made it harder for CIS residents to visit their once favored resort spot, today Americans like me can travel to the Crimea.

In yet another sign of how times have changed, the orchestra of the Black Sea Fleet now includes “Let It Be” in its repertoire. Check out this video circulating on YouTube:

Sporting the fleet’s seafaring uniforms, the singers look like they’ve stepped out onto the small stage from an earlier era. The lead singer gesticulates and croons to mother Mary in accented English. The performance is pegged as one of the “worst cover songs ever.” That said, comments in English and Russian are surprisingly uplifting — “This is genius!,” “The heart with which he sings inspires me” — although not all are convinced: “He should have stayed in opera.”

Whatever you think of the lead singer’s tremulous bass and the dancing girls swaying and waving their hands, you can’t deny that a performance like this would have been inconceivable 39 years ago. And that, in my view, is what makes it so wonderful and poignant today.

- Christine Kiernan

Missile defense during the Bush administration was so contingent as to be faith-based — if Iran builds long-range missiles, if they choose to commit a suicidal act by launching one, if the system can be made to work…if, if, if.  Of course, we need to plan for long-term and unknown threats, but not at the expense of protecting against more immediate and known threats. This shift also opens up more potential for cooperation with Russia on Iranian nuclear ambitions, by removing an irritant in the relationship but, more importantly, by showing just how serious we are about the threat from Tehran. Another victory for rational defense policies.  Go Gates.

- Nina Hachigian

Nina Khruscheva, the granddaughter of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss Stalin’s continuing appeal.

The Committee to Protect Journalists — in a report out on Tuesday — says 17 editors, reporters, photographers, columnists and a publisher have been killed since 2000. In only one case have the killers been convicted. The CPJ says critical media coverage is effectively silencing discussion on sensitive subjects like corruption and human rights abuses.

Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss how the murders have impacted Russian journalism and the rise of online journalism in places like Cuba and Vietnam.

Watch World Remembers Beginning of World War II, a report by English-language TV station Russia Today highlighting the difficult history between Russia and Poland.

Vladimir Lensky, the New York bureau chief for Russia’s Channel One, discusses Russia’s role and responsibility in World War Two.

In a Russian language blog on Moscow radio station Echomoscow’s website, writer Sergei Shagunov comments on Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent article in a Polish newspaper about the Soviet-Nazi pact to split up Poland in 1939.

Read the full post here in Russian. The following excerpts were translated from by Worldfocus producer Christine Kiernan.

It is frequently necessary to disagree with Vladimir Putin, but in his article published in the newspaper “Vyborcha” [the Polish newspaper], there are strivings for objectivity. Today this is rare thing. Of course [even-handedness] is possibly only when there is open discussion. …The 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War is reason for a sharp, honest, difficult conversation.

Poland was up until the end a [partner] of Hitler, participating in the invasion of Czechoslovakia… and its minister of foreign affairs Bek spoke about pretensions to Soviet Ukraine… It’s necessary to remember that England France from the beginning shut their eyes over Germany’s armament, then gave Czechoslovakia to her, and finally, drew out and [ruined] Moscow discussions about the creation, together with the USSR, of an anti-German coalition. So Hitler broke the East. ..

Yes, the Soviet Union was totalitarian. But even totalitarian states have their own interests…..For example, interests of safety.

A simple question: was it necessary to sign an amoral supplement to the Soviet-German pact?

Everyone was amoral, including Poland. Everyone is guilty in the war. To different degrees? Perhaps. But all the same – guilty.

Writing in the UK’s The Guardian, Anita Prazmowska says that despite Putin’s subsequent efforts to praise Polish bravery during the war, the timing of his comments will strike many Poles as misplaced. Read the full post here.

1 September is seen in Poland as a beginning of its enslavement, first under Nazi domination and then, after the war, to Soviet domination. 1 September is a time of grieving. One can’t really expect Poles to see this as a date for reflection on the shortcomings of their own governments’ policies in 1939 and subsequently. Thus Putin has on the one hand accepted that the Soviet Union was wrong, but he has also publicly reminded the Poles that they too have to address some unsavory moments in Poland’s history. The fact that he spoke of the Russian people being victims of both Stalinism and of Nazism has done little to soothe Polish anger.

Many of these people who came to Russia looking for work and better lives are currently suffering a dramatic reversal of fortune. Due to the hard hit Russia has taken from the recession, much of the work originally sought has gone away, leaving many with uncertain futures.

Neave Barker of Worldfocus partner Al Jazeera English reports from Moscow on those hit hardest by this turn of luck.

The Sayano-Shushensk dam in Khakassia.

Twelve people have been confirmed dead and 64 remain missing after an accident at Russia’s largest hydroelectric power station on Monday.

Reports suggest that an oil-filled transformer exploded, causing a turbine room to flood at the Sayano-Shushenskaya station in Siberia.

The disaster is a haunting reminder of the structural insufficiency that plagues Russia. Worldfocus contributing blogger Paul Goble writes that the incident is symptomatic of serious infrastructure issues in the country.

The deadly disaster at the Sayano-Shushensk dam in Khakassia, the fifth largest hydro-electric facility in the world, occurred because officials sought to generate more electricity than the dam was designed to produce and because Moscow has ignored repeated warnings about such shortcomings or invest in the repair of such critical infrastructure.

As a result, Dmitry Verkhoturov, a Russian commentator who specializes on environmental questions, says that there is a very real danger that his country is entering into “a period of serious technogenic accidents as has been predicted” since the start of this decade and even earlier.

Both the impact of the accident in terms of lives and lost production as well as the accident’s proximate cause are still to be determined, Verkhoturov notes. The number of those killed is rising, with more than 60 people still missing, and “many major enterprises are without power,” including energy-intensive aluminum factors in Sayan, Khakassia, and Krasnoyarsk.

Sergey Shoygu, Russia’s emergency situation minister, says that it will take some time to determine exactly what happened and why and an even longer time, one measured “in months and most likely even in years” to repair the hydro-electric facility and bring its power production back on line.

But if the specifics remain to be determined, the general causes do not, Verkhoturov suggests. In June and July, RusHydro which operated the facility was using higher water levels in order to produce “record” amounts of electricity, some 105 million kilowatts every day, the highest output in “the entire 30 years” of the dam’s existence.

And in an eerie echo of the Chernobyl atomic power disaster, Russian officials at the dam took pride in the fact that they did not employ any local people, as if that provided a guarantee the dam would be safe. “We have no Tuvans and Khakass,” the deputy director of the hydro-station said in September 2008.

The pursuit of ever greater power output, regardless of what the station was designed for, and the arrogant self-confidence of the operators that the dam would operate regardless of what they did because they were keeping non-Russians away from the controls are the real causes of this disaster.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user SGES Press Service.

A man overlooks damage in Gori, Georgia. Photo: Onnik Krikorian

On Friday, Russia and Georgia marked the first anniversary of the war that erupted a year ago.

Last summer, Georgia launched an attack on the breakaway republic of South Ossetia to drive out Russian-backed separatists. Russia responded with a massive counterattack, pushing deep into Georgian territory.

The five-day war killed at least 390 people, displaced tens of thousands and left fear that more fighting could erupt. Tensions between the countries are still running high, with both sides making accusations about the other.

Ivan Krastev is based in Sofia, Bulgaria, and is the editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy. He writes at OpenDemocracy about the lasting political fallout from the brief conflict for Russia, Georgia, Europe and the U.S.

It took less than a hundred days for the Russia-Georgia war of 8-12 August 2008 to be eclipsed as a history-shaping event. The guns of August were silenced by the thunders on Wall Street. A war that seemed momentous at the time became subject to instant amnesia: a non-event. But it was a non-event with consequences.

A year on, a measure of these consequences seems appropriate. The post-war balance-sheets of the leading actors - Georgia and Russia themselves, but also the United States and the European Union - in many respects resemble those of the Wall Street financial institutions hit by the global economic crisis: undeclared losses and inflated profits.

Indeed, amid the fallout of this toxic conflict it is easier to see losers than victors. In August 2008, Georgia lost its dreams, the Kremlin lost its complexes, Washington lost its nerves and the European Union lost its sleep. But as the poet said, there’s no success like failure; and the messy aftermath also reveals collateral benefits for some of these and other powers.

Russia is at the centre of every calculation. The war was the occasion of Moscow’s first large-scale military operation outside the territory of the Russian Federation since the end of the cold war. The Kremlin’s subsequent recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was the first revision of inter-state borders on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Russia emerged from the war as a revisionist power and broke the illusion of the existence of European order.

[...] In assessing the consequences of the Russia-Georgia war the real question is: does the post-August 2008 world giving us a better chance for negotiating a legitimate and just European order, or is it making such a order even less likely?

Two answers are possible: the desperately pessimistic or the moderately optimistic.

Pessimists will claim that by turning the Russia-Georgia war into a non-event the west has encouraged the Kremlin to repeat its “success” in other parts of the post-Soviet space - thus making European order an illusion.

Optimists tend to believe that the Russia-Georgia war marks the simultaneous failure of two projects: Russia’s for reviving sphere-of-influence politics in Europe, and the west’s for constructing Europe without Russia.

If the pessimists are right, these are the early stages of a long night. If the optimists are correct, the death of these two projects means that now is a proper time to start thinking about the gestation of a third.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo and article available under a Creative Commons license.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced a pilot program that will introduce mandatory religious studies and secular ethics in Russian schools.

Students will choose between one of four religions — Russian Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism — or courses in secular ethics. The program’s test phase will involve some 20 percent of Russia’s schools, with the stated goal of encouraging morals.

Since the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church has been gaining influence, and religious education has sparked protest.

Worldfocus contributing blogger Bruce Chapman, writing at Russia Blog, describes the controversy in Russia and compares it to related issues in the U.S.

A new Kremlin plan to teach students religion or secular ethics is meant to combat the aimlessness of youth.

Perhaps it will — to some extent.

The approach is probably unique — teach what is again the dominant state religion (Russian Orthodoxy) as the one acceptable Christian faith, and also teach — according to student desires — Islam (the religion of a sizable minority, particularly in the South), Buddhism or Judaism, and give the students the alternative of a coarse in secular ethics. It will seem fair to many, maybe most, Russians. It is quite different, obviously, from the “scientific atheism” of Soviet days.

The program will get a lot of criticism, however. First, the most eager evangelists in Russia today are probably the various kinds of Christian pentecostals, and there is a sizable Roman Catholic population in certain ethnic centers. So the government apparently is starting a new struggle with these groups in schools, of all places.

Then arises the question of how smart it is to have Islam taught in state schools. Who is going to teach it? What is going to be taught? Might the government find itself trying to deal with hostile Friday mosque sermons because of the kind of Islam it promulgates in the schools? Where does that lead? How will populations in areas where Islam is a majority faith react to state school classes that offer instruction as well in other faiths?

Regardless, the new Russian model is so jarringly different from what is on offer in the United States that it may be worth careful monitoring by Americans. We no longer provide much at all in schools of the old, slightly Protestant civic religion of yore. The struggle in the U.S. is over whether to allow any expressions of faith in schools, whether in Commencement speeches by students or in after-school religious clubs.

Overall, America has benefited by a general separation of religious instruction and public education, as in other fields. A state religion gets lazy. It becomes synonymous in students’ minds with state politics, which cannot be good.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for students learning more about the religious heritage of their country. If the Russians are erring on one side of that objective, Americans may be erring on the other. If nothing else, comparisons of results should be interesting.

One place where the outcomes may be studied closely is….China.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user wonderlane under a Creative Commons license.