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| Devoted to democracy? The first post-Soviet country to chair the world body devoted to democracy is showing an iron fist to critical newspapersFor Respublika it has been a long battle for survival. In September bailiffs seized the opposition newspaper's entire print run.Working through the night, reporters retrieved the proofs from a USB flash disk, photocopied them, and stapled them together. By 7am they had churned out 2,000 homemade copies – not exactly a big edition, but a small symbolic victory in the struggle for media freedom in Kazakhstan.Respublika's long-running scrap with officialdom isn't unusual for Central Asia, a region not known for its pluralism. What makes it extraordinary is that Kazakhstan is about to assume the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Vienna-based body devoted to democracy and press freedom.On 1 January, Kazakhstan will become the first post-Soviet country to lead the organisation of 56 countries. Since 2007, when member states voted it OSCE chair, Kazakhstan's own record on press freedom has worsened.Respublika is known for its mocking criticism of Kazakhstan's autocratic government, which has responded by repeatedly trying to close it.In 2002 Respublika's editorial office mysteriously burned down. The arsonists left a headless dog dangling from a ground-floor window. Attached to it was a note. It read: "You won't get a second warning."Respublika now appears in text that cannot be read without squinting and is stuck together with a couple of staples. The amateurish format is familiar to anyone who remembers the late Soviet Union. "We're the new samizdat," Respublika's deputy editor-in-chief, Oxana Makushina, explains in the paper's small office in Almaty, Kazakhstan's attractive former capital on the edge of the snowy Tian Shan mountains. "When we outwitted the bailiffs we felt triumphant. The next day all of our copies sold out immediately."Other Central Asian countries share Kazakhstan's iron-fist approach to critical newspapers. A bunch of variously repressive super-presidents rule all five post-communist Central Asian republics: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan's ageing leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been in the job for 18 years. He shows no signs of retiring.On the eve of its OSCE chairmanship, Kazakhstan's broader human rights record is also causing alarm. On 3 September the country's most famous human rights activist, Yevgeny Zhovtis, was jailed for four years for knocking down and killing a pedestrian. Zhovtis does not deny his role in the accident, but his unusually harsh punishment has provoked concern among human rights activists and western governments.Government officials have tightened the screw on critical publications. Last January Ramazan Esergepov, the editor of the Alma-Ata info portal, was arrested after publishing documents revealing corruption inside Kazakhstan's spy agency. He got three years in jail. Then in April the opposition newspaper Tasjargan was closed down after reporting on a long-running scandal involving claims that a US oil fixer paid Nazarbayev and his associates $78m in bribes.Kazakhstan's alarming slide on press freedom has embarrassed the EU countries, led by Germany, that backed its OSCE candidacy. The Germans believed that giving the job to Kazakhstan would show that the OSCE was not a closed western club but was open to the former communist states of eastern Europe. They also argued that democratic reform would be stimulated inside Kazakhstan, which would then serve as a model for the rest of the region. In fact, the opposite happened.Over the summer Kazakhstan passed a repressive internet law and legislation on defamation – in effect a prohibition on stories about corrupt officials.At a meeting earlier this month in Athens, OSCE foreign ministers expressed concern at Kazakhstan's democratic slide. Kazakhstan, however, appears indifferent to western criticism. Analysts say its leadership is more worried about internal revolt than international hand-wringing by European and US human rights groups. "The new media laws are a legacy of the economic crisis and the Soviet mentality of our ruling elite," Adil Kaukenov, a political analyst based in Almaty, said. "They don't know how to do it any differently."According to Kaukenov, Kazakhstan was making modest progress on democratic issues until late 2007. Then the credit that had fuelled the country's economic boom – it is Central Asia's most prosperous nation – suddenly dried up. Officials were terrified that Kazakhstan might become engulfed in the kind of pro-reform uprising that took place in 2005 in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, he said.(Kyrgyzstan's so-called Tulip revolution has since fizzled out.)As well as muzzling the media, Kazakhstan's elite has been busy with another project: transforming the president into a mythical national super-figure. Already nicknamed "papa", Nazarbayev is now portrayed by state-run television as a revered global statesman. Nightly broadcasts include fawning testimonies from old school chums and ordinary Kazakhs. Astana, the gleaming new capital in the northern steppes, has just got its first Nazarbayev statue.Kazakhstan's OSCE chairmanship is central to this giddy PR offensive.Kazakhstan has proposed that, as well as hosting a meeting of foreign ministers next December, it holds the first OSCE summit for a decade to be attended by heads of state. A summit would pander to Nazarbayev's increasingly messianic pretensions. Analysts suggest it would also enable Kazakhstan to assert its regional leadership role over its Central Asian neighbours.The man who lobbied for Kazakhstan to get the OSCE job was Rakat Aliyev, Nazarbayev's former son-in-law. Aliyev, now the president's bitter enemy, suggested the idea when he was Kazakhstan's ambassador to Austria. He fell out with Nazarbayev in 2007 and has since been divorced from the president's daughter, sentenced to 20 years in prison for plotting a coup and stripped of all privileges.Exiled in Vienna, Aliyev has been avenging himself against his former father-in-law. Aliyev was once head of Kazakhstan's committee on national security – the country's equivalent of the KGB – and he has posted dozens of compromising conversations with Nazarbayev on his LiveJournal blog. Kazakhstan responded by banning LiveJournal in 2008. It also pulled the plug on the satellite TV channel K+ after it broadcast an interview with Aliyev.According to Andrei Grozin, an expert from Moscow's Institute for the Study of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the group of former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan's power structures are engulfed in a vicious clan war, with the security services pitted against the financial police and the prosecutor. "Aliyev's departure has been the trigger for the complete restructuring of the elite field in Kazakhstan," Grozin said.Opposition politicians express little optimism that Kazakhstan will change. Nazarbayev, who turns 70 next year, has failed to anoint a successor. None of Kazakhstan's elections have met OSCE standards: widespread ballot-box stuffing and refusal of registration for opposition parties has been alleged. The parliament has only one party – the ruling pro-presidential Nur-Otan faction won all the seats at the last election in 2007."Nazarbayev is surrounded by a load of toadies. They are prepared to do anything, not because they love him but because they see his epoch coming to an end,'' Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, the head of the opposition Azat party, said. "They want big political positions."Tuyakbay, who stood unsuccessfully against Nazarbayev in the 2005 presidential election, said Kazakhstan had duped the Europeans over the OSCE. "It's absurdly cynical. Kazakhstan isn't orientated towards the west. It's merely using the OSCE so it can boast to Kazakhs it leads Europe."Respublika's latest troubles, meanwhile, began earlier this year when it reported that the state-owned BTA Bank was on the brink of bankruptcy. The bank sued the weekly newspaper for damages. A court near Almaty upheld the bank's claim, fined the weekly $401,000, and threw its print run in a lorry. Government critics say that Respublika is an irresponsible scandal-sheet. Its journalists say that the court proceedings are merely another politically driven attempt to crush the title.Kazakh officials insist that the country's media laws are not repressive but merely an attempt to strike a balance between media freedom and the interests of national security. "I would strongly argue that there has been no concerted effort to stifle dissent, as people would like to say," Roman Vassilenko, chairman of Kazakhstan's foreign ministry international information committee, said.He added: "Reporters need to know the rules of the game."Vassilenko pointed out that the OSCE wasn't just concerned with democratic values but had two other "baskets" – security and economics. 'It's a major misunderstanding in western Europe that the OSCE is only about monitoring elections and promoting human rights," he said. Kazakhstan, which had successfully avoided conflict between its ethnic Kazakh, Russian and other populations, planned to host an OSCE conference on tolerance and diversity, he said.Asked why Kazakhstan had banned LiveJournal, Russia's answer to Facebook, Vassilenko grew vague. "I don't know about that," he said.KazakhstanPress freedomHuman rightsLuke Hardingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Losing 2 senators, 1 gov equals worries for Dems WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the 2010 election year barely under way, two senators and one governor - all Democrats - ditched plans to run for re-election in the latest signs of trouble for President Barack Obama's party.... hosted.ap.org |
Conan O'Brien rejects moving 'The Tonight Show' LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Conan O'Brien says he's rejecting NBC's attempt to move "The Tonight Show" to a post-midnight slot to accommodate Jay Leno's return to late-night. In a statement Tuesday, O'Brien says that NBC has given him a scant seven months to try to establish himself as host of "Tonight."... hosted.ap.org |
Taliban Attack Kabul The Taliban launched a coordinated attack on the Afghan capital, setting off bombs, taking over buildings, and attempting to disrupt the swearing-in of new cabinet ministers. online.wsj.com |
Ethiopian Airlines crash kills 90 All 90 on board – including two Britons – presumed dead after Ethiopian Airlines flight breaks up mid-air shortly after takeoffNinety people, including two British nationals, are presumed dead after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed into the sea today minutes after taking off from Beirut during a thunderstorm. Witnesses reported seeing a "ball of fire" plunging into the Mediterranean.Among those on Flight 409, which was heading to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, were two British nationals of Lebanese origin, as well as the wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon, Reuters reported. The majority of the passengers were Lebanese or Ethiopian.Lebanon's military said the aeroplane appeared to have broken up in mid-air before falling into the water, and that there was no realistic prospect of finding survivors more than 12 hours after the crash.The Boeing 737-800 aircraft took off from Beirut's Rafik Hariri airport at around 2.30am local time and disappeared from radar a few minutes later, two miles off Naameh, a coastal village.Local people in Naameh reported seeing a "ball of fire" fall into the sea, Reuters said."As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely. The investigation will uncover the cause," the Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, told a press conference.The plane took off amid heavy rain, high winds and lightning. Poor weather also hampered the rescue efforts by helicopters and naval ships, although 24 bodies have so far been recovered.The remains of seats and luggage washing up on the coast were shown on local television. The Lebanese authorities have requested assistance from UN peacekeeping forces in the country.The country's government declared a day of mourning as the prime minister, Saad al-Hariri, went to the airport to meet distraught relatives, some of whom were angry that the plane was allowed to take off in bad weather.However, the chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines, Girma Wake, insisted that the pilots would not have attempted to fly in dangerous conditions. "There was bad weather. How bad it is, I will not be able to say. But, from what I see, probably it was manageable weather otherwise the crew would not have taken off," he told reporters, according to Reuters.He added that the plane had been built in 2002 and a maintenance check a month ago found no evidence of technical problems. The aircraft was under lease from a division of CIT Group, a US financial services firm.Among the 83 passengers and seven crew listed as being on the plane were 54 Lebanese nationals, 22 Ethiopians, one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Canadian and one Russian, as well as the Britons and the French ambassador's wife, Marla Pietton.Relatives began arriving at the airport early today, many of them crying and hugging. Officials led them into a VIP area.Ethiopian Airlines released a statement on its website confirming the plane was missing."A team is already working on gathering all pertinent information," it said. "An investigative team has already been dispatched to the scene and we will release further information as further updates are received."The Lebanese army said the plane was "on fire shortly after takeoff".Ethiopian Airlines has a far better reputation for safety than many other African airlines, with two notable crashes in the past 20-plus years, one of which was caused by a hijacking.A jet crash-landed off the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel in November 1996, killing 126 of the 175 people aboard. The plane had just left Addis Ababa when three hijackers stormed the cockpit and demanded to be taken to Australia.In September 1988 another plane crashed shortly after taking off when it ran into a flock of birds, killing 31 of the 104 people on board.Plane crashesAir transportEthiopiaLebanonPeter Walkerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |