Despite controversy, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is proceeding with plans to hold its annual meeting in Tashkent next year after gaining pledges from the Uzbek government to provide freedom of speech and access for NGOs to the meeting, EBRD President Jean Lemierre told reporters at a press conference in London on December 17, Reuters reported. "I trust what he says to me when he says 'I promise free access.' I know we have to monitor this," Reuters quoted Lemierre as saying.
The decision to hold the annual meeting in Tashkent was originally taken in 1999, long before the tragedy of September 11 2001 and its aftermath rebounded throughout Central Asia. Now, with a spotlight on Uzbekistan's repressive practices, particularly in its places of detention, international human rights groups have complained anew about the choice of venue and cited last month's finding of "systematic" use of torture by the UN special rapporteur on torture. Yet Lemierre said only "in exceptional circumstances" will the EBRD cancel the meeting in Uzbekistan, although human rights monitors are urging the EBRD to hold the government of Uzbekistan accountable to a set of benchmarks such as release of political prisoners, an end to persecution of nonviolent Muslims functioning outside of state control and legalization of NGOs and independent newspapers.
Veronika Szente Goldston, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch's (HRW) Europe and Central Asia Division, believes the EBRD is aware of both human rights and economic problems in Uzbekistan but feels a need to "mark its presence" and "send a strong signal about commitment" to the region, she told "(Un)Civil Societies." "They think they will help make progress and don't want to follow the policy of isolation versus engagement," she said, noting that she and her colleagues had been in a number of meetings with the EBRD in the last year as they campaigned about deplorable conditions in Uzbekistan's prisons. In a September 2002 letter to the bank supported by other international NGOs, HRW set out specific cases and issues which they believe could be remedied "within weeks," said Szente Goldston, although they acknowledged that some systemic changes, such as judicial review of cases where confessions appeared to have been obtained by torture, will take much longer to achieve. At the Ebara's annual meeting in May 2002 in Bucharest, HRW enlisted more than 50 local groups throughout Eastern and Central Europe and Eurasia, such as the Moscow Helsinki Group, Legal Aid Society and Mazlum in Uzbekistan, the Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan, the Romanian Helsinki Committee, and the National Ecological Center of Ukraine.
They called on the bank to be far more forceful in gaining concessions from Tashkent. HRW found that some local groups were reluctant to call for canceling the meeting or pressuring states to boycott it; they did not want to appear either to harm their impoverished country's ability to get much-needed aid, nor to lose an opportunity for international attention to their plight.
Critics of the human rights advocacy approach say that poverty programs benefiting large populations, especially such urgent projects as securing water for the Ferghana Valley, are too important to hold up over suppression of the civil rights of the relative few who challenge the regime. "Of course we would like to see cash flowing to those in need," said Szente Goldston in reply to such arguments, "but the funding will not be effective in a closed, repressive society without transparency and accountability" to the public and international donors.
"While we welcome the EBRD taking seriously these modalities [regarding free access], that doesn't replace the responsibility to attach to the meeting as such tangible progress in the run-up period [to the annual meeting] on specific benchmarks" such as release of imprisoned human rights defenders, Szente Goldston said.
Pressure from the United States and the EU have brought about some concessions this year, human rights activists say, such as registration for one human rights group, access for the UN's investigator and prosecution of some policemen guilty of torturing suspects. It's not enough, say activists as well as relatives of prisoners who have suffered torment or have died in prison even as the West increases aid.
Turkmenistan's staunch refusal to bend to the West's human rights pressure this year has also pushed diplomats into more forceful measures. In response to a crackdown on opposition figures, journalists, and their relatives in Turkmenistan in the wake of the November 25 assassination attempt against President Saparmurat Niyazov, in the last month the United States and the EU have invoked the so-called "Vienna and Moscow mechanisms" of the OSCE, procedures for human rights interventions, diplomatic sources said.
Under the OSCE's Vienna mechanism, if other participating states request information about an urgent human rights matter, a member state must respond in writing within 10 days and may hold optional bilateral meetings within one week of a request to bring situations and cases to the attention of another state. On November 21 in Vienna, in a public speech to the Permanent Council, deputy mission chief Douglas Davidson expressed concern about the manner in which suspects were being investigated and also the failure to provide consular access to an American citizen charged in the attack on Niyazov's motorcade. He also requested further information about the former Turkmen OSCE Ambassador and Foreign Minister Batyr Berdiev, who was well-known to the Vienna diplomatic community and who has reportedly been tortured into confessing to involvement in the assassination attempt.
Evidently after Turkmenistan failed to issue a sufficient reply to Western queries, on December 12 the United States and EU (and on behalf of most of the associated states but not Turkey) next invoked the Moscow mechanism, a procedure that enables states to request a mission of three experts to investigate and attempt to resolve a human rights problem. If Turkmenistan refuses to permit such a mission to enter the country, it could be forced to accept increasingly intrusive actions including receiving a rapporteur mission immediately if 10 participating states agree it must proceed.
Drafted in the heady days following defeat of the August 1991 Soviet coup, and promoted by Soviet dissidents like parliamentarian Sergei Kovalev, who was serving in the official Russian delegation to the OSCE conference held in Moscow at the time, the Moscow mechanism has only been used a few times in the last decade, including for the Balkans conflict in 1992 and by self-invocation on the part of Estonia in 1992 (to resolve nationality and judiciary issues) and by Moldova in 1993 (regarding the language, citizens, and religious-freedom laws). Since then, the Vienna and Moscow mechanisms have fallen into disuse, and even been discredited to some extent in the eyes of the West in 1999 when Russia attempted after trying other procedures for emergency situations to invoke the Vienna mechanism against NATO member states for allegedly committing mass violations of human rights on Yugoslav territory. The next few weeks will tell whether a standoff similar to the one over the OSCE mission in Belarus will develop between the OSCE and Turkmenistan.
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