President Islam Karimov's image rises above the street in Andijon
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against Russia in a case involving 13 Central Asian businessmen who are fighting to block their extradition to Uzbekistan, where their lawyer says they could face torture or even execution.
The Strasbourg court ordered Russian authorities to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to the 13 men, one of whom is Kyrgyz and 12 of whom are Uzbek nationals, because they violated their rights when they held them for as long as 20 months without trial. It also cautioned Russia against handing any of the plaintiffs over to Uzbek authorities.
Tashkent has alleged that the men helped finance a broad plot in 2005 that was aimed at freeing a handful of alleged Islamic extremists in Andijon, in eastern Uzbekistan, and destabilizing the central government. Officials responded to the unrest with a security crackdown in which eyewitnesses say hundreds of unarmed protesters were killed.
One of the Uzbek defendants, Shukrullah Sobirov, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service on April 25 that the accusations against himself and his fellow defendants "are baseless and obviously fabricated by the officials."
He called allegations that he and his fellow defendants had received at least $200,000 to further the antigovernment cause "complete slander," adding, "Honestly, back then, we didn't even have enough money to pay our rent."
Fearing persecution in Uzbekistan, the men fled soon after the Andijon tragedy to Russia, where they sought asylum. Instead, they were arrested in June 2005 on the basis of the Uzbek warrants.
The group's lawyer appealed to the Strasbourg court, citing concerns over possible torture or execution if they were returned to their homeland.
On April 24, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay each of the men roughly $24,000 in damages and a combined $28,000 in legal fees.
The court also warned against extraditing the men to Uzbekistan, saying such a move would further breach the plaintiffs' rights because they would face imminent arrest and possibly torture.
Russia, a member of the Council of Europe, has three months to appeal the decision.
Uzbekistan has long been criticized by rights groups for alleged ill-treatment of prisoners.
Irina Sokolova, the defendants' Russian lawyer, says Uzbek authorities claim that the men continue to pose a threat.
"I would also like to point out that Uzbek law enforcement officials wrote in the men's criminal cases that they have been involved in extremist and terrorist activities on Russian territory," says Sokolova, who noted that Russian authorities have been unable to corroborate such claims. "After investigating the case at the request of the Russian prosecutor-general, the Russian side said that they could not find any proof or information to confirm those allegations."
The men say Russian human rights activists, including the Memorial group, have provided support by attracting media and politicians' attention to the case.
In May 2005, months of minor protests surrounding the trials of 23 businessmen accused of being members of the banned Islamic group Akramiya culminated in an attack on a jail and other public facilities in which many prisoners were freed. The next day, according to eyewitnesses, hundreds of unarmed residents were killed when security forces opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators who had gathered in central Andijon to criticize the government and demand better social conditions.
Tashkent has consistently rejected international calls to allow an independent probe into the events in Andijon.
Hundreds of Uzbeks fled Andijon for neighboring Kyrgyzstan in the days after the violence, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) eventually granted them refugee status and helped relocate them to third countries.
Under intense pressure from Tashkent, neighboring Kyrgyzstan has extradited five Uzbek nationals accused of involvement in the Andijon violence. The move sparked condemnations from human rights groups and the UNHCR, which described it as a violation of international law.
RFE/RL's Uzbek Service correspondent Oktambek Karimov contributed to this report
Vacated residential area in Prypyat, near Chornobyl
But then an odd thing happened. Environmental groups held public hearings, local residents were mobilized, and a letter-writing campaign to lawmakers was launched. Weeks later, the plan was dead.
It was a landmark victory for Kazakhstan's environmentalists -- a fledgling movement that traces its roots to the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.
It was a rare success, however. As the international community marks the 22nd anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident on April 26, vibrant Green movements that can influence environmental policy in the former Soviet Union remain few and far between.
The Chornobyl blast was caused by a massive power surge at the plant, located near Pripyat in Ukraine. It blew the 1,000-ton lid off a reactor and initially killed two people. Another 29 emergency workers died within the next three months. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that fallout from the disaster will account for no more than 4,000 deaths worldwide. But Greenpeace and other environmental groups say the total is in the hundreds of thousands.
Despite such dire predictions, authorities in the regions affected by Chornobyl have typically pushed ecological concerns far down on their agendas in favor of short-term economic or political gains. Nascent grassroots Green movements have also suffered from the emergence of authoritarian regimes in countries like Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
"Green movements are more developed in countries with stable regimes, where people are for the most part confident in their future, where they are provided for, where finding a piece of bread or life-supporting medication is not a problem," says Aleksandr Velikin, the head of the Chornobyl Union in Russia's Leningrad Oblast and a former "liquidator," one of the hundreds of thousands of people from across the Soviet Union who were brought in to clean up after the nuclear explosion at Chornobyl.
Rising Green Consciousness
Such luxuries have so far eluded the post-Soviet space, where environmentalists continue to face an uphill battle.
Russian activists, for example, failed in 2001 to prevent a nuclear waste-import scheme similar to the one that Kazakhstan's Greens blocked. Moscow also plans to build 40 new nuclear reactors by 2030, over the objections of the country's environmentalists. Belarus, which to this day screens milk and other agricultural products for radioactive contamination, is likewise planning to build a new nuclear plant.
It wasn't always this way. Many analysts describe the years between the Chornobyl disaster and the 1991 Soviet breakup as the high-water mark of environmental activism in the region.
"The Chornobyl catastrophe changed people's awareness and their attitude toward the environment; toward technical progress, which doesn't always bring good; and toward the fact that atomic energy must be handled very cautiously," says Vladimir Chuprov, the chief nuclear expert at Greenpeace-Russia.
Soon after the accident, physicists and other scientists lobbied for enhanced nuclear safety. Within a few years, as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika took root, even the general public began to press for more information.
Kazakh "cleaners" of the Chornobyl disaster pose for a picture in 1986, on display at an exhibition in Almaty
Flowers, who was expelled from Belarus in 2004 for unauthorized contacts with NGOs, says the scientists' concerns mushroomed into more broad-based political activism in the general public. He says the "large-scale" reaction that ensued included campaigns for the publication of information and maps about the Chornobyl fallout.
Observers say this gave a boost to environmental groups that were already forming in the increasingly open political atmosphere.
"In the Soviet Union, you couldn't criticize the system, the party, but ecology was one of the issues to which the Soviet leadership paid no attention. The ecological movement had already begun, and Chornobyl gave it a huge boost," says Chuprov.
Political Fallout
In Ukraine, the new environmentalism dovetailed with an emerging independence movement. And in Belarus, as Flowers notes, it sparked the rise of the republic's first post-Soviet head of state, Stanislau Shushkevich, who led the republic's independence drive and served as chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1991-94.
"In particular, Stanislau Shushkevich came to prominence because as a physicist, he was very aware of the true extent of fallout and the need to publicize and open up information to the public on the locations of the fallout," Chuprov says. "He became the people's champion on publicizing information on the Chornobyl accident in Belarus."
Kazakhstan, which was not directly affected by the Chornobyl fallout, nevertheless provided many of the liquidators who cleaned up after the explosion. When they returned home, some joined -- and helped publicize -- the emerging environmental movement there.
Today, Kazakhstan has one of the stronger environmental movements in the former Soviet Union. Analysts and activists say that this is because the environmental situation there is particularly dire, even by post-Soviet standards.
According to estimates cited in the media, nearly 10 percent of Kazakh citizens are suffering the aftereffects of hundreds of Soviet-era nuclear bomb tests at the Semipalatinsk testing site, which was closed in 1991. Falling rockets and debris from the Baikonur Cosmodrome have also caused ecological damage.
"Kazakhstan is a place where many international environmental problems are concentrated," Mels Eleusizov, leader of Kazakhstan's Tabighat (Nature) movement, tells RFE/RL's Kazakh Service. "Here we have Caspian problems -- a huge issue; the Aral Sea problem -- the whole world is talking about it and it has been affecting more and more aspects of life day after day; the Balkhash Sea issue -- the issue that has been getting similar to what we have in Aral region; Semey [Semipalatinsk nuclear test field] and many other test fields. Every single city in Kazakhstan has its own [ecological] challenges."
New Obstacles
But the burst of ecological activism that followed Chornobyl lost its momentum after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. The Soviet successor states quickly became more concerned with economic development than ecology.
"We gave a lot of recommendations to the government. But the government has made it clear that it doesn't need them," Eleusizov says. "The government is focusing on economic issues now -- it cares mainly about oil and other mineral resources. Meanwhile, ecological issues seem to be on the second level of interest. But I can tell you, at some point it will be too late for anybody to take care of the ecology."
Many post-Soviet governments in recent years have become increasingly authoritarian, leaving little room for independent environmental movements. The most glaring example, of course, is Belarus, the country most affected by the Chornobyl disaster and where President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's regime ruthlessly suppresses any form of public dissent, including environmental activism.
"Discussion of grassroots activism is pretty much a barren territory in Belarus, insofar as any nongovernmental activism is very closely scrutinized and has been for very nearly a decade in Belarus," Flowers says.
True to form, Belarusian authorities are widely expected to break up a march by the country's liquidators, which is scheduled for April 26 to mark the Chornobyl anniversary.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Belarus Service, Katsyaryna Gancharova, a member of the country's Ekadom environmental group, says that despite the numerous bureaucratic and political obstacles placed in its path, the Green movement is determined to persevere.
"The registration process is complex. On the whole, civic organizations are barely surviving because the very unfavorable situation in the country doesn't allow them to function as they should," Gancharova says. "But the Green movement is nonetheless developing, people are interested in ecology. This question is becoming increasingly topical."
RFE/RL's Belarus, Kazakh, and Ukrainian services contributed to this report
Monica Lovinescu
(Monica Lovinescu, a Paris-based literary critic and journalist who encouraged intellectual resistance to Romania's communist regime from the microphone of Radio Free Europe from 1964-92, passed away on April 21 at the age of 85. The daughter of influential interwar academic Eugen Lovinescu, and a mother who was to die in a communist prison, Monica Lovinescu enjoyed tremendous prestige and influence in her native Romania. She was considered a chief ideologue in arguing that communist crimes were equal to those of the Nazis, and her work angered dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to the point that he ordered the beating in 1977 that left her in a coma. She recovered to return to her seat behind the microphone, where she observed the downfall of Ceausescu's regime in 1989.)
Behind the scenes with "Putin" at "Kukly" before its demise
His March 2 election -- which critics say was merely a prearranged transfer of power -- has prompted a flurry of jokes about the future president.
Most revolve around his boyish appearance, diminutive stature, and reputation as a puppet of President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to become prime minister after stepping down in May.
What is "nanotechnology" in Russian politics? goes one joke. Answer: When each new leader is shorter than his predecessor.
In another, Putin takes Medvedev out for dinner. Putin orders a steak. "What about the vegetable?" the waiter asks him. "The vegetable will have a steak, too," answers Putin.
Perhaps the most popular gag so far is a video that lampoons the cult Soviet film "Kavkazskaya Plennitsa," or "Caucasus Prisoner." The clip has been viewed more than 1 million times on the video-sharing website YouTube.
In the original scene, a local tricks a naive Russian tourist into kidnapping a young woman by persuading him that abductions are a local tradition. In the overdubbed spoof version, the tourist is Medvedev and he's being asked to snatch not the woman but the Russian presidency.
"So what's my role?" asks Medvedev. "Collect signatures, put forward your candidacy," the local tells him. "My candidacy?! That's also part of the tradition? Brilliant!" exclaims an enthusiastic Medvedev.
The local then explains that things must look "natural" even if the vote is bogus. "The candidates will resist, kick, even bite, call for observers, shout that they're going to complain to the United Nations," he says. "But don't pay attention -- it's all part of a beautiful old tradition!"
No Laughing Matter
The Kremlin, if aware of the clip, is unlikely to be amused.
Such jokes are a far cry from the reverent portrayal of Medvedev and Putin in Russia's state-controlled media.
Yuly Gusman, humorist and head of the Russian Film Academy, says the Kremlin has become particularly intolerant of political satire under Putin's tenure.
"It's disappearing from the social sphere and from television debates. It's gone, and I think it will be gone for a long time. I think this began under Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]," he says. "[Former President Boris] Yeltsin can be reproached for many things, but he attached great value to freedom of speech and of the press, which attacked him, bit him. He ground his teeth but bore it all."
Gusman knows this from firsthand experience.
The television station covering the Nika film awards ceremony -- Russia's equivalent of the Oscars -- in Moscow last month cut out part of his speech, in which he made a tongue-in-cheek remark about the Putin-Medvedev power tandem.
"Traditionally we have a message from the Russian president," he told the star-studded audience. "Since clearly no one knows who our president is, you can consider it coming from me."
A spoof film sequence shown to Nika guests in which Putin and Medvedev were portrayed as a tsar and his son was also skipped over in the television report.
'Approved Humor'
The Kremlin, however, has tolerated -- sometimes even encouraged -- mild political satire.
As Russians cast their ballots on March 2, national television broadcast images of Medvedev attending KVN, a hugely popular student humor show dating back to Soviet times. Medvedev was shown smiling good-naturedly as some of the performers poked gentle fun at his sudden rise to power.
Yuly Gusman (right) says, "Yeltsin can be reproached for many things, but he attached great value to freedom of speech and of the press" (AFP)
The more scalding satire that flourished in the 1990s following the Soviet collapse has all but vanished. "Kukly," a satirical puppet show, was one of the first television programs axed after Putin became president in 2000.
"Kukly" showed Putin in a variety of guises, from an indecisive leader struggling to choose a new prime minister to an impotent young king on his wedding night.
One of the most caustic episodes was based on "Little Zaches Called Zinnober," a tale by 19th-century German author E.T.A. Hoffmann in which a wicked dwarf bewitches a city, tricking its residents into worshiping him as a great ruler.
The show depicted Putin as the wicked, foul-mouthed dwarf, and oligarch Boris Berezovsky -- the former Kremlin kingmaker who eventually fell out with Putin -- as the magic fairy helping him put the nation under his spell.
"In the outhouse, waste them all! Waste everyone in the outhouse!" screams the Putin puppet at the start of the episode, in which he is still a baby in his crib -- a reference to Putin's famous statement about Chechen separatist rebels.
"Lie still, boy. Now we'll make a human being out of you," says the Berezovsky-fairy.
Vanishing Nation?
The episode enraged Putin's supporters, a handful of whom published an open letter calling for the show's authors to be prosecuted.
The man behind "Kukly," the well-known humorist Viktor Shenderovich, was not dragged to court. But he left the show in 2001 after the television station broadcasting it was taken over by a state-controlled company. A significantly tamer version of "Kukly," without the Putin puppet, was finally ditched in 2003.
Since then, says Shenderovich, political satire has been driven underground.
"It's not the 'Kukly' program that disappeared, it's the country in which the 'Kukly' program existed that disappeared," he says. "Beyond the realm of the Internet, we've returned to a Soviet model. Biting personal satire, the kind that goes for the most sensitive spots, is absolutely impossible in the federal framework. It escaped entirely to the Internet; it escaped entirely to folklore."
Russia has a rich tradition of political satire. For centuries, sharp-tongued "chastushki" -- short, rhymed folk songs -- were devised to ridicule the country's rulers.
Russians also used "lubki," hand-colored folk prints, to poke fun at the elite. Peter the Great, whose drive to secularize and Europeanize the country earned him many foes, was a favorite target of lubok artists. Famous lubki portray him as a cat or a crocodile.
While biting satire has long been an inherent part of political life in Western countries, Russia's history of despotic regimes means this type of humor has almost always been confined to the private realm.
Precisely because it is so deeply entrenched in the Russian psyche, the Kremlin is unlikely to ever succeed in uprooting political satire.
"In Russia, mocking authorities is an exclusively oral, folkloric tradition," says Shenderovich. "There were jokes about Stalin under Stalin's rule; there have always been jokes about leaders, there have always been harsh chastushki, there has always been an entire world of satire -- including satire that is foul-mouthed, popular, vulgar, but incredibly talented. This has always existed, and will always exist."