The first meeting of Helsinski Committee in Sofia

The First Meeting of Helsinki Committees in Sofia The annual General Assembly of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) was held from 16 to 19 November 2006, in Sofia.

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) hosted the event.

At an official ceremony, the Annual IHF Recognition Award was presented to the prominent Russian human rights activist, Ms. Karinna Moskalenko, founder and director of a human rights organization. Ms. Moskalenko has made an important contribution to the efforts to achieve justice for the victims of the war in Chechnya. She was one of the closest associates of the fearless Russian human rights journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered “by unknown perpetrators”. Ms. Moskalenko has already come under persecution on the part of the Russian authorities for her activities (read our interview with her on p. 5) The focus of this year’s General Assembly was the battle against the circumvention by the United States, Russia, Uzbekistan, and many other countries, of the absolute prohibition on torture as a means of obtaining information from detainees. Different governments do so in different ways, whether by torturing prisoners and subjecting them to degrading treatment in prisons outside their own country, as the United States has done with the terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo, or in secret prisons in various European countries, or by staging mass disappearances without a trace, as Russia has done in the war in Chechnya. The catchphrase that is used to justify this grave violation of human rights is that “the war on terror has forced us to resort to such means of protection, because it is the greatest threat to the security of our people.” “Circumventing the ban on torture and ill-treatment in the name of enhancing security is illegal and diminishes respect for human dignity,” Aaron Rhodes, Executive Director of the IHF, declared at the session. “Any admission of abusive practices is the beginning of a slippery slope toward the uncontrollable and systematic use of torture and ill-treatment and constitutes a security threat to all,” he went on to say.

The session also discussed the human rights situation in the OSCE region, and more specifically in the countries of Central Asia, Russia, Chechnya, and Belarus. Three new organizations were accepted as members of IHF: the Republican Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law in Tajikistan, the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.

The General Assembly re-elected Ulrich Fischer to the office of President of the IHF, and Srdjan Dizdarevic as Vice President. The BHC Chairman Krassimir Kanev was re-elected as a member of the organization’s board of directors.At the end, a joint statement was unanimously adopted, in which the IHF expressed its grave concern about the increased repression of human rights activists in Russia (where new legislation on NGOs has placed human rights organizations under strict government supervision and exposes them to a danger of repression), Belarus (where at the end of November, the Supreme Court is set to decide whether to dissolve the Helsinki Committee), and Uzbekistan (where in 2006 alone, at least 30 human rights activists were imprisoned), as well as a special declaration expressing the international organization’s concern about ultra-nationalism in Bulgaria and the increase in antiminority and anti-Roma rhetoric.

Due to the wave of repression against human rights organizations and their members, the theme of the IHF Yearly Campaign in 2007 will be about human rights defenders at risk, the General Assembly of the IHF also declared.

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A Balance Must Be S - Mr. Fischer, would you share your impressions from the conference?- As you know, this conference was our effort to draw the attention of our member-committees to anti-terrorist endeavors and their effect on human rights not only in Russia and Uzbekistan, but also in a number of European countries.

Over the past year, we have witnessed attempts to restrict personal rights, for example in the provision of personal data about the passengers on trans-oceanic flights. In actuality, we must live with certain restrictions to our individual rights, inasmuch as in directly confronting specific situations we now cannot expect to board a plane without being checked. The restrictions on the carrying of liquids on board, for example, is something different from the spreading of information. However, I do not consider that to be dangerous, in as far as it is known what is done with the information provided. My criticism towards European and other companies that provide information for use overseas is that they do not know exactly what it is used for.

That use is something entirely against our own laws!

- How do you see the role to be played by the International Helsinki Federation and its members in striking the necessary balance between the

This year the IHF conferred its annual Recognition Award on Ms Karinna Moskalenko, Director of the International Protection Center.

As a prominent human rights lawyer, Ms Moskalenko has pioneered the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights in Russia.

Struck Between Security Measures and Human Rights

Ulrich Fischer President of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights in Vienna. Member of the Board of the German Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Security and Cooperation in Europe.

need for increased security measures and the protection of fundamental human rights?

- Our chief task as a human rights organization is to engage in dialogue with other concerned citizens, to organize an exchange of viewpoints. If governments are open, they will include themselves in this discourse.

We have no authority; our power lies in the fact that we make things public. For example, Stalinism is over in the countries of the former Soviet Union, but some of these societies in transition are partially living under the authority of old traditions, which must be overcome.

- Can you indicate a concrete example of readiness and desire on the part of individual governments to cooperate and build relationships with your committees on a partnership basis, rather than as adversaries?

- That depends primarily on the governments. It does

not depend on us, and in some countries, cooperation is better with a certain administration and deteriorates with a change in power. Or there is a general change.

At the beginning, for example, the Russian Federation and the Russian government were quite open with regard to human rights organizations. That has changed in the present day, inasmuch as the regime of Mr. Putin is much less willing to cooperate with NGOs and especially with human rights organizations.

- Has the situation worsened considerably since September 11, 2001?

- Yes, yes, it is getting worse. We are witnessing one of the most serious confrontations ever with human rights and fundamental needs, which we do not underestimate.

But this is a big issue in our societies, including the so-called democratic Western societies. The obvious, objective need for protection of the population from the latest actions of terrorists and the undertaking of measures in that direction is again and again leading us in the direction of limitation of human rights. Governments are going too far in that regard. The political class is easily going too far in changing the level of individual freedoms. Sometimes they do not even realize what they are doing. That is also true of the countries in Central and Southeastern Europe.

- Do you see any limits to this process? Is it possible to stop it, or will it continue to develop, out of control?

- With regard to the willingness of critical civil societies to raise their voices - and this is not at all just a matter for human rights organizations, it is an issue that affects civil society as a whole and an objective, intelligent political class that understands its values - if we are inattentive, we will destroy what we have been fighting for: our shared values, which in and of themselves represent a limit that is easy to define.„ Interview by Dimitar Sotirov.

The Russian Authorities Won’t Stand for Any Criticism!

- Ms. Moskalenko, when did you become involved with human rights issues?

- All the way back in 1997, when I was a young Moscow criminal lawyer, I saw that it was not possible to overcome the prejudices of the judges, and especially of the prosecutors. All of them seemed to be programmed to impose harsh sentences, beyond and regardless of the evidence in the case. Since a person had reached the court, that meant unconditionally that he was guilty and had to be convicted. There was no presumption of innocence! I thought that my task was to help people, but that was practically impossible. I was idealistic, but I was not a dissident; on the contrary, I believed in the justice of the Soviet authorities. But life suddenly showed me that was not true.

- And afterwards? How did the glasnost and perestroika affect you?

- I wanted the presumption of innocence to really

begin to function, along with the principle of adversary proceedings in court. My other goal was to improve the situation in the prisons and penal colonies. It seemed to me that it was first of all unjust, and second, that the state was practically the criminal in that context. I began with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHRFF) and I saw that the absence of equality between the parties in criminal proceedings was a grave violation of Article 6 of the Convention, which guarantees the right to a fair trial. In Russian prisons, I found a direct violation of Article 3 of the same document, which absolutely forbids torture and inhuman treatment of human beings.

- And how did you begin your professional human rights career?

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Continued from page 5 - In 1992, I began to visit prisons. I went everywhere, from the camps of Archangelsk to the colonies of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok! I wrote a lot of reports. It was easier to work back then, and we cooperated a lot with the prison authorities. They too understood that the prison system inherited from the USSR was in need of fundamental reform. In 1994, I left to study at Birmingham University in the UK, which had a special program for lawyers from the former socialist countries. We studied the European Convention and the jurisprudence of the court in Strasbourg. Afterwards I worked as a volunteer at a British human rights organization. When I returned to Russia in November 1994, I realized that I had to establish a similar organization right away, despite the fact that at that particular time we were denied membership in the Council of Europe. I am still very sorry about that to this day, because at that time we lost a historical opportunity. The Yeltsin administration really wanted us to join back then, and were seriously preparing for it. Whatever Yeltsin’s shortcomings, nobody can deny that under him, freedom of the press, of expression and opinion, and several other basic things were upheld much more than they are now.

If we had been accepted back then, even with many conditional requirements, we could have had our first cases reach the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg as early as 1995-6! Perhaps, then we could have prevented the second war in Chechnya, because when the first one was over, it didn’t receive the appropriate legal evaluation; the guilty parties were not punished, and later, those who were thirsty for revenge rose to the top.

The Council of Europe’s rejection indirectly helped that revenge. The second Chechnya campaign began in 1998, and it was more shameful and more hypocritical than the first. Incidentally, how is it that the secret services, who know what I said on the telephone yesterday, didn’t notice the movement of the Chechen rebels into Dagestan after which the second war began?

- Tell us about your organization in more detail.

- It was the year 1994. We began to help other human rights organizations. And although we didn’t have recourse to the ECHRFF at that time, but we were called the “International Defense Assistance Center”, we began to use the mechanism available to us via the UN Committee on Human Rights, as Russia had recognized the authority of that body since 1 January 1992. The first cases heard by the Committee were ours, and we won them, but unfortunately, the Russian authorities did not comply with its decisions. Now, the Committee is very concerned by the fact that Russia and other countries are setting a bad example with their non-compliance with its decisions and is trying to explain to them that this is not right. From 5 May 1998 we began actively bringing cases to the ECtHR in Strasbourg. In the first hearing of a Russian case in Strasbourg, in the case “Kalashnikov vs. Russia,” I participated as counsel for the complainant. As of 18 September 2001, Kalashnikov had been held in prison in Magadan for five years with no conviction, awaiting the final verdict of the Russian court. We won that case under three articles of the Convention: Art. 3 (on inhuman treatment and torture in detention), Art. 5 (on excessively long de6 OBEKTIV

tention without trial), and Art. 6 (on lack of due process).

That was a very serious precedent, especially with regard to the conditions in prisons. After that, the authorities approved a huge improvement program for changes in prison conditions. But the mentality of the prison authorities remained the same, especially at the lower levels. Most of the people in the system still view prisoners as less than human beings, and continue to disrespect the dignity of inmates.We also do a lot of work pursuant to Article 5, because the extremely long periods of detention without conviction are still very widespread. Court oversight of detention facilities has been introduced, but it is often very slow and very much a formality.At the beginning, we had about 100 cases in an entire year, but now we receive about 1,000 requests per month. Only a small number of them go to Strasbourg, but that too is helpful - showing a person why there is no point in their complaint going to the European Court. The more than 30 judgments finding violations that Russian applicants have received from the ECtHR with our help could be beneficial in improving the human rights situation in our country. But the authorities reacted to them as if they were a slap in the face. First, they began to isolate us; they stopped inviting us to seminars with judges and prison officials, to the big legal conferences where things are discussed, and in general they tried to give the impression that we did not exist. All of this had the worst possible repercussions on our work. And I was accused of “destruction of Russia’s economic security,” obviously with the intention of scaring me. And some of our co-workers quit.Since we fully expect that some very unhappy day they may close the organization’s bank accounts, we decided to take advantage of my doctoral studies at Strasbourg University and transfer most of our work there, with the establishment of a sister organization, the International Protection Center.The late Anna Politkovskaya and I used to work together on many cases: the “NordOst” case, in which special forces killed about 100 people with gas during a raid to free hostages, and instead of minimizing the number of victims, they maximized it, thus grossly violating the right to life of hundreds; and in many Chechnya-related cases, and the authorities did not like that one bit. She was an exceptional person, and her murder is very symptomatic, despite the fact that as an attorney I cannot blame any concrete entity. Putin’s reaction was really saddening, when he said of this brilliant journalist that she was insignificant. The situation in our country is now such that nobody is protected from arbitrary acts, even such a wealthy person as my client Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Next week I am going to visit him in Chita, where he is in jail in violation of the law (by the way), which states that he should be imprisoned close to his home.But the authorities in our country cannot stand any criticism, in no way and for no reason, and that is why they do all of this, to us, and to anyone who substantially criticizes them. Whoever criticizes them is an enemy of Russia, and they begin to treat him/her as such. They substitute the terms “Russia” and “Russian authorities.” The authorities identify themselves as being Russia.

Interview by Emil Cohen

Talib Yakubov, Chairperson of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan

Despite Repressive Measures, We Operate Entirely in the Open - Mr. Yakubov, please tell us about your organization and its work in Uzbekistan.

- The Human Rights Society in Uzbekistan, of which I am the chairman, was founded in 1992 and will soon celebrate its 15th anniversary. It is a purely civil society organization, not a political one. It defends human rights and conducts ongoing monitoring of compliance with them. Unfortunately, to this day it remains unregistered by the government. We have submitted applications for registration to Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Justice six times, but they have turned us down.

- What does it mean if an NGO is not registered in your country?

- Firstly, it means that we are de jure not recognized by the government. We cannot open a bank account, we cannot rent an office, we don’t have the right to a letterhead or stamp for our documents. For this reason, during all these years, the organization’s office has been in my home. In addition, we cannot visit certain government institutions; for example, we may not enter prisons or detention facilities. Despite all that, however, our organization was the first of its kind, and others developed from it afterwards. There are already about 20 of them today.

- And none of them is registered?

- No. They registered three of them. We do know that two of them in particular are pro-government. I do not know about the third one. Our lack of registration officially leaves us outside the law, and despite the fact that the political regime in our country is very repressive, we are able to operate entirely in the open. We address the authorities at all levels and demand that they uphold the laws that they themselves have passed. We write all sorts of letters. In the beginning, the authorities did not answer us, but over the past ten years they have begun to answer, despite the fact that according to them we do not officially exist. So, the authorities have de facto recognized us. Because in 2001 Uzbekistan reported before the UN Human Rights Committee in New York, I presented an alternative report there. And one of the Committee members asked why our organization had still not been registered, since according to the government our country was so democratic? Our government’s representative tried everything he could to wriggle out of answering, but they asked him three times. Finally, he literally said the following: “Yes, there is such an organization, and it is de facto recognized.” But that hasn’t stopped the authorities from not allowing any foreigners who wish to observe the human rights situation in Uzbekistan from entering the country.

- Two or three years ago, the IHF wanted to send me on a mission to Uzbekistan, but I did not get a visa.

- Recently, several Russian human rights activists wanted to conduct a monitoring of the human rights situation in our country, and they flew in from Moscow.

At the airport, they were denied entry into the country, despite the fact that Russians do not need visas for Uzbekistan and are allowed to enter freely. They were all taken into a room and forced to board the first plane back to Moscow. That is only the latest incident, of which there are many.

- How would you describe the overall human rights situation in Uzbekistan?

- For example, over the past 15 years, 25 members of our organization have been sent to prison. There are nine in jail right now. Most of them are directors of our regional branches. We have about 500 members in the entire country. They have been sentenced to different periods of imprisonment. Of course, officially they were not arrested for being human rights activists. We have in effect ceased to exist in three provinces, where almost all of our activists have been arrested. Two chiefs of the Militia, from the cities of Bzhezak and Karshim, told me personally and openly that they had been set the task of putting all of our activists in jail by October 2006. They told me that this had been ordered by President Karimov.

It hasn’t been completely accomplished yet, and our organization continues to work in other provinces, but under conditions threatening its very existence. I was forced to leave Uzbekistan at the end of July. I am already an old man, and until now, I have never thought that I would have to live away from my home country, and my family. But I was forced to. Now I live in France, where I have been granted refugee status.As for your question about human rights in our country, it would be easier simply to ask whether there is any right that is not being violated. There is not. Nothing that is written in our Constitution is adhered to. Nothing. But I would like to point out in particular the total lack of freedom of the press. To a large extent, the situation of the press today is worse than it was during the Soviet years. Back then, a critical article or two could appear in the newspapers from time to time. That is impossible today, especially from 1993 onwards. Until 1993, there were many critical articles in the press, but not against the President. He has been in power for 17 years now, but in all those years not a single critical article about him has appeared in the newspapers.The religious rights situation is also very bad. They are completely trampled on. According to the most conservative estimates, OBEKTIV 7

Holly Cartner, Executive Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch

The War on Terrorism has Led to the Erosion of Human Rights Protections - You deal with the countries in quite a large region: Europe and Central Asia. How would you assess the situation and the need to protect fundamental human rights there, given the increasing threats to global security and the individual security of citizens?

- I would specify two areas that concern us the most, areas in which the issues of security and the supposed - and sometimes even real - threat of terrorism are of the utmost importance: they are in Central Asia, specifically Uzbekistan and Chechnya. We do recognize that there are security threats that governments are forced to address, but unfortunately, in their attempts to combat terrorism in those countries, they all too often pursue policies of blatant violation of human rights, policies which are actually counterproductive. In Uzbekistan, the government has cracked down drastically on innocent Muslims. Many of them are conservative in the religious sense, but they do not espouse violence. They simply want to profess their faith in mosques, outside the supervision of the government.

Massive acts of aggression have been committed against those places; mosques have been closed down, thousands of people arrested and cruelly tortured, people have been persecuted and charismatic imams have been arrested, as well as human rights activists and independent journalists, who tried to tell what was happening with human rights in Uzbekistan.

In the end, cutting off all channels of moderate opposition and moderate criticism of the government could push some young people towards more radical organizations. People are getting desperate and losing hope, and the situation in Uzbekistan has definitely worsened significantly over the past year. We still have an office in Tashkent, and we are trying to monitor the situation

and tell the international community about it - we are the only international non-governmental organization that is still functioning there, although I am not sure for how long. The circumstances are very difficult, and I would say that Uzbekistan and, of course, Russia in the conflict in Chechnya, feel encouraged to pursue policies detrimental to human rights. They know that if such actions are taken in response to a terrorist threat, they will enjoy the tolerance, if not the support, of Western governments. In very close cooperation with the United States, the Blair government undertook a number of measures which, in our opinion, seriously undermine the prohibition on torture. Several of them were struck down by the court in the United Kingdom, and the same happened in the European Court of Human Rights, whose warning about the unacceptability of torture was quite clear. It is, in fact, a guiding principle of international law.

- Don’t you get the feeling that the fundamental civil rights that have been championed for many decades could now be abandoned lightly, in the name of the terrorist threat? Aren’t things going too far?

- It is true that we are only now beginning to learn about the secret role that a number of European governments played in regard to the detention of persons suspected by the United States of terrorist activity. We are also learning of the role played by certain representatives of the secret services of EU countries during the interrogation of suspects. All of this has a definite part in the erosion of human rights protections. We still don’t know everything about these matters, but it is clear that all of these institutions participated to a much greater degree than is now known about.

Interview by Dimitar Sotirov

there are about 30,000 people in our prisons who are there because of their religious beliefs. They are accused of being “members of dangerous cults,” such as the Wahhabi (ed. note: an Islamic religious sect). There are few evangelical Christians in our country, but they too have suffered a lot: refusal of registration, being run out of municipalities, and having their leaders thrown in jail.

- But your authorities claim that the Muslim activists are extremists, who support Al Qaeda, and that is why they are persecuted, not because they are religious.

- That is not the least bit true. It is actually religious opposition. But they are totally peaceful people, and the great majority of them are very young. It is a myth that they are extremists and terrorists, Karimov’s myth from the early 1990s, when he wanted to use Western

fear of Islamic extremism. He was constantly throwing people in jail for their religious beliefs, and saying that Uzbekistan was in great danger, and he thus succeeded in convincing the West - they believed him - that he was fighting Islamic terrorism. But the vast majority of them are simply devout Muslims, and nothing else. I am absolutely convinced that there has never been any terrorism or extremism in Uzbekistan. It is a fact that there are small groups of extremists in every country, and there are probably some in yours, too. But that is not the reason why over 30,000 people have been put in prison.

The truth of the matter is that our President wants to remain the head of state as long as he lives, and that is why he cuts down any sort of opposition.

Interview by Emil Cohen

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