Freedom at Issue

A Kazakh Justice Odyssey

The Kazakh government frequently trumpets its reformist character, while the West lauds the resource-rich country as a great place to do business. However, embedding oneself in Kazakhstan, with its institutional wobbliness, is certainly risky, as the case of a former telecommunications executive reveals. The details of—or rather the lack of an objective rationale for—Mark Seidenfeld’s prison time and subsequent journey through the courts illustrate the urgent need for increased transparency, judicial system reform, and basic respect for the rule of law in Kazakhstan.

On Sunday, August 26th, 2007, journalist Steve LeVine reported on his blog that the American telecommunications executive was free to leave the country (pending receipt of authorizing papers), after spending 10 months in prison in Russian Siberia and an additional 6 months in a Kazakh prison following his extradition. He had been acquitted of his alleged crimes but remained in prison until higher courts upheld his acquittal. As detailed in an April 2007 IHT report:

...in November 2006, he returned to Almaty bruised and exhausted after a three-week journey from Siberia in a Russian prison train, extradited from Siberia after a 10-month imprisonment there.

The Kazakhstan authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Seidenfeld after a Kazakh citizen accused him of siphoning $40,000 from his Almaty company, pocketing funds meant to buy a piece of machinery.

After a series of postponements, preliminary hearings for Seidenfeld's criminal trial were delayed again last week for at least another month for translation of court documents.

An assessment in February by the Almaty office of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and provided to The New York Times found that the equipment that Seidenfeld is accused of falsely listing on company books was located in the company's offices.

The narrative of the Seidenfeld case demonstrate the pitfalls of traversing the Kazakh judicial system, its corruption, its lack of independence from business interests, and the troubling coziness between Kazakhstan and Russia. It was hoped that democratic governance would gradually assert itself in Central Asia after the break-up of the Soviet Union, but of late, authoritarian governments have seemed to remain quite comfortable.

In the 2006 Countries at the Crossroads report, analyst Martha Brill Olcott discussed the conflicts created by the intersection of Kazakh state power and private economic interests. Seidenfeld’s case starkly illustrates these conflicts. In Kazakhstan, and indeed in much of Central Asia, states routinely quash openings when individuals demand transparency—as Seidenfeld did with the privatization of his telecommunications firm—and demonstrate a tendency to side with local business interests when they run counter to those of outsiders, or even when they appear to undermine generally accepted legal principles. “Kazakhstan has shown a repeated failure to untangle private interests from public policy that makes it virtually impossible to objectively evaluate these sorts of cases,” notes Chris Walker, Freedom House’s Director of Studies. In countries where the rule of law is strong, justice is the end, due process is the means, and cases do not begin with the premise that those arrested are guilty, awaiting sentencing, until proven innocent. Ultimately, Seidenfeld will leave the country, his ordeal largely for naught. Kazakhstan’s indigenous elite interests hijacked this case until they got what they wanted. The treatment of Seidenfeld, a business leader, will leave a mark on the image of the country; however, rather than serving as a pioneer in his efforts towards greater transparency, he will serve as a symbol of the capriciousness of the government. 

Media Manipulation – the Newest Olympic Event

China’s December 2006 announcement of temporary new media rules for international journalists in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics was greeted with great fanfare by the international community. Indeed, the declaration was heralded as confirmation of the progress that could be achieved through China’s new determination to improve its international reputation and its increased sensitivity to criticism while under the spotlight. In hindsight, however, although China achieved its pat on the back from the international community, little changed in reality. A recent Human Rights Watch report shows that the situation for foreign journalists remains largely the same: reporters are still subject to the arbitrary whims of officials and vulnerable to charges of criticizing the state. By establishing nominally less restrictive rules, but still maintaining the ultimate say over media in the country, China was only adjusting to what will be the reality of the Olympics. With the thousands of people and hundreds of journalists expected to descend on Beijing, Chinese authorities will have their hands full keeping track of and censoring all the possible stories that might develop. The regime has adeptly created the new rules to placate international pressure and receive credit for giving foreign journalists leeway they will probably be able to take anyway during the excitement and confusion of the Games. The new guidelines also strategically exclude local Chinese media, adding to the confirmation that these will only be temporary measures, and not the broader opening the international community had hoped for.

Forward Movement in Ethiopia?

Ethiopia has not received much good press since its armed forces’ invasion of Somalia to oust the Union of Islamic Courts in late 2006. Last month, however, news of the release of opposition leaders who had been imprisoned since the violence that followed the 2005 elections was greeted enthusiastically in the international community. Nonetheless, conditions in Ethiopia remain harsh for advocates of more open government and greater freedom of expression. The regime continues to crack down on basic preconditions for a functioning free press through crude means including violence, imprisonment, and intimidation, as well as censorship and denial of broadcast licenses.

As a recent article in the Washington Post points out, even these seemingly positive steps, such as the release of journalists, are superficial in nature: the journalists in question were immediately subjected to threats credible enough that they felt compelled to flee the country. Not only should the government refrain from allowing (or ordering) such attacks, it should actively protect journalists from them. If it does not, it should not expect to reap any positive publicity for their mere release.

Ethiopia plays a critical role in the region due to its size, location, and history. Many foreign governments, not least the US, would like to see it as an example of incremental improvement; indeed, as the article points out, the State Department trumpeted the releases, stating, “we commend the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi for its statesmanship in resolving this issue.” But the continuing repression behind the façade of small improvements such as prisoner releases reveals that vigilance and pressure by the international community, along with sustained support for Ethiopian rights defenders, remains critical.

Bureacracy: Boring but Necessary

Neither the Economist nor Latinnews Daily are reflexively pro-Alan Garcia. Nonetheless, both have been fairly kind to Peru’s president regarding his government’s earthquake recovery efforts, noting that while there have been plenty of moments of chaos and inefficiency, nobody is known to have died from lack of food or water. Other non-Peruvian media and many domestic outlets have not been so kind. One aspect of the situation that all have addressed is the speed with which President Garcia took personal control of the situation. As several Peruvian papers have asked, why should one expect that this—or any— president would be qualified to run such an operation?

Aside from possessing a touch of the populist’s natural instinct to take over the media spotlight when it shines brightest, Garcia is undoubtedly aware that many Peruvian bureaucracies are politicized and inefficient (a situation which of course predates the current administration). Garcia may have underestimated the severity of the damage while overestimating his own and his ministers’ ability to take charge and cut through technical obstacles. But regardless of whether one gives the president the benefit of the doubt in this case, Peruvians are certainly aware that such natural tragedies will happen again and are demanding that the government be better-prepared next time. Steps to increase the quality of the state bureaucracy constitute a minimum precondition for such improvements: a well-coordinated bureaucratic response to emergencies may not be as appealing in a short-term political sense, but it has the virtue of actually working.