Photo Credit: Flickr user Iaihiu
What do Liu Xiaobo, Tran Anh Kim, Evgeny Zhovtis, Emin Milli, and Adnan Hajizade have in common?
All are democratic reformers seeking to advance greater democratic accountability in their countries. In 2009, all were on the receiving end of harsh prison sentences—products of contrived and non-transparent legal proceedings—designed to silence them.
The plight of these modern-day dissidents is troubling, given the ruthlessness and unjust nature of their treatment. These cases are even more disturbing, however, because they fit into a broader pattern of “rule by law” visible in findings from Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual analysis of political rights and civil liberties. Influential authoritarian states, including China, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan (whose citizens are cited above), as well as other repressive regimes like those in Russia and Iran, in recent years have pursued increasingly illiberal policies that have played a critical role in the global setback to democratic accountability.
The countries at the forefront of this surge of illiberalism are strikingly diverse culturally, geographically, economically, and ideologically. China sets the standard for authoritarian capitalism, with rapid economic growth sustaining single-party rule. Vietnam applies a similar approach. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Russia are post-Soviet petrostates, where governing cliques divide spoils from oil and gas windfalls. Iran, a clerical authoritarian system, is in the throes of political upheaval where the authorities are resorting to depredations—including mass arrests, show trials and unspeakable violence against its own citizens—few could envision before the country’s rigged elections last June.
But for all of their differences, what these regimes have in common is a priority of maintaining absolute political power. They are systematically fine tuning methods of “rule by law,” rather than rule of law, raising serious questions about the prospects for these countries with ever deepening ties to the international economy to create accountable, rules-based systems.Consider the cases of the dissidents:
On December 25, Liu Xiaobo, a respected literary figure and human rights activist, was convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Liu had been held in secret by the Chinese authorities since December 8, 2008, for helping write Charter 08, a document advocating for democratic rights and the rule of law. His lawyers were given less than two weeks to prepare their defense. His trial, closed to the public, lasted two hours.
On December 28, Tran Anh Kim, a former army officer who pushed for democratic reforms, was convicted in Vietnam of “subversion.” He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison following a court hearing that began in the morning and was over by the same afternoon. Kim’s is the first in a series of prosecutions of pro-democracy and human-rights activists, including prominent human-rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh, who was charged with subversion in December and could face the death penalty for allegedly attempting to undermine the state by supporting democratic freedoms.
In Kazakhstan, leading human rights activist Evgeny Zhovtis was sentenced to four years in prison for vehicular manslaughter on September 3 in a legal proceeding fraught with irregularities. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), among other international organizations expressing doubts about the case, raised concerns about “numerous violations of Zhovtis’ right to a fair trial.”
And in what the outgoing head of the OSCE’s media freedom arm Miklos Haraszti described as a set-up in Azerbaijan, video bloggers Emin Milli, 30, and Adnan Hajizade, 26, in November received jail sentences of two-and-a-half and two years, respectively, for “hooliganism” following an altercation in a restaurant that occurred in July. The charges undoubtedly stem from an online video satirizing Azerbaijan’s government the bloggers posted shortly before their arrest.
So why are these cases important? While it may be tempting to view the dissidents’ treatment in isolation, it has wider implications for advancing democratic accountability. In these authoritarian settings their fate is intertwined with citizens’ broader aspirations for reform. By silencing them, the regimes are sending a clear message to others who might agitate for more systematic political change.
This pattern of abuse is also of a piece with broader institutional crackdowns on democratic accountability. China’s leadership for example is building a 21st century, market-based censorship model that includes a multilayered system of internet monitoring and filtering and also targeting human rights lawyers. Last July the authorities shut down the respected Open Constitution Initiative, a group of public interest lawyers known for defending the victims of China’s tainted milk scandal.
More ominously, emboldened authoritarian regimes are not checking illiberal behavior at their borders but are increasingly inclined to project it outward.
China is pursuing its censorship ambitions internationally, in democratic and authoritarian settings alike, seeking to repress voices critical of the Chinese government at conferences, in academic settings and in news media. China’s internet control methods, at the vanguard of new media subversion, are drawn on by other authoritarian regimes. Kazakhstan, ranked Not Free in Freedom in the World, has just taken over the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
In the end, the treatment of these dissidents is not simply directed at the individuals involved, but clearly signals these regimes’ allergy to democratic governance and rule of law.