Freedom at Issue

Russia 2012: Increased Repression, Rampant Corruption, Assisting Rogue Regimes

On March 21, David J. Kramer, President of Freedom House, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about human rights abuses in Russia.  Below are excerpts from his testimony at the hearing. The full testimony can be read here.       

The Road Ahead for the Russian Opposition

by Katherine Brooks*

On March 5, the day after Vladimir Putin won a new term in the Russian presidential election, around 20,000 members of the country’s broad-based opposition movement gathered in Moscow’s Pushkin Square to protest what organizers deemed an unfair and illegitimate vote that was marred by electoral fraud. The demonstration ended with nearly 250 arrests in Moscow alone, as a number of the protesters refused to leave the park in an act of civil disobedience.

The Kremlin's Big Gamble

This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine on March 1, 2012.

See the original piece here:  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/01/the_kremlin_s_big_gamble?page=full

by David J. Kramer and Christopher Walker

In the five months since the Russian public was handed this fait accompli, Putin has been booed during an appearance at a mixed martial arts match, increasingly ridiculed on the Internet, and seen his party, United Russia, fail to win a majority in parliamentary elections last Dec. 4, despite extensive fraud in its favor. Large, peaceful protests across the country since those elections -- including one this past Sunday in which demonstrators circled Moscow's Ring Road -- represent a clear indicator of the desire for change.

With Russian Help, Belarus Heads Downhill

by Ilya Kunitski*

When Belarus’s authoritarian ruler, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, goes to ski in Russia, it is rarely just for a nice vacation. The southern Russian resort town of Sochi, planned site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, is a favored spot for Belarusian and Russian officials to gather and discuss bilateral relations in a relaxing setting. Lukashenka’s trip to Sochi last month was no exception, with official Belarusian media duly reporting that his time on the slopes would be combined with a working visit.

Little information on the details of the trip emerged, aside from video and photographs of Lukashenka skiing together with Russian president Dmitri Medvedev.


Photo Credit: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

The Arab Spring and Freedom’s Future

by David J. Kramer and Arch Puddington*
 
As we mark the first anniversary of the events that led to the Arab Spring, it is worth highlighting the uprisings’ far-reaching repercussions for freedom, both in the region and beyond. Freedom in the World, the report on global freedom issued annually by Freedom House, found more declines than gains worldwide for 2011, but we believe that the overarching message for the year is one of hope and not reversal. At a minimum, we can say that developments in the Middle East touched off the most serious challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism. While the challenges today are far more complex than in 1989, the basic theme of captive peoples seeking freedom after decades of oppression is very much the same.

Russia Spoofs the Human Rights Report

by Tyler Roylance
Staff Editor

On December 28, with little fanfare, Russia’s foreign ministry released a 90-page human rights report on the United States, Canada, and assorted European countries. There is no accompanying introduction, preface, or methodology for this rather slapdash document, entitled On the Human Rights Situation in a Number of the World’s States, but the selection of countries and their respective treatment makes it fairly clear that the report is meant to be a stick in the eye of the Kremlin’s perceived enemies, rather than any genuine attempt to promote human rights around the world.

Wake-Up Call in Russia and Eurasia

by Christopher Walker  (@Walker_CT)
Vice President for Strategy and Analysis


Screengrab courtesy Al Jazeera YouTube Page

International attention has turned to Eurasia in recent days, as Kazakhstan uses deadly violence and draconian information controls to crush widening labor unrest in its strategic oil region, and Russia faces the most serious popular challenge to its puppet-theater political system in many years. But long before the current shocks, when things were looking more placid in both countries, there was abundant evidence of trouble to come. Six months ago, Freedom House published a report that pointed to the glaring vulnerabilities of dead-end authoritarian regimes across the former Soviet Union. It noted that these entrenched authoritarian systems exhibited many of the same features that led to the collapse of their Middle Eastern counterparts in the Arab Spring.

The Best and Worst Human Rights Developments of 2011

by Mary McGuire and Sarah Trister* 

The year 2011 will be remembered as one of immense political and social change around the world, particularly the Middle East. On this International Human Rights Day, Freedom House looks back at a few of the best and worst developments of the year with respect to their long-term implications for the global state of human rights.

A Victory for the Net in Russia

by Arch Puddington and Katherin Machalek*

Perhaps the biggest story to emerge from Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia is the central role played by new media. To be sure, the failure of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party to obtain a solid majority in the State Duma, even while cheating, is significant. But the Kremlin-approved parties that profited from the antigovernment protest vote—the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, the Communist Party, and the faux-opposition A Just Russia party—appear unlikely to stimulate reform. The election results thus reflected deep disillusionment with Putin, but utterly failed to provide a road map to future change.

Russia’s Revolution Won’t Be Televised

by Christopher Walker and Robert Orttung*

Vladimir Putin’s foray into the ring to congratulate the winner of a mixed martial arts match the week before last provided ordinary Russians with an extraordinary view of their country’s paramount leader. The live national television broadcast captured emphatic booing by the crowd of 20,000 that was clearly directed at Putin, who has made management of his image a top priority. Things quickly returned to normal, however, at least by the standards of state-dominated mass media in Russia. By the following day, Kremlin-controlled television stations had sanitized their coverage of the event, cleansing it of any heckling aimed at Putin.

Freedom House Questions for Republican Presidential Candidates

It is a core belief of Freedom House that American foreign policy should be grounded on support for democratic values and the global expansion of freedom. Practically every aspirant to the American presidency would agree that the United States should remain the world’s beacon of democracy. But especially in an era of rival claims for global leadership and calls for fiscal austerity, the development of a U.S. strategy to propel freedom forward poses a serious challenge. Thus far, the presidential candidates have failed to grapple with the complexities of this challenge, and the discussion has been far from illuminating, to put it mildly.

Misreading Russia

by Christopher Walker
Vice President for Strategy and Analysis

In recent remarks made at the Heritage Foundation, House Speaker John Boehner said that “in Russia’s use of old tools and old thinking, we see nothing short of an attempt to restore Soviet-style power and influence.”  In using this formulation the Speaker gets things only half right. Moscow is undeniably seeking ways to reassert power and influence. But Russia’s Putin-era effort to flex its muscles is not in the Soviet mold, as the Speaker suggests. The contemporary effort represents, instead, a modern, adaptive form of authoritarianism, whose particular methods and tools pose new challenges.

Little to celebrate in Kadyrov’s Chechnya

by Arch Puddington 
Vice President for Research

One of the most popular items pinging back and forth across the internet is the infamous video report on the glitzy extravaganza sponsored by the president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, to celebrate both his birthday and the unveiling of a series of lavish new buildings in the Chechen capital, Grozny. What made the spectacle especially notable was the presence of several celebrities from the world’s great democracies, including American actress Hilary Swank and the Belgian-born Hollywood action hero Jean-Claude Van Damme. In her words of appreciation, Swank said she “could feel the spirit of the people, and everyone was so happy.” “Happy birthday, Mr. President,” she added.

Having crossed his Rubicon, Putin lands in Central Asia

Photo Credit: www.kremlin.ru

by Tyler Roylance
Staff Editor, Publications

When Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin announced last week that he intended—and had always intended—to return to the presidency, he effectively tore down a flimsy veil of constitutional rectitude that had separated Russia from the autocracies of Central Asia. For over four years, Russians were invited to believe that unlike the perpetual presidents in those countries, their leader would uphold the rule of law and make way for new blood in the form of his chosen successor, Dmitri Medvedev. Now, however, it appears that Medvedev’s entire presidency was an artifice designed to circumvent the ban on more than two consecutive terms.

In this sense, the maneuver was only the most elaborate and circuitous among many similar techniques employed by the rulers of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, as well as Azerbaijan and Belarus. These presidents have relied on rigged referendums and rubber-stamp legislatures to enact repeated term extensions of one type or another. When it comes to elections, they have methodically suppressed any genuine opposition parties and then won lopsided votes against the nonentities that remained. In 2007, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan brazenly secured a new term without bothering to remove the constitutional restriction. (For a summary of term-limit manipulation in each country, see the text box on page 5 of the release booklet for Freedom House’s Nations in Transit 2011 survey. Russia’s gradual convergence with Central Asian governance standards is apparent in the Nations in Transit scoring data.)

A new blog for an old but crucial challenge

by David J. Kramer
President of Freedom House

Guided by the findings of our surveys and reports, as well as the experiences of our staff members and partners in the field,
Freedom House has decided to launch a new blog that will offer comment and analysis on the state of, threats to, and prospects for global democracy. We are pleased to welcome you to the inaugural post of Freedom at Issue.

20 Years After Tiananmen, a Different Form of Undermining Democracy

Freedom House has just released a new report, Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians, describing the efforts of authoritarian states including China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran to sustain their autocratic models and even advance alternatives to democracy in other countries. The report explores how these leading authoritarian regimes are threatening democratic development by promoting repressive policies and manipulating and distorting democratic discourse. Their efforts to redefine – and ultimately empty out – the concept of democracy have not only been pursued within their borders, but have also been exported abroad.

Among the tools that these regimes have used to further their interests internationally, the promotion of “win-win” economic arrangements and “no-strings-attached aid” stand out. In April, we addressed this issue in a blog post about China’s aid policy towards Africa in particular. At the time, we discussed the dangers of championing China’s unique development model, along with the pernicious effects that China’s offers of unconditional aid can have for governance. Because Beijing’s foreign assistance isn’t conditioned on the adoption of reforms and a general respect for human rights, it opens the door for corruption and neglect of the rule of law. Undermining Democracy includes a more comprehensive analysis of China’s foreign assistance efforts, along with those of other authoritarian regimes, analyzing the modern strategies and methods used to project authoritarian influence.

As Undermining Democracy explains, China’s is systematically developing its own brand of “soft power.”  After becoming aware of the necessity of increasing its clout in an increasingly interdependent international system, China began to ramp up efforts to promote its own model of political and economic development in its international relations. Due to China’s impressive economic development, the model is often touted as a superior alternative to Western prescriptions.

As it happens, Undermining Democracy has been released on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. An article in the Financial Times last week traced China’s political trajectory since the crackdown, explaining how China’s Communist Party weathered both extensive criticism and countless predictions of its demise to propel its country to a leading role in the world sphere. As it notes, Chinese officials have ceased to adopt an outwardly apologetic stance towards their more repressive political policies, instead becoming increasingly confident in their model’s superiority over its Western counterpart. Most importantly, it argues that China’s remarkable ability to persevere and prosper can be attributed to its willingness to adapt and modernize. In other words, whereas mere repression might not have been enough to counteract the pre- and post-Tiananmen calls for change, China has survived and flourished due to its policy of economic opening. While these reforms have boosted growth and ameliorated some citizen complaints, more fundamental reforms of accountability and transparency have been absent.

China’s economic success has created a major dilemma for advocates of good governance. This success has obvious appeal as a formula for economic prosperity for struggling developing countries.  Nevertheless, there are some important points to consider. First, by championing the undemocratic Chinese model, the benefits in terms of basic ethics and justice of democratic rule in comparison to China’s oppressive political regime are ignored. The coercive nature of China’s political regime cannot be underemphasized. China is a highly repressive state, which is evidenced by the regime’s dismal human rights record. China has, every year, by far the highest number of executions of any country and has consistently and arbitrarily applied state power to restrict basic freedoms including freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

Secondly, it is important to realize that the Chinese model of adaptation is not the norm. As the Financial Times article notes, China was successfully able to learn from the Soviet Union’s mistakes and to become aware of the need to “adapt and change or atrophy and die.” If any lessons are to be learned from the past, however, China’s adaption method is the exception: authoritarians are often drawn to the repressive part of the model while ignoring the technocratic, adaptive element. Some but certainly not all developing countries will be able to follow China’s trajectory. For example, in the past few months, Hugo Chavez has frequently praised the comparative advantages of the Chinese model over the Washington Consensus at the same time that he has ramped up his efforts to curb trade union autonomy and freedom of the press in the country.  In addition, Kremlin officials have frequently evoked the Chinese success story to justify Russia’s autocratic policies. In addition to providing these leaders with validation for their despotic ventures, the opportunities the model provides for corrupt practices are extensive, as is evidenced by China’s ranking of 72 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Moreover, it is not just the model in conceptual terms that is a threat to the democratic order, but also China’s means of promoting it. Most notably, China has sought to facilitate the model’s advancement by offering “win-win” economic arrangements to foreign countries and coupling its aid provision with a promise of “non-interference” in domestic affairs. Apart from the African countries listed in our previous post, China has provided unconditional assistance to numerous Latin American countries and several Asian countries, most notably Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, many of which have questionable or downright execrable human rights records. As we noted in our previous post, the negative consequences of providing unconditional aid are a real threat to democratic governance.  As Undermining Democracy argues, these arrangements also threaten democratic development on a greater scale. By framing these new economic relationships in “win-win” terms, China seeks to tarnish the legitimacy of the Western development model, and more particularly the traditional Western requirement that aid be conditional upon reform and respect for human rights standards.

Other contemporary authoritarian regimes have used foreign assistance of one sort or another to exert influence. Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, for instance, have used their oil wealth to court developing nations, leading them to ignore governance reform.  While these active efforts are providing new competition to reform-based assistance, the authoritarians’ approach is not perfect. As Undermining Democracy notes, China’s increasingly powerful position – and even more so the other states – has its own inherent flaws. The global economic crisis, along with other factors, could hamper its efforts to propel the new model; alternatively, discontent at home could herald a loosening of the authoritarian reins. In any case, 20 years after Tiananmen, the Chinese authorities have modernized their authoritarianism and, for the time being at least, offer a serious challenge to the notion that economic growth in China would inevitably lead to political liberalization and sounder governance. 

THE LEADER FOR LIFE, CONTINUED

In March of this year, we posted on the subject of presidential succession (The Leader for Life), noting the absence of a meaningful rotation of power in a number of strategically important countries and its negative impact on democratic governance.  Among other things, these countries exhibit exceedingly high levels of corruption. A chart detailing time in office for leaders in 20 states indicated that none of these politically managed systems could perform better than 105 (out of 179 countries examined) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Egypt came in at 105; the next best were Yemen and Iran at 131.

Since that time, several critical countries have made news by virtue of their leaderships’ determined effort to extend their term in office.

In Zimbabwe, discredited President Robert Mugabe said on December 19 that he would “never surrender”.  To emphasize the point, Mugabe added that “Zimbabwe is mine”.  Meanwhile, his beleaguered and impoverished country is suffering from a growing list of severe problems, including an outbreak of cholera that has killed hundreds of people. A BBC video clip explains in horrifying detail the devastating price cholera is exacting on ordinary Zimbabweans.

In Russia, CNN reported that the country’s upper house of parliament on December 22 approved an extension of the presidential term from four years to six, a step that could presage former President Vladimir Putin’s return to the nation's top office. Putin now serves as prime minister but is viewed by many as the country’s paramount leader.  The speedy move to amend the constitution comes at a time when low energy prices are putting increasing pressure on the Russian leadership’s ability to maintain the social and economic model that has been forged under Putin.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is also working diligently to remove institutional checks on his power.  On December 22, Chavez suggested that a referendum could be held on February 15, 2009 that would among other measures lift term limits. A December 2007 referendum that included a host of measures that would have removed checks on presidential power was narrowly defeated. Like Russia’s leadership, Chavez confronts a rapidly shifting and less predictable political landscape, as the energy resources that have been integral to his power dwindle.

A December 19 Washington Post editorial observes that while democracy advocates might welcome a vote of this sort in Venezuela, it carries real risks because:

"elections in Venezuela are no longer free and fair. Mr. Chavez has turned national television into a state propaganda outlet, and the Miami Herald reported [on December 14] that the government spent tens of millions of dollars to buy votes in the recent state and local elections. The state election authority, which is controlled by Mr. Chavez's loyalists, delayed the announcement of his defeat in last year's referendum; reliable sources say the president conceded only after he was told by military commanders that they would not put down protests against a falsified result. The official results, showing the margin of Mr. Chavez's loss, have not been released".

Unlike the Russian petrostate, where opposition has tended to be muted, in Venezuela opposing voices still make themselves heard.

Benighted Russia Waits in Vain for Anticorruption Drive

Russia’s new president, Dmitri Medvedev, placed an early emphasis on anticorruption efforts, calling graft a “systemic problem” that requires a “systemic response.” Earlier this month, he bemoaned the fact that corruption had become “the norm, a daily occurrence in everyday life,” and went on to observe that victims seem “resigned” to this reality, while perpetrators assume they will enjoy impunity. He failed to mention that these conditions persisted, and indeed grew worse, during the eight-year presidency of his patron and now prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who made similar pronouncements about the need to root out lawlessness when he took office in 2000. Given the nature of his own election and his ongoing partnership with Putin, it is difficult to swallow the notion that Medvedev will usher in a new age of transparency in government and society.

Authoritarian Rule Curdles Reforms in Russian Caucasus

The International Crisis Group (ICG) released a new report this month on the volatile Russian republic of Dagestan, finding that the growing Islamist militant movement there is fueled in large part by rampant corruption, massive unemployment, and an abusive security apparatus that persecutes observant Muslims. Government ministers, journalists, businessmen, lawmakers, and scores of policemen have been killed in recent years, and much of the violence is attributed to Islamist groups whose ranks have been replenished by angry young recruits. The unrest has escalated despite some attempts at political and anticorruption reform by federal officials. Similar conditions in neighboring Chechnya and Russia’s other impoverished North Caucasus republics suggest a pattern in which nationwide authoritarian governance effectively thwarts reform efforts and encourages the region’s downward spiral.

Russia Shifts the Deck Chairs

Russia is once again swirling with the political intrigue of the boyars as the new Putin cabinet has reshuffled the imperial court. Kremlin observers are busy attempting to grasp the implications of several key internal moves as the Medvedev-Putin dual administration begins in earnest following Medvedev’s inauguration on May 7th and the May 8th Duma vote confirming Putin as Prime Minister.

After a week-long, precisely choreographed celebration featuring a grandiose display of Russian strength unseen on Victory Day in Red Square since Soviet times, Medvedev’s first act as President was to nominate his patron for the post of prime minister. Putin delivered a speech before the Duma on May 8th that stole the limelight from Medvedev and outlined the priorities of the premier’s new government.

However, Putin’s closely-watched Duma speech had a certain been-there-done-that quality to it, leaving Kremlin-watchers with few clues as to the contours of the new diarchy. Highlighting a number of national priorities, primarily in the economic and social spheres, Putin revisited broader issues previously raised in his February 8th address on Russia’s development strategy through 2020. Recent windfall oil and gas profits have yet to significantly improve Russia’s infrastructure development, and key social sectors such as public health and education continue to decay. Pressured by recent reports of Russia’s stagnant oil production, Putin acknowledged that hefty government duties levied on petroleum companies – upwards of 80% – are discouraging new exploration and promised to cut taxes on crude later this summer. In addition, the enormous reliance on, and use as a cudgel of, state energy firm Gazprom by the Kremlin means political leaders have less maneuverability even as outside investors remain justifiably leery of whether they will have any legal protections when investing in Russia.

Speculation regarding the implications of a minor shake-up in the dominant siloviki group was rampant after Putin introduced his new government on May 12th. Several ministries were restructured as part of a dizzying array of changes to the executive branch. Most noteworthy among these bureaucratic reforms is the bifurcation of the former Ministry of Industry and Energy into two separate units, underscoring the centrality of managing Russia’s energy assets to the new government. However, apart a few notable demotions and the accession of shadowy Kremlin insider Igor Sechin – a key figure in the Kremlin’s dismemberment of the Yukos oil firm – to the post of Deputy Prime Minister, business remains largely as usual in the Putin cabinet. Putin loyalists dominate the power ministries, and the newly anointed premier continues to rule by balancing rival factions and interests competing for his favor.

The fundamental question on the minds of many Russia observers is how long the “tandem” arrangement between Medvedev and Putin will last. According to the letter of the law, the power vested in the Russian presidency is largely unchecked, with the prime minister serving upon the request of the president. Speculation has been widespread on whether Putin will reform Russian law to transfer over key powers – particularly control over security forces and the foreign ministry – from the president to the prime minister. Both the relative stability and the longevity of the Medvedev-Putin diarchy are debatable and perplexing. Needless to say, shifting institutional control to follow an individual leader as he changes jobs is at direct cross-purposes with the institutional strengthening that Medvedev, at least, has at times acknowledged Russia requires. The Russian political system remains over-managed and manipulated, and disputes between ruling clans for power and influence continue to sow the seeds for an eventual systemic governance crisis in Russia.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Neeka