LEYLA YUNU

Leyla Yunus has been in pretrial detention for nearly three months.
She says she has been beaten and denied medical care for diabetes and other ailments.

By Shahnaz Huseynova and Daisy Sindelar October 20, 2014

On October 21, the European Parliament will announce the 17th annual Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, a distinction that comes with a 50,000 euro award ($64,000) and entry to a select club of some of the world's most respected human rights defenders.

In the case of Leyla Yunus, one of this year's finalists, the prize holds another potential benefit: pressure on the Azerbaijani court system, which is set this week to determine if the 58-year old activist will remain behind bars to face trial on charges -- dismissed by supporters as bogus -- of treason and espionage.

Yunus, the head of the Baku-based Institute for Peace and Democracy and an outspoken government critic, has already spent nearly three months in pretrial detention, where she complained of being physically beaten and denied medical care for diabetes and other ailments. 

On October 20, authorities appeared to ratchet up the pressure by abruptly transferring Yunus to a detention facility run by the Ministry of National Security, which is notorious for use of torture and other coercive tactics. Yunus's 59-year-old husband, Arif -- a well-known historian and activist in his own right -- is being held in the same facility on charges similar to hers. 

The unexpected transfer is seen as an attempt to further isolate Yunus, and comes just days before a court hearing on whether to extend her pretrial detention. The remand hearing is scheduled to be held this week, although an exact date has not been set. 

By law, Security Ministry officials are required to explain the need for a transfer before any move is made. But lawyer Alayif Hasanov told RFE/RL that he received no prior notification about the relocation. 

"The officials are meant to provide both us and the person being transferred with an explanation for the transfer and whether it's a matter of urgency," Hasanov said. "Based on that explanation, we can determine how reasonable or urgent the transfer was. But there's been no explanation."

Yunus's legal team expressed concern that the ministry's tighter restrictions on food and medicine deliveries may further compromise Yunus's health. Lawyer Khalid Bagirov expressed cautious hope that a positive announcement from the European Parliament could bring pressure to bear on authorities in Baku. 

"The Sakharov Prize is one of the most serious prizes in Europe, but I can't say how seriously the Azerbaijani government views it," he said. "I want to hope that if she's awarded the Sakharov Prize, Leyla Yunus will be set free." 

'Track Two' Diplomacy

Yunus, who has taken on corruption, domestic violence, and unlawful evictions over the course of her career, has run afoul of the Azerbaijani government more than once. But her current charges -- linked to her work promoting so-called "track two" diplomacy, or person-to-person contact, between Azerbaijan and archenemy Armenia -- are especially grave, and could carry a sentence of 15 years to life if Yunus is convicted. 

The Yunuses' arrests come amid a sweeping crackdown in Azerbaijan against journalists, lawyers, and other government critics. In recent months, the oil-rich regime of President Ilham Aliyev has arrested at least 11 activists on political charges despite assuming the rotating chairmanship of the Council of Europe, the European region's foremost human rights body, in May. 

Advocacy groups have slammed the government case against the Yunuses. In an October 18 press release, Human Rights Watch called on authorities to immediately release the couple and drop the charges against them, denouncing the case as "a travesty and a clear attempt by the Azerbaijan government to silence them with bogus charges." 

Yunus, who has published several open letters to her husband since their detention, has written passionately about the government's campaign, and has expressed mounting fear that she and her husband, who suffers from heart disease, may not live to see their release. 

In her latest letter, published the same day as her transfer, she wrote, "I clearly understand their goal is not just destruction, but brutal torture, insults, and physical torment, when death becomes the desired escape from the terrible suffering. This is our reality, and I clearly realize it. In other words, our work received the highest mark on the highest scale." 

The international community has traditionally offered only mild criticism of Baku's rights record, prompting allegations that Azerbaijan is using its energy riches to peddle influence abroad. 

Notable exceptions include the European Court of Human Rights, which on October 11 granted priority status to the Yunuses' case against their arrest, and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which on October 15 ordered Azerbaijan to undergo a review of its civil society standards by the start of 2015. 

The couple's daughter, Dinara, who has lived in Amsterdam since receiving political asylum in the Netherlands, says the Sakharov Prize could help provide additional leverage against the Aliyev regime. 

"It might have an influence on her case, and it would also show the world what's really going on in Azerbaijan and how many political prisoners there are," she says. "I'm afraid that if she doesn't win, she won't have that protection from the Europarliament. The Sakharov Prize would give her protection in front of the Azeri government."

Yunus, who was nominated for the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament's Green Party faction, is considered a dark horse in the race, where Ukraine's Euromaidan protest movement and Denis Mukwege, a doctor crusading against rape in the Congo, have been backed by larger factions. 

The fates of past Sakharov laureates, however, indicate that the prize is not always accompanied by better conditions at home. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, received the Sakharov Prize in 1990 but was only able to collect the award after her release from house arrest 20 years later. 

Other Sakharov prize-winners continue to face oppression, including the Belarusian Association of Journalists, Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and the Russian rights group Memorial -- founded and led by Sakharov himself -- which is facing current efforts by the Justice Ministry to liquidate its operations. 

Source: http://www.rferl.org/

THE BIG BUG OUT?

Making plans to leave...

Some minds are understandably focused on the Afghan exit strategy and how to get out while keeping NATO casualties to a minimum. Now I don’t for a moment question the courage and endurance of our service personnel who have been sent by the politicians in Westminster to complete a near impossible task.

I remain however critical of what followed, when collective eyes were taken off the ball and Afghanistan was effectively placed on the back burner out of sight and out of mind for a dubiously motivated and justified invasion of Iraq. I also deeply question the wobbly logic that ran riot and the mission creep that developed in relation to Afghanistan during the latter years of the Blair and Brown governments, after attention shifted back from Iraq. 

The Con Dem government is largely blameless inheriting the ongoing car accident of Afghanistan from its predecessor formerly New Labour government, who should take the full measure of blame for the unfolding mess. However things are spun, the reality is that things are not going well, it has been revealed (in a UN report) that three times as much opium was produced in Helmand last year than was being produced when British troops first moved in 2006.

A report by the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) forecasts an increase in opium production this year and says this has been partly caused by the lack of agricultural assistance. The report blames the situation on insecurity. As the pullout progresses and international troops wind down their combat role, the increase in poppy cultivation is a significant failure for the international project, and particularly the UK's role in it.

Most of the worldwide production of illegal heroin, the drug refined from opium, comes from Afghanistan, and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair cited this as a reason for the war in 2001, calling the drugs trade a part of the Taliban regime that "we should seek to destroy". Back in 2001, the Brits (and the USA) made a deal with the surviving Taliban to reduce opium production by 94%.

Just before the invasion Taliban actually brought in a ban on poppy growing, declaring it to be anti-Islam, which lowered the overall production. After the invasion, rightly or wrongly as result of Blair’s decision the UK took a lead role in counter-narcotics from the beginning, and sent troops to Helmand in 2006 partly because this was the largest area of poppy cultivation.  The UK (back in 2002) became the lead nation for counter narcotic activities in Afghanistan. British cash for a voluntary eradication programme which was run in 2002 produced what has been described independently as “a total failure.”

Ironically Opium production has actually become more important to Afghanistan’s economy since US and NATO forces invaded back in October 2001. After an initial drop in opium production caused by NATO’s invasion, opium production resumed and now the country produces some 90 per cent of the world’s opium, the great bulk of which now ends up on the streets of Europe and Russia.

Now the UN report predicts that this year more than 75,000 hectares of land in Helmand is under cultivation for opium poppies, three times as much as in 2006 - and this is expected to increase. In Afghanistan any counter narcotics activities are merely an unavoidable occupational hazard because there is no viable alternative industry which can create the 50% of licit GDP that opium trading represents.

Opium, which is the basic raw material for heroin, and most of the illegal drugs that are on sale on the UK's streets come from Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s Government and business leaders operate in a wildly unregulated free market economy, where opium offers the safest and most profitable investment available to both peasant farmers and Narco-entrepreneurs.

The World Bank recognises that the narcotics trade accounts for 1/3 of all economic activity and acts as a major source of demand for services, goods and construction. The trade also provides income and livelihoods for a large number of people generates almost half a billion dollars a year for farmers.  Perversely the drugs trade goes on giving by providing several hundred million dollars in income for labourers and supports the country’s ramshackle rural economy.

The bank also acknowledges that the trade actually supports the Afghan balance of payments to the point that it produce a net surplus, not to mention supports the Afghan currency. Additionally as a result of imports from drug proceeds actually generates significant amounts of customs revenue (Source: The Fulcrum Strategy (Version 3) By David James, July 2006).

The problem is that the drug trade destabilises Afghanistan, and the chronic corruption and the effects of the ongoing insurgency combine to actively undermine the country’s tax base.  Security aside a stable tax base is one of the key requirements if the Afghan Government, post pull-out, is going to be able to sustain a potentially prolonged campaign against the Taliban.

Any Government that is pretty much dependent on foreign aid in lieu of a revenue stream is in trouble that might work out over the short-term but will not last over the longer term. What may in the end lead to the plug being pulled and foreign aid drying up is that much of the international aid to Afghanistan ends up being stolen before it ever gets to its intended recipients. 

The problem for the rest of us is that the opium based drug trade’s impact spreads far beyond the porous boundaries of Afghanistan. Back in March, Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, made a presentation to UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, stating that, opium growth has increased by 18 per cent from 131,000 hectares to 154,000 and that “Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales”.

Transparency International in its 2012 Corruption Index (CPI) ranked Afghanistan as one of the (joint) most corrupt country with North Korea and Somalia. President Hamid Karzai in the United State for the NATO Summit in Chicago (in 2012) was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about this rampant corruption issue in Afghanistan. As usual, President Karzai’s answer was “it is the contractual mechanism that the US applies in Afghanistan” that encourages bribery, fraud, and corruption.

The Afghan President has consistently blamed the west for the loss of billions of aid dollars and the rise of corruption in Afghanistan. The harsh reality is less simple as on a daily basis, ordinary Afghans are less concerned about the kinds of bribery that occurs when the US and Western  development agencies hand out big development contracts. Ordinary Afghans are more infuriated by the kinds of bribes that they often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to via “harassment bribes.”

Basically harassment bribes are like when a retired Afghan has to pay some cash to the pension officer to receive his retirement check. Or, when a young man or woman freshly graduated from college has to get his or her paperwork done in order to become a teacher. To accomplish this any prospective teacher will be asked to fork out a hefty bribe. Or your Tazkira or national ID card is held up until you pay some cash to the officer in charge. These are all simple illustration of harassment bribes.

Saigon  (in 1975) or Kabul (in 2015)

Harassment bribery is widespread in Afghanistan, and it plays a large role in breeding inefficiency and has a profoundly destructive effect on civil society. While President Karzai consistently wags the finger at the West for widespread corruption in Afghanistan, yet his administration has failed to take responsibility for banishing bribery on the lower level. The West has for a quiet life has looked the other way as local low level corruption tends to be written off as a fact of life something that indirectly may feed support for the Taliban. 

Overwhelmed by both large and small scale corruption what can an effectively endemically corrupt Afghan government seriously do to discourage bribe givers and takers (at all levels of government) even if it wanted to? Endemic corruption aside the security situation is the key, with NATO leaving and the Taliban waiting in the wings even a diehard optimist would struggle not to think that things don’t look good.

Behind the NATO pullout lurks the unspoken question of how can a successful NATO withdrawal ensure that the corrupt Karzai Government retains its hold on power. And at least in the short term can they (the Afghan Government) keep the Taliban at arm’s length and can the whole sorry process be made to look good for domestic political consumption at home.  

A QUIET SENSE OF URGENCY...

There is an increasingly desperate search for secure energy supplies, which is one of the reasons why George Osborne jumped in with both feet in relation to exploitation of Shale Gas reserves, hence the creation of the Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil. Just exactly how that fits in with the concept of Devolution in Wales is open to question? The chancellor also started the ball rolling on yet another Conservative driven dash for gas by approving the construction of potentially up to 30 new gas-fired power stations, to be built over the next two decades.

The UK Westminster government wants up to 26 GW of new gas generating capacity by 2030 much of which may come from the potentially environmentally questionable process known as fracking. Back in March 2011 the House of Commons Energy Select Committee came out in favour of fracking as an option for ‘secure energy’ simply stating that any environmental problems associated with fracking in the US would be overcome by tight regulation and good industry practice.

Options for energy exploitation (South Wales)

I am a big believer in developing Wales’s secure energy potential; unlike the Chancellor and the Con Dems I actually believe that we should have secure sustainable energy supplies. I also think that they should be community beneficial and just happen to think that we in Wales should have control of them. One inescapable part of the problem is that we (the population of the planet) are running out of easily (relatively) accessible hydrocarbons (oil, gas, etc) no matter how you spin it they are a finite resource.

The search for conventional hydrocarbons (oil) is becoming increasingly costly. Work on the Kashagan oil island in the Caspian Sea, off Kazakhstan has cost $46 billion dollars or around £ 28.8 billion pounds to develop. It is one of Kazakhstan's most ambitious project and just happens to be the world's largest oil find in the past 40 years. Kashagan may be as good as it can get for the Kazakhs and the Oil companies, but, one inescapable fact is that the field holds approximately 13 billion barrels worth of recoverable oil or around enough oil to fuel the world for nearly five months.

At the moment much of the UK’s gas supplies come from Qatar (in the Persian Gulf) which while being relatively stable has some Human Rights issues. As stable as it is, the problem is that the Middle East and the Gulf region are unstable. If some of Qatar’s despotic and repressive neighbouring rulers (run out of rubber bullets, tear gas and live rounds) and fall to popular unrest (at some point the repressed will lose patience and then it comes down to a simple if bloody numbers game) then we could be talking about lights out in the UK and flickering lights for much of Europe.  

Options for energy exploitation (North East Wales)

Hence the Chancellor’s quiet sense of urgency surrounding exploiting the Shale gas reserves. Now there are potentially sizeable reserves of Shale gas under some parts of our country with an estimate of recoverable gas reserves, possibly worth £120bn something which have got some people and some of the energy companies salivating.  Oddly enough Gazprom, the monopolistic gas producing arm of the Russian State, with its hands tightly gripped on the gas pipe, of most of Eastern Europe, does not favour Shale Gas production.

Now this all sounds good, but, the potential impact of the hydraulic fracturing technique (fracking) on people's health and environment is potentially pretty grim. The process can use a combination of water, sand and chemicals which are pumped into rock formations under high pressure. Something which has led to a sizeable number of environmentalists to raise real concerns about the fracking method could which can contaminate drinking water supplies.

Something else that is worth thinking about is that to make the extraction process work economically there is a requirement to drill lots of wells in close proximity to each other to aid extraction. Something that might lead to a far more significant environmental footprint during and after the gas is gone. In parts of south and north east Wales, whether with deep mined or open cast coal mining we have seen how the post mineral extraction clean up works.

One unanswered question is what will happen to any tax revenues, drilling permit fees, etc from Shale gas extraction. The Labour Party in the late 1970’s and the Conservatives through the 1980’s failed to pump revenues into an oil and gas fuelled sovereignty fund (like Norway did) choosing to blow the lot on subsidies for inefficient nationalised industries and tax cuts for the rich.

Ultimately Shale gas is also a one off, literally a one hit wonder, once gone it’s gone for goods. UK reserves, even if 50% was extracted might last 10 years, and then what? Over the last 15 years successive UK governments should have been working hard to develop non hydro carbon dependent sustainable energy supplies. Rather than do something they simply left energy planning and energy development to the whims of a cartel dominated nominal free energy market.

The main beneficiaries at the moment for Shale exploitation would by the UK Treasury (tax) and the Crown Estates which with its urban, rural and marine holdings across the UK, including the seabed and large areas of land, stands to profit from renewable energy developments and off-shore dredging. Any shale gas extraction should be regulated, supervised and approved (but only after a full and comprehensive environmental assessment) here in Wales, not in Westminster.

Any tax or licence revenues raised should go into a ring fenced all Wales sovereign energy fund which the National Assembly should avoid plundering for short term financial fixes. As we in Wales will have to live with any consequences (both long and short term) of an environmental disaster it is only reasonable that our natural resources should be controlled by and developed for the benefit of the Welsh people.

EUROPE’S LAST DICTATOR?

In Belarus, Europe last old style Soviet style dictatorship, a prominent human rights organization in Minsk is being evicted from its office. The Deputy Chairman of the Vyasna (Spring) Human Rights Center Valyantsin Stefanovich reported on November 19th that the unregistered organization had received papers from Belarusian authorities saying that it should vacate its office by November 26th.

Back in the USSR?

Belarus has a bad Human rights record, something which lead to the imposition of sanctions (including a travel ban for government officials) by Western governments. An Amnesty International report on Belarus noted that restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly had increased during 2012. They noted that the Belarus government continued to carry out executions and that prisoners of conscience remained in detention and were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. Amnesty also noted the right to a fair trial was also restricted.

The Human Rights centre’s office is situated in the apartment of Vyasna chairman Ales Byalyatskim, who  is currently in prison for tax evasion, a charge he has denied since his arrest last year. Back in November 2011, a court in Minsk sentenced him to 4 and 1/2 years in prison and ordered the confiscation of all his property. The human rights centre has been working in Byalyatski's apartment for 12 years. Viasna’s activist have been subject to systematic harassment for years, the Human Rights Organisation was de-registered by the state authorities in 2003, yet has continued to operate.

The opposition boycotted elections in September of 2012 which the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) described as unfree with the electoral authorities clearly showing a lack of “neutrality” or “impartiality”, not to mention serious concerns about electoral procedures. Oddly enough the observer mission from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) led by Belarus's ally, Russia described the election as being "transparent and open".

Back in June (2011) 1,000 people defied a ban in Belarus to hold a silent protest at the economic crisis in the capital Minsk, with police holding back. The protestors gathered peacefully in streets close to President Alexander Lukashenko's main administration building. The rally  was organised through social networking sites despite threats from the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko (who has been in power since 1994) that he would "strike hard" against protesters.

Protest rallies in Belarus are becoming increasingly rare as the authorities have been engaged in a crackdown against dissent since December 2010.  After the Presidential election in December 2010 five former candidates and 37 opposition activists to be accused of incitement after tens of thousands of people took part in protests after the 19th December vote which was described by international monitors as "lacking transparency".