The Kremlin’s pardons have been seen as a public relations exercise ahead of the Winter Olympics. Credit: Pavol Stracansky/IPS.

By Pavol Stracansky
MOSCOW, Dec 22 2013 (IPS)

An amnesty freeing high-profile detainees and convicts and the pardoning of arguably Russia’s most famous political prisoner have failed to move critics of the country’s appalling human rights record.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Russia’s constitution, lawmakers this week approved a wide-ranging amnesty for thousands of prisoners.

The amnesty applies to, among others, the Arctic 30 – the 30 Greenpeace protestors held for months after boarding a Russian oil rig on spurious charges of hooliganism – and two members of the Pussy Riot punk rock group serving a two-year jail sentence after performing a protest song against President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.In Russia itself some local media and analysts have linked the Games to the amnesty and Khodorkovsky’s pardon.

And on Thursday President Putin made a shock announcement that he would soon be pardoning Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil baron who has spent more than ten years in jail after what critics say was a politically motivated judicial process which saw him tried twice for economic crimes.

But the wave of judicial clemency is no sign of an impending improvement in the country’s poor human rights record, say critics.

Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division, told IPS: “Amnesties don’t correct the way the authorities have abused the justice system to punish political opponents and intimidate potential critics. The amnesty does not change anyone’s notion of how the Russian government views human rights.”

Since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency last year, international and local organisations say there has been an unprecedented crackdown on rights and freedoms, some of which has prompted outrage among the international community.

Recent legislation forcing foreign-linked NGOs to declare themselves ‘foreign agents’ or face effective closure and possible criminal prosecution and a law banning the promotion of homosexuality have attracted the ire of both foreign governments and international rights groups.

The arrests of the Arctic 30 were met with widespread outrage and the jailing of Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina – both young mothers – has been repeatedly condemned by the international community.

Meanwhile, the continued incarceration of Khodorkovsky met with continued calls from international rights to have him freed and remained a prominent blot on Russia’s already poor rights record, serving as a reminder of the regime’s treatment of political opponents and what can happen to people who do not toe the Kremlin’s line.

These and other rights abuses have come increasingly into focus as the country prepares to stage the Winter Olympics in February.

Heads of state from a number of Western nations have already said they will not be attending the Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. While not all have said so directly, their non-attendance has been seen as a protest over the apparent active suppression of human rights in the country.

The release of the Arctic 30 and Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina under the amnesty has suggested to some that the move has more to do with creating good PR for President Putin’s regime ahead of the Olympics than a sudden Kremlin u-turn on rights.

Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Programme Director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Programme, told IPS: “The Russian authorities are certainly in the spotlight of much international criticism over Russia’s worsening human rights record.

“While it is not for us to say what exactly motivated the Russian authorities to adopt this amnesty law, it would indeed appear not unrelated to the growing criticism ahead of the Games.”

In Russia itself some local media and analysts have linked the Games to the amnesty and Khodorkovsky’s pardon.

Under the headline ‘Mikhail Khodorkovsky got an Olympic ticket’, political analyst for news website RBCDaily.ru, Lilit Gevorgian, said: “The pardon for Khodorkovsky is in conjunction with the amnesty. Together with financial assistance to Ukraine, this has a positive impact on Russia’s image.

“This is especially important on the eve of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in which Russia invested a lot of money.”

President Putin has denied any ulterior motive to the amnesty. Speaking at an annual press conference in Moscow on Dec. 19 he said that the arrests of the Greenpeace protestors should “serve as a warning” to anyone else attempting similar action and emphasised the amnesty was “not a revision of the court decision” to jail the Pussy Riot members.

He also made clear that his pardon of Khodorkovsky would be on compassionate grounds.

Activists say the amnesty and pardons are not enough though. Lydia Aroyo, press officer for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International, told IPS: “Khodorkovsky’s potential pardon is not the same as releasing him unconditionally. The charges are not written off. It does not put straight the record – Khodorkovsky’s trial was politically motivated and unfair.”

And Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace’s Arctic oil campaign, told IPS: “While there is relief that the Arctic 30 are being freed we are not popping open the champagne corks in celebration. They should never have been arrested and detained in the first place. The charges against them were a fantasy.”

Even with the amnesty and apparent Khodorkovsky pardon, there are no signs that the Kremlin crackdown on NGOs and activists is going to ease up.

Just this week the promiment St. Petersburg-based anti-racism group Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial was told by a court that it had to register as a foreign agent.

Meanwhile, activists promoting minority rights in the Krasnodar region, where Sochi is located had their homes searched and computers and mobile phones taken from them by police. Some of them had spoken out about abuses connected to the Games.

Also, many of the Bolotnaya 27 – arrested after street protests last year against President Putin on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow and now facing 13 years in jail for mass rioting and violence against public officials despite little evidence against them – remain behind bars as their trials continue.

The detention of the Bolotnaya protestors in particular is symptomatic of Russian authorities’ approach to human rights, say activists.

Amnesty’s Krivosheev told IPS: “The failure to immediately and unconditionally release them, along with other prisoners of conscience, signifies the authorities’ continuing disregard for basic human rights.”

As two young Azeri poets enter their 11th week in detention in Iran, efforts to secure their release are not losing steam, nor are political tensions between the two countries.

Officials in Azerbaijan have publically condemned the arrest, which many experts have described as being political in nature.

The Iranian Centre for Independent Writers and Poets invited Farid Huseynzade (23) and Shahriyar Hajizade (21) to the Maraga poetry festival on Apr. 29.

The two were arrested on May 3 in Tabriz, while on a bus on the way back to Baku.

It took five diplomatic requests from the foreign ministry in Azerbaijan to prompt an official response from the Iranian government stating that the poets had been arrested in conjunction with “criminal activity”.

“However, Iran does not specify the (exact) crime that the poets are accused of,” Elman Abduallayev, spokesman of the foreign ministry of Azerbaijan, told IPS.

Iranian media have reported that the pair was arrested for espionage against Israel, as well as for the use of illegal drugs.

For Alik Alioghlu, a young writer and close friend of both Huseynzade and Hajizade, charging the two poets with espionage is “ridiculous”, as his friends have never been involved in political activity and never been critical of Iran.

“They were writing about love and about some social issues. They were not even interested in depicting the political situation in Azerbaijan (let alone in Iran),” Alioghlu told IPS.

Mail Hajizade, Shahriyar Hajizade’s farther, told IPS his son was never involved in any activity related to Iran.

For the duration of their arrest, the poets were only allowed to call home three times on May 27, Jun. 7 and Jun. 21. They told their parents they were being treated well and that they had been accused of entering Iran without the proper documentation.

However, according to an agreement between Iran and Azerbaijan, since Feb. 1, 2010 Azerbaijani citizens have been free to travel to Iran without a visa, except journalists. This contradicts Iranian officials’ justification for holding the two artists.

On Jul. 12, a group of 14 Azerbaijan-based youth organisations addressed United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon about the arrests in Iran and asked the rights body to take decisive steps towards the release of Huseynzade and Hajizade.

One of these organisations, the IRELI Public Association, issued a statement on Jul. 10 about the arrests and sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

“If those poets were guilty, the Iranians would have announced it immediately,” said Orkhan Mukhtarli, head of the literature assembly at the IRELI Public Association. But the absence of an official statement for more than two months suggests that there is something else behind the arrest, she said.

Niyazi Mehdi, a professor at the Baku State University in Azerbaijan who taught both Huseynzade and Hajizade, believes the claims against the two are “unconvincing”.

“It is very difficult to get information out of Iran. It is ridiculous to accuse the poets of espionage because, at best, they can only take pictures of some buildings – which can be obtained via satellite anyway. So why send two poets all the way there (to spy)?”

Chingiz Abdullayev, a prominent writer and head of the PEN club in Baku, has also appealed for their release.

Shahbaz Khuduoghlu, journalist and director of the Qanun publishing house in Baku, believes that Iranian media coverage of the arrests – which generally ends with footage of meetings between Azebaijani president Ilham Aliyev and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – highlights the explicity political nature of the arrests.

“It shows that those poets are victims of a political (game) between Iran and Azerbaijan. That is why I sent a letter to the Iranian embassy in Azerbaijan to ask them to let Azerbaijani NGO representatives, journalists and lawyers meet the poets in Iran and clarify what happened. I have not heard anything back yet,” he told IPS.

Global geopolitics

The relationship between the two states has recently been deteriorating, with each side accusing the other of political treachery.

Officials in Azerbaijan say the Iranian authorities are planning terrorist attacks against the country, while Iranians have accused Azerbaijan of “siding with Israel”.

In January, police in Azerbaijan arrested Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov in connection with an alleged plot to kill Israelis living in Azerbaijan.

In March security services in Azerbaijan arrested 22 people, mostly Azerbaijani citizens, who they said had been hired by Iran to carry out terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Baku.

Iranian officials criticised the arrests, saying that Azerbaijan was working for Israel.

The 1.6 billion-dollar arms deal between Azerbaijan and Isreal in 2011 made Iran concerned about Israel’s rising influence in the region, and suspicious that Israel could potentially use Azerbaijan to launch an attack against Iran.

In early May, when Azerbaijan was about to host the Eurovision Song Contest, Iranian officials claimed that the event was immoral and staged several protest actions against it.

“Response protests” erupted outside the Iranian embassy in Baku, during which demonstrators brandished posters depicting half-naked images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

For Elkhan Shahinoghlu, head of the Atlas Research Centre, 2012 has been the most “intense” year in the two country’s 20-year-long diplomatic relationship, with the month of May being the climax in rising tensions.

“The arrest of the poets is Iran’s way of warning Azerbaijan that Iran can be aggressive if its messages are not taken seriously,” he added.

Still, on an official visit to Azerbaijan last month, the Iranian minister of education presented Aliyev with an invitation to participate in the upcoming summit of head of states of the Non-Aligned Movement member countries.

While receiving the Iranian minister on Jul. 12, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister demanded that Iran take concrete steps toward the release of the Azeri citizens.

Shahinoghlu said if the poets are not released in time for the summit, the Azeri president should stay away, as his presence in Iran “would (paint) a very bad image of both (our) president and of the country”.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government has not yet arranged the requested meeting between the poets and an Azerbaijani counsellor.

Now the foreign ministry has issued a warning to its citizens to be cautious while traveling to Iran.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, Seyed Abbas Arakchi, will arrive in Azerbaijan soon to discuss the current situation in bilateral terms.

(END)