In early October 2016 a federal policeman stands guard between the Oromo regional flag (left) and Ethiopia’s national flag at the ceremony marking the opening of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, an apparent boon for the country's strengthening economy that at the same time angers so many Ethiopians who feel their lives are no better off despite all the economic fanfare and proclamations. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 26 2018 (IPS)

Ethiopia’s most notorious prison lurks within the capital’s atmospheric Piazza, the city’s old quarter popular for its party scene at the weekend when the neon signs, loud discos and merry abandon at night continue into the early hours of the morning.

The troubling contrast is one of many in this land of often painful contradictions. The Ethiopian Federal Police Force Central Bureau of Criminal Investigation, more commonly known by its Amharic name of Maekelawi, has for decades been associated with torture and police brutality—a symbol of the dark underside of the authoritarian nature of the so-called Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.The EPRDF has long been criticised for using draconian anti-terrorism charges to detain political prisoners, and then in true Orwellian fashion arguing those charges mean there are no political prisoners in Ethiopia.

But this January 3, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced the government would close the detention centre and release prisoners, including those from political parties.

An unprecedented action by a government not known for compromise rather for its stubborn intransigence to criticism of its oppressive methods, it took most by surprise, resulting in guarded praise from even the government’s staunchest critics such as international human rights organisations.

Since the announcement, though, subsequent proclamations from the government have muddied the issue and led many to question the government’s sincerity amid general confusion on all sides regarding the practicalities and terms of prisoner release.

What most observers seem more sure of is that the episode illustrates the speed and scale of change occurring among the four parties that constitute the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party.

“The decision was a concession to the very strong demand made by the Oromo People Democratic Organisation (OPDP) which governs the Oromia regional state,” says Awol Allo, an Ethiopian lecturer in law at Keele University in the UK, who can’t return to Ethiopia for fear of arrest.

The EPRDF was the brainchild of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a Marxist-Leninist movement that spearheaded the defeat of Ethiopia’s former military dictatorship the Derg to liberate the Tigray region, whose Tigrayan ethnic group constitute only about 6.5 percent of Ethiopia’s more than 100 million population today.

In the final days of Ethiopia’s civil war, the TPLF orchestrated the creation of three satellite parties from other elements of the rebel force: the OPDO, the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (SEPDM) to ostensibly represent their respective ethnic groups but which enabled the TPLF to consolidate its grip on power after the Derg fell in 1991.

That grip became vice like over the years—the TPLF dominates business and the economy as well as the country’s military and security apparatus—much to the consternation of Ethiopia’s other ethnic groups, especially the Oromo.

Constituting 35 percent of Ethiopia’s population, the Oromo are its largest ethnic group. They also constitute the largest proportion of inmates at Maekelawi and in the rest of country’s federal and regional prisons. This, Allo notes, cannot be explained simply by the numerical size of the Oromo population.

“There is a disproportionate and indiscriminate repression of the Oromo because they are suspected to pose a threat by virtue of their status as the single largest ethnic group in the country,” Allo says.

That perceived threat has only increased in the government’s eyes—as well as among some of the other ethnic minorities in the country such as the Somali—since November of 2015 when Oromos took to the streets at the start of a protest movement that continues to this day.

And since the protesting Oromo were joined by the Amhara in 2016—the two ethnic groups representing 67 percent of the population—the government has had to recognise the depth and scale of anger against it.

Hence it is now trying to appease the groundswell of discontent in the country that poses the greatest threat to the country’s stability—perhaps even the survival of the Ethiopian nation state itself—since 1991; the risk of state failure in Ethiopia saw it ranked 15th out of 178 countries—up from 24th in 2016—in the annual Fragile States Index by the Fund for Peace.

The problem, though, with such mollifying efforts by the government, as with the current announcement, is they usually don’t go the necessary distance.

“The EPRDF has taken responsibility for the political crisis in the country and has apologised for its leadership failures and undemocratic actions,” says Lidetu Ayele, founder of the local opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party. “But it has not accepted the presence of political prisoners in the country. These are contradictory outlooks and a clear manifestation that the ruling party is not ready to make genuine reform.”

The EPRDF has long been criticised—domestically and internationally—for using draconian anti-terrorism charges to detain political prisoners, and then in true Orwellian fashion arguing those charges mean there are no political prisoners in Ethiopia. Human rights groups have estimated political prisoner numbers in the tens of thousands.

The Oromo are proud of their cultural traditions and enjoy opportunities to celebrate that heritage. They also share a common language, Afaan Oromoo, also known as Oromoiffa, which belongs to the Cushitic family, unlike Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, which is Semitic. A different language is only one of many sources of tension the Oromo have within the Ethiopian federation. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

With the announcement about Maekelawi and the prisoner release, however, it initially appeared the government was making a clear break with the past and acknowledging the existence of political prisoners. But soon afterwards it tried to backtrack, with government spokespersons vacillating about what had been meant by political prisoners.

“The announcement of the release of prisoners is highly symptomatic of the disorganization, if not the cacophony, among the leadership,” says René Lefort, who has been visiting and writing about Ethiopia since the 1974 revolution that ended emperor Haile Selassie’s reign and brought in the Derg military dictatorship that would fall to the EPRDF.

“This decision could have been the most resounding proof of the sincerity of the EPRDF to launch a democratizing process. But as it has been announced in successive versions lacking essential points—who exactly is effected; when will they be freed, and will it be unconditionally or, as in the past, only having apologized—this decision has largely lost the impact it could have had.”

Such political flip-flopping and indications of infighting in the government leave some with little confidence about the significance of the promise to end Maekelawi’s history of torture and ill-treatment, as documented in chilling detail by Human Rights Watch.

“The closure of the torture chamber does not signify anything because the government will undoubtedly continue the same practise at other locations,” says Alemante Selassie, emeritus professor at the William and Mary Law School in the US.

Others are less sceptical of the government’s motives.

“It’s not a smokescreen, it’s been under discussion within the context of the interparty dialogue ever since the parties stated their wish lists of issues at the beginning of 2017,” says Sandy Wade, a former European Union diplomat in Addis Ababa. “It is a necessary step in the run-up to the 2018 and 2020 elections—and for the future of the country—if [the government] wants opposition participation, which they do.”

On Jan. 15, Ethiopian Attorney General Getachew Ambaye gave a briefing saying that charges at a federal level brought against 115 prisoners had been dropped as part of the first phase to release jailed politicians and other convicts.

Although the attorney general did not mention names of prominent political figures imprisoned, on Jan. 17. Merera Gudina, leader of the Oromo Federalist Party arrested in 2016, was released.

The attorney general added that the Southern Ethiopia Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State—a region of more than 58 ethnic groups—had dropped charges against 413 inmates also, and that other regions would follow suit in the next couple of months, with political figures in jail who have been “convicted” of crimes given amnesty.

At the same time, though, it appears the jury remains very much out on whether the government is genuinely committed to democratization and achieving a national consensus in the longer term.

“If they are, this would be a transformative moment for Ethiopia,” Awol says. “Either way, Ethiopia cannot be governed in the same way it has for the last 26 years.”

Which leaves the big—possibly existential—question facing Ethiopia: whether the government can and will come up with the necessary strategy and then implement it successfully in time for the 2018 local and 2020 national elections.

“If the EPRDF wants to rescue itself and the country from total collapse, what we need is genuine and swift political reform that will enable the country to have free and fair elections,” Lidetu says. “Anything less than that will not solve the current political crisis.”

When Azerbaijan served as chair of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, it scoffed at the spirit and purpose of the organisation and moved vigorously to squash all forms of free speech at home.

Now that Baku no longer holds the top spot, civil society activists are worrying about what Azerbaijani authorities will do next.At the moment, the country’s jails hold at least 90 political prisoners, almost double the number in Belarus and Russia combined. These prisoners of conscience face a variety of cooked-up charges, including hooliganism, drug possession, tax evasion and treason.

All civil society actors in Azerbaijan currently are grappling with a daunting dilemma: either stop engaging in rights-related activism or pay a high price, in particular face the prospect of criminal prosecution.

Dozens of activists and independent journalists remain behind bars for no reason other than engaging in rights work or tacitly promoting free speech. At the moment, the country’s jails hold at least 90 political prisoners, almost double the number in Belarus and Russia combined. These prisoners of conscience face a variety of cooked-up charges, including hooliganism, drug possession, tax evasion and treason.

Azerbaijan relinquished its Committee of Ministers chairmanship on Nov. 13. Far from softening its repressive behaviour and cleaning up its awful rights record during its six-month tenure, the government stepped up its suppression of internal dissent.

At least 13 activists were arrested and at least 10 others were convicted on politically motivated charges following flawed trials. Authorities rounded up the country’s most senior human rights defenders and other leading activists, including Leyla Yunus, veteran human rights defender and director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy, and her husband, the political commentator Arif Yunus.

They also detained Rasul Jafarov, chairman of Azerbaijan’s Human Rights Club, Intigam Aliyev, prominent lawyer and chairman of the Legal Education Society, and the famous opposition journalist Seymur Haziyev.

Some of those detained in recent months have serious health conditions. Yet, authorities keep them locked up, even as they fail to provide any information to suggest that pre-trial detention is warranted. They also have not released any credible evidence that would support the charges against these recent detainees.

In addition to politically motivated arrests, dozens of draconian laws regulating the operations of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been adopted. The offices of several local and international NGOs were recently raided, their bank accounts frozen and staff interrogated. As a result of increasing pressure, many groups have felt compelled to cease operations.

While the Azerbaijani government has been ruthless in its clampdown, it remains sensitive about its public image, a fact underscored by Baku’s efforts to lavish money on PR in Washington and the EU. Baku’s PR acumen needs to be kept in mind by those who mine for signs of its intentions. Some Western partners have lauded President Ilham Aliyev’s government for releasing four political prisoners in mid-October.

The truth is the release does not change anything, and it is certainly not indicative of a softening of the Aliyev administration’s stance on dissent. It is important to note that before the four were pardoned, they were coerced into acknowledging in writing their “crime,” begging for forgiveness, praising Aliyev, objecting to being called “political prisoners” and denouncing the “anti-Azerbaijan or pro-Armenian activities” of international organizations.

Aliyev’s administration has a habit of using a “revolving door” tactic, releasing few and arresting new political prisoners. Since the October amnesty, at least three more activists have been jailed on bogus charges.

Police accused two of them on hooliganism for “swearing in public place,” and the other faces “narcotics” charges. They all have rejected the accusations, insisting their arrests are retaliation for their rights-related work.

During the Azerbaijani chairmanship, the Council of Europe chose mostly to avert its eyes to Baku’s violations or make toothless statements and merely symbolic criticisms. This head-in-the-sand approach has prompted activists in Baku to question the point of the Council of Europe.

Sadly, Azerbaijan’s refusal to release people imprisoned on politically motivated charges and end its abuses has not affected its relationships with the United States and European Union. Western diplomats tend to prefer backroom diplomacy to public pressure, but, in Azerbaijan’s case, there is absolutely no indication that private talks have had any positive effect.

The international community’s inaction means that the end of the Azerbaijan’s independent human rights community is nearing soon. Unless Aliyev’s government understands that there are serious consequences for its abuses, Baku’s free pass on human rights abuses will continue.

Editor’s note:  Vugar Gojayev is an Azerbaijani researcher and freelance journalist. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Syrian mother and child near Ma'arat Al-Numan, rebel-held Syria, in autumn 2013. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Jul 19 2014 (IPS)

Gaunt, haggard Syrian children begging and selling gum have become a fixture in streets of the Lebanese capital; having fled the ongoing conflict, they continue to be stalked by its effects.

Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

By the end of January, almost 40,000 Syrian children had been born as refugees, while the total number of minors who had fled abroad quadrupled to over 1.2 million between March 2013 and March 2014.Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

Lack of proper healthcare, food and clean water has resulted in countless loss of life during the Syrian conflict, now well into its fourth year. These deaths are left out of the daily tallies of ‘war casualties’, even as stunted bodies and emaciated faces peer out of photos from areas under siege.

The case of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp on the outskirts of Damascus momentarily grabbed the international community’s attention earlier this year, when Amnesty International released a report detailing the deaths of nearly 200 people under a government siege. Many other areas have experienced and continue to suffer the same fate, out of the public spotlight.

A Palestinian-Syrian originally from Yarmouk who has escaped abroad told IPS that some of her family are still in Hajar Al-Aswad, an area near Damascus with a population of roughly 600,000 prior to the conflict. She said that those trapped in the area were suffering ‘’as badly if not worse than in Yarmouk’’ and had been subjected to equally brutal starvation tactics. The area has, however, failed to garner similar attention.

The city of Homs, one of the first to rise up against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, was also kept under regime siege for three years until May of this year, when Syrian troops and foreign Hezbollah fighters took control.

With the Syria conflict well into its fourth year, the U.N. Security Council decided for the first time on July 14 to authorize cross-border aid without the Assad government’s approval via four border crossings in neighbouring states. The resolution established a monitoring mechanism for a 180-day period for loading aid convoys in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

The first supplies will include water sanitation tablets and hygiene kits, essential to preventing the water-borne diseases responsible for diarrhoea – which, in turn, produces severe states of malnutrition.

Miram Azar, from UNICEF’s Beirut office, told IPS that  ‘’prior to the Syria crisis, malnutrition was not common in Lebanon or Syria, so UNICEF and other actors have had to educate public health providers on the detection, monitoring and treatment’’ even before beginning to deal with the issue itself.

However, it was already on the rise: ‘’malnutrition was a challenge to Syria even before the conflict’’, said a UNICEF report released this year. ‘’The number of stunted children – those too short for their age and whose brain may not properly develop – rose from 23 to 29 per cent between 2009 and 2011.’’

Malnutrition experienced in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life (from pregnancy to two years old) results in lifelong consequences, including greater susceptibility to illness, obesity, reduced cognitive abilities and lower development potential of the nation they live in.

Azar noted that ‘’malnutrition is a concern due to the deteriorating food security faced by refugees before they left Syria’’ as well as ‘’the increase in food prices during winter.’’

The Syrian economy has been crippled by the conflict and crop production has fallen drastically. Violence has destroyed farms, razed fields and displaced farmers.

The price of basic foodstuffs has become prohibitive in many areas. On a visit to rebel-held areas in the northern Idlib province autumn of 2013, residents told IPS that the cost of staples such as rice and bread had risen by more than ten times their cost prior to the conflict, and in other areas inflation was worse.

Jihad Yazigi , an expert on the Syrian economy, argued in a European Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFR) policy brief published earlier this year that the war economy, which ‘’both feeds directly off the violence and incentivises continued fighting’’, was becoming ever more entrenched.

Meanwhile, political prisoners who have been released as a result of amnesties tell stories of severe water and food deprivation within jails. Many were detained on the basis of peaceful activities, including exercising their right to freedom of expression and providing humanitarian aid, on the basis of a counterterrorism law adopted by the government in July 2012.

There are no accurate figures available for Syria’s prison population. However, the monitoring group, Violations Documentation Centre, reports that 40,853 people detained since the start of the uprising in March 2011 remain in jail.

Maher Esber, a former political prisoner who was in one of Syria’s most notorious jails between 2006 and 2011 and is now an activist living in the Lebanese capital, told IPS that it was normal for taps to be turned on for only 10 minutes per day for drinking and hygiene purposes in the detention facilities.

Much of the country’s water supply has also been damaged or destroyed over the past years, with knock-on effects on infectious diseases and malnutrition. A major pumping station in Aleppo was damaged on May 10, leaving roughly half what was previously Syria’s most populated city without running water. Relentless regime barrel bombing has made it impossible to fix the mains, and experts have warned of a potential humanitarian catastrophe for those still inside the city.

The U.N. decision earlier this month was made subsequent to refusal by the Syrian regime to comply with a February resolution demanding rapid, safe, and unhindered access, and the Syrian regime had warned that it considered non-authorised aid deliveries into rebel-held areas as an attack.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a live interview with Iranian TV on Apr. 29, 2014. Courtesy of President Rouhani's official website

By Sussan Tahmasebi
WASHINGTON, May 2 2014 (IPS)

While enjoying unprecedented successes in international relations, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani seems to be suffering a stalemate when it comes to building trust and cooperation between different factions in the Iranian state. As a result, he seems plagued by continuous human rights disasters at home, while issuing no public condemnations. 

Indeed, during an official event he held to mark Labour Day on May 1, wherein he encouraged citizens to set up organisations to advocate for their rights, approximately 25 labour activists were arrested in Tehran.Iranians, increasingly weary and angry, are holding their government and officials accountable.

The detained included members of Tehran’s bus trade union, who had gathered outside the Ministry of Labour to offer the public sweets and flowers.

Prior to this event, during a live state television interview Tuesday, Rouhani vowed that he has not forgotten his 2013 presidential campaign promises. This vague declaration was interpreted by many as a reference to the continued house arrest, without charge or trial, of 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi.

During that same interview, Mousavi was rushed to the hospital with reported heart problems.

Mousavi’s ailments, which have been ongoing during his detention, came on the heels of another human rights crisis in Iran.

On Apr. 17, prison officials and security forces stormed the men’s “Ward 350,” at Evin prison in Tehran, where a number of political prisoners are being held.

According to reports, the prisoners were beaten violently, many were moved to solitary confinement, and some had their heads shaved to humiliate them.

The prisoners and their families claim that those in need of serious medical attention have yet to receive proper care in an equipped medical facility.

Despite the fact that government spokesperson, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, announced that an investigation was underway, Rouhani and his administration have been largely silent on the issue, refusing to publicly condemn the prison raid. 

This silence extends to other human rights issues, such as the high rate of executions in Iran.

Observers and analysts agree that Rouhani has little influence over other branches of government, including the judiciary, which is responsible for stays in execution, overseeing courts and prisons, and issuing early prison releases.

There is much speculation on the reasons behind this lack of coordination between Rouhani and other branches of government on a variety of issues, including human rights.

Some analysts believe that the stepping up of executions since Rouhani took office is intended to embarrass and weaken his position on national and international stages.

Others, such as Isa Saharkhiz, a political analyst and journalist, have offered a different analysis.

In a recent article published on the Paris-based Rooz Online, this former political prisoner argues that the raid and recent arrests are intended to send a message from hardliners to Iranian dissidents, saying that while international relations may be changing, domestic policies will remain the same and little dissent will be tolerated.

In his election campaign, Rouhani repeatedly promised to ease the impact of Iran’s security state on citizens, and while in office, has welcomed constructive criticism and encouraged Iranians abroad to return home.

However, despite his new approach to Iranian human rights, throughout these many crises, Rouhani has refused to publicly and clearly condemn the actions of hardline groups, opting instead for a quiet, diplomatic approach to solving problems.

He alluded to this approach in his televised interview, when he stated that he has started a process of peacebuilding and reconciliation both internationally and nationally.

He also claimed that he is “committed to his campaign promises but realising them will take time.”

But patience is wearing thin among Rouhani’s critics and supporters.

Many are angry at the slow pace of change and the continued repression and rights abuses in Iran.

While Rouhani, hardliners and reformers engage in a battle of wills and shows of strength, the Iranian public is reaching its own understanding on human rights.

Iranians, increasingly weary and angry, are holding their government and officials accountable.

Last week, when families of prisoners in Ward 350 were staging a protest outside the presidential offices to demand an investigation into the prison raid, something strange and unexpected happened.

The incident was widely reported on social media.

One account reported: “Today while the families of prisoners were outside the president’s office, a group of women approached and pulled out a banner that read: ‘We want an end to executions’ and began chanting their demands.”

These women were relatives of prisoners who had been sentenced to death because of petty drug dealing, according to other accounts.

The women had come to the office of the president to demand justice and to prevent the execution of their sons.

According to a Facebook report, “the women were very direct and forward in expressing their demands…unlike any human rights activist. One of the women asked: ‘they want us to have more children, so they can execute them?’”

“They went on to complain about their poor economic situation, which forced their children to turn to selling drugs,” continued the report. “[T]hey lamented that they have no money to feed their families and that their utilities had been turned off.”

The understanding that the public has reached on human rights issues demonstrates a serious rift between the state and the public.

Across the country, Iranians, including family members of death-row inmates, disenfranchised youth from ethnic-minority communities, and the working poor, are rapidly changing their view of and approach toward the state in their demand for human rights.

The state, however, seems unwilling to respond to these demands.

While this boiling-point situation may be the legacy of the Ahmadinejad era, or those who have come before him, it is still a legacy that President Rouhani must address.

These demands will likely, if left unanswered, prove problematic for moderates like Rouhani, and the hardliners who prefer swift reprisals.

Since his June 2013 election, Rouhani’s concentrated efforts have achieved considerable success in reforming Iran’s image internationally.

When under pressure, Rouhani often strategically boasts about holding a legitimate mandate from the Iranian “public.”

So far, though, Rouhani’s efforts at national reconciliation have been narrowly focused on peacebuilding between political foes — hardliners and reformers — rather than the public.

This effort has been carried out in silence and behind closed doors.

To be successful national reconciliation needs to include a broader segment of the Iranian population.

Rouhani should take cues on his successes internationally and begin building trust with the “public” that seems to have been forgotten.

This trust-building must extend beyond economic reforms.

Solving Iran’s human rights situation should be seen by Rouhani as a critical strategy for ensuring national and human security in Iran.

Sussan Tahmasebi is an Iranian women’s rights activist, who lived and worked in Iran between 1999 and 2010. She is the co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), where she serves as the Director of the MENA/Asia programme on women’s rights, peace and security.

At a cabinet meeting in mid-July, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev lashed out at the European Parliament for supposedly conducting a “dirty campaign” against Baku. The shrill tone of Aliyev’s comments indicates that European pressure on Azerbaijan to respect basic rights is stinging the Aliyev administration.

The latest EU parliamentary resolution critical of Azerbaijan came in June, when European officials called for the release of Ilgar Mammadov, a jailed leader of the opposition Republican Alternative movement.

Euro-criticism in 2012 included the loud and public condemnation by European MPs of an officially orchestrated smear campaign against independent investigative journalist Khadija Ismailova. [Editor’s Note: Ismailova has worked as a contributor to EurasiaNet.org].

Aliyev, who is expected to travel to Brussels to confer with top EU officials in the fall, showed himself to be sensitive to criticism. At the July cabinet meeting, he dismissed the recent European assessments of Azerbaijani policy as the work of a jealous few.

“There are still prejudiced people, [European] parliamentarians who do not accept Azerbaijan’s success, and they are systematically trying to make attacks on Azerbaijan,” he groused, according to comments broadcast on state television.

While official statements critical of Baku’s behavior have succeeded in vexing government officials, if European criticism is actually going to be effective in getting Aliyev & Co. to change its authoritarian ways, it’s important for European officials to dispel some persistent myths among Azerbaijani policymakers surrounding EU actions.

Here are a few widely held assumptions in Baku that European officials should keep in mind as they consider taking the next steps:

1) European criticism of Azerbaijan´s human rights record is the work of the pro-Armenian lobby and other actors who wish to undermine Azerbaijan´s “independent foreign policy”.

Not true. There is no evidence that the members of the European Parliament who are critical of Azerbaijan´s rights practices have any connections to the Armenian lobby or to Russia, which is believed to want to re-integrate Azerbaijan into its own sphere of political and economic influence.

In fact, some critical Euro MPs, such as the Austrian Green Ulrike Lunacek, are on record as demanding the withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

The reason for European criticisms is simple: the situation of the human rights is deteriorating, in spite of the commitments undertaken voluntarily by Azerbaijan. When the EU offers criticism, it is simply assessing the country on its own merits.

2) Demands for democratisation and respect for human rights are nothing but a smokescreen to promote the regime change.

Not by a long shot. The last thing the EU wants is a new source of instability in an already combustible part of the world. In fact, the EU is quite comfortable with the Aliyev administration, as long as it delivers on energy cooperation and regional security – particularly counter-terrorism, Afghanistan and Iran.

But for the sake of its own credibility, the EU cannot completely ignore human rights issues. It is also in the EU’s self-interest: it needs a government in Baku with enhanced domestic legitimacy as its partner.

Its message to Aliyev seems to be: better to start reforms today, while you can manage a controlled transition from a position of strength, rather than to risk a popular explosion tomorrow. But if the government persists in tightening the screws, and in the meantime, a viable opposition emerges, the calculus might shift in favour of the latter.

3) Azerbaijan is unfairly singled out and is a victim of double standards.

Yes, there are double standards, but they actually work in favour of Azerbaijan. For instance, the European consensus holds that Belarus has nine political prisoners. In Azerbaijan, there are at least several dozens of them.

Yet several Belarussian officials are subjected to EU travel bans and an asset freeze, while the EU has never even considered similar measures against Azerbaijani officials.

Furthermore, ODIHR, the OSCE’s democracy watchdog, has never recognised presidential and parliamentary elections in both Belarus and Azerbaijan as free and fair. But it is only the Belarussian parliament that is not recognised as such by the European Parliament, and which is banned from participation in EURONEST, the parliamentary dimension of the Eastern Partnership.

Azerbaijan´s Milli Mejlis delegation, on the other hand, enjoys full participation rights in inter-parliamentary bodies.

4) The EU ignores the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands and the human rights of Azerbaijani IDPs.

Not true. The European Parliament adopted a resolution in 2010 on the need for an EU strategy in the South Caucasus (known as the Kirilov Report) in which it clearly calls for the withdrawal of Armenian forces from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan, and upholds the right to return for Azerbaijani IDPs.

In 2012, in addition to these demands, the European Parliament for the first time linked the conclusion of association agreements with Armenia to progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks, including the withdrawal from occupied territories of Azerbaijan and return of IDPs.

Of course, Azerbaijan could have won more converts to its cause had it stopped sending wrong messages, such as the pardon and promotion of Ramil Safarov, an army officer guilty of the murder of an Armenian counterpart, and the state-orchestrated campaign against Akram Aylisli, a writer who dared to depict a more nuanced picture of the Azeri-Armenian conflict than is usually accepted in Azerbaijan.

5)  There is no point in satisfying EU demands, since Azerbaijan will never be admitted to the EU anyway.

Too simplistic. It is true that the EU has lost its appetite for enlargement, and the example of Turkey’s stalled candidacy lends credence to this assertion. But current fiscal troubles will not last forever, and Europeans might still change their mind on enlargement.

Meanwhile, there are other forms of association with the EU that can be beneficial for Azerbaijan, such as association agreement, free-trade agreement and visa liberalisation.

Most importantly, reforms that conform to EU norms are needed not to satisfy Brussels, but to improve the quality of life of Azerbaijanis. If implemented consistently, they might even help Azerbaijan to win over hearts and minds of the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, and solve the long-festering conflict on terms that are more favourable to Baku.

Editor’s note:  Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists & Democrats Group in the European Parliament, who writes in his personal capacity. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

In a historic letter to President Barack Obama, 52 Iranian political prisoners describe the effect of the crippling sanctions regime on the Iranian people and plead for a new approach to the nuclear issue. They write:

“Mr. President! We believe it is time to replace sanctions with an effort to achieve a mutually acceptable resolution of the nuclear issue. To achieve such an end and given the chronic nature of the deep-rooted conflict, all sides concerned should strive for a dignified solution in which no party will be considered the loser.

“Such a solution should be based on genuinely addressing international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program by the Iranian government on the one hand and acknowledging the legitimate rights of Iran to peaceful nuclear energy, in compliance with international legal standards, by the US and the West on the other.”

For the last four years, Iran’s political prisoners have operated as a visible and influential actor in a severely repressed political atmosphere. They are now becoming an important voice in Iranian foreign policy by sending messages to politicians in Tehran and Washington.

The letter’s co-signers are politicians, journalists and democracy activists who were imprisoned during and after the government’s crackdown on the 2009 uprising against the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The heavy-handed response suddenly increased the number of political prisoners in Iran to hundreds — at times even thousands. Many of them included prominent figures in Iran’s political and civil society.

In Iran, imprisonment operates as a conventional method of silencing political dissidents, but many of these prisoners continued their oppositional activities from the beginning of their sentences.

What made this new round of prison activism more effective was the Iranian opposition movement’s strong Internet presence. When the Green Movement emerged in Iran, many analysts pointed to the activists’ innovative use of digital technology in initially organising the electoral campaign and then publicising information about protest events and regime atrocities.

The government’s crackdown attempted to stifle the public presence of Iran’s democracy movement, but the activists turned the Internet into an oppositional space. This included sharing updates about political prisoners’ situation and actions and spreading open letters smuggled from the prisons.

Sociologists refer to “abeyance structures” as spaces and communities through which social movements continue to exist in periods of repression and public inactivity. Ironically, prisons were a major abeyance structure for Iran’s Green Movement after the 2009 crackdown.

During the years of the Green’s decline, Iranian prisoners sustained activity both through direct actions, such as hunger strikes, as well as adopting positions on issues through individual and collective open letters.

In addition to individual strikes against the abuse of prisoners’ rights, hunger strikes were also organised in solidarity with other prisoners and against regime atrocities conducted outside prison walls.

In the most stunning example, 12 political prisoners went on hunger strike in 2011 after fellow prisoner Hoda Saber died after prison guards beat him while he was hunger striking against the tragic death of another activist outside the prison, Haleh Sahabi.

This collective action led to a burst of solidarity among Iranian dissidents inside Iran and among those in exile.

Prisoners also engaged in radical political positions in a country where political activists fear hosting meetings in their homes. In one of the boldest examples, political prisoner Abulfazl Ghadiani publicly accused Iran’s Leader Ali Khamenei of despotism and compared him to Iran’s pre-revolutionary autocratic monarchs.

In other open letters, prisoners reflected on Iran’s political landscape and offered strategic analyses of Iranian politics and proposed courses of action.

In discussions about boycotting or participating in the recent presidential election, Zia Nabavi, an exiled student sentenced to 10 years in prison, argued that Iran’s civil society needs active citizenry who won’t be easily discouraged by destructive authoritarian actions and will act with hope and rationality.

He endorsed Hassan Rouhani in that letter and encouraged all democracy supporters to actively participate in the election. As with other letters by political prisoners, that letter became part of the pragmatic wave that resulted in Rouhani’s electoral victory.

During his campaign, Rouhani suggested his election could result in the releasing of political prisoners. That was one of the major demands that Rouhani’s supporters made during his electoral campaign and in celebrations of his victory. This will be one of the major tasks of the new president’s first term.

All these factors have provided political prisoners with a unique place in Iran’s political landscape. They are, after all, the people who have paid the highest price in fighting for freedom and equality for the Iranian people. A year before the election, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, a prominent reformist sociologist, stated that political prisoners are even more important than reformist organisations.

For all these reasons, the prisoners’ recent letter to President Obama contains significant ramifications for politicians in Washington as well as in Tehran.

The message to Washington is clear. Regardless of whether the goal of sanctions or calls for military action is to empower the Iranian people, an element of the most legitimate and suffering voices of Iran’s democracy movement is stating that sanctions have been disempowering and should end.

Iran’s political prisoners are also teaching all of us an important lesson: one should not sacrifice the people’s wellbeing and interests for personal revenge. These prisoners had many reasons to ask for more sanctions on a government that has illegally imprisoned them for unjustifiable reasons, deprived them of their most basic rights and tortured them and their families.

But they prioritised the Iranian peoples’ interests and asked both Iran and the U.S. to engage in constructive diplomacy rather than blind hostility.

Let us hope that Iran’s leaders, especially Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, learn this lesson and facilitate the release of these prisoners while starting a new era in Iran’s foreign policy.

Mohammad Ali Kadivar is a sociology PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies global democratisation and popular mobilisation and writes about Iranian politics in Farsi and English.

Presidential elections in Iran have historically been used by reformists to push for a more open political environment. Credit: Garry Knight/cc by 2.0

By Yasaman Baji
TEHRAN, Jan 30 2013 (IPS)

With the June 2013 presidential election drawing closer, Iran’s reformists are debating what they should do in the face of the severe restrictions to which their leaders and political parties have been subject since the popular protests that roiled the country after the last election four years ago.

While some reformists have insisted they will boycott the election, others are arguing that it could offer a new opportunity for political organising regardless of whether the Guardian Council, the body that vets potential candidates, will permit their well-known political leaders to run.

Still others say much depends on how the competition among their conservative rivals shakes out in the coming months. Since no conservative or hard-line candidate has yet stepped forward to announce his official candidacy, they argue it is too soon to decide what position to take and that the political environment could yet change in unexpected ways before the election.

Presidential elections in Iran have historically been used by reformists both to push for a more open political environment and to demonstrate their ability to mobilise popular support, particularly among the urban middle classes.

This year, however, reformists appear more ambivalent, especially given the continuing house arrests of their 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, and the imprisonment of other key reformist leaders, including former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and the former chair of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, Mohsen Mirdamadi.

Their release – as well as those of other political prisoners – has been a top priority for many reformists, even as a condition for their participation in the June election.

But some reformist leaders disagree. Former interior minister Abdullah Nuri believes that addressing the deteriorating economic situation and the continuing external threat against Iran posed by the U.S.-led sanctions regime is more urgent than the release of their political comrades from detention.

In addition, Nuri worries that the insistence on the release of political prisoners before the reformists agree to participate in the election will force them to play a game under rules set by their foes. “We should take the first step and show our opponents that we are determined and serious,” Nuri told the monthly Aseman in October.

Former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, who supported Karrubi in the 2009 election, has taken a similar position.

Also writing in Aseman, he recently asked: “Is it logical to ask our rivals to fulfill our ultimate demands so that we can win the competition with them? If political prisoners were to be released (and)… economic, cultural, and political situation and domestic and foreign policy be improved (before the election), then why should the reformists win power?

“These are in effect the reformists’ future programmes, and they must make an effort to fulfill them when they reach power and not make them conditions for participation in elections.”

Such words, along with rumours regarding the possible candidacy of former first vice president Mohammadreza Aref and former minister of education Mohammad Ali Najafi, have given the impression that at least some reformists are seriously considering participating in the election.

Some reformist groups have even declared that former president Mohammad Khatami will be their candidate despite the latter’s declaration last summer that he will not run.

Even the mention of Khatami’s name as a possible candidate, however, has unsettled the hard-line establishment. Iranian state television has gone so far as showing Khatami – something it had not done for years – and calling him a “companion of sedition”. Sedition is a term routinely used to refer to the protests that followed the contested results of the 2009 presidential election.

“Companions of sedition” could participate in the election, the television programme said, only if they renounced or recanted their support of sedition.

In December, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, the body that determines who is eligible to run for office, appeared to echo that view, insisting that the disavowal of sedition will make it more likely that candidates will receive favourable consideration.

The call for renunciation by institutions close to the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, was immediately rejected by key reformists. Cleric Mussavi Khoeiniha, the publisher of the now-banned daily Salaam, pointed out that the reformists had made former Prime Minister Mussavi their candidate in 2009.

“Now we should renounce our support in order to participate in the election so that they can repeat the same story? What kind of political logic would allow us to do this?” he asked, adding that that he is opposed to the view that reformists should participate in the election at any cost.

One well-known reformist who did not want to be identified told IPS that the Leader and his close advisors don’t believe the country is facing such a serious crisis that they need reformists’ participation in the election as a means to enhance the legitimacy of the regime and promote national unity in the face of external pressures.

“They only need the people we can bring to the polls and not us. Why should we then place our votes in their pockets?” he said.

Khatami himself has ignored demands on him to renounce his support for the 2009 protests and has instead, along with former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, called repeatedly for a free and fair election.

In doing so, he has chosen to ignore Leader Khamenei’s criticism of “those who keep saying” that elections must be free. “In which country elections are freer than Iran? Be careful your words do not discourage people from participating in elections,” Khameni has warned.

Khatami reacted to the Leader’s criticism by saying that a free election simply means an election which is not engineered in advance for the purpose of achieving specific results.

“They say we will not give permission; you should participate in the election but only the way we want you to,” Khatami scoffed in a recent meeting with a reformist party.

Still, Khatami has remained vocal and has used the pre-election political environment to repeatedly sound the message that the reformists have not gone away and remain an important voice for articulating unmet needs and demands for political and social reform in the country.

These demands for a more open political and cultural environment tells Abbas Abdi, a well-known reformist journalist, that reformists should do as they did in the 1997 presidential election when Khatami’s surprise victory shocked the conservative establishment.

“Our understanding should be that there is an election, and we should participate in it. In all likelihood, we will not receive a lot of votes but maybe we will,” Abdi stated in an interview with the daily Etemaad.

A university professor who asked not to be identified was even more sanguine. “Even if there is no hope in the benevolence of the Leader, there must be hope in his limitations,” he told IPS.

Pointing to Khamenei’s aversion to being seen as interfering in the political process, the professor believes that, “Between Khamenei’s pretense of impartiality and hidden interventions, a space is created for the activities of political groups, including the reformists.”

As of now, however, it is not clear whether the reformists believe such a space exists and, if it does, whether they will even be allowed to try to seize it.

This week’s arrests of more than a dozen of young journalists who mostly work for reformist dailies and weeklies may be an omen that the traditionally more open pre-election environment may not be repeated this time.

While the charges against these journalists have not yet been announced, indications are that their arrests are not for their writings and relate to their alleged illegal contacts with “anti-revolutionary” Persian-language media outside of Iran.

The move suggests that the current political establishment in Iran remains highly sensitive and continues to treat the reformists not as competitors with different domestic and foreign policy outlooks but as a security challenge to the survival of the Islamic regime.

Former political prisoners of Indonesia's anti-communist purge live together in Jakarta, shunned by society. Credit: Alexandra Di Stefano Pironti/IPS

By Alexandra Di Stefano Pironti
JAKARTA, Oct 27 2012 (IPS)

If the caste system existed in Indonesia the 10 elderly people who live in Jakarta’s Kramat Street would surely be untouchables: for decades they and their families have been banned from jobs and access to education and, until 2005, their identity cards marked them as former political prisoners.

They are survivors of the 1965-66 military crackdown on the now outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), during which time between 500,000 and three million people were massacred and thousands tortured and imprisoned without trial.

Ostracised since General Suharto ousted independence leader Sukarno in 1965 and began a 32-year dictatorship marked by anti-communist zeal, the former prisoners interviewed by IPS at the old two-story villa in downtown Jakarta offered a string of traumatic tales that give but a glimpse into a blood-soaked chapter of Indonesian history that many have chosen to forget.

Pak Rosidi, an 86-year-old former agricultural engineer who graduated from the University of New England in Australia, recalled in perfect English the horrors he suffered until 1980 in the notorious detention camp of Baru Island, where a recent investigation uncovered conditions that had amounted to slavery.

“I was dismissed from my job at the Department of Agriculture in 1970 and arrested because I was Sukarnist, not a communist,” he said.

“I am speechless about my years in prison. I was beaten, and continuously electrocuted for three hours at a time during those years,” the soft-spoken Rosidi recounted.

“I had three children and I was married before I went to jail, but my wife rejected me when I returned,” he added.

Strained family ties are a common theme in the stories of former prisoners, at a time when fear pushed children to turn against their parents in a bid to escape a life of discrimination.

Like many others, Rosidi faced difficulties making a living after jail because his identity card was marked  ‘Ex Tapol’ (former prisoner). That barred people like him from decent jobs, and banned them from careers in law, politics and the military.  Their children were denied access to university education.

Ibu Snanto, now 85 and a housemate of Pak Rosidi, was in jail from 1966 to 1975 because her husband was a communist party member.

“My husband was the communist and I was only a housewife, but they arrested me and I was often electrocuted and sexually abused.  I suffer from heart problems and trauma because of those years,” she told IPS.

The massacres started against the backdrop of the Cold War on Oct. 1, 1965, when a group inside the armed forces calling itself the ‘Thirtieth of September Movement’ kidnapped and killed six senior army generals, allegedly to prevent a coup against Sukarno, who was sympathetic to the PKI.

How many were killed and tortured, and the number who were imprisoned or are still alive, is not clear.

“We have spent two years of inquiry to find the numbers of people killed, but we cannot conduct validation. We haven’t had help from military officials,” Nur Kholis, a senior executive of the official Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), told IPS.

In the first official report of its kind – released last July and based on interviews with 349 former prisoners – Komnas HAM acknowledged that ”gross human rights violations” had taken place during the purge, including “murder, slavery, torture, sexual abuse, disappearances, cleansing, forced displacement and persecution.”

The report recommends that the government of Indonesia, the world’s most-populous Muslim nation, launch a national reconciliation process, and that the attorney general prosecute those found to be responsible for the crimes.

Kholis recounted to IPS the story of a witness in South Sumatra island who saw army soldiers push 100 half-starved prisoners into the sea.

He also recounted the tale of a woman survivor in the city of Medan in North Sumatra island who was forced to lie down naked while soldiers pushed bunches of lit matches into her vagina.

Details of the anti-communist massacres are not found in Indonesian schoolbooks, and communism remains banned to this day. As recently as 2008, police summoned a group of artists in Bali to court for using symbols of the communist party during an exhibition.

Although Indonesia started its path to democracy in 1998 after Suharto was ousted as president, the current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, also a retired army general, has also been reluctant to re-open old wounds.

Meanwhile, the 10 former prisoners living on Kramat Street want nothing more than to have their names cleared of any wrongdoing.

“I want the stigma to be taken off us and a recognition that the government says that we are good people,” 87-year old Ibu Pujiati, who spent 14 years in jail after 1965 for being a labour activist, told IPS.

Australian university professor Robert Cribb, who has written extensively about Indonesia’s recent history, believes that the government’s refusal to acknowledge the suffering of victims has had a  “profound effect” on the former prisoners.

“They have not only suffered discrimination, but they have been portrayed as unreliable citizens. Things that they believed in have been portrayed as evil,” Cribb told IPS.

The biggest Muslim organisation in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), whose members took part in the persecution and killing of suspected communists alongside the military, believes that the former prisoners are best forgotten.

“They should not look for compensation. The conflict should be forgotten,” As’ad Said Ali, a senior NU official, told IPS.

He justified the killings and persecution as “human nature,” saying the massacres were driven by “revenge” for previous deadly conflicts between the PKI and NU.

“We don’t like revenge because everything depends on God, but we want official rehabilitation for all of us,” said former prisoner Ibu Snanto, eliciting nods from fellow victims at the Kramat Street home.

The poetry of former prisoner Putu Oka Sukanta succinctly paints those years as a time “when human life was as cheap as a gutter rat’s.”

Seventy-three-year-old Sukanta describes Leftists as being “hunted down by hungry dogs”. Although never tried, he was jailed for 10 years for belonging to the cultural organisation Lekra, which was affiliated to the communist party.

(END)