Starting Points: authoritarian rule

Showing posts with label authoritarian rule. Show all posts

Jun 19, 2010

In Eritrea, the Young Dream of Leaving

AMMAN, Jordan — Long before he learned to dunk on warped wooden backboards, Awet Eyob nursed a dream: to play basketball in America.

He is 6-foot-8, built like an oak tree, and seems to have mastered a behind-the-back dribble and crisp passes from the corner of his eye.

But one big problem stood between him and his dream: his homeland, Eritrea, an isolated, secretive nation in the Horn of Africa that is refusing to let its young people leave.

Eritrea, which fought its way to independence nearly 20 years ago, is ruled by hard-as-nails former guerrilla fighters who have held firm to their revolutionary Marxist policies and who demand that all young people work for the government, sometimes until their 40s. Anyone who tries to buck this national program, according to human rights groups, is subject to cruelly inventive tortures.

So this January, in great secrecy, Mr. Awet gathered four pairs of boxers, two pairs of socks, his high school transcript, his Air Jordans and some cash to pay a gang of human traffickers (or coyotes, as he calls them).

“I remember that first call,” he said. “The coyote said: ‘Hello, this is Sunshine.’ I answered, ‘This is Thunder.’ ”

Mr. Awet, 20, who is now living in Amman, Jordan, is the embodiment of Eritrea’s lost generation. This tiny country is spawning more refugees per capita than just about anywhere else in the world, according to United Nations statistics, and most of them are young men, and often the country’s most promising ones at that.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says that hundreds of thousands of people have fled Eritrea in recent years — the total population is less than five million — and nearly every day, 100 new Eritreans risk their lives to cross into Sudan.

The New York Times

Hundreds of thousands have fled Eritrea in recent years.

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Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

Many young Eritreans complain of being chained to government jobs in Asmara.

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Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

Mr. Awet, 20, fled Eritrea and is now staying in an American family’s home in Amman, below. He hopes to get into an American college or prep school.

Some of these defections have been hard to miss. In December, more than 10 players from the Eritrean national soccer team absconded to Kenya during a tournament. In 2004, some Eritrean refugees being sent home from Libya were so desperate not to return that they hijacked the plane.

Many never make it out. One of Mr. Awet’s friends recently won a four-year, $200,000 scholarship to a prestigious American university. “He should have been sent out with a garland of flowers,” said the boy’s father, with tears in his eyes.

Instead, the boy was arrested trying to defect in time to register for classes. He was drafted into the military and deployed near Eritrea’s southern border, one of the hottest places on earth.

Mr. Awet was lucky. Dressed in an extra, extra large gallebeyah (a long flowing gown common in the Muslim world), he sneaked through Sudan and then on to Kenya and Dubai. He is now camped out in the basement of an American family’s home here, doing push-ups, working on his jump shot, playing on a Wii set with the family’s children and trying to get into an American college or prep school.

A big reason why he has gotten this far is Matthew Smith, a gregarious, athletic American diplomat who befriended Mr. Awet a couple years ago on a basketball court in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, where Mr. Smith was working. Mr. Smith was impressed by the young man’s game, but more than that, he was moved by Mr. Awet’s burning ambition to break out of his hermetically sealed world.

“He wanted more, and I could relate to that,” said Mr. Smith, whose father was a taxi driver in Brooklyn. “Who would’ve ever thought the kid of a cabbie and nanny could be a diplomat?”

Mr. Smith matched up Mr. Awet with an American basketball coach in Amman who is now training him.

“His skills were better than I expected,” said the coach, Robert Taylor, who was sitting next to Mr. Awet on a stack of exercise mats in a high school gym. “No offense, Awet, but Eritrea isn’t exactly known for its basketball.”

If Eritrea is especially well-known for anything these days, it is for being a troublemaker in a very volatile neighborhood. The nation has been accused of invading Djibouti in 2008 and fueling chaos in Somalia by arming insurgent groups, prompting sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

But Eritrea has a proud history, fighting a grueling 30-year guerrilla war to break away from Ethiopia.

Mr. Awet’s name, in fact, means victory. He was born at home, by candlelight, in February 1990, on the eve of independence, right after a legendary battle.

He was always big. He was selected to play for the national basketball team when he was 15, and earned the nickname King A. By Eritrean standards, he had an enviable life, with a wealthy merchant father, good grades and a touch of fame.

But Dan Franch, his high school literature teacher, could tell he was not happy.

“I knew he wanted to leave, and I didn’t blame him,” Mr. Franch said. “This place is becoming inert. You encourage students to apply to college overseas but their chances of going are one in a gazillion.”

On the surface, life for young Eritreans does not look so bad. Asmara is littered with chrome-lined Art Deco cafes where young people sip cappuccinos and munch on pizza. But many young people complain (quietly) of being chained to dead-end government jobs. By law, mandatory national service is supposed to last 18 months. In reality, it is often indefinite, and few can get permits to exit the country until they are done serving. The government justifies this because of a highly militarized, unresolved border dispute with its neighbor, Ethiopia, nearly 20 times its size.

Mr. Awet says he probably will not see his parents for years because now that he has escaped, it will be dangerous to go back home.

At night, when he cannot sleep, he takes out a tiny prayer book his mother gave him — the cover is literally the size of a postage stamp — and thinks of her. Or he stretches out on a single bed with his feet nearly dangling off, listening to rap songs on his MP3 player and nurturing his dream.

“I used to dream about the money and the cars and the girls,” he sings. “But now I see, because I’m sitting on top of the world.”

Apr 4, 2010

The Public Editor - Censored in Singapore - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

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By CLARK HOYT

LAST month, on the same day The New York Times praised Google for standing up to censorship in China, a sister newspaper, The International Herald Tribune, apologized to Singapore’s rulers and agreed to pay damages because it broke a 1994 legal agreement and referred to them in a way they did not like.

The rulers had sued for defamation 16 years ago, saying a Herald Tribune Op-Ed column had implied that they got their jobs through nepotism. The paper wound up paying $678,000 and promising not to do it again. But in February, it named Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister, and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister now, in an Op-Ed article about Asian political dynasties.

After the Lees objected, the paper said its language “may have been understood by readers to infer that the younger Mr. Lee did not achieve his position through merit. We wish to state clearly that this inference was not intended.” The Herald Tribune, wholly owned by The New York Times Company, apologized for “any distress or embarrassment” suffered by the Lees. The statement was published in the paper and on the Web site it shares with The Times.

Some readers were astonished that a news organization with a long history of standing up for First Amendment values would appear to bow obsequiously to an authoritarian regime that makes no secret of its determination to cow critics, including Western news organizations, through aggressive libel actions. Singapore’s leaders use a local court system in which, according to Stuart Karle, a former general counsel of The Wall Street Journal, they have never lost a libel suit.

The notion that it could be defamatory to call a political family a dynasty seems ludicrous in the United States, where The Times has routinely applied the label to the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Clintons. But Singapore is a different story.

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Lee Kuan Yew once testified, according to The Times, that he designed the draconian press laws to make sure that “journalists will not appear to be all-wise, all-powerful, omnipotent figures.” Four years ago, The Times quoted his son as saying, “If you don’t have the law of defamation, you would be like America, where people say terrible things about the president and it can’t be proved.”

Steven Brostoff of Arlington, Va., wondered whether The Times had other agreements like the one with the Lees, and asked, “What conclusions should we draw about how news coverage from these countries is slanted?” Zeb Raft of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, asked if The Times was admitting that certain world leaders “deserve to be treated with deference. This is the implication of the apology.”

George Freeman, a Times Company lawyer, said the 1994 agreement was the only one he knew about and that it applied only to The Herald Tribune. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said, “Nobody in this company has ever told me what our reporters can write — or not write — about Singapore.” He said the Times newsroom has no agreements with any government about what can be reported. “We don’t work that way.”

Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page, said, “If we have something that needs to be said on the editorial or Op-Ed pages, on any subject, we will say it, clearly and honestly.”

That is what the late William Safire did on the Op-Ed page in 2002, when he criticized Bloomberg News for “kowtowing to the Lee family” by apologizing for an article about the elevation of the younger Lee’s wife to run a state-owned investment company. Bloomberg, he said, had “just demeaned itself and undermined the cause of a free online press.”

Safire wrote that he took “loud exception” in 1994 when The Herald Tribune, then owned jointly by the Times Company and The Washington Post Company, “cravenly caved” over an article by Philip Bowring — the same Hong Kong-based columnist who sparked last month’s dust-up. “I doubt such a sellout of principle will happen again.”

Richard Simmons was the president of The Herald Tribune in 1994 and authorized the agreement that was broken last month — an “undertaking” by the company’s lawyers to prevent a repetition of the language that offended the Lees. “We had, in my view, no choice,” he said. “What the American media absolutely refuse to recognize is Singapore operates on a different set of legal rules than does the United States.” He said Western news organizations can accept the legal system there or leave.

For The Herald Tribune and all the other news organizations that have paid damages to Singapore’s rulers (The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloomberg) or had their circulation limited there (Time, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Economist), the choice has been to stay.

Singapore is tiny, with a population of around five million, but it has outsized economic power as a financial hub, making it an important source of news. For The Herald Tribune, the economic stakes are large: more than 10 percent of its Asian circulation is in Singapore. It prints papers there that are distributed throughout the region. It sells advertising to companies throughout Asia that want to reach readers in Singapore.

“If you want to be a global paper, it has lots of banks, lots of commerce, a highly educated, English-speaking population,” said Karle. “It’s hard to turn your back on that.”

Faced with this predicament when the Lees objected to the article last month, The Herald Tribune apologized and paid up — $114,000 — before it was even sued. Karle said the paper could have spent a million dollars for a worse result in court: forced to pay higher damages and make a more humiliating apology.

But settling the way it did has its own price. Roby Alampay, the executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, told Agence France-Presse, “This continuing line of major media organizations too quick to offer contrition and money is a sad sight and a persisting insult on legitimate journalism, fair commentary, free speech and the rights that Singaporeans deserve.”

Safire told The American Journalism Review in 1995 that the world’s free press should unite and pull out of Singapore in the face of any new libel action. I think that is what should happen too, but it never has.

That leaves the Times Company with its own choice if another challenge arises. “Singapore is an important market for The International Herald Tribune,” the company told me in a statement. “There are more than 12,000 I.H.T. readers who shouldn’t be deprived of the right to read the paper in print or online. In addition, getting kicked out of Singapore would also make it more difficult for others in the region to get the I.H.T. since we print in Singapore for distribution there and in the neighboring areas.”

Google faced a similar painful dilemma in China. With potentially billions of dollars at risk, it stuck to its principles, and The Times applauded editorially. I think Google set an example for everyone who believes in the free flow of information.

E-mail: public@nytimes.com.

Feb 26, 2010

Organization of American States report rebukes Venezuela on human rights

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By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 25, 2010; A10

The human rights branch of the Organization of American States issued a blistering 300-page report Wednesday against Venezuela, saying that the oil-rich country run by President Hugo Chávez constrains free expression, the rights of its citizens to protest and the ability of opposition politicians to function.

The report, compiled and written by the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, reflects growing concern in the region over how one of the organization's member states is governed. The document holds legitimacy for human rights investigators and diplomats because it has the imprimatur of the commission, which is run independently from the OAS and largely free of its political machinations.

"This is a professional report, and the commission has been progressively more critical about Chávez over the years," said Michael Shifter, an analyst who tracks Venezuela for the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "There's a growing sense of the greater risks of human rights abuses and authoritarianism in Venezuela."

The commission has in the past issued major reports about serious violations in a number of countries, notably targeting the military junta in 1970s-era Argentina and the quasi-dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in Peru.

Chávez has railed against the OAS as beholden to the interests of the United States. Venezuela declined to cooperate with the commission, its members said, prompting commissioners -- jurists and rights activists from Antigua, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and the United States -- to hold hearings and seek out Venezuelan activists and politicians to compile information about the suspected abuses.

The report asserts that the state has punished critics, including anti-government television stations, demonstrators and opposition politicians who advocate a form of government different from Chávez's, which is allied with Cuba and favors state intervention in the economy.

The report outlines how, after 11 years in power, Chávez holds tremendous influence over other branches of government, particularly the judiciary. Judges who issue decisions the government does not like can be fired, the report says, and hundreds of others are in provisional posts where they can easily be removed.

The commission said some adversaries of the government who have been elected to office, such as Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, have seen their powers usurped by Chávez.

"The threats to human rights and democracy are many and very serious, and that's why we published the report," Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, a member of the commission who specializes in Venezuela, said by phone from his home in Brazil.

Chávez did not have an immediate response to the report. But in a phone interview Wednesday morning, Roy Chaderton, Venezuela's ambassador to the OAS, said the commission had become a "confrontational political actor instead of an advocate for defending human rights."

Chaderton said the commission had shown support for a failed 2002 coup against Chávez -- an accusation denied by the commission -- and charged that its members had dedicated themselves to weakening progressive social movements in Latin America. "They have become a mafia of bureaucrats who want to play a bigger role in the efforts against Venezuela's government," Chaderton said.

The commission, in compiling the report, incorporated responses from Venezuelan authorities to written questions. The government says it permits protests and opposition groups, while focusing much of its energy on improving Venezuelans' standard of living.

Pinheiro said the commission recognized the government's progress in areas such as reducing poverty. But Pinheiro said that there can be "no trade-off" between political and economic progress. He said the commission's hope is that the Venezuelan government will make improvements based on the report's recommendations.

"This report, instead of isolating Venezuela, is a call for Venezuela to come on board," Pinheiro said.

Others who track developments in Venezuela, though, said Chávez is prone to a disproportionate response when criticized. After releasing a critical report about Chávez two years ago, José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, and a fellow investigator for the group were detained at their Caracas hotel and escorted by armed agents onto a Brazil-bound flight.

"It would be nice to think the Chávez government would pay attention to the report," Vivanco said. But he noted that the president had "responded to all such criticism by attacking its critics, often using conspiracy theories and far-fetched allegations to distract attention from their own human rights practices."

Oct 9, 2009

Egyptian Pro-Reform Activists Say U.S. Commitment Is Waning - washingtonpost.com

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By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 9, 2009

MAHALLAH AL-KOBRA, Egypt -- Four months after President Obama delivered an address from Cairo in which he voiced American commitment to human rights and the rule of law, concern is mounting among Egypt's pro-reform activists that the United States is abandoning its long-standing efforts to bring democratic reforms to the Arab world's most populous nation.

Since the speech, Egyptian security forces have launched a fresh campaign against the banned Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamist opposition group, arbitrarily arresting hundreds of members, from young bloggers to senior leaders. The government has prevented a centrist opposition movement from legally becoming a political party. In this Nile Delta industrial city, the epicenter of recent worker strikes, the government has appeared unresponsive to labor concerns -- or is cracking down.

"We are very disgruntled with President Obama," said Kamal al-Fayoumi, a labor leader who was jailed by the government for launching a major strike last year. "He has given the regime the green light to do what it wants with the Egyptian people."

U.S. pressure for democratic reforms in Egypt, once effective, waned in the final years of the Bush administration. But critics charge that the pressure has significantly eased at a time when Egypt is nearing a crucial political transition: The presidential election is set for 2011, and speculation is rife that incumbent Hosni Mubarak, 81, will anoint son Gamal as his successor before the election, raising fears that the regime will undemocratically extend its 28-year-old rule.

"We may have changed tactics, but our commitment to democracy and human rights promotion in Egypt is steadfast," a U.S. Embassy official said in an e-mailed response to questions. Senior American officials will continue to raise these issues in meetings with Egyptian counterparts, the official added.

The frustrations have been compounded by sharp cuts in U.S. funding for democracy programs in Egypt as much as by the Obama administration's soft tone and warmer relationship with the Mubarak government. Activists say Obama's middle-ground approach could have significant repercussions in a region dominated by autocrats, who respond only to pressure.

"His reduced talk of democracy is giving these non-democratic regimes the security that they won't face pressure. And that's having a negative impact on democracy in the Arab world," said Ayman Nour, a prominent opposition politician.

Today, the Obama administration is increasingly relying on Egypt to jump-start the Arab-Israeli peace process and to contain pro-Iran radical groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Obama has met with Mubarak three times, reestablishing Egypt's position as a key strategic ally in the Arab world. This marks a significant departure from the Bush administration, during which tensions between Washington and Cairo raged over U.S. policies in the Middle East, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and American criticism of Egypt's political and human rights record.

The clearest indication yet of the U.S. shift is the funding cuts, activists say. Last year, the United States allocated $54.8 million for democracy programs, of which $27.85 million went to civil society programs, the nexus of grass-roots activism for democracy. This year, the funding has shrunk to $20 million, of which $5 million went to civil society groups. The cuts were made by the Bush administration; for 2010, the Obama administration has allocated $25 million, an increase from this year's funding but still well below the 2008 figure. The U.S. Embassy official said an additional $4 million in funding for civil society groups would come from other sources.

Although the Bush administration's policies were largely reviled across the Arab world, many Egyptians credit them with ushering in some political reforms. Under U.S. pressure, Egypt held its first contested presidential election. Independent newspapers, Web sites and blogs flourished.

"The truth is it was pressure by George Bush that brought political reforms and political mobilization," said Ibrahim Issa, a columnist and government critic who was jailed for writing that Mubarak was ill.

Senior Egyptian officials openly admit they prefer Obama to Bush.

"He is not interfering in the domestic affairs of countries," said Ali Eddin Helal, a top spokesman for the ruling National Democratic Party. "He's not trying to achieve objectives through confrontation or pressure, but through brokering and reconciliation."

Nour, the opposition politician, was a beneficiary of American pressure. Criticism of the regime mounted after he was jailed on unsubstantiated fraud charges in the wake of the 2005 election. He was freed this year. The release was widely seen as a bid by Mubarak to improve relations with the Obama administration -- and to send a signal that any U.S. pressure would be counterproductive.

In an interview, Nour shook his head when asked whether he thought the Obama administration would apply similar pressure if the government were to jail him again.

"They are focused on Israel," Nour said. "They believe the current regime works, so they shouldn't take any risks."

Others sense a growing fatigue. "The Americans, I think, are fed up with the Egyptians," said Anwar E. el-Sadat, the nephew of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and an opposition leader. "They have been spending millions promoting democracy, and nothing happened."

The government, meanwhile, is escalating its crackdown. On Saturday, 16 Muslim Brotherhood members were detained on charges of violating a law that requires government approval to hold a political gathering.

The Muslim Brotherhood's opposition to U.S. policies in the Middle East, as well as its popularity, ultimately helped to doom the Bush administration's push for political reforms. American officials worried that the Islamists could one day replace Mubarak if democracy took root.

Many activists fear that the Obama administration feels the same way -- and will legitimize what many expect will be Gamal Mubarak's ascendancy in a nation that has never experienced a democratic transfer of power.

"We were hoping Obama would be different than other U.S. administrations," said Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights. "But America is concerned more about stability than democracy."

Aug 9, 2009

General Calls for Mousavi, Khatami, Karroubi Prosecution

As Iran moves to squelch opposition to the disputed June presidential election, the stage has been set for the judiciary to try two defeated candidates and a former president.

A senior official with Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on Sunday accused Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two defeated candidates whose supporters took to the streets to protest the official vote result, as well as former President Mohammad Khatami of inciting the unrest.

Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, head of the IRGC's political bureau, said it was absolutely vital to defend the integrity of the 30-year-old Islamic Revolution amidst a “Western-backed plot to topple the government through a 'velvet coup',” the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Monday.

"The question is who were the main plotters and agents of this coup. What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi and Karroubi in this coup?" he wrote in an article in the weekly IRGC journal.

The official outcome of the presidential vote, which saw President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad win by a massive margin, provoked unprecedented, widespread protests.

The crackdown against the street demonstrations resulted in the arrest of thousands of opposition figures, protesters and journalists -- who have been put on trial on charges of plotting to topple the government --, and the deaths of at least 30 people.

During their hearings in the Revolutionary Court, many of the defendants have confessed to aiding foreign countries in the post-vote developments.

Iranian authorities blame world powers, particularly Britain and the US, for the turmoil, and accuse them of instigating the unrest in line with staging a “velvet revolution” in the country.

The trials have raised the ire of the opposition with their public symbols, Mousavi and Khatami, terming the prosecution as a “sham” and claiming the confessions were extracted under torture.

However, the IRGC official believes the affirmation of guilt can be used by the judiciary to convict those who are truly to blame for the “failed coup.”

“If Mousavi, Khatami, [Ayatollah Mohammad] Mousavi Khoeiniha (Iran's prosecutor general after the victory of the revolution in 1979) and Karroubi are the main suspects believed to have been behind the velvet coup in Iran, which they are, we expect the judiciary ... to go after them, arrest them, put them on trial and punish them according to the law,” Javani was quoted by IRNA as saying.

The remarks also echo increasing pressure by the ruling system on the opposition who alleges that the June 12 election was rigged and continues to defy the result.

The vote, hailed by President Ahmadinejad and the Guardian Council, the body tasked with overseeing elections, as the “healthiest” vote in the history of the Revolution, has also presented an influential critic.

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the head of the Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Council, has denounced the government's handling of the controversy over the election and urged officials to release the protesters still in custody.

However, Rafsanjani, who is to deliver a sermon at the Tehran University prayer hall on Friday, has been harshly criticized for his stance by supporters of President Ahmadinejad and a number of officials in the Principlist camp.

An Iranian lawmaker, Nasrollah Torbai, on Sunday moved to quiet the criticism by boasting the credentials of Ayatollah Rafsanjani and the leaders of the opposition.

“It has taken years and a vast amount of political capital has been spent on the likes of Mousavi, Hashemi-[Rafsanjani], Khatami, Karroubi and [Hojjatoleslam Ali-Akbar] Nateq-Nouri to grow and serve the Revolution,” Torabi was quoted by Parleman News website as saying.

“Why is it that the trust of the people is not regarded as the most valuable treasure in the country?” he queried.

Ayatollah Rafsanjani had said during his Friday Prayers sermon on July 17 that the ambiguities surrounding the presidential election had led to the distrust of the Iranian nation in the establishment.

"Doubt has been created," he said. "There are two currents; one has no doubt and is moving ahead. And the other is a large portion of the wise people who say they have doubts. We need to take action to remove this doubt."

MD/HGH