Der Spiegel: The case of Alexei Navalny – How Russia is destroying the Council of Europe

Navalny’s health is deteriorating rapidly. Is Russia’s president letting his most important opponent die in custody? If the Council of Europe does not act now, it will make itself superfluous.

Hardly anyone shaped post-war Europe as much as the Frenchman Pierre-Henri Teitgen. And hardly anyoneis so forgotten today.

Teitgen fought in the resistance against Hitler. He was arrested by the Gestapo and narrowly escaped the concentration camps. After 1945, he rose to become France’s Minister of Information and Justice under de Gaulle and helped found the daily newspaper “Le Monde”.

Above all, Teitgen was one of the initiators of the Council of Europe, an association of European states whose most important body is the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.

A question of life and death

The Holocaust was on Teitgen’s mind all his life. “Democracies do not become Nazi states overnight,” he said. “Evil spreads cunningly. Step by step, freedoms are suppressed.”

Teitgen and his comrades-in-arms wanted to ensure that such a catastrophe would not happen again in Europe. The Council of Europe was supposed to prevent democracies from turning into dictatorships. It is one of the great achievements of the post-war period. Now, however, it is about to become irrelevant.

Although the number of members in the Council of Europe has grown from ten to 47 in recent decades, many states no longer feel bound by its word. Russia, in particular, is systematically undermining the body.

The Kremlin, like all other Council members, has officially committed itself to implementing ECHR rulings. In reality, however, it mostly ignores them. For a long time, this was a nuisance for the Council of Europe. Now it is a matter of life and death.

Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, has repeatedly appealed to the ECHR, a total of twenty times, more than any other citizen. As recently as February, the ECHR ordered that Navalny be immediately released from prison in Russia. However, the Russian regime has defied this ruling as well.

Everything depends on Germany

Navalny, who only last summer narrowly survived a poisoning by the Russian secret service, has since gone on hunger strike. His health has deteriorated dramatically. His lawyers warn that he could die any day.

The Europeans have a number of options to influence Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. They could impose sanctions against his regime, Germany could stop the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline.

But the Council of Europe in particular has seldom been so challenged. It must exert pressure on Moscow. The „European Stability Initiative“ (ESI), a think tank based in Berlin, shows how.

In a recent paper, Gerald Knaus’s experts at ESI argue that the Council of Europe could issue an ultimatum to Russia with a two-thirds majority in the Committee of Ministers. If the Kremlin does not release Navalny, Russia could be temporarily expelled from the Council of Europe. It would be a sign that Europeans are not willing to accept Russia’s internal and external aggression without further action.

Germany is now likely to be the main player in the dispute with Moscow. The German government still holds the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe until the end of May. In a speech to the Council of Europe on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to stand up for Navalny. „We are very worried,“ she said.

Interview in Die Welt: “Moscow wants to show that everything can be bought”

This interview originally appeared in German in Die Welt: „Moskau will zeigen, dass alles käuflich ist“.

Migration researcher and rule of law expert Gerald Knaus calls for Russia to be expelled from the Council of Europe over Alexei Navalny’s imprisonment if the opposition leader is not released. In an interview, he explains what Europe must do in its dealings with Russia.

Gerald Knaus is best known as the “architect” of the refugee agreement between the EU and Turkey. However, the chairman of the Berlin think tank European Stability Initiative (ESI) has for years also been writing about deficits in the rule of law in Eastern Europe, for example in Poland and Hungary. For him, Russia is an extreme case of the departure from democratic values that can also be observed in other European countries. He calls for “drawing a red line” in dealing with Russia in order to stand up for the credibility of the European Convention on Human Rights’ values.

WELT: Mr Knaus, Russia has massed its troops on the Ukrainian border, put opposition activist Alexei Navalny in a penal colony, and denied him medical treatment. Washington has threatened Moscow with consequences, but Brussels and European capitals have contented themselves with admonitions. These excesses on their own doorstep seem to interest Europeans little. Why is that?

Gerald Knaus: The EU is divided. Some governments see Russian threats to their European neighbours as too unimportant to affect their own interests. So threats are played down, even the massing of troops to intimidate a neighbour. Other EU governments perceive themselves as powerless. This alleged powerlessness is fast becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are responsible options for action, even now.

WELT: There are already EU sanctions against Russia because of the Ukraine War. You suggest threatening Moscow with expulsion from the Council of Europe because of the Navalny affair. Do you think Putin will be impressed by that?

Knaus: The first priority is to try saving Navalny’s life. In addition, no other European has turned to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg as often as he has, 20 times in ten years. The court has also repeatedly condemned Russia, but the effect of these judgements has been damning. Moscow systematically ignored them. Those who think the Council of Europe is pointless may accept that. But those who believe in the idea behind the oldest human rights organisation in Europe cannot want it to become a European UN, where even North Korea remains a member, no matter how it behaves.

WELT: That seems to be Moscow’s view of things. Wouldn’t a possible expulsion be more than a symbolic step?

Knaus: First of all, the Council of Europe should now make clear that if Navalny is not released within days, as the Court demanded, Russia’s membership will be suspended. Yes, this is also about symbols like those that once inspired dissidents like Sakharov and Havel, who repeatedly pointed out the gap between the human rights rhetoric of their regimes and their reality.

That is precisely what Russia wants to prevent in the Council of Europe. Moscow wants to show that these values, to which one could appeal, do not exist at all, that everything is for sale. For example, the Russian state has paid Navalny around 120,000 euros in compensation after ECHR rulings, but has not changed its policy. So, as a state, can you buy your way out of constant violations of fundamental rights, up to and including the assassination attempt by the secret service last summer? Or is there any behaviour where the credibility of the Council of Europe, the Human Rights Court, and the values behind it are at stake?

WELT: You rightly said that Europe is divided in its relationship with Russia. How can you convince Russia-friendly countries like Hungary or Austria to become more critical with Moscow?

Knaus: The EU can and will always have economic relations with states like Russia, Egypt, or China, and cooperate on foreign policy where there are common interests. But the Council of Europe is about fundamental values, not economic relations. According to its statutes, it is a club of democracies that remember their human rights obligations. Why are we allowing this institution to be destroyed by authoritarian countries exerting illegitimate influence there? Little Azerbaijan is doing it, as the recent affair of some in the CDU shows. We have to protect our institutions, show that we take their rules seriously. Otherwise we show that we are ready to sell our souls.

WELT: What do you think should happen with Nord Stream 2? This often criticised project defended by Germany is the prime example of the separation of the economy and human rights.

Knaus: Months ago, I pleaded with members of the Bundestag to use the pipeline to put pressure on Russia in consultation with neighbours like Poland or the Baltic states. For example, to say that the almost completed pipeline will only be finished if Moscow is prepared to join the EU in pressing for new elections in Belarus. But perhaps it is already too late for that. However, the idea of simply continuing to build the pipeline in view of the Kremlin’s actions in Belarus and now in Ukraine, as if nothing had happened, is another fatal signal from Berlin.

WELT: Russia keeps complaining that they want to build the common European home from Lisbon to Vladivostok, only the Europeans are opposed to it. How credible are such accusations?

Knaus: Of course Russia is a European country. Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco were also European but they would not have been admitted to the Council of Europe. There are states in Europe today that suspend human rights, the rights of minorities, the political opposition, the right to demonstrate. In the 1950s, however, there was no question of fascist Spain or the GDR joining the Council of Europe. It was known that elections in a democracy could not be equated with elections in the Soviet Union. Today, Russia in particular is trying to blur these differences. A strong Council of Europe with its court would stand in the way. Even the Soviet Union could join today’s Council of Europe.

WELT: What needs to happen for relations between Russia and Europe to improve?

Gerald Knaus: The first prerequisite is that Russia renounces foreign policy aggression. To this end, we must never give up the hope that great dissidents like Andrei Sakharov had even in the Soviet Union: that their country too will one day respect the values of the 1950 Human Rights Convention. For this to happen, however, we must protect the Convention now.

Fragility – autumn in a garden in Moscow (one year later)

A few thoughts, written one year ago in autumn in the sunny garden of the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, where I was then a visiting fellow.

The dark clouds of that moment – the sense of fragility of our institutions and norms and moral emotions – are very much more obvious today. Then was the moment of Willkommenskultur in Germany and Austria, a generous, emotional, fragile sense of possibility, that was real – perhaps my forebodings came from observing it from Russia, with sympathy and concern.

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27 September 2015 (Facebook)

(Sonntag, im Garten des Museums für Moderne Kunst in Moskau)

Wir sollte uns keinen Illusionen hingeben.

Das Recht auf Asyl – all die Konventionen, auf die wir uns heute noch berufen können, in Kommentaren oder vor Gerichten – verschwindet in dem Moment, in dem Mehrheiten das wollen. Oder in dem die Minderheiten, die das wollen strategischer vorgehen als die Verteidiger der Menschenrechte.

Das hat Orban gerade wieder gezeigt, unbestraft; seine “Asylverfahren” an der Grenze sind eine Farce, doch seine Zustimmung steigt.

Das zeigen uns seit Jahren andere Mitglieder des Europarates. Azerbaijan war Vorsitzender des Europarates, verhaftete alle Menschenrechtsaktivisten … wo war die Reaktion? (jenseits der Menschenrechtsorganisationen, die das Regime einfach ignoriert). Wo war der Europäische Menschenrechtsgerichtshof? Abgemeldet, vom Regime ignoriert, vollkommen ungestraft. Heute, wo wir ihn brauchen, ist der Europarat eine unglaubwürdige Institution. Wir haben diese Entwicklung ignoriert, weil viele dachten, das betrifft nur Autokraten im fernen Osten Europas. Das war ein großer Fehler. Einer von vielen der die Menschenrechte in Europa in Gefahr bringt.

Jede, auch die grundlegendste, Menschenrechtsnorm, ist ständig in Gefahr sich im Nichts aufzulösen, wenn der Rückhalt schwindet. (Die Folter wurde in Russland Anfang der 19 Jahrhunderts von einem russischen Zaren abgeschafft; wir wissen was später passierte …).

Orban weiß das: er hat das Ende des Kommunismus, mit allen seinen Normen, erlebt. Er weiß, dass alles Menschliche vergänglich ist. Nun erwartet er, dass dies auch für das europäische Bekenntnis zu Asyl gilt, wenn er nur die Angst vor Muslimen instrumentalisieren kann.

Wenn die Briten über einen Austritt aus dem Menschenrechtsgerichtshof laut nachdenken, ja, eine Regierungspartei damit Wahlkampf macht, und gewinnt, warum dann nicht Ungarn? Warum nicht Österreich, unter einem Bundeskanzler Strache? Was bleibt dann? Wenn mehr Regierungen wie Orban denken, wer verteidigt dann “europäische” Standards? Diese werden dann einfach umdefiniert. Darauf setzt er. Daran arbeitet er.

Diese Krise sieht er als eine große Gelegenheit. Und die, die nicht seiner Meinung sind – wie mächtig auch ihre Positionen, ob nun Bundeskanzlerin in Berlin oder Präsident der Kommission in Brüssel – setzen ihm derzeit nichts entgegen: keine Strategie, nur Hilflosigkeit. Oder Ärger. Das aber stört ihn nicht; im Gegenteil.

Die Situation ist brandgefährlich. Das “Ende der Scham”, der Moment in dem Menschenrechte grundsätzlich in Frage gestellt werden, sinnentleert werden, umdefiniert werden, betrifft längst nicht nur Azerbaijan oder Russland.

Das Fundament auf dem unsere Grundrechte stehen kann zerbrechen. Das ist schon oft geschehen in der europäischen Geschichte. Darum geht es in diesem Ringen heute.

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Journal of Democracy, Gerald Knaus, “Europe and Azerbaijan: The End of Shame” (July 2015)

Thomas de Waal on Leyla Yunus and the Heirs of Andrei Sakharov

Thomas de Waal is one of the leading experts in the world today on the Caucasus, author of “Black Garden, Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War” and “The Caucasus: An Introduction” and a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC.  He also knows all the key actors in the region for decades, including Leyla Yunus and her husband Arif, two of the most impressive intellectuals and human rights defenders in Europe today.  The fact that both are in jail in the Azerbaijan of Ilham Aliyev tells you almost everything you need to know about this regime.

Tom wrote the following essay as part of our advocacy effort to convince the European Parliament to give Leyla Yunus the 2014 Sakharov Prize. She is already among the top three, a huge honour and recognition of her work. The final decision will be taken later this week.

 

 

 

The Responsibility of a Politician: Leyla Yunus and the Heirs of Andrei Sakharov

Thomas de Waal

October 11, 2014

 In 1989 during some of the most tumultuous days of perestroika, Andrei Sakharov stood up in the Soviet Union’s first popularly elected parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, and called for the end of the monopoly on power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Sakharov was an influential voice, but also a lonely one, speaking amidst a cacophony of old Communist Party nomenklatura officials on the one hand and aspiring nationalists on the other.

At the same time, in the Soviet Union’s non-Russian republics, a few brave activists were inspired by the courage of Sakharov and others. They stepped forward and spoke out about the rights of their republics to win independence and achieve democracy.

These activists were strongest in the three Baltic republics and the three republics of the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In Azerbaijan, the struggle was especially difficult. The Communist Party apparatus clung tenaciously to power. The Popular Front of Azerbaijan had a radical nationalist wing that was ready to use violence. All the while the mutually suicidal conflict with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh was heating up.

A small band of academics and intellectuals in the city of Baku were the first to talk about democracy, the first to warn about the dangers of “provocations” and the first to speak up about the defence of the Armenian minority still living in Azerbaijan. They combined courage with intellectual insight about where their republic was heading.

Leyla Yunus, a young historian, was one of that band, together with her husband, Arif, also a historian and scholar. Yunus was one of the half-dozen founders of Azerbaijan’s Popular Front, an organization that modeled itself on the Popular Fronts of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, even as they knew how much harder the struggle was in their country.

As 1989 unwound, Leyla and her colleagues warned that two extremes–the dinosaurs of the Communist nomenklatura and the nationalist radicals–were feeding off one another in a dangerous game of bluff and provocation.

The sad culmination of these mutual provocations came in January 1990–Baku’s terrible “Black January” and the bloodiest episodes of Mikhail Gorbachev’s entire rule as Soviet leader. First the city’s remaining Armenians were subjected to pogroms and expulsion. Then Soviet tanks rolled in to the city, fired on apartment buildings and crushed demonstrators to death.

At the end of Black January, around 90 Armenians were dead and thousands had fled, 130 Azerbaijanis had been killed. Leyla Yunus spoke up again, this time in print. In an essay entitled  “The Degree of a Responsibility of a Politician,” published in the journal Istiklal in April 1990, she described the situation with devastating clarity.

In the essay, she begins by praising the bravery of those who stood in the streets to face down the tanks in Baku:

They stood with linked arms. “Freedom!” The word rang over Communist Street, which would soon lose its name, along with so much that lost its meaning that night. They did not step away from the path  of the armoured personnel carriers and tanks, whose tracks were already crimson with the blood of the people they had crushed on Tbilisi Avenue, Square of the XIth Red Army and other places. But even the bloodied tanks stopped before this never-before-seen unity. “Freedom!”

Yunus calls Moscow’s military intervention “red fascism”

Forty five years ago, practically unarmed–how much the armament campaign of 1941 cost us!–our people stopped the tanks of brown Fascism. On the night of January 20, the armour of red Fascism went through the streets of Baku–the very same Fascism which had crushed and overpowered the peoples of the Union after October 1917.

Until then, Leyla Yunus tells us, Azerbaijanis had been “lucky”–to a degree.

Our people saw this regime in April 1920 and experienced its charms most acutely in the 1930s. Fortunately, we did not meet the fate of the Crimean Tatars, Balkars or Volga Germans, who were deported wholesale in cattle cars to destruction. We did not lose our homeland as the Meskhetian Turks did. We did not lose a third of our population, as the Estonians did, we felt the famine of 1933-34 less than did Belarus or Ukraine. We were lucky enough to be spared Chernobyl. But all the rest that this prison-house order gave to our peoples we experienced to the full. Collectivization, the genocidal destruction of the intelligentsia, the economic theft of our riches, the transformation into a mono-cultural colony…

Only now, it seems, had Azerbaijanis woken up to the nature of the regime they lived under, but they should have known earlier…

Which of you, who threw away their Communist Party cards today, rejected the “Ruling and Guiding” Party in 1968 when our sons were sent to crush the Prague Spring? Which of you spoke out, when our boys were dispatched to Afghanistan?

Did it really have to take the rivers of blood spilled in beautiful Baku for every decent person to decide that it was morally unacceptable for him to stay in the ranks of a criminal party? There is an easy human explanation for this–it is one thing to hear and to know something, and another to see all the horror with your own eyes, to feel it on yourself. However, in my view, this epiphany which even today has come to too few people, came too late and cost us too much…

She rebukes the extreme nationalists of the Popular Front for fomenting hatred against Baku’s defenceless Armenians.

On January 13, on Freedom Square the rally was still continuing, and in the building opposite people were already assaulting Armenians. Woe, disgrace, dishonour came to our town.. The pogromshchik  has no nationality. The looter and murderer does not have the right to belong to any people…

And she warns against those who want to soak Azerbaijan’s movement for independence in blood.

The responsibility of a politician is comparable to the responsibility of a doctor. In both cases lack of professionalism leads to death and injury. And if someone writes, “Sacrifice cleanses the nation! You know how much we needed this cleansing… ” it is absolutely clear to me where this patriot-politician can lead us.

Why, in the name of a falsely understood unity of the nation should we march like a herd, behind first one, then another organization, behind this “father-leader” or behind another one?

But she still hopes for the release of political prisoners and the triumph of democracy:

My greatest desire is to see the Popular Front of Azerbaijan as a single powerful organization speaking out from a position of democracy, defending with the help of lawyers today with human rights organizations everyone who has been arrested.

I dream of an overwhelming victory by the democratic forces of the Azerbaijani people headed by the Popular Front of Azerbaijan in the elections.

Our tree of freedom will not bloom soon, and we need to water it with reason and not with a pool of blood.

Leyla Yunus’ essay was so powerful, clear-sighted and morally cogent that it persuaded hundreds of young Azerbaijanis to support the country’s Social Democratic Party, which became the most progressive and democratic part of the opposition.

Leyla Yunus subsequently briefly served in the Popular Front government of 1992-3, where she was a moderating influence. In 1993 former Soviet leader Heidar Aliev returned to power as president of independent Azerbaijan. In 1996 she founded the Institute of Peace and Democracy. The list of issues they worked on was dizzying: rule of law, defence of those arrested, national minorities, land-mines.  Later they founded Azerbaijan’s first women’s crisis center. In the mean time Arif Yunus was Azerbaijan’s foremost expert on a host of issues, including the plight of refugees and the rise of political Islam.

In recent years, under the presidency of Heidar Aliev’s son Ilham, Leyla and her colleagues were increasingly targeted by the authorities. They were called strident, aggressive and difficult. And they were.

In the past year, the situation in Azerbaijan has deteriorated rapidly. The old nomenklatura mindset is back in full force. The list of political prisoners Leyla Yunus compiled—now including her and Arif—has 98 names on it. Most of them are secular pro-Western activists. In April, Leyla and Arif Yunus were detained at the airport as they were about to board an international flight. They were hit with all sorts of ludicrous charges, most notably–and with the scariest echo of Soviet times– espionage on behalf of the enemy, the  Armenians.

In prison, Leyla Yunus, who has diabetes and other health problems, has been subjected to verbal and physical abuse. Arif Yunus, who has a heart condition, has been kept in complete isolation in the cells of the national security committee, the heir to the KGB.

For her commitment to European values and human rights, Leyla Yunus was nominated for the 2014 Sakharov Prize in the European Parliament. Her condition and her heroism were recognized by four heirs of Sakharov: three dissidents who had worked with Sakharov, Sergei Kovalyov, Lyudmila Alexeeva and Svetlana Gannushkina and by Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial.

In the same week, the Russian Ministry of Justice applied to have Memorial–Russia’s strongest human-rights organization and the winner of the 2009 Sakharov Prize–shut down.

In 1989 and 1990, these people had a vision, even as they recognized with the same clarity all the dangers that lay ahead, the narrow path that needed to be trod between different forces, if the former Soviet republics were to achieve European-style democracy.

Now, unfortunately, 25 years later, in both Russia and Azerbaijan some of the worst fears are coming to pass. That increases our responsibility to support people like Leyla Yunus and Memorial, as they are punished for having that vision.

 

Acting now on political prisoners – Six proposals for debate in Berlin

Today Monday, 2nd of June, at 4 pm in Berlin ESI, together with the German Federal Commissioner for Human Rights, organises  a public debate on the future of political prisoners in Europe. Our goal is to raise the awareness about this issue and about the current failure of international organisations. It is also to discuss concrete proposals on what to do next.

It certainly seems the right moment to focus on this issue. A few days ago I got a message from Leyla Yunus, one of Azerbaijan’s most respected human rights defenders:

“No support from CoE!

All of us hostages. procurator do not return our passports, which they took illegally!

Leyla”

 

Leyla Yunus Foto: Christian HassLeyla Yunus

 

We are hearing a lot from people already in prison in Azerbaijan about the economic hardships faced by their families as a result of their captivity. They also often rely on lawyers they cannot afford to pay and who therefore work pro bono, with a significant risk of later being harassed for this very work.

For all these reasons ESI and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee have put together a set of concrete proposals for discussion in Berlin. We will share it at the conference, discuss it more on Tuesday with leading practitioners, and then put it online after receiving more ideas. Here are some of these concrete ideas – an excerpt from our paper – for your feedback:


Introduction

In 2014 there are, once again, a growing number of people in Europe who are jailed for no other reason than for disagreeing with their government.

In Azerbaijan, we witness at this very moment a wave of repression against independent journalists, youth protesters, election observers, opposition leaders and Muslim believers, with many receiving long jail terms. In Russia, people who participated in peaceful protests in Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square after Vladimir Putin’s re-election in 2012 have received tough sentences. Many other activists and government critics have also been brought before the courts. Ukraine, until recently, held political prisoners. There are many political prisoners in Belarus.

Europe has the densest network of human rights NGOs in the world. All European states, with the exception of Belarus, are also members of the Council of Europe. They have thus signed and ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. They have committed themselves to respecting fundamental rights and freedoms. Belarus has accepted the human rights obligations of OSCE membership. But the problem persists, and is in fact getting much worse.

Proposal I: a European website on political prisoners

We propose to create a website on political prisoners in Europe, supported by a coalition of human rights NGOs. This could help focus and mobilise public attention.

The website would highlight all cases of people arrested for their views or on other politically motivated grounds in European countries.

In particular, it would include and consider as political prisoners for this project the following individuals, and make clear these sources:

–          all prisoners of conscience recognized by Amnesty International,

–          all presumed political prisoners identified by PACE rapporteurs,

–          all other relevant cases identified by reputable human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Article 19, as well as leading national human rights organisations, which have a methodology and resources and a definition to establish their lists.

Such a website would feature prisoners’ photos, biographies and information on developments in their cases. The aim would help raise awareness of political prisoners among the European public.

There might also be a separate section on alleged political prisoners. NGOs and human rights activists can submit information to the website administrator on who in their view should be included in this category and whose case would deserve to be looked at more closely. These would add pressure on the Council of Europe to find ways examine these prisoners’ cases and establish whether there are systemic patterns of politically motivated persecutions.

 

Proposal II: Effective support mechanisms for families

and lawyers of political prisoners

How can one most effectively mobilize support for families of political prisoners and their lawyers? What existing aid channels are there, and which organizations have already been involved? Where do gaps exists? Are there opportunities for better cooperation in raising the awareness of the need for support among different NGOs?

There appears to be a need for new support mechanisms, for ordinary people to contribute to them and for better ways to advertise them.

 

Proposal III: Establish a standing Expert Commission on Political Prisoners

The Council of Europe needs a new professional and credible mechanism to address the issue of political prisoners. The mechanism must be potentially applicable to any member state where a systemic pattern of repression is suspected. Its work must be compatible with the work of other institutions (the Court and rapporteurs) and complement their work. A new Expert Commission on Political Prisoners could meet both requirements.

The initiative for creating such a panel can come from the Secretary General or the Committee of Ministers. The panel then would be set up by the Committee of Ministers, which is authorized to set up “advisory and technical committees or commissions.”This would require a two-thirds majority of votes cast with a minimum of 24 votes in favour. No member state would have a veto. This panel would become active if one of the following Council of Europe institutions finds a systemic pattern of politically motivated repression!

The proposed panel on political prisoners could be composed of 3 to 7 experts. These should be former judges, presidents of national courts or senior human rights lawyers. . They would act in their individual capacity. The panel would receive necessary resources and a budget for travel, translation, legal aid, and other expenses.

Several institutions would have the right to independently appeal to this Expert Commission to begin work and examine the situation and cases in any country where they are suspecting systemic repression.

–          PACE rapporteurs of any committee; the president of PACE; or the PACE bureau.

A new PACE rapporteur on political prisoners could also ask the Commission to examine – with more resources than a rapporteur will ever have – whether there is a pattern of systemic repression, which would make his or her political work easier.

–          The Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights.

–          The Secretary General.

–          A number (to be determined) of member states of the Committee of Ministers

The commission’s work would consist of investigating individual cases in a quasi-judicial capacity, but not leading to legally binding judgements, to see if there is a systematic pattern of abuse. Suggestions for cases to examine would be submitted both by the Council of Europe’s own institutions and by local and international NGOs or human rights defenders.

The panel would select a limited number of pilot cases and examine them first. Then, it would complete draft opinions on whether these individuals are political prisoners according to the PACE 2012 definition and ask the authorities of the country for feedback. After this, it would finalize its opinions and set a reasonable deadline for the authorities to react by granting a release or retrial and carrying out reforms to stop systemic abuse of this kind.

After the deadline, either the Secretary General or a PACE rapporteur for political prisoners or the Commissioner for Human Rights should assess whether the authorities have acted on the findings of the experts.

If this is not the case, the Assembly and the Committee of Ministers should consider sanctions, including a boycott of official Council of Europe meetings in this country and loss of voting rights. Also, no such country would be able to assume the chairmanship of the Council of Europe as long as the situation is not resolved.

A similar panel of legal experts was already successfully used by the Council of Europe in 2001-2004 for Azerbaijan. The combined efforts of the experts and PACE rapporteurs led to the determination that there were 62 presumed political prisoners in Azerbaijan and to the release of hundreds of alleged political prisoners in the country.

Currently in the case of Azerbaijan, PACE did already adopt a resolution on 23 January 2013 stating that there were not only individual cases but in fact a systemic pattern of arrests. The Council’s Commissioner for Human Rights has also identified “selective criminal prosecution” of dissenters in Azerbaijan. Either of these findings would in the future automatically trigger the Commission to look into the situation more closely.

Proposal IV: The future of the Russian delegation in PACE

In April 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military involvement in the Ukraine crisis, PACE voted to suspend the voting rights of the Russian delegation until the end of the year. It should be considered to link the restoration of voting rights to progress on other human rights issues, not limited to Ukraine, and in particular to addressing all concerns about political prisoners.

Proposal V: Azerbaijani chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers

On 14 May, Azerbaijan assumed the six-month chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers. There is consensus among human rights NGOs that the situation with political prisoners has markedly deteriorated in Azerbaijan. This has also been publicly confirmed by various institutions of the Council of Europe. On 29 April, the Council’s Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muiznieks issued a statement on Azerbaijan, in which he condemned “unjustified or selective criminal prosecution of journalists and others who express critical opinions.”

On 22 May, Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland published an op-ed in European Voice, in which he conceded that Azerbaijan was “known in Western capitals for stifling journalists and locking up opposition activists” and maintained that the Council of Europe was not blind to violations. The same day, ECtHR issued a judgment saying that the Azerbaijani authorities had arrested opposition leader Ilgar Mammadov to “silence and punish” him for criticising the government.

On 23 May, PACE President Anne Brasseur spoke in Baku, mentioning a “more than worrying state of affairs” in Azerbaijan, criticising the deterioration of freedom of expression, assembly and association, and calling on the government to release Ilgar Mammadov.

There is a consensus on the seriousness of the problem. There should now also be an appropriate reaction. One clear measure to be considered now would be to hold no Council of Europe meetings and events in Azerbaijan until Ilgar Mammadov, on whom the ECtHR has already ruled, is released.

Secondly Azerbaijan should officially agree to the appointment of a new PACE rapporteur on political prisoners and commit itself to cooperation.

Thirdly, the Secretary General and the Committee of Ministers should establish an Expert Commission as outlined above.

Proposal VI: an EU visa panel for human rights violators

The European Union has the power to sanction human rights violators. One type of sanctions (“restrictive measures”) are travel bans. Traveling to the EU is not an inherent right. It is a privilege that governments are free to deny. Sanctions can be proposed by member states and the High Representative for Foreign Policy, who can also act together with the European Commission.

The body responsible for imposing sanctions is the Council of Ministers. It does so by adopting – unanimously – a document called a “decision”. For travel bans, no additional legislation is necessary, and member states are obliged to directly implement the Council’s decision. Travel is a privilege, not a right. The EU needs to develop a forward-looking policy of denying entry and visa to human rights violators from Russia, Azerbaijan and other states.

To do this, member states could sponsor an independent commission of senior former judges, who would make annual recommendations to the Council of Ministers on who should be barred from entry.

This proposal avoids two pitfalls: it is not summary justice and it provides a mechanism for appeal. The independent commission would review its recommended blacklist annually, providing room for appeal. The whole process would also ensure transparency. This would increase pressure on EU governments to act, spur debates, and create a credible process that human rights defenders can use.

Conclusion: a campaign “2015 For a Europe without political prisoners”

Many of the most respected human rights organisations have their roots in campaigns on behalf of political prisoners: Amnesty International (the 1961 letter by Peter Berenson on “The forgotten prisoners”), Human Rights Watch (the Helsinki committees to support dissident in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union).

After the end of the Cold War it seemed for a short moment as if this particular problem no longer haunts Europe. Now it has returned. This is a test of the ability and compassion of European civil society, and of the organisational capacity of human rights defenders. A reactive approach is clearly no longer enough.

Combined efforts pay off. Concrete initiatives and proposals can be brought together under the banner of a Europe-wide campaign “2015 For a Europe without political prisoners.” Such an effort would be a joint effort of different independent human rights NGOs. The strategy could encompass all these various elements:

–          highlighting stories of individual victims better;

–          mobilising support for victims, their families and lawyers;

–          mobilising think tanks and NGOs to monitor and analyse PACE and its members;

–          taking back and using existing mechanisms in the Council of Europe;

–          setting up a new mechanism in the Council of Europe to look into systemic imprisonments on political grounds in member states,

–          institutionalising a process for visa bans for human rights offenders by the EU.


In accordance with Article 17 of the Statute of the Council of Europe: “The Committee of Ministers may set up advisory and technical committees or commissions for such specific purposes as it may deem desirable.”

PACE Resolution 1917 (2013) “The honouring of obligations and commitments by Azerbaijan”, 23 January 2013, para. 14.

 

Azerbaijan - Chairman of “REAL” movement Ilgar Mammadov and Deputy chairman of Musavat Party Tofig Yagublu

Ilgar Mammadov and Tofiq Yagublu, two political prisoners in Azerbaijan

A few days ago a  relative of another political prisoner in Azerbaijan, Tofig Yagublu, forwarded me this appeal:

“I have been sentenced to prison term on absurd charges since I fight for democratization of Azerbaijan, for its transformation into the part of the progressive world. So that you have an idea about absence of any justification for charges against me, I would like to state that, those charges have as much relevance to you as it has to me.

Due to aggressive actions of Russia against Ukraine the humanity is on the brink of its another tragedy. It is a problem of lack of democracy. Russia’s complacent, illogical and unfair actions are due to lack of democratic society and democratic government formed in accordance with popular will. Would Russia be able to act complacently and carelessly like this, had it had democratic societies in the countries surrounding it?

Therefore, one of the most effective ways of helping Russia is seriously supporting democratization process in surrounding former soviet countries. The Azerbaijani authorities are illegitimate and corrupt. The amount of money stolen by these authorities from the people is way more than the state budget. There have not been any free and fair elections in Azerbaijan since Aliyevs came to power in Azerbaijan. The OSCE ODIHR opinion on the presidential elections held in the autumn of 2013 was the most critical and strict among the opinions stated until present. But even this critical evaluation is lenient compared to the objective reality.

The statements of the authorities with regards to absence of democracy and human rights problems in Azerbaijan is similar to what the USSR leadership used to say on the same topic, and to what the North Korean leadership is saying now. The incumbent government is using energy resources and its important geographical location to refrain from carrying out its international obligations on democracy and human rights. Unfortunately, they have been successful in this until present.

Take into consideration that, political parties and civil society organizations fighting for democracy in Azerbaijan unambiguously see the happy future of Azerbaijan in integration to the West, to EU and NATO. Under such circumstances, the interests of the Azerbaijani people and the progressive world will be ensured more effectively and in a more guaranteed way, unlike in case of existence of the regime, which is staying in power through the Kremlin’s support.

Therefore, it is obvious that, significant pressure on the incumbent regime to start democratic reforms in Azerbaijan is an objective necessity. Under such circumstances, carrying out of the June session of OSCE PA in Baku is withdrawing in front of the Azerbaijani authorities, which have closed the Baku office of this organization and have declared war against the Warsaw bureau due to its negative opinion on the elections. It is difficult to understand this step.

The First European Olympic Games will be held in Baku in the summer of 2015. Shortly after this competition the parliamentary elections will be held in the country. It is very illogical and unfair that, such an event will be held in a country which lacks basic freedoms, prisons of which are full of political prisoners, where free press is mercilessly strangled, on the brink of another election fraud. Those Games shall be boycotted. Until the start of real democratic reforms under the monitoring and guarantee of the international organizations in Azerbaijan, all possible sanctions shall be applied against the Azerbaijani authorities.

Tofig Yagublu, political prisoner 17.03.2014 “

 

A family history of World War I – and a meaningless war

This is an unusual post in two respects: it is personal (about two grandfathers in World War I) and it is not by me but by the next generation:  my daughter produced this for a school  project in France, researching the family history in World War I. It was an excellent way to reflect on this anniversary, and we all learned some new things.

I hope those who  understand German agree that this is interesting to share, as another generation comes to grips with the madness of nationalism in Europe in the very recent past. These lessons remain as relevant today as ever.

 

Zwei junge Männer, zwei Fronten, zwei Gefangenschaften

Fanny Knaus (Paris)

Viele Mitglieder meiner Familie haben im ersten Weltkrieg gekämpft. Das ist die Geschichte von Gottlieb und Alfons, meinen beiden Urgrossvätern, die an unterschiedlichen Fronten kämpften.

Alfons Schwärzler an der italienischen Front. Gottlieb Knaus an der russischen Front.

 

Gottlieb Knaus ist 1895 in Schladming in den österreichischen Alpen geboren. In jungen Jahren arbeitete er in einem Kohlebergwerk.

Mit 19 Jahren zog er 1914 in den Krieg. Er kämpfte an der Ostfront gegen Russland. Dort kam er in Gefangenschaft. Er wurde in Sibirien bei einem Bauern (Kulaken) zur Zwangsarbeit eingeteilt. Es ging ihm relativ gut. Er spielte viel Schach und lernte perfekt Russisch. Nach 40 Monaten, nach der russischen Revolution, gelang ihm die Flucht und er kam zurück nach Österreich.

 

Gottlieb Knaus in Sibirien als Kriegsgefangener

 

Später gab er seiner ältesten Tochter den russischen Namen Ludmilla. In meiner Familie nimmt man an, dass er sich in Sibirien in eine Ludmilla verliebt hatte.

Alfons Schwärzler (der meine Grossmutter adoptierte) wurde 1898 in einem Bergdorf in Vorarlberg  in Österreich geboren. Er kam aus einer armen Familie. Er hatte sechs Brüder und drei Schwestern. Als Bub musste er ins Schwabenland ziehen und dort schon als Kind auf einem fremden Hof arbeiten, da seine Familie ihn nicht ernähren konnte.

1916, als er 17 Jahre alt war, wurde er von der Armee eingezogen. In einem Brief vom 18 Mai 1916, den ich gefunden habe, erzählt er Details aus der Zeit der Vorbereitung auf den Krieg in einer Kaserne: er wurde erstmals geimpft; er hoffte seinen Anzug, den er abgeben musste, nach Kriegsende bald wieder zurückzubekommen; und er bat seine Familie ihm seine Pfeife zu schicken. Er erzählte auch, dass viel exerziert wurde und es „in wenigen Wochen nach Italien geht, um den Katzelmachern [ein Schimpfwort für Italiener] einen Denkzettel zu geben [sie zu bestrafen]“.

 

Gottlieb Schwärzler als junger Soldat während der Ausbildung 1916

Nach der kurzen Ausbildung wurde er in die Alpen geschickt. Er verbrachte zwei Jahre in den Dolomiten hoch oben in den Bergen. Hier kämpfte Österreich-Ungarn gegen Italien. Der Alpenkrieg war sehr gefährlich. Berggipfel und Höhlen wurden gesprengt. Man kämpfte oft im Schnee.

Einmal, beim Essenholen, geriet Alfons in eine Lawine. Er konnte sich an einen Baum klammern und überlebte. Alle litten schrecklich Hunger in den Bergen.

Nach Friedenschluss kam Alfons von den Bergen ins Tal. Trotz des Friedens wurde er nun, wie viele andere, von den Italienern gefangengenommen. Alfons erging es dabei viel schlechter als Gottlieb in Sibirien. Er war über ein Jahr in Gefangenschaft wo er schrecklich Hunger hatte, weil es jeden Tag nur dünne Reissuppe gab. Die Gefangenen lebten in Zelten. Sie froren und es gab viele Krankheiten. Alfons hatte danach ein Leben lang einen Lungenschaden.

Ich fand eine Postkarte an ihn von seiner Familie aus dieser Zeit. Sie ist addressiert an den „Kriegsgefangenen Soldaten aus Österreich“ [prigioniere di guerra soldato austriaco Alfonso Schwärzler].

 

 

Sehr interessant finde ich, dass sowohl für Alfons Schwärzler wie auch für Gottlieb Knaus 1918 der Krieg noch lange nicht vorbei war. Durch ihre Gefangenschaft waren sie noch viele Jahre von ihren Familien getrennt.

Heute kann ich diese sinnlosen Kämpfe nicht verstehen. Mein Vater und meine Tante haben beide in Italien studiert. Mein Grossvater und mein Vater haben Russisch gelernt und mein Vater in der Ukraine gearbeitet. Heute lernen meine Mutter und ich beide Russisch. In Italien war ich schon, aber nach Sibirien muss ich noch fahren.

 

 

Lydia’s vision – Czernowitz, Ukraine, 1994-2014 (in German)


Universität Czernowitz 1994

Es sollte eigentlich ans baltische Meer gehen, doch dann sperrte die Fakultät in Riga kurzfristig ihre Tore. Wie wäre es mit der Ukraine, wurde ich gefragt: auch hier suchte man 1993, kurz nach dem Auseinanderbrechen der Sowjetunion, junge Leute mit Interesse daran, einer post-sowjetischen Generation westliche Wirtschaftslehre nahezubringen. So landete ich im Sommer 1993 in Czernowitz, im Grenzgebiet zu Rumänien und Moldau, Hauptstadt der nördlichen Bukowina.

Ich hielt Vorlesungen zur Volkswirtschaft und international political economy, vor dem Hintergrund von Hyperinflation und dem Zusammenbruch aller Strukturen. Und ich entdeckte dabei ein mir bis dahin vollkommen unbekanntes Land.

Da war die Armut, das Gefühl von Isolation gerade eine Tagesreise von Wien entfernt. Der Zusammenbruch von sowjetischer Infrastruktur und Industrie. Ein Jahr lang kein Warmwasser, manchmal tagelang keinen Strom. Die Kopiermaschine, die ich aus Wien mitgebracht hatte, gab ihren Geist auf, nachdem hungrige Mäuse in meinem Schlafzimmer alle Kabel durchgebissen hatten. Im Winter wurde der Unterricht abgesagt, denn die Räume der Universität konnten nicht mehr beheizt werden.


Czernowitz Herrengasse – A young Austrian teaching economics in 1993

Da war die Verzweiflung einer ex-sowjetischen Mittelklasse. Und die Entdeckung der Vergangenheit einer Region, die der Historiker Timothy Snyder als Bloodlands bezeichnete: Mittelosteuropa, das wie keine andere Region im frühen 20. Jahrhundert unter Besatzungen, Vertreibungen, Völkermord und totalitären Regimen gelitten hatte.

An die mitteleuropäische Vergangenheit erinnerte nicht nur die Architektur der Stadt – Universität, Herrengasse, Schlossplatz, Volksgarten – sondern vor allem zwei ältere jüdische Damen, noch in der k. u. k. Monarchie geboren. Zwei Freundinnen, Lydia Harnik und Rosa Zuckermann, die seit Jahrzehnten jeden Tag miteinander telefonierten. Ich besuchte sie mindestens einmal die Woche in ihren Wohnungen. Deutsch war ihre Muttersprache, Europa ihre geistige Heimat. Lydia hatte Mitleid mit der Ukraine, diesem “armen geschundenen Land”. Von ihrer Rente konnte sie nicht leben, und so unterrichtete sie weiterhin Sprachen; Französisch und Deutsch, in ihrer winzigen Wohnung neben dem Volksgarten. An der Wand das Portrait von Thomas Mann, im Regal die Romane der russischen Schriftsteller, die sie verehrte. Sie liebte die russische Literatur  ebenso sehr wie die deutsche.

Beide hatten im zweiten Weltkrieg Angehörige in faschistischen Lagern verloren. Beide waren selbst nach Transnistrien verschleppt worden. Rosa und Lydia erinnerten sich allerdings auch an ein Europa mit offenen Grenzen, so wie jenes, in dem es einst ihren Eltern möglich war, bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg ohne großen Aufwand von Czernowitz nach Wien zu reisen. Damals war hier die östlichste Universtät des Habsburgerreiches, und ein junger Ökonom war damals ebenfalls auf die Idee gekommen es doch zunächst einmal in der Provinz zu versuchen (Joseph Schumpeter). Diese Zeit lag fern, die Bevölkerung jener Stadt war vertrieben oder ermordet. Lydia hoffte dennoch dass nun, mit dem Ende des Kommunismus’ und der Sowjetunion, eines Tages auch die Ukraine zu einem neuen freien, demokratischen Europa gehören würde.


Rosa Zuckermann, mentor in Czernowitz

Und so hatte jede Generation hier Erinnerungen an den Fall von grossen Reichen. Melancholie lag auf der Stadt. Die Industrie war zusammengebrochen. Der grosse jüdische Friedhof der Stadt oberhalb des Prut war überwachsen. In der Stadt kannte damals kaum jemand Westeuropa – kaum jemand konnte reisen. Wir befanden uns dabei weniger als eine Stunde Fahrt von der rumänischen Grenze entfernt, doch Rumänien zählte damals noch nicht zu Europa. Zu absurd die Grenze, zu arm das Land dahinter.

Zwei Jahrzehnte sind seit damals vergangen. Ich besuchte Lydia noch einmal kurz vor ihrem Tod mit meiner zukünftigen Frau – Lydia hatte mir zur Hochzeit geraten,  sie war die erste Person, der wir von einer Telefonzelle vom Hauptbahnhof in Rom aus nach dem Heiratsbeschluss von unseren Plänen erzählten. Unsere Tochter heißt, nach ihr, Fanny Lydia.

Rosa besuchte ich später auch zu ihrem neuzigsten Geburtstag, eine 28 stündige Zugreise war dazu notwendig, aus Wien mit Umsteigen in Lemberg.  Sie kam zu jener Zeit durch einen wunderbaren Film – Herr Zwilling und Frau Zuckermann – in ihren letzten Lebensjahren zu einer gewissen Bekanntheit in Deutschland. Das amusierte sie sehr. Ich hatte sie und Herr Zwilling oft in ihrem kleinen Haus in der Klara Zetkin Straße besucht und tatsächlich sehe ich sie heute noch, winkend von ihrem Balkon beim Verabschieden, nach außen fröhlich und resolut, im Inneren melancholisch und besorgt.


Herr Zwilling und Frau Zuckermann (Filmtrailer)

Mittlerweile sind Lydia und Rosa beide auf dem überwachsenen jüdischen Friedhof von Czernowitz bestattet. Europa hat sich seit jenen Jahren dramatisch verändert.

Nicht nur Österreich, auch Polen und Rumänien sind der Europäischen Union beigetreten. Wer heute aus der Ukraine nach Polen blickt, kann die Veränderung dort oft kaum fassen. Ein Europa der offenen Grenzen, ohne politische Gefangene, kein Abholen von Kritikern des Nachts durch die Geheimpolizei, ohne Angst vor Kriegen, Revolutionen oder neuen Vertreibungen. Dieses Europa ist heute weniger als eine Stunde Fahrt von Czernowitz entfernt an der rumänischen Grenze, die zur Grenze der Europäischen Union geworden ist. Und doch hat sich eines nicht geändert: die Ukraine gehört weiterhin nicht dazu.

Die politische Hoffnung der beiden jüdischen Freundinnen, eine europäische, demokratische Ukraine, sie ist bislang nicht in Erfüllung gegangen.

Will man verstehen warum im November 2013 erst Tausende, dann Zehntausende Menschen aller sozialen Gruppen und Generationen in Kiew auf die Straße gingen, um mit europäischen Fahnen in der Hand für ein Assoziationsabkommen zu demonstrieren, das kaum einer von ihnen im Detail gelesen haben dürfte, dann muss man sich die Verschiebungen der politischen Grenzen in Europa vor Augen halten. Ich vermute es gab nicht viele Ukrainer, die davon motiviert waren sich von Russland abzugrenzen, ein Nachbar der hier – auch bei Rosa und Lydia – viel weniger als Bedrohung empfunden wurde als in den meisten Ländern Mitteleuropas. Daher gab es auch in Umfragen bis zu den Protesten nie Mehrheiten für eine NATO-Mitgliedschaft der Ukraine, ganz anders als in Polen, dem Baltikum oder Georgien.

Was es gab, vor allem bei der jungen Generation, war ein wachsender Konsens darüber, dass die Ukraine sich nicht noch einmal zwei Jahrzehnte auf der Suche nach einem Sonderweg leisten konnte. Die Plünderwirtschaft großer Oligarchen, ein von Korruption zersetztes politisches System, eine Gesellschaft ohne Perspektiven, das Gefühl, vor verschlossenen Grenzen zu stehen … all das trieb viele einer Generation, die zum Zeitpunkt des Zusammenbruchs der Sowjetunion oft noch gar nicht geboren war, auf die Straße. Auch die Enttäuschung über das Versagen der letzten Proteste, der Orangenen Revolution 2004.

Als ich im Winter 2013 nach Kiew kam, bemerkte ich bei jungen ukrainischen Studenten großes Interesse an den Erfahrungen ihrer westlichen Nachbarn, Interesse selbst für die arme, kleine Republik Moldau, die die Ukraine auf dem Weg zum Erlangen der begehrten Visafreiheit für Schengen-Staaten überholt hatte. Und auch Angst, dass die Ukraine erneut den Anschluss zu verlieren drohte. Als schließlich Ende des Jahres auf russischen Druck hin ein schon zu diesem Zeitpunkt enorm unbeliebter, weil korrupter Präsident das Assoziationsabkommen mit der EU verweigerte, schien eine weitere Hoffnung auf ein irgendwann besseres Leben zu schwinden.

Tatsächlich waren die meisten der Demonstranten auf dem Maidan vor allem für eine andere Ukraine, eine europäische, ähnlich dem heutigen Litauen oder Polen, auf die Strasse gegangen (Von westukrainischen extremen Nationalisten, die niemals die Mehrheit stellten, einmal abgesehen). Was war auch die alternative Vision der Herren im Kreml, und ihrer ukrainischen Verbündeten? Warnungen vor einem dekadenten Westen, der ehrbaren Slawen die Homosexuellenehe aufzwingen wollte? Zumindest in dieser Frage stimmten Putin und ukrainische Nationalisten überein.

Der Kreml verhöhnte die EU, von der politischen Klasse in Moskau schon lange als impotent, künstliches Konstrukt, machtlos, dekadent, abgeschrieben. Doch bot Russland selbst keine Hoffnung. Mit einer Wirtschaft, deren wertvolle Rohstoffe Europa zwar auf dem Weg durch die Ukraine erreichten, deren Nutznießer ihren Reichtum dann allerdings sofort nach London, Paris, Wien oder Nikosia überwiesen. Dieser im westlichen Europa gelagerte Reichtum ist heute die Achillesverse, aber auch ein Machtinstrument des Kremls. Denn nun, nach der Besetzung der Krim, nach Ultimaten, Drohungen mit Einmarsch und Krieg und der Verletzung aller eingegangenen internationalen Verpflichtungen, die Souveränität der Ukraine zu respektieren, sind es auch wirtschaftliche Interessen, russische Milliarden, die Europa davon abhalten, auf das russische Verhalten entsprechend zu reagieren. Und das hieße: Druck auch auf die persönlichen Interessen der Herren im Kreml. Die von einer Wiederherstellung eines eurasischen Großreiches träumen, ihre Reichtum und ihre Familien aber in London oder Paris vor einem räuberischen Staat in Sicherheit bringen.

So kommt es heute in der Ukraine zu einem Aufeinandertreffen zweier Visionen. Da Herrscher, die unbeliebte Grenzen unter vorgeschobenen Argumenten mit Gewalt neu ziehen. Dort die Erfahrung von Integration und offenen Grenzen. Es geht um die Frage was die Werte der Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention, später auch von Russland bei seinem Beitritt in den Europarat akzeptiert, heutigen Demokratien noch wert sind. Die heutige russische Elite fürchte – trotz ihrer Rhetorik – weniger die NATO als die Möglichkeit den eigenen Reichtum zu riskieren. Oder fürchtet gerade dies eben auch nicht: denn nicht nur ehemalige deutsche Bundeskanzler sind heute auf der Gehaltsliste kremlnaher Betriebe, sondern auch internationale Organisationen, wie der ebengenannte Europarat, wurden in den letzten Jahren von den Autokratien des Ostens unterwandert.

Dass es bei der Bewahrung dieser Werte letztlich um Zivilisation geht, um Sicherheit nicht nur für Ukrainer sondern für ganz Europa; das hätten Lydia Harnik und Rosa Zuckermann jedem jungen Europäer glaubwürdig dargelegt.

Europe’s Abyssinian moment

In October 1935 the Italian army invaded Abyssinia. In the same month the Abyssinians appealed to the League of Nations for help. The League condemned the attack. All League members were ordered to impose economic sanctions on Mussolini’s Italy. Then all resolve faltered.

Sanctions were half-hearted. They did not include vital materials such as oil. Britain kept open the Suez Canal, crucial as Italy supplied her armed forces. In December 1935 the British Foreign Secretary and the French Prime Minister met and presented a plan that gave large areas of Abyssinia to Italy. Mussolini accepted the plan.

The League’s involvement was a total failure.The capital, Addis Ababa, fell in May 1936 and Haile Selassie was replaced by the king of Italy. Somaliland, Eritrea and Abyssinia became Italian East Africa. The League of Nations was a corpse even before it perished. It had no more legitimacy.

DL0929

The Crimea crisis and events in Ukraine today pose a similar threat to the credibility of other European organisations … created, like the League, in the wake of a devastating war with high hopes of launching a new era.  And one organisation already  in the crosshair of the dictator’s assault, already reeling, which Russia was able to join under false pretext and then proceeded to capture with the support of other autocrats in the East and accomplices from the West is the Council of Europe.

Until a few weeks ago one could fear that the Azerbaijani presidency of the Council of Europe, set to begin a few weeks from now in Strasbourg,  would mark the low-point in the history of this once proud organisation. And one might have hoped that, perhaps, it was still possible that the sight of a dictator at the helm of this club of democracies might produce a long overdue shock; wake up democrats across Europe, to pay attention to an institution once created to embody the values of post-war Europe (stated in the European Convention on Human Rights) and recently captured by autocrats from Europe’s east.

Until a few weeks ago I thought there was time to rescue these institutions. Certainly, that it was worth it Today there is good cause to wonder whether the Abyssinia moment has not now also come for Strasbourg.

Unless the Council of Europe reacts to the dramatic illegal occupation of one member state by another member state; unless PACE – the Parliamentary Assembly – issues a strong and unequivocal declaration; unless member states in the Committee of Ministers now take effective actions against Russia; it is hard to see how this “spiritual union” of European democracies can survive as more than a bureaucratic corpse.

It is not hard to envisage a future for the OSCE in this new, harsher, Europe: it will return to being a forum for debates between dictatorships and democracies, similar to the CSCE after the Helsinki Accords were ratified in the 1970s.  It has long been obvious that countries such as Uzbekistan, Belarus, Russia or Azerbaijan are not democracies. The notion that they should participate in setting  high standards for European democracies – which need these standards as much now as ever – debases everyone. Instead let diplomats meet in Vienna and talk (and exchange insults) about peace and common interests. Such a forum is useful as long as it does not serve to legitimize dictatorial rule as “democratic.”

The same is not true for the Council of Europe. Between the  OSCE and the EU it has no future if it does not credibly defend the highest values of democracy. The demise of its credibility creates a void that also needs to be filled: most probably by the European Union, now called upon to define its own human rights acquis more explicitly.

The EU should make human rights central to its association agreements. It should spell out its “political criteria” much clearer, both for accession candidates and for its own members. It should find ways to cooperate with other genuine democracies, from Switzerland to Norway to Moldova in the East.

Of course it would be preferable to preserve the Council of Europe and see dictators such as Putin and Aliyev censured instead, until their countries change their ways. But this looks increasingly unlikely. Instead we will have an Azerbaijani presidency and not even symbolic sanctions against Russia after its aggression.

The Palace of Europe in StrasbourgThe Palace of Europe in Strasbourg

It is hard to see is how the Council of Europe can function much longer as a hostage of dictatorial and aggressive members. They pay an important share of its budget. They are bent on destroying the values it once stood for. And for some time now they have imposed their vision of the world with impunity.

It should also be noted that there would still be a lot worth rescuing  from the burning house of the Palace of Europe, the Council of Europe’s headquarter in Strasbourg. Conventions, agreements, commissions, initiatives (such as the Venice Commission), all serving their members , all worthy of being preserved … but outside of the clutch of dictators. (The same is less obvious in the case of PACE, which appears increasingly superfluous next to the European Parliament on the one hand and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly on the other).

The thread does not stop here, unfortunately. Other proud institutions might soon face a similar challenge: one is the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw. It has so far stood up, valiantly, to pressure from the East over its professional work on election monitoring. Why would Putin or Aliyev want credible election observation any more than rulers in Tashkent or Minsk? It is fighting tough battles over its budget. It soon faces a crucial choice over its future leadership. ODIHR’s independence and professionalism must be defended at all costs. In fact, should ODIHR be at risk of losing its credibility as a result of an ongoing Russian and Azerbaijani campaign, or should it be paralysed – then the EU and democracies like Switzerland should stand ready to fund it directly.  To rescue valuable experience. To preserve it as the preeminent  European election monitoring organisation, open to other European democracies.

It now seems only a matter of months before post-Maidan Europe will see a broader debate on the institutional architecture needed to preserve core values and safeguard the lessons from the 1930s and 40s.  And we had better prepare for it. For it now seems increasingly likely that Russian troops in Crimea and Ukraine might have a similar effect on European institutions as Mussolini’s troops had when they embarked on their aggression in East Africa many decades ago.

Council of Europe. Photo: Alban Bodineau / Council of EuropeCouncil of Europe

 

ESI background analysis: how the Council of Europe is losing credibility