Democratic Conditions in Kyrgyzstan?

Last week Member of Parliament Irina Karamushkina from the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan called on her MP colleagues to conduct a fair vote on the candidates for the Central Election Committee. According to her, last December’s elections showed that citizens’ rights existed only on paper and respect to the law was only rhetorical. Today only the interests of one party were lobbied. Karamushkina wanted to stand up for a vote without manipulation to restore the trust of the population.

That’s nice of her. Though it leaves some questions unanswered. The new members were of course hand-selected and all nominated by the ruling party Ak-Zhol. But that is nothing surprising. Kyrgyzstan lives in a state of affairs, in which most politicians do only speak, because they want to remind the power, that they do exist (and thus offer a price for a possible co-opting). And it sounds always a bit suspicious, if someone criticizes the „vlast“. Why Karamushkina did it? The more so, if nothing else has been heard from the party leadership or other deputies.

Usually oppositional events follow this path of public scrutiny. It is a dilemma: if someone decides to stand up against the power, he or she is automatically confronted with public suspicion. Too often the public observed how politicians from supposed-to-be oppositional forces raised their criticism to declare their readiness (and the price) to be co-opted by the power. Atambaev, Eshimkanov, Suvanaliev, Satybaldiev, Karabekov, … – How to build up public trust, if there is nothing provided by the political system to build trust upon?

Irina Karamushkina’s statement at least caused some funny anecdote. After she had finished her speech, MoP Kubanychbek Zholdoshev from the Ak-Zhol party (he entered the parliament being number 67 (!) at the party list) entered the stage and asked Karamushkina to apologize to Ak-Zhol group. According to him there is no reason to speak of undemocratic conditions in Kyrgyzstan. He thinks that only if all deputies in the Zhogorku Kenesh were from Ak-Zhol party one could not speak of democracy. However, since there are three parties and since the elections were held in accordance with the election code there is nothing and no-one to blame. – Exactly such statements ruin any public trust left in society …

The last speaker was head of communist party Iskhak Masaliev . He asked pardon for … well, he said, he doesn’t know what for. But since some deputies need an apology he thought it wise to ask for it. (Masaliev himself recently started a little campaign against the AUCA, demanding this reputed liberal arts institution to leave the main campus building, which in Soviet times was the seat of the Kyrgyz government; and he questioned the educational standards of the AUCA – well, if he pursues this path, his premature pardoning was made just in time!)

ОБОН, БАКС и ЧМО

Die Auseinandersetzung mit Internet-basierter Kommunikation, sprich dem Durchwühlen von Foren und Kommentaren im WorldWideWeb verlangt das Eindenken in neue Begriffe. Wie beim Simsen legt sich der online Kommentator eine Technik zu, möglichst viel Inhalt auf möglichst wenige Tastaturen verteilt anzuzeigen. In Kyrgyzstan sorgt das für schöne, witzige Wortschöpfungen.

Den Anfang machen Namenskürzel. Das Bekannteste war das des alten Präsidenten: Askar Akaevich Akaev wurde kurzerhand zu AAA. Nicht sonderlich kreativ aber schön anzusehen. Man wusste sofort um wen es geht, ohne sich mühselig durch den ganzen Namen samt Vatersnamen etc. durchzuarbeiten. Beim neuen Präsidenten Bakiev ist die Sache hingegen etwas tricky. Er wird gemeinhin mit BAKS abgekürzt. Das referiert auf BAkiev, Kurmanbek Salievich, stellt also den Nachnamen nach vorne und nutzt sowohl ersten als auch zweiten Buchstaben desselbigen, hingegen beim Vornamen und dem Vatersnamen jeweils nur den Anfangsbuchstaben. der kundige Leser merkt es sofort: der Witz liegt in der Ähnlichkeit mit dem englischen Wort bucks, also Dollar. Unterstellt wird dem heutigen Präsidenten die Motivation zur Bereicherung am Volksgut. Was nicht ganz von der Hand zu weisen ist. Bakievs Sohn MAKSim gilt als hochbegabt in der Manipulation der heimischen Wirtschaft und hilft mit seinen guten Kontakten ins Baltikum Papa vermutlich beim Transfer von Volksgut von Punkt A nach Punkt … well, so genau kennt man den Punkt nicht.

Etwas interessanter im Bereich der Begriffsschöpfungen wird es bei solchen Kürzeln wie ChMO und OBON. Ersteres lässt sich dechiffrieren als человек, мешающий общество, also eine Person, welche die Gesellschaft stört. An Popularität gewann der Begriff mit dem ständigen Aufkommen neuer Protestler und besonders vielfältigen Protestaufwiegler im Zuge der scheiternden Machtsicherung des Tulpen-gebetteten Präsidenten BAKS. Melis Eshimkanov, den gerade wankenden und vielleicht bald verdient stolpernden Direktor der staatlichen Fernsehanstalt NTRK, würde ich in diese Kategorie schieben. Ursprünglich, so wird auf kyrgyznews.com informiert, wurde mit chmo unter den Seki eine Person bezeichnet, die moralisch untragbar geworden war. Mir selbst wurde in Kyrgyzstan auf Nachfrage immer oben genannte Entschlüsselung präsentiert.

OBON nun ist mein absoluter Favorit. Angelehnt an das Kürzel OMON, was für Отряд Милиции Особого Назначения (Abt. der Miliz für besondere Verwendung) steht, bedeutet OBON Отряд Баб Особого Назначения, meint also eine Gruppe von älteren Damen (höflich formuliert), die zu politischen Zwecken mobilisiert werden können und in den Hochzeiten kyrgyzischer Dauerproteste, besonders 2006, häufig zum Einsatz kamen. Das sieht dann folgendermaßen aus: eine Gruppe von Protestlern möchte mit gerechtfertigtem oder auch ungerechtfertigtem Anliegen öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit erregen. Wenn man das als Machthaber oder Statthalter der Macht nun blöd findet, dann ist das effektivste Mittel zur Abwehr einer solchen Aktion die Mobilisierung besagter бабы, die dann im Extremfall laut schreiend (орут) die Bühne stürmen, den Redner / die Rednerin verprügeln und die ganze Aktion mehr oder weniger gewaltsam auflösen. Da öffentlich gegen ältere Frauen keine Hand erhoben werden darf – so will es die Tradition und mitunter auch die Konstitution – streichen alle vor diesen Sonderabteilungen altender Amazonen die Segel. Wer wissen möchte, wie man sich fühlt, wenn man von бабы attackiert wird, frage Edil Bajsalov, der, wenn mich meine Erinnerung nicht trübt, in Dzhalal Abad selbst Opfer eines OBON Einsatzes wurde.

Als Erfinder der OBON wird in Kommentatorkreisen übrings immer wieder Usen Sydykov angeführt. Nachweisen konnte man das bisher (ihm) noch nicht. Zuzutrauen wäre es dieser (inzwischen wohl ehemals) grauen Eminenz der kyrgyzischen Politik schon!

Grant Money for „Remont“ of the City Prison

Last week, the Kyrgyz Human Rights activist Tolekan Ismailova from the NGO Citizens against Corruption and the Human Rights Representative of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, Tursunbek Akun and his deputy, Aziza Abdrasulova visited a city prison, where people were hold waiting for their trial. They discovered more than 150 people, jammed together in a facility that lacks even basic conditions: no functioning sanitary system, not enough space for all people to sleep and no proper food supply.

Extremely shocking is the story of a young woman, 23 years old, who had already been confined in this prison for a few days when the Human Rights activists interviewed her regarding the circumstances of her arrest. Like many other Bishkek new residents, she moved with her family to the capital in search for work and better living conditions. And like many others, she was not carrying her documents with her, when she was stopped by the police and asked to present her identification. A mistake with serious consequences!

The police officers bluntly asked her to pay a fine of a few hundred soms (50 soms ~ 1 Euro). Since she couldn’t pay such amount of money, the police officers arrested her. The first night of imprisonment she spent in some cave-like cell, with no food, no water, just a hole filled with excrements. The next day she was taken to court (Sverdlovksi Rayonnyj Court) and convicted to five days of imprisonment (a written verdict was never shown to the woman). All this time the police officers kept asking her for money, even pushed her to call her husband, so that he could bring the money. She couldn’t reach him and neither crying no begging had any impact on the police officers’ stand, not even the explanation about her baby who was waiting at home to be breast-fed.

The next few nights the young woman spent together with other inmates in the „Бишкекский приемник – распределитель„, the Bishkek remand prison. Only four plank beds served around two dozen inmates as sleeping places. One piece of bread was given to all the prisoners who were kept for trial. Only by chance the woman was able to contact her husband (another inmate turned out to be an aquaintant), who was already searching for his wife, cause she didn’t return home from a visit to a friend. To make the story short, first the husband brought some money, for which the woman could buy some bread for herself and for other inmates. Then he sold some of his possessions so that he could pay the fine (bribe, to be exact). He still did not manage to come up with the sum wanted by the police. At that point the police told him his wife would be released in a few days because she actually did not commit any crime (!). During the next few days, he tried to hand over money to his wife, he bribed the officers so that he could see her, but he was not able “to buy her free“, and that’s when after one week of her imprisonment, the Human Rights activists found her in a bad physical condition and in total despair.

According to the statements made by the Human Rights activists, it has become a routine for the police officers in Bishkek to arrest migrant-looking people right off the streets. While squeezing out money from these poor and often helpless migrants, members of the police make a quite substantial supplementary income. For the inmates it often means a nightmare, since logically speaking in this case police is more interested in holding them prisoners than releasing them early. The more despair, the more willingness to pay a higher bribe. And despair is guaranteed when people are forced to live in a place, which the HR activists describe as „концлагерь“.

The reaction from the State officials was twofold: the Bishkek City Administration under major Danijar Usenov, long-time friend and ally of president Bakiev, and the City Police Office refuted the HR activists’ statement. They called the story of the young woman untrue and asked the activists to help reconstructing the prison by using some of the money they receive in form of grants, thereby using some means as an infrastructural investment and not for „unfounded criticism“.

A second reaction, although not directly connected to this case, comes from the new Minister of Interior, Moldomusa Kongantiev. He recently started a large reform program of the police forces that is aimed to bring the local police officers closer to people. He intends to shift resources from the center to the local branches and hire new personnel. The intention seems to be right and long overdue. If it will actually lead to more citizen oriented police work and less corruption remains to be seen. Before Kongantiev became the Interior Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic, he was the head of the Bishkek police office. He already missed the chance or had no intention to act against the horrible conditions in the „Бишкекский приемник – распределитель“ at that time.