Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Europe Must Help Georgia And Armenia, Or Russia Will

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Europe Must Help Georgia And Armenia, Or Russia Will

    EUROPE MUST HELP GEORGIA AND ARMENIA, OR RUSSIA WILL

    In Georgia and Armenia I saw how vital European integration will be to
    a fragile post-Soviet spring

    Sigrid Rausing
    The Guardian, Wednesday 17 April 2013
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/17/europe-help-georgia-armenia-russia-will

    Yerevan, the Armenian capital, with Mount Ararat in the background.

    'This could have been a landscape of extraordinary beauty; instead it
    was depleted and scarred by nearly a century of bad or indifferent
    governance.' Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA I recently travelled
    to Georgia and Armenia to meet human rights groups. After two days
    in Georgia we drove east, the hilly landscape gradually turning
    mountainous, sheep and cattle tended by shepherds in littered,
    post-Soviet villages. For a long time the road followed a small river,
    plastic trash snagging on rocks and branches. This could have been
    a landscape of extraordinary beauty; instead it was depleted and
    scarred by nearly a century of bad or indifferent governance.

    Crossing the border into Armenia, the river was still there, the
    litter now older, almost indistinguishable from the brown water and
    grey rock. There were remnants of the Soviet state - giant concrete
    chutes channelling water from the steep mountains, occasional blocks
    of flats now, like the rubbish, taking on the colour of the dark
    earth. In one valley ruins from the earthquake in 1988 stood like
    archaeological remains.

    Every village we drove through was half abandoned - the falling down
    houses haphazardly mended with metal sheets or planks of wood. Whole
    families move if they can, otherwise women and children remain while
    the men join the migrant labour force in Russia, sending meagre
    remittances home. I know there were children in these villages,
    because occasionally laundry - the only colour in this bleak world -
    hung from wires, drying in the still dusk. We saw no people, and no
    shops. We saw no other cars.

    In Britain we sometimes forget the harsh reality behind the talk of
    human rights in transitional states. Human rights language is the same
    the world over, bland and institutional. Thus in Georgia many groups
    talked about "prison reform". The issue in fact was the widespread use
    of torture, revealed when secret footage was released of detainees
    raped with broom handles or burned with cigarettes, guards looking
    on, indifferent to the screams. The victims were ordinary criminals;
    this was part of police and prison routine. After the release of the
    footage, thousands of people took to the streets, the minister for
    corrections had to resign; 16 out of 17 prison directors were fired.

    Some claim the footage was staged; no one, however, disputes that
    those things went on.

    Other groups talked about "corruption" and "transparency". Here is one
    case: an Armenian shopkeeper is visited by tax officials, demanding
    a bribe. He refuses, and takes them to court. Several years and many
    court cases later he wins his case, but by now the same tax officials
    have so terrorised his suppliers that he can't stay in business.

    In Armenia campaigners talked about "hospital reform". Many people with
    learning disabilities rather than mental illness are institutionalised
    in mental hospitals. Even if you are let out, once in the system you
    can be committed at any time in the future by a doctor's order.

    The human rights activists (some former dissidents) we met steadfastly
    rely on, and believe in, the European court of human rights in
    Strasbourg, despite the fact that tens of thousands of cases are
    languishing there in a seemingly permanent backlog. It's all they have.

    European solidarity is an empty concept to most British people,
    at least judging from the media. But democracy and the rule of law
    on the margins of Europe matter to all of us. Georgia and Armenia,
    and 14 other nations, are in talks with the EU under the European
    neighbourhood policy. It offers a degree of economic integration
    in return for a commitment to democracy and human rights, the rule
    of law, market economy principles and sustainable development. Free
    trade for good governance - it's a win-win deal.

    In Georgia and Armenia, however, so long after the fall of the Soviet
    Union, the state is still weak - and occasionally thuggish - the
    economies are largely oligarchical, and there is a lack of watchdog
    institutes - that function is almost entirely given over to civil
    society. As in all former Soviet republics, there is a history of
    institutional brutality and indifference lingering on in the army,
    the prisons, hospitals and orphanages.

    And yet people in Yerevan, the capital, talked hopefully of an
    Armenian spring. Serge Sarkisian, the president (and Putin ally), won
    a second term in the recent election, but not with anything like the
    Soviet-style 90% majority pollsters had suggested. Significant numbers
    of ballot papers had been spoiled. (The fact that one candidate,
    a former dissident, was shot and wounded in January may have
    contributed to voter disaffection.) The main opposition candidate,
    the American-born Raffi Hovannisian (37% of the vote), held a shadow
    swearing-in ceremony on 9 April.

    In this region, as in any other, individuals come and go, and
    sometimes, as we have seen in Georgia, good people turn bad. European
    integration is the best bet for good governance. The alternative
    for Armenia is Russia, where NGOs receiving foreign funding are now
    required to register as "foreign agents". European trade agreements
    and human rights requirements must be better than that, for them and
    for us.

    Sigrid Rausing travelled to Georgia and Armenia with the Open Society
    Institute

Working...
X