Читать книгу Kazakhstan's Assassinated Democracy - Yerzhan Psy.D. Dosmukhamedov - Страница 11

Radio "Liberty" (USA)

27 October 2008

In an interview with Radio Liberty, the Kazakh political exile and Chairman of the unregistered political party Atameken talks about the differences and similarities among opposition leaders at home and abroad.

Dr. Dosmukhamedov, 27 October is exactly two years since the Founding Convention of your Atameken Party. The party still has not received registration for its activities. Furthermore, you yourself emigrated from Kazakhstan. So you have been in exile now for two years.

Abroad I am still a citizen who appealed to the head of state to guarantee my constitutional rights - first, my personal safety in the context of the statements that I made concerning the political course chosen by our political party. Secondly, I asked him to protect my constitutional freedom of political expression. Unfortunately, our main guarantor of constitutional rights these past two years has kept silent, pretending that the problem does not exist.

I consider this fact very extraordinary. It demonstrates how the Kazakh government machine spits on its ordinary citizens.

But in this case you are not just an ordinary citizen, but a leader of a political organization. At what stage is your party's registration? What do the authorities say? Or, on the contrary, what do they not say?

The bureaucracy fully accepts the quintessential idea incorporated in the Kazakh legislation on political parties. That is, to control the process of the emergence and evolution of civil society in Kazakhstan. As you know, after one month the authorities can initiate a so-called expert assessment. And this assessment, according to the existing legislation, may last 100, 200, 300 years - all depending on how long the regime keeps its grip on power.

One day before the expiry of the one-month period we received a copy of the Order of the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan informing us that our founding documents filed with the Ministry required additional assessment.

Dr. Dosmukhamedov, so if the President does not respond to your appeals and the officers of the Ministry of Justice brush you off, what is the reaction on the part of the political elite? How mature is Kazakh society, to be a catalyst for the political process?

The emergence of our party was a huge surprise for Nazarbayev. It provoked a strong concern on the part of the Administration of the President. The open process by which our party conducted its Founding Convention was a major irritation for Mr. Adilbek Dzhaksybekov, chief of staff to the President at the time.

We should clearly realize that the emergence of our party was a genuine process of the expression of the will of the ordinary citizens of Kazakhstan, who wanted to exercise their simple constitutional right of freedom of political association. The reason for this continuing non-registration is that we set up our party without the blessing of the Administration of the President. It remains unregistered because I refused to take an oath of loyalty on the Quran. Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the President, demanded this oath from me. It remains unregistered because I slammed the cabinet door on Yermukhamet Yertyysbayev, Minister of Press and Information, in response to his harassing demands for a loyalty oath and the introduction of new positions of co-chairmen of our party, through whom the authorities could secure control over our party, NGOs and civil society in Kazakhstan.

Look at the recent situation with the Young Professionals of Kazakhstan, a new NGO. They are also not registered. And these are the very people who form the middle class. This is complete nonsense, President Nazarbayev. I would therefore like to address him through your radio station:

Mr. President, everywhere you travel - from Washington to Frankfurt - you claim that you are building a democratic society and a market economy. However, they cannot exist without a political organization of the middle class. You have bred many exotic parties like Rukhaniyat, which nobody needs, and the Patriots' Party. You have cloned a second, subservient Communist Party in order to weaken your long-time personal rival and opponent Serikbolsyn Abdil'din. You finance pseudo-opposition parties like those of Bulat Abilov and Zharmakhan Tuyakbai. During these 15 or 17 years, however, you did not give an opportunity to let a party emerge that is the proponent of the essential ideas of a free-market economy and a genuine democracy.

Dr. Dosmukhamedov, now you are telling us very serious things. So if any party is uncontrolled, apriori its registration will be blocked in one way or another. This practice indeed exists in authoritarian countries. But at the same time you are talking about such archaic practices as giving an oath of personal loyalty on the Quran, a demand by Timur Kulibayev, the president's son-in-law. What kind of ritual is that?

After the Founding Convention I had a long conversation with Timur Kulibayev. As you may recall I was his advisor prior to the Founding Convention. By the way, after the Convention, he gave instructions to have me immediately and retrospectively dismissed from my position as his advisor in the KazEnergy Association. He was so frightened for his skin that he gave orders to get rid of me formally.

This regime is not founded on rights - not even on rightful law. In fascist Germany there were also laws, but they were not based on moral laws, on universal human values. Thus the Kazakh regime starts to invent archaic feudal rituals of bonding in order to have informal leashes of control over those who lead our society.

After my conversation with Kulibayev I also had meetings with [Minister of Information and Culture] Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, and I was told directly about these conditions for our party registration. I refused categorically. Many of my acquaintances told me later that I should have accepted the conditions for registration. I am strongly convinced, however, that we should not do so. Because the more we compromise with this inhumane and anti-democratic regime, even in small things, the stronger it gets, and the longer it will survive.

Dr. Dosmukhamedov, along with those archaic rituals we hear about real political scandals. You have just mentioned one. It revolves around the parties led by Zharmakhan Tuyakbai and Bulat Abilov. They were both accused of secret collaboration with the Committee on National Security (KNB). Of course, they both denied these accusations. How have you received this news?

As a citizen of Kazakhstan I received this news with sadness. Our country is trying to stand up after centuries of slavery and build up its statehood. It is a real pity that at the very beginning of forming our statehood, the algorithm of our state and national consciousness, our state twisted the hands of the weak emerging civil society and thereby made it not just its servant, but a slave.

This is an indication that the democracy which is being built by Nazarbayev is a fig leaf. One thing became clear - the entire political process being observed in Kazakhstan is a complete sham, a hoax, to put it plainly. It is a hoax to refer to a "free press", and now the deception also includes "opposition parties". He perpetrates these hoaxes to lie and mislead ordinary citizens of Kazakhstan and the West.

Well, there is another scandal emerging now in Kazakhstan. Some leaders of the opposition are being accused by the authorities of contributing to a criminal felony. More specifically, a few years ago they sent an appeal to the government of Ukraine requesting it to grant political asylum to Yesentai Baisakov, an opposition activist and businessman. The most wanted personality is Tolen Tokhtasynov, who has been abroad for the last few months for medical reasons. With two years' experience as a political exile, what forecast would you envision in this case?

First I would like to correct you. My experience of political exile is not two years, actually. Might I remind you that my first clash with the corrupt regime happened in 1997. It was a big report by Arguments and Facts, a major newspaper of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It contained a detailed description of that conflict, which happened in Kazakhstan's embassy in Germany. When I took up my position as Minister in the embassy, I began to sort out documents and discovered that a significant amount of money was illegally appropriated and embezzled. There were threats and repression directed against me at the time. Secondly, after that conflict I was compelled to leave Kazakhstan for five years. I returned to Kazakhstan only after some mild warming that happened briefly in 2001.

Now, as to the case you have mentioned. I as a lawyer cannot comment on it as I am not aware of all the involved circumstances and facts. However, the style and motive, I assume, are pretty clear even for non-lawyers. The entire case appears to have been constructed to strangle the formation of an independent political force and personalities in Kazakhstan.

There is a need for the genuine opposition to unite in order to compel this inhumane regime to undertake systemic reform. This can be done only with the help of international democratic tools.

But we don't observe the unity of opposition within the opposition, both at home and abroad. Discontent among the leaders of opposition within Kazakhstan resembles discontent within the opposition abroad.

What exactly you mean? How does this discontent manifest itself?

I mean politicians who occupied various positions, but whose career paths never crossed. For example, Galymzhan Zhakiyanov and Rakhat Aliyev, who were in fact at the opposite sides of the political barricades. They are presently on one side. Or another example - Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a veteran of the Kazakh opposition. This year is the 10th anniversary of his political persecution. The number of opposition leaders in exile is growing, but they behave the same way they behaved in Kazakhstan.

First, all the individuals whom you mentioned are qualitatively different from one another by, so to speak, the reasons for their emigration from Kazakhstan. There were no formal political grounds for leaving Kazakhstan. This relates to Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Rakhat Aliyev and Galymzhan Zhakiyanov.

As to Rakhat Aliyev and Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, I think that both of them were part of the regime. One - Rakhat - was part of the repressive branch of the regime. Another - Galymzhan - was part of its political branch. Therefore they both have common ground on which they could find a common language. One can't present them as people who came out of different uniforms. They are all from the crib called "the Nazarbayev elite".

The same can be said about Akezhan Kazhegeldin. At the same time, every individual exiled opposition leader contributes in his unique way to dismantling the political regime that is presently in power in Kazakhstan

As to the unity of our positions, as you may recall last year there was a meeting in Strasbourg, which was attended by Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Serik Medetbekov - head of the foreign bureau of the Kazakh opposition - and myself. We discussed the current situation constructively and passed the Strasbourg Initiative. This was the starting point of complete reform, more specifically the radical reformation of Kazakhstan's constitution.

To sum up, then, in spite of the rumours that are spread by the presidential Administration, in this regard we have a common view. We have all worked on the draft of a new constitution. It is presently being examined in European and American universities. I believe that it will be the solid platform uniting our efforts.

Thank you.

Interviewed by Yerzhan Karabek