May 5th 2003
Not much for previous year for various reasons. In FR Yugoslavia, fight between Djindjic and Kostunica resulted in status quo and effectively paralyzed whole Serbia. Kostunica's party was kicked out of parliament and then reinstated later while Kostunica's attempt to switch presidency from federal to republic failed two times. Milutinovic's presidency ended around New Year and soon after that he left for the Hague. State Department report, although released on March 31st, 2003 doesn't cover events after January 1st so there is nothing on Milutinovic as well as Djindjic's assassination, operation "Sword", indictment of Milosevic, thousands of arrests of organized crime members, indictment of Vojislav Seselj and his trip to the Hague, discovery of Stambolic's body, etc. Report is absolutely worthless and useless so there is no comment of any kind. That doesn't mean that human rights improved in Serbia. Yugoslav military officials arrested Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Momcilo Perisic for alleged espionage. You can read more here. Latest on Curuvija murder here. Reports for Russia and China are also worthless as well because from them it seems that human rights have significantly improved although it is completely opposite. "Strike Hard" campaign in China was finished early last year but not because government gave up on it thanks to critics but because they literally killed everyone on their hit list. Same thing applies to Falun Gong followers who were completely decimated in previous years. War in Chechnya, officially(Kremlin statement) is over but not because of some peace settlement or change in policy towards Chechnya but because of total annihilation of Chechen people. Russian independent media was in similar way also annihilated, leaving only Kremlin stooges to write ode to Putin. As in previous year only new abuses and trends will be mentioned. Check out Human Rights 2000 and Human Rights 2001 for more info as well as various news articles located in News and Articles sections.
Russia
Total control by FSB of Russian Internet is complete. Every E-Mail, every IP, every download and every web page visited is recorded and sent to FSB. Freedom of using Internet in Russia simply doesn't exist.
Internet service providers were required to install, at their own expense, a device that routes all Internet traffic to an FSB terminal. Those providers that did not comply with the requirements faced either loss of their licenses or denial of their license renewal. While the framers of the System for Operational Investigative Measures (SORM-2) claimed that the regulation did not violate the Constitution or the Civil Code because it required a court order, there appeared to be no mechanism to prevent unauthorized FSB access to Internet traffic or private information without a warrant. In 2000 Communications Minister Leonid Reyman issued an order stating that the FSB was no longer required to provide telecommunications and Internet companies documentation on targets of interest prior to accessing information. Human rights activists suggested that this order only formalized existing practices, established since SORM was introduced, of monitoring communications without providing any information or legal justification to those being monitored. Despite the 2000 Supreme Court ruling upholding the requirements that the FSB conduct monitoring only by court order, the oversight and enforcement of these provisions were inadequate in practice.
Reporters in Russia are treated as wild animals with full year of hunting season on them. But that is not the worst. Only in Russia it is possible for judges to prosecute and sentence reporters at the same time.
In July the Central District Court of Sochi ordered the newspaper Sochi and correspondent Sergey Zolovkin to pay $3,175 and $1,587 (105,000 and 50,000 rubles), to the Krasnodar region administration for alleged defamation of 26 judges from the Krasnodar region. The judge who made the ruling was also one of the plaintiffs in the case. An article by Zolovkin printed in September 2000 reported on the lack of transparency of the court system, while not naming any particular person. Zolovkin left the country for security reasons in March after surviving an assassination attempt and was living abroad at the time of the ruling.
More about Zolovkin's case here.
During the year, a number of individuals whose occupations were related to the media were killed or reported missing, and scores were attacked, drawing protests from international media defense organizations. The International Press Institute voted unanimously in May to keep the country on its watch list of countries that "retain the essential elements of democracy, but which have entered a repressive phase," or countries with the means to halt attacks on media. The NGO Glasnost reported 25 killings of journalists during the year; however, other observers noted that not all of the killings had been linked to the victims' occupations. In the following cases, colleagues and police considered the victims' professions to be the motive for the crimes against them: On March 11, Natalya Skryl, a journalist for the Taganrog-based newspaper Nashe Vremya, was killed by a blow to the head. Sergey Kalinovskiy, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Smolensk, disappeared on December 14, 2001; his body was found on April 1. Valeriy Ivanov, editor-in-chief of Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye, was shot dead on April 29 in Tolyatti. On May 19, Aleksandr Plotnikov, founder of the newspaper Gostinyi Dvor, was found murdered in Tyumen Oblast. Nikolay Vasilyev, a local Chuvash reporter, was robbed and beaten to death on August 18 in Cheboksary. Igor Salikov, head of information security for Moskovskiy Komsomolets-Penza, was shot to death on September 21 in Penza. Also in Penza, the editor of Lyubimiy Gorod newspaper was beaten unconscious on August 11. The next day, Yuriy Frolov, deputy director of Propaganda Publishing, was abducted and had not been located by year's end. On August 14, Viktor Shamayev, crime reporter for Penzenskaya Pravda and editor of the newspaper Dlya Sluzhbenovo Polzovaniya, was abducted in Arbekov, tied up and beaten and told to give up journalism and leave town. He was subsequently released and was reported to have remained in Arbekov. In February Ilyas Magomedov, head of an independent Groznyy Television channel, disappeared after leaving his home in Beloreche on February 21.
Putin's long for "good" old Stalin's days is going too far. Restricting freedom of movement within any country is severe violation of basic human right, freedom of movement.
The Government has imposed registration requirements on domestic travel. All adults are issued internal passports, which they must carry while traveling and must register with local authorities for visits of more than 3 days (in Moscow for visits more than 24 hours); however, travelers not staying in hotels usually ignored this requirement. These internal passports also are required for obtaining many governmental services. There have been several disputes between the central authorities and regional governments regarding the internal passports.
We all know about human trafficking in Russia, especially women but Putin's government is definitely going into wrong direction. The basic government role is to serve people but that is definitely not the case in Russia.
NGOs claimed that Russian consular officials abroad refused to help trafficked women. The MFA confirmed that it had no policy on assistance to victims of trafficking and was working to create appropriate guidance. Victims rarely filed complaints against the agencies that recruited them once they returned to the country, reporting that fear of reprisals often exceeded their hope of police assistance. Law enforcement authorities acknowledged that they rarely opened a case following such complaints because often no domestic law was broken, and law enforcement authorities are evaluated according to the number of cases they close.
There were no government initiatives to bring trafficking victims back to the country. Unless deported by the host country, women had to pay their own way home or turn to international NGOs for assistance. Women reported that without their documentation, which was often withheld by traffickers, they received no assistance from Russian consulates abroad. The Government did not provide direct assistance to trafficking victims.
It seems that only purpose of Russian diplomats abroad is to spy and protect interests of wealthy clique in Moscow behind Putin. How do you turn away women being kidnapped, raped, tortured and forced to prostitution in foreign countries? It is more believable that some Russian consular officials are also involved in human trafficking as well. Exporting natural resources abroad is big business in Russia including women.
China
Government killed them all so what's left of it? Internet, of course. China's censorship of the Net is intense and the worst in the world. Everything found to be even remotely challenging to the totalitarian government in Beijing is cut, inaccessible and punishable by long prison sentences.
During the year, a Harvard Law School report concluded that China had the most extensive Internet censorship in the world. According to the report, the Government blocked at least 19,000 sites during the 6-month study, and may have blocked as many as 50,000. Blocked sites included those of major foreign news organizations, health organizations, educational institutions, Taiwanese and Tibetan businesses and organizations, democracy activists, and religious and spiritual organizations. In September the Government blocked Google, a foreign-based search engine. After 2 weeks, during which the Government allegedly enhanced blocks on sensitive sites, access was restored. Altavista, another foreign-based search engine, was also blocked. The Government denied that it ever blocked the search engines. The authorities reportedly began to employ more sophisticated technology, such as "packet sniffers," enabling the selective blocking of specific content rather than entire Web sites in some cases. Such technology was also used to block e-mails containing sensitive content. The Government generally did not prosecute citizens who received dissident e-mail publications, but forwarding such messages to others sometimes did result in detention.
The Ministry of Information Industry regulated access to the Internet while the Ministries of Public and State Security monitored its use. Regulations prohibit a broad range of activities that authorities have interpreted as subversive or as slanderous to the state, including the dissemination of any information that might harm unification of the country or endanger national security. Promoting "evil cults" was banned, as was providing information that "disturbs social order or undermines social stability." Internet service providers were instructed to use only domestic media news postings, record information useful for tracking users and their viewing habits, install software capable of copying e-mails, and immediately end transmission of so-called subversive material. Many Internet service providers practiced extensive self-censorship to avoid transgressing the very broadly worded regulations. Another regulation requires Internet cafe patrons to register with "software managers" and produce a valid identification card to log on. The State Council also has promulgated a comprehensive list of prohibited Internet activities, including using the Internet to "incite the overthrow of the Government or the Socialist system" and "incite division of the country, harming national unification." In April the Ministry of Public Security announced a campaign to "clean up the Internet environment" before the 16th Party Congress.
Eleven years in prison for downloading articles from the Internet!?
During the year, authorities arrested dissidents for disseminating information through the Internet. In the most serious punishment yet for an Internet-related crime, Li Dawei, a former police officer from Gansu, was sentenced in July to 11 years in prison for downloading "reactionary" articles and maintaining contacts with foreigners. On September 14, Chen Shaowen was detained for subversion by local officials in Lianyuan, Hunan, for having posted almost 40 articles deemed "reactionary." On November 7, 22-year-old Beijing Normal University Student Liu Di was arrested after expressing views critical of the Government in an online essay. At year's end, according to the international NGOs Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, 14 persons were being held for publishing or distributing information online.
In March the Government began a "Public Pledge on Self Discipline for China's Internet Industry" drive. More than 300 companies signed up, including the popular Sina.com and Sohu.com, as well as foreign-based Yahoo!'s China division. Those who signed the pledge agreed not to spread information that "breaks laws or spreads superstition or obscenity." They also promised to refrain from "producing, posting, or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability." In protest against the self-censorship pledge, a group of 18 dissidents published a "declaration of Internet users' rights" in July. The declaration called for complete freedom to surf the Internet, with restrictions placed only on sites with pornographic, slanderous, or violent content.
Provisional figures issued in March showed that the country had more than 200,000 Internet cafes. On June 16, a fire at an unlicensed Internet cafe in Beijing's university district killed 25 persons and injured 12. In response, authorities closed down more than 14,000 Internet cafes nationwide, 3,100 of them permanently, and in October issued more restrictive regulations governing the operation of such businesses. The new regulations limit hours of operation, allow authorities to view records of Internet use, and require identification card registration.
Who wants to buy Korean women for $50? Only in China! Stalinist dictator Kim from North Korea as Putin likes to export his women abroad for cash.
There were reports that women and girls from Burma, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, and Russia were trafficked into the country either to work in the sex trade or to be forced to marry Chinese men. Trafficking of North Korean women and girls into the country to work in the sex industry was reportedly widespread in the northeastern part of the country; border guards reportedly were involved. Many such women, unable to speak Chinese, were virtual prisoners. Others chose to stay in their new situation because China was less poverty-stricken than North Korea. A few of the Korean women were sold against their will to rural men in both ethnic Korean and ethnic Han areas. Others ended up working as prostitutes. According to press reports, North Korean brides were sold for approximately $38 (RMB 315) to $150 (RMB 1,245). Women reportedly also were trafficked from Vietnam into the country for purposes of forced marriage.
Hong Kong
Freedom and liberties in Hong Kong are steadily eroding.
Despite regular coverage of sensitive subjects in print and in the broadcast media, professional journalist groups and NGOs asserted that media self-censorship continued. The Hong Kong Journalists Association, for example, commented in a June report that self-censorship was on the rise. The Association reported that subjects avoided included topics of particular sensitivity to China, leadership dynamics, and Taiwanese and Tibetan independence.
Since the handover, several prominent overseas dissidents have been denied entry or visas to enter Hong Kong. In April exiled mainland dissident Harry Wu, who held foreign citizenship, was refused entry to Hong Kong, on the grounds of protecting Hong Kong's security. The Government asserted that the denial of Wu's entry was in accordance with the law. In June Wu was denied a visa to come to Hong Kong, where he had been invited to address a seminar. Also in June, over 90 foreign Falun Gong adherents who intended to stage protests during the fifth anniversary of the handover celebration were denied entry upon arrival at the Hong Kong international airport.
Until the next Falun Gong hunt, "strike hard" policy and open season on reporters in Russia.
FS Net Editor