'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

MODERATOR 1: Okay. Which designers do you prefer?
SECRETARY CLINTON: What designers of clothes?
MODERATOR 1: Yes.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Would you ever ask a man that question? (Laughter.) (Applause.)
MODERATOR 1: Probably not. Probably not. (Applause.)

-- Interview with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday, at KTR Studio (above) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Full transcript and photo credit here.

On this day

On February 23, ...
... 1898 (110 years ago today), following a 2-week trial, a court in Paris convicted renowned author Émile Zola of libel for J'Accuse (I Accuse) (right), the 4,000-word commentary, styled as an open letter to the President of France, in which he'd described as a "crime of high treason against humanity" the 1897 conviction by court-martial of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a result linked to anti-Semitism.
... 1944, Soviets acting on orders of leader Joseph Stalin began a 2-day operation in which "nearly half a million Chechens and Ingush were systematically gathered together ... and transported in freight trains" east to Siberia and to 2 Soviet Socialist Republics that today are the independent states of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As a result of the cold, hunger, and disease they suffered, an estimated 50% of these peoples, whose homelands had been in the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union, perished within a year of this forced deportation.

Sovereign Democracy?

In a couple of earlier posts (here and here), "Grace O'Malley" [IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann] and I discussed the fact that “democracy” has many meanings. Judy Dempsey writes in the Herald Tribune that Russia is now openly advocating a repressive political philosophy it calls “sovereign democracy”: subordinating democratic values to national interests. According to this “philosophy”, the foreign supervision Russia is subject to as a member of the Council of Europe (COE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is nothing more than foreign meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Thus, Russia is currently blocking reforms at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (at right), the court established in Strasbourg, France to hear human rights claims from individuals living in the 47 COE member states. Judges at the Court are seeking reforms to help deal with the 89,000-case backlog (while 90% of ECHR claims are dismissed as inadmissible, they still must be examined individually). Russia joined the court in 1996 and implemented the European Human Rights Convention in 1998. Since then, over 48,790 complaints have been filed against Russia – more than against any other country. Of those, 10,569 were lodged in 2006 alone, when the ECHR found 96 violations. As COE chair last year, Russia suggested the Council shift priorities away from human rights to education, culture, illegal migration, human trafficking and combating terrorism. Russia is also trying to curb election-monitoring activities undertaken by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Vienna. A division of the OSCE founded in 1976, the Office monitored elections in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine in which Russian-backed regimes were toppled by pro-democracy revolutions (below). Despite its criticisms of these organizations, however, Russia is not renouncing membership. Instead, it created the Collective Security Treaty Organization in 2003, which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Political cooperation and collective security are the main purposes; interference in member states' internal affairs is strictly forbidden. Russia is also supporting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. which was founded in 2001 to fight terrorism and cross-border crime and, again, includes Russia and several Central Asian countries. This organization also directly competes with the Office for Democratic Institutions in observing elections. As Dempsey points out, this is a sad turn-around “for a rich and self-confident country that during the 1990s had fought hard to be accepted into Europe's human rights organizations”. While I cannot help but agree, I also cannot help but note that “Guantánamo”: from the camp itself to the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping, CIA renditions and secret detention camps, abuse and disappearance of Muslim prisoners within the US, and withdrawing from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to avoid scrutiny of our application of the death penalty to foreign citizens are all signs of a return to sovereign democracy here at home.