31 Dec 11 | Russia
Opposition activist Taisiya Osipova was sentenced to ten years on charges of drug trafficking on Friday. Rights activists allege that her arrest is a political move to silence both her and her husband. Both are members of The Other Russia opposition movement.
No journalists were present at the Smolensk city court when Ospiova was sentenced to ten years of liberty deprivation in a colony on 29 December. The Other Russia condemned her arrest in a statement said that the sentence would be fatal for Osipova, who has severe diabetes and pancreatitis as well as a five year old child.
Osipova and her husband Sergey Fomchenkov both support the founder of the Russian radical National Bolshevik Party (NBP) Eduard Limonov, which was banned in 2005 and subsequently revived under the name The Other Russia. Fomchenkov is a political council member for the organisation, and Osipova is an activist.
Taisiya Osipova first became well-known in 2003, when she smacked the Smolensk governor Victor Maslov with a bunch of carnations and shouted “You are getting fat at the expense of simple people. NBP says hello.” She was then given one year’s probation.
Osipova was initially arrested on drug charges in November 2010 after police found suspicious powder and marked bonds in her flat. Investigators accused her of selling and storing heroin, and a criminal case was then filed. Human rights activists expressed concern over the credibility of the sentence, because no fingerprints were analysed with the drugs allegedly found at Osipova’s flat, and three witnesses in the case were pro-Kremlin youth movement members, who are traditionally hostile to opposition organisations. This has raised suspicions that the drugs were planted in her flat to frame her, which is a common practise with corrupt law enforcement official.
Many organisations and activists have spoken out against Osipova’s arrest and called for her release, including The Other Russia, World Organization Against Torture, Russian rights activist organisations including Memorial and The Committee for Civil Rights, and public figures like musician Yury Shevchuk and Evgenia Chirikova, an activist for the Khimki forest. Osipova claims that operatives told her that they would release her if she testified against her husband; she refused.
A number of peaceful protests were held in Russia’s biggest cities this year, and many participants were detained by the police. Two biggest post-Soviet rallies in Moscow had a demand to release political prisoners immediately in their resolutions. But Osipova has yet to be released.
While many criminals are allowed to remain free, Osipova, “whose case the public considers faked-up”, remains in prison, Yury Shevchuk stated in his video address in Osipova’s support.
Along with antiextremism and defamation, drug law is often times used to silence opposition activists and outspoken critics of the Kremlin. One of the remarkable examples is that of the artist Artyom Loskutov who was arrested based on drug charges in 2009. The Novosibirsk-based artist Loskutov is famous for orchestrating “monstrations”—which are flash mobs with absurd slogans including “Who’s there?,” “Tanya, don’t cry,” and “System, why so nervous?” Loskutov said marijuana was dropped into his pocket by antiextremism police force operatives, as his fingerprints were not found on the pacakge with drugs, and no drug traces were found in his blood or on his hands. In a statement supporting Osipova, Loskutov said “drugs are used as an instrument for political repressions.”
30 Dec 11 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa
Egyptian security forces reportedly raided the offices of at least seventeen local and international NGOs yesterday. Authorities confiscated files, computers and records from the human rights and pro-democracy organisations. The raided organisations all allegedly receive foreign funding, and are now under investigation for violating Egyptian law. Staff of the organisations were confined to their officers during the raid, and prevented from using their mobile phones or computers. US officials have condemned the attacks, and demanded that the Egyptian government “resolve this issue immediately and to end harassment of NGO staff as well as return all property”.
29 Dec 11 | Uncategorized
It was pleasing to see a few names familiar to Index on Censorship as the Tunisian government took office over the weekend. People we defended and championed during the years of the former Ben Ali regime, and frequently featured in the magazine’s Index Index listings, turned up in a very different kind of list, one including Moncef Marzouki as new Tunisian president, the second most powerful role after the new prime minister Hamid Jebali.
Index chaired the Tunisia Monitoring Group of the IFEX free expression network (IFEX-TMG) between 2007 and 2011. I once had the pleasure of sharing a 2007 panel in Washington DC with Marzouki (recording here), convened in an attempt to get the US government and Congress to recognise the state of repression in Tunisia at the time. He dealt graciously with the Ben Ali drones specially flown in by the regime to try and discredit our arguments.
Marzouki, a doctor and established rights activist was jailed in 1994 after challenging Ben Ali in a presidential election. He was released four months later following an international campaign, but forced into exile. A brief return to Tunisia was marked by weeks when hundreds of plainclothes security service officers surrounded his home and office around the clock and followed him everywhere.
Two other names who were regular namechecks in Index Index have a particularly significant role in the new government. Mohammed Abbou, a member of Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic party, and now deputy prime minister for administrative reform, has the task of retraining, reenergising or just removing the old-regime party hacks still populating the old sclerotic civil service.
The new deputy prime minister for relations with the Constituent Assembly, Abderazek Kilani, has the equally important role of ensuring that the government — charged with drafting a new constitution for the country — remains answerable to the Assembly and it’s voice is heard. Kilani, an independent, is one of the country’s most active human rights activists, going back to his time as leader of Tunisia’s Young Lawyers in 1989.
Outside the government, another lawyer and another name from Index’s back issues, Judge Kalthoum Kennou is the new president of the Association of Tunisian Judges (AMT). She and 10 other brave and independent-minded judges elected to the MAT’s ruling council were the focus of a 2010 campaign by Index, the IFEX-TMG and Article 19 to support the independence of the judiciary.
Index’s work in the country, coordinating a major advocacy project in Tunisia that begun a year before Ben Ali’s removal, goes on. More details.
28 Dec 11 | Egypt
A Cairo civilian court has ordered an end to the practice of forced virginity tests on female detainees in military prisons.
Judge Ali Fekry, head of the Egyptian Administrative Court, read out the ruling at noon on Tuesday in a courtroom packed with pro-democracy activists and journalists. The crowd immediately erupted in cheers of jubilation and anti-military chants. Activists outside the courtroom hugged and congratulated each other flashing the victory sign.
Samira Ibrahim, the 25-year-old woman who had filed a lawsuit against the army for ordering the virginity checks, is one of several female protesters who were subjected to the humiliating tests after being arrested by the military during a protest in Tahrir Square on 9 March.
In that demonstration, staged less than a month after President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down, the Egyptian military had appeared to deliberately target the protesters. Soldiers dragged dozens of pro-democracy activists from Tahrir Square and through the gates of the Egyptian Museum.
Salwa Hosseini, a 20-year-old hairdresser who was among the protesters rounded up by the army later told CNN that uniformed soldiers had tied her up , forced her to the ground and repeatedly slapped her. They shocked her with a stun gun, calling her a prostitute.
Bowing to public pressure, the army later suspended the one year prison sentence it had handed the protesters. Hosseini and the other female protesters later told reporters “The army wanted to teach us a lesson. They wanted to make us feel that we do not have dignity.”
An Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest, claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity tests .
After repeated denials by military authorities that the virginity tests had been conducted, a senior Egyptian military general finally admitted to CNN on 30 May 30 that the virginity checks had indeed been performed. The general however defended the practice.
“The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” the general said. “These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square.”
He added that the army had carried out the tests in “self-defence so that the women wouldn’t later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.”
Wiping away tears of joy, Samira told reporters outside the courtroom Tuesday that “justice had at last been served.”
The court had postponed a hearing in November leading activists to suspect the case may drag on for months.
Human Rights lawyer Hossam Bahgat said the case was a “victory for all women” adding that it was the first crack in the army’s impunity.
Samira’s case marked the second “victory” for pro-democracy activists this week in rulings involving the army. Another court had ordered the release on bail of prominent blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah a day earlier. Alaa was accused of inciting violence against the military and attacking soldiers in deadly clashes between security forces and Coptic protesters demanding protection of their churches last October.
The military generals running the country since President Hosni Mubarak was forced out in February have faced mounting pressure from pro-democracy activists in recent weeks for rights violations. A series of nationwide protests broke out last week after the local and international media flaunted pictures of military brutality against pro- democracy activists who had staged a sit in outside cabinet headquarters demanding an end to military rule. A picture of a half-naked female protester being dragged and beaten by soldiers who had torn off her clothes, triggered public outrage and prompted thousands of Egyptian women to take to the streets last week chanting that “Girls are the red line” and “No to military rule”.
Similar slogans were repeated on Tuesday as Samira and the activists marched from the courtroom in Dokki to Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate the ruling. Egypt’s first female presidential candidate, Bothayna Kamel, a staunch supporter of women’s and minority rights marched alongside Samira, leading the crowd over Kasr el Nil bridge to Tahrir. Male activists joined the rally forming a “protective cordon” to shield the women against any harrassers as they had done in the women’s march earlier in the week.
With calls growing louder in Egypt in recent weeks for a quick handover to civilian rule, the army appears jittery and willing to make concessions to appease a disgruntled public. The generals have expressed regret for the widely publicised photograph of the half-naked woman under attack from army soldiers. The apology, the release of blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah and the ruling to stop the virginity checks on female detainees all signal a clear policy shift by the army, away from the repressive tactics. But sceptics here wonder if it may be “too little too late” as plans are already underway for “a second revolution” on 25 January 2012 in Tahrir to force out the autocratic military rulers.
