Eye on Eurasia: Moscow blocks Maris
09.06.05
By Paul Goble
Vienna, Austria, Jun. 8 (UPI) -- Moscow succeeded in blocking Tuesday
the release of a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe report
critical of human rights abuses in the Republic of Mari El less than 48
hours after Mari activists were forced to convene an ethnic congress secretly
in a rural forest lest officials use force against them.
Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Duma's International Affairs
Committee who led the Russian delegation to PACE, celebrated what he called
Russia's "success" in blocking the release of that report, which the Parliamentary
Assembly had unanimously supported May 12, RIA Novosti reported.
"The assembly will thus have no special report on the situation in Mari
El mainly thanks to Russian participation in the session," Kosachev continued,
citing pro-Moscow Finno-Ugric officials as saying the resolution was "an
act of interference in the domestic affairs of the Republic of Mari El
and of the entire Russian Federation."
The Russian news agency added these same Mari El officials had said
they could solve their own problems without the assistance of outside advisers
"who have no information about developments" there and "who are pursuing
goals that do not correspond with the interests of the Mari people" or
"the idea of European cooperation."
Just how officials in the Middle Volga region of Mari El will go about
"solving" problems on their own was shown two days earlier. On Sunday,
ethnic Mari activists had to organize their second congress secretly deep
in a forest lest the Russian-dominated government there again use force
to block such a session or persecute those taking part.
In a news release Tuesday on the basis of reports from Mari El, the
Information Centre of Finno-Ugric Peoples in Tallinn (contact: suri@suri.ee)
said that congress denounced the violation of the rights of all residents
of that Middle Volga republic and welcomed PACE criticism of those abuses.
Speakers at the session, who included both local activists and foreign
visitors, recounted the many ways in which Mari El President Leonid
Markelov had abused the constitutional rights of the Mari nation, dramatically
cutting back the level of Mari participation in the bureaucracy and of
the Mari language in public life.
Moreover, Markelov has not been shy about using force against the Mari.
He dispatched heavily armed police to prevent the first Mari congress from
taking place in December 2004, and he has sponsored or at least looked
the other way when thugs - none of who has been arrested - have beaten
up Mari activists and independent journalists.
Because the Maris are linguistically related to the Estonians, Finns
and Hungarians, the three Finno-Ugric independent states, their situation
has attracted more attention than many equally isolated groups in the Russian
population. And indeed, representatives of the three took the lead in pushing
for the May 12 PACE resolution.
But just as Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin signaled
his support for Markelov by presenting him with an award for promoting
"friendship of the peoples," so too now, the Russian delegation at the
PACE Bureau has shown Moscow will do what it can to draw a curtain around
events there by denouncing any outside attention.
In many ways, this represents a return to the Soviet approach to dissent
and international support for dissenters. Once again, Moscow officials
say that only they really know what is happening and argue that cooperation
between Moscow and Europe is too important to be sacrificed over a small
people far away.
Fortunately for the Mari, they have many friends beyond the borders
of their republic both within the Russian Federation and abroad. But unfortunately,
as the current situation shows, Moscow and Markelov have powerful cards
to play and the Maris are thus forced to retreat into the forests just
as their ancestors did so many centuries ago.
--
(Paul Goble teaches at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu
in Estonia.)
Source: The
Washington Times
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