Window on Eurasia: South Caucasus Nations Overwhelmingly Anti-LGBT, Poll Finds

Paul Goble

Staunton, July 25 – Ninety-six percent of Armenians, 84 percent of Azerbaijanis, and 87 percent of Georgians say that homosexuality “can never be justified,” figures that reflect the conservative values of these societies and provide context for attacks on LGBT demonstrations in Tbilisi this year and in Armenia last.

Those results, reported yesterday by the Caucasus Research Resource Center, were in response to the question “Please tell me whether you think homosexuality can be justified or not?” These figures are for the answer that it “can never be justified” on a five point scale (crrc-caucasus.blogspot.com/2013/07/attitudes-towards-homosexuality-in.html).

Only extremely small percentages – three in Armenia, seven in Azerbaijan, and five in Georgia – were more acceptant, the CRRC survey found, and roughly comparable and equally small shares—one percent, nine percent and eight percent respectively – refused to answer or said they found it difficult to say.

At least in part, these attitudes reflect traditional cultural values not challenged by legal change. Punishment for homosexual acts was dropped in Azerbaijan and Georgia only in 2000 and in Armenia in 2003. Armenia and Azerbaijan do not have laws against hate crimes or discrimination against sexual minorities, while Georgia banned job discrimination against LGBTs in 2006.

In many countries around the world display, studies suggest, attitudes on homosexuality vary widely by geography, gender and age cohorts, with those living in the capitals, those who are female, and those who are younger generally taking a more tolerant view. But the CRRC report says that  “the South Caucasus is different.”

“In all three countries, attitudes towards homosexuality are relatively similar between geographic areas, sex and age groups,” the CRRC report said, with the poll outcomes all within “the margin of sampling error of plus or minus three” percent, a pattern that suggests there is unlikely to be growing pressure for change in these attitudes from within these societies.

 The countries of the South Caucasus also diverge from international patterns in another way.  The Pew Global survey found, with a few notable exceptions, a strong relationship between levels of religiosity and poverty, on the one hand, and the acceptance of homosexuality, on the other (pewglobal.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-homosexuality/).

In that Pew study, Armenians and Georgians said they were more religious than Azerbaijanis, and Armenia and Georgia were classified as lower middle income economies while Azerbaijan was categorized as an upper middle one. Despite that, the CRRC report found that the levels of acceptance of homosexuality “does not significantly differ” among them.

Window on Eurasia: Abdulatipov’s New Hard Line on Islamists Reflects Deteriorating Security Situation in Daghestan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – Daghestani leader Ramazan Abdulatipov has adopted a harsh new line against Islamists in his North Caucasus republic, one far removed from the views for which he earlier attracted positive attention and a shift that some see as leading to extra-judicial murders of Wahhabis and other Islamists there given the deteriorating security situation there.

            In an article on the “Bolshoy Kavkaz” portal, Svetlana Bolotnikova discusses Abdulatipov’s evolution and both what it says about where Daghestan is now and what it may presage about developments there in the coming months (bigcaucasus.com/events/topday/22-07-2013/84825-vah-0/).

            Seven years ago, she notes, Abdulatipov said in the course of an interview with “Vechernyaya Moskva” that “Wahhabism appears as a result of hunger, poverty and the lack of civilized values,” a position that reflects the views of much of the expert community in Moscow and the West.

            But upon being named head of Daghestan, Bolotnikova points out, “his position regarding Wahhabis sharply changed. Instead of pointing to social problems, Abdulatipov reportedly said in Khadhalmakhi that he is quite prepared to “permit the destruction of radicals under his personal responsibility” rather than through education, social change or the courts.

            Six were shot at that time, Bolotnikova says, including a woman“whose body was found in a river.”

            Khahimurad Damadayev, the imam of a village in the republic’s Shamil District, told the Makhachkala weekly “Chernovik” what he had heard.  “In the district,” he said, there wasa rumor that Abdulatipov had said: ‘Throw all the Wahhabis in the river. I will take responsibility’” if you do.

            According to the imam, several people in his district decided to “follow the example of Khadzhalmakhi” and deal with the Wahhabis on their own and “without the participation of the law enforcement organs.” The authorities then dispatched a more senior imam into his village, Damadayev said, who called on people to ensure that there were no Wahhabis there and to use whatever means were necessary to ensure that, including “boycotts and even murders.”

            Abdulatipov for his part sought to blame the media for all this. He threatened to shut down “Chernovik” and declared that “certain media have in fact provoked the murder of people in the republic.”  But an examination of the record shows that it is the republic head and not the media that have been fanning the flames of popular anger at the Wahhabis, Bolotnikova says.

              A week ago, in remarks covered extensively in the Daghestani media, Abdulatipov said that “it is necessary that people after such cases autonomatically go out and help the police and the law enforcement organs.  Questions of the security of the republic and our citizens are so serious that we must not put the task only on the shoulders of the officers of these [organs].  Society must be involved.”

            Moreover and in support of that goal, Abdulatipov has sponsored the creation of popular druzhinniki groups, some of whom have already engaged in extra-judicial executions and of people who have “no relation” to Wahhabism. And he has demanded that the leaders of regions come up with lists of Wahhabis who can be targeted.

            According to Bolotnikova, Abdulatipov is especially concerned about the 200 Daghetanis the FSB says have gone to Syria to fight the regime of Bashar Asad.  When they return after receiving “the international support of extremist and terrorist organizations,” they will represent a serious threat.”

            Therefore, he continued, officials at all levels must follow these people and “take a whole line of measures for their neutralization so that their influence will be minimal.”  As Bolotnikova points out, “in the language of the FSB, ‘neutralization’ means the physical elimination of the militants.” Thus, some coming back from Syria may be “destroyed” as a prevention measure.

            These returnees and also those coming back from Muslim medrassahs and universities in Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere must be eliminated, Abdulatipov has said, “because “these people are fighting together with international extremists” and constitute “a direct threat to Daghestan.”

            The Daghestani head adds that from now on, no one will be given a foreign passport in Daghestan without official clearance and investigation of his or her family and ideological reliability. And those that don’t pass muster will be included in lists where they will be subject to special and continuing scrutiny.

            Obviously, only a radical deterioration in the security situation in Daghestan and Moscow’s insistence that something be done and done quickly can explain such a remarkable shift in the position of Abdulatipov, once upon a time one of the most thoughtful observers of the situation there.

Window on Eurasia: FSB Now Targeting LGBTs the Way the KGB Did in Soviet Times

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – On the basis of both standing internal directives and the new Russian law against “homosexual propaganda,” the FSB is targeting LGBTs even more aggressively than the KGB did in Soviet times but to the same ends of discrediting opposition groups in the eyes of the population and forcibly recruiting gays to report on the leaders of such groups.

            One FSB officer told yopolis.ru that Soviet officials applied its anti-gay laws only rarely but that “the KGB recruited agents from among homosexuals” to gather information about the dissent movement by threatening them with criminal charges if they did not cooperate (yopolis.ru/cityboom/occasion/11881).

            Olga Gert, a LGBT activist, recalls that practice. She says that KGB officers often “invited a homosexual for a conversation and then proposed working for the authorities or being charged. “It seems to me,” she says, “that today we are returning to Soviet times” in this regard.

            The situation has been getting worse for several years and not just since the law on “homosexual propaganda” was passed, according to the FSB officer with whom the news agency spoke. According to him, that agency has data showing that LGBTs are “actively cooperating with opposition figures” and actively involved in protest actions.

            Natalya Tsymblaov of the Heterosexual Alliance for LGBT Equality says that her group has much evidence that the FSB is regularly inviting LGBT activists and rights activists for “conversations” and seeking to use them as sources or agents. Her group recommends either not going or not answering any questions.

            But some have gone, and the questions they have been asked show what the FSB is interested in and concerned about. Mariya Kozlovskaya, a lawyer who works with LGBTs, says members of that community are asked about “numbers, contacts with foreign foundations, especially American and German, and about their financing.”

            “It seems to us that they are recruiting their agents in this milieu,” she continues. And judging from some documents that she has seen, that process and raids against places where LGBT people are known to congregate have been going on for some time and are going to continue.

            One of the documents to which Kozlovskaya refers was prepared by the FSB Administration for Moscow and Moscow Oblast. In its report on recent harassment of LGBT groups in Moscow and Murmansk, Yopolis.ru  provides two large excerpts which say a lot about official thinking concerning homosexuality.

            “The dissemination of the ideas of homosexualism and the use of narcotics are acquiring an ever larger character,” the report says.  According to operation data, members of sexual minorities and also drug dependent citizens and members of organied criminal groups involved with drug trafficking are actively being used by the special services and organizations, including non-governmental one0 of foreign states with the goal of realizing projects of a destructive direction.”

            “In particular,” the report continues, “in recent times has been noted the active participation of the listed categories of persons in the carrying out of protest actions, including on May 6, 2012 on Bolotnoye Square in Moscow, which were directed at harming the interests of the Russian Federation. Quite often devotees of homosexualism and drug users are used by destructive forces as organizers of illegal public actions which have as their goal the destabilization of the political and social-economic situation in the country.”

                As the news service points out, this report contains several very disturbing “ideas.” First, it equates homosexuality and drug trafficking. Second, it links both to the political opposition, a tie that officials can use against both groups.  And third, it ties LGBT activists to Western governments and NGOs, thus opening another front against them.

            The arrest and then release of LGBT activists in Murmansk on Monday and the OMON raise in Moscow on June 2 have attracted a certain amount of media notice in the West, but this latest testimony about what the FSB is doing shows that the Russian government’s attack on LGBTs is broader and more insidious, even though it has remained largely out of sight.

Window on Eurasia: Ukraine Offers More Reasons for Optimism than Russia Does, Shevtsova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 24 – Neither Ukraine nor Russia has it easy as a result of their Soviet pasts and the collapse of Western moral leadership, but nevertheless, Ukraine by virtue of its pluralism, regionalism and more honest dealing with the past offers far more reasons for optimism than does the Russian Federation, according to Liliya Shevtsova.

            Speaking to a group of journalism students in Kyiv, Shevtsova, an associate of the Moscow Carnegie Center and a prominent Russian commentator, offered praise for what Ukraine has achieved but only concern about what is happening in the West and in Russia (day.kiev.ua/ru/article/mirovye-diskussii/zakat-zapada-i-rossiyskaya-matrica).

            The Moscow analyst began by noting that Ukraine and Russia share many problems, not just the familiar ones of their common Soviet past but the especially critical ones caused by “the deep and prolonged crisis” of the internatonal system and especially of the absence of leaders and leadership from Western civilization.

            These latter two problems are especially great both because “Western civilization was the motor of world development, innovation, brave thinking and freedom” and because no country will find it easy to make the transition from an authoritarian or totalitarian past without the existence of such leadership.

            The West has lost its way, and it does not have leader like de Gaulle, Churchill, Reagan, Mitterand, Kohl or Thatcher who inspired those in Eastern Europe like Havel, Lennart Meri, or Walensa. After them, there were no leaders. Everything “ended.” And because the West has “lost itself,” “there were for favorable external contitions” for Ukraine or Russia.

            The West can get out of this crisis as it has gotten out of earlier ones, she suggested, with the appearance of a new generation of leaders who will turn away from “pure pragmatism” at home and abroad and be guided once againin their approach by “the restoration of the valus and principles of freedom.”

            Once that happens, Shevtsova says,”it will beeasier for us to breathe” and to make progress toward those goals we share with the West.

            The situation in this regard with respect to Russia is especially unfortunate, she continued.  Russi “missed its chance in 1991” when there was a chance for the new independent states to begin to construct their statehood and to form their nations.” Instead of doing so, Russia remained in an indeterminate status and then turned to the past.

            Having ceased to be the Soviet Union, she argued, Russia all the same used the very same “Russian matrix only without communism,” a situation which has meant that “for the last 20 years, we have attempted to livein this ‘indeterminate one’ trying to show on the one hand that we are a democracy and on the other w are continuing all of the old model of autocracy.” 

            Initially, Shevtsova continued, Russians were ashamed of this, then “they concealed it, but now,” they are quite open about it.  Instead of an imitation, the Russian authorities have moved to selective repression,” repression reflecting the weakness of the regime rather than its strength and pointing to the final agony of these arrangements.

            “But there is no joy in that the Putin system is losing its staility because a dramatic situation is arising [in Russia]: despite the fact that the current authorities are losing their popularity, the system of autocracy itself has many more bases for survival” and can do so for a long time to come, all the more so because even many of its opponents want to use the same kind of personal and autocratic power.

            The Putin regime in Russia is a new kind one based on “total and absolute loyalty.” Any deviation will be punished.  But this requirement of the system “means that there is no independent game in politics.”  That is sometime obscured by the ability of the opposition to express their views on the Internet and in certain Moscow newspapers.

            “But the overwhelming part of [Russian] society gets its information from television,” which is controlled by the state.  And as a result, “the opposition and the critics of the regime … cannot exert decisive influenc on the formation of public opinioin.” It can, however, frighten the regime by mass actions.

            That is what happened after the Bolotnoye protests.  But the Kremlin reacted by deciding that it “woud no longer allow the smallest chance for ‘orange outburts’ in Moscow.  The authorities understand that they have lost Moscow nd the major citieis and decided to tighten the screws.”

            That has meant “the formation of a new pretorian regime, one more cruel than its predecessor.” The Kemlin doesn’t particularly want that development, Shevtsova argued, “but the logic of survival is driving it to the use of force” and to a reliance on the most traditional strata of society, on the search for enemies and Soviet-style mobilization.

            The active part of Russian society is still reflecting what to do. The last wave ofcivic protest has died away, and “the next one must be more organied, politically structured and have a different agenda if it wants to be successful,” onedirected not at making the autocracy better but at “transforming the autocracy into a legal state.”

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            Turning to the situation of Ukraine, Shevtsova said she was “more optimistic” at least in comparison with her assessment of Russia.  “You have done one big thing which we in Russia up to now have not done: you have begun to strengthen the state but on new principles … a very rare experiment when a nation not yet having become a nation forms a state.”

            Moreover, she continued, in Ukraine, there has been “a preservation of political pluralism, regionalization, and also a lack of desire on the part of the Ukrainian political elite to presereve its power” by any means and by subordinating itself to Russia. Instead, Ukraine has begun the difficult but necessary changes needed to become part of the European Union.

            And finally and perhaps most important,Ukrainians “have begun to write your own history. You have done what no one other than the Baltic states have done. I praise Yushchenko who did an absolutely phenomena thing relative to the Terror Famine: he legally defined the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.”

            “Why is this important? Because it legally strengthenes a different treatment of the history of the Ukrainian nation which has still not been formed,” Shevtsova said.

            That does not mean there are not problems and disappointments with Ukraine, however. Shevtsova said that in the 1990s she had thought “Ukraine would go to the West first, that it would be an experiment and create a legal state earlier than Russia. But that did not happen.”

Russia’s approach to Ukraine has not helped.  Vladimir Putin doesn’t view Ukraine as a state at all, and his view is shared by most of the ruling elite. They don’t think much about Ukraine or consider it a priority. “There is a complete lack of understanding and absence of information and knowledge which always leads to an inadequate policy.”

            At the same time, Shevtsova said, Russia’s liberal opposition does not have a clearly developed position about Ukraine. Most of its members have the opinion that “Ukraine is in a aone of civiiaitonal indeterminancy” but with “a plus sign” that means it has “the potential of movement to Europe.” 

            But “one thing is clear: we will not go to the West and to Europe together. You hav a chance to use a half opened window” to do so. But it is a chance that must be used and used quickly because remaining in a state of indeterminacy for long will ultimately lead back to the past as it has in Russia.