The Dominion - Jay Heisler

Forced Off-Air

dawn — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:58:05 +0000

ECHR rebukes Georgia for Soviet-style repression of independent TV station

TBILISI, GEORGIA–In the wake of a January 27 judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which strongly rebuked the Georgian government for its wrongful arrest, sham trial and inhumane imprisonment of media personalities Shalva Ramishvili and Davit Kokhreidze, controversy is spreading about the wider implications of their case, and the circumstances surrounding their arrest.

Georgia, a former Soviet republic, burst onto North American newscasts in August 2008 when Russian tanks came to the defence of two pro-Moscow breakaway regions in Georgia and rolled to within spitting distance of the capital, Tbilisi. The short war quickly entered the rhetoric of the US presidential campaign, with both Barack Obama and John McCain calling for a tough stance on Russia and staunch support for US allies in the Georgian government.

The story of Ramishvili and Kokhreidze echoes numerous stories of media crackdowns in Putin’s Russia. The comparison is uncomfortable for a government desperate to clean up its image, and achieve NATO membership and general Western support.

Critics allege that the 2005 arrest and imprisonment of Ramishvili and Kokhreidze was part of a successful plot—whose aim was to close a politically neutral television station and turn it into a propaganda arm of the Georgian military—engineered and executed by the Georgian Ministry of Defence, a policy group known as the “Freedom Institute,” and an elusive German businessman.

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Georgian television station TV 202, and its co-founders and shareholders Ramishvili and Kokhreidze were looking forward to a good year in 2005. They had aired the first part of a documentary alleging foul play in the death of former Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania; they were hosting “Debates,” a popular talk show in which government politicians were often publicly challenged; and “Dardubala – 2”&mdashan animated comedy program satirizing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili—was planned for the following season. The TV station's optimistic future reflected the hopes of many Georgians, who looked forward to life in a stable and democratic Western-leaning nation and a fulfillment of the promises of 2003’s Rose Revolution, which brought President Saakashvili to power.

In 2005, the two close friends and respected public figures drove to meet with a member of parliament, Koba Bekauri, who was the subject of an upcoming TV 202 report on corruption. Bekauri had tried to block the report’s screening and Ramishvili and Kokhreidze agreed on a price of US$100,000 to keep the program off the air. Although bribery is not an uncommon phenomenon in Georgia, Bekauri and the government declared this an act of blackmail and Ramishvili and Kokhreidze were arrested in their cars as they left the meeting.

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Goga Kokhreidze is a former Member of Parliament and an activist for the rights of the disabled in Georgia. He hadn't seen his brother Davit for over two months when he finally visited him in prison. He found Davit pale, malnourished and surrounded by desperate and miserable convicts.

“If you are not a strong man, you are broken in this place, you go down. In Georgia it is bad, but this, in jail, this is too much.”

Davit Kokhreidze was kept in a 12-bed cell with 29 occupants, where the prisoners had to take turns lying down to sleep. After protesting his treatment by announcing a hunger strike, Kokhreidze was ignored and six more prisoners were added to his cell.

Ramishvili was allegedly held in a cell that had been used for solitary confinement for death row prisoners in the Soviet era. He shared the unventilated 5.65-metre cell and its tiny, vermin-infested bed with another prisoner. Their “toilet” was a thin pipe directly next to their bed that was “so narrow that it was difficult for the inmates to pass urine and excrement through the hole.”

The Georgian Penitentiary Department announced after an investigation that the conditions of Ramishvili and Kokhreidze's imprisonment fully complied with international standards.

The ECHR disagreed, ruling that their incarceration was a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, citing “inhuman and degrading” prison conditions and a trial of dubious integrity. (The European Court of Human Rights was created by the European Commission to award damages to individuals who suffered at the hands of a state. The Georgian government is not required to follow the ruling under international law.)

During their appeal hearing, the two men were kept in metal cages and surrounded by masked men with machine guns. Dozens of plain-clothes government agents filled the courtroom, arguing with families and supporters of the defendants and visiting the judge in the deliberation room. After viewing a video of the hearing, the ECHR decided the judge was openly partial—rephrasing difficult questions to the prosecutor in a leading manner and sometimes answering them himself. Of this hearing, the ECHR cited violations of Article 1, Article 3, Article 4 and Article 5 of the Convention.

Following the ECHR judgment, the government announced structural and policy changes based on the ECHR’s criticisms and paid total damages of EUR 6,000 to each defendant, as well as a joint sum of EUR 14,694 for “costs and expenses.”

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“The [trial] was against TV 202,” said Lia Mukhashavria, Ramishvili and Kokhreidze's lawyer during the ECHR case. “They wanted to close it down. Once they were imprisoned, it collapsed, and by doing that the government has now another TV station on that channel, Sakartvelo, purely a Ministry of Defence channel. They made a clear message to all journalists in Georgia: these guys got in trouble; so could you.”

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Following their arrests, Ramishvili and Kokhreidze were approached by German businessman Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg, who offered to purchase TV 202.

But Altenburg soon sold the station to Beka Paatashvili, a small-town Georgian pig farmer who became the station’s official owner. How Paatashvili acquired the money to purchase the station has never been publicly explained, but the sale also involved Georgian businessman Kakha Ninua, whom Georgian media has alleged is the brother of the Deputy Minster of Defence. The station was given a new, pro-government management team, and, supported by the Georgian Ministry of Defence and a political advocacy organization called the Liberty Institute, was launched in September 2007 as SakarTVelo. Altenburg became the station’s manager and part of its legal team.

Little information can be found about the current shareholders and managers of SakarTVelo. Their website is under maintenance and the Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the station's ownership.

The Liberty Institute, officially a Georgian research and advocacy organization, is seen by most Georgians as representing and enforcing American foreign policy interests. As with the station itself, very little information is publicly available about the funding and management of the Liberty Institute. Liberty did not respond to repeated telephone calls and e-mails.

“I saw the contract of sale that was signed by Hans von Sachsen-Altenburg,” said former owner of TV 202 David Mapley about the sale of TV 202 to Altenburg, detailing a $500,000 payment to his account at Merrill Lynch in Dallas, Texas, and $60,000 to Nana Andronikashvili in Georgia. “This was obviously a set-up."

Mapley has given all relevant files to the FBI for an investigation. He adds that he contacted Merrill Lynch to freeze Altenburg’s assets and they did not respond.

“The whole [Georgian] government is in on the take! It is significant that I wrote to Prime Minister Noghaideli for help, and he orchestrates stealing the station!”

Altenburg refuses to comment on questions related to his background or his involvement with SakarTVelo, but he says he strongly supports the ECHR position, claiming the judgment is “a gift to the people of Georgia,” and adding, “Those with honour should resign in shame and those without honour should be fired.”

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While Kokhreidze was released in 2007 after the transfer of TV 202 to government control, Ramishvili remains behind bars. In an interview conducted with Ramishvili through his lawyer, who wrote down his responses while visiting him in prison, the message relayed was: "The president personally is interested in keeping [him] in prison to serve full time"; that he was a "very close person to the president"; and that he wants "to publicize private materials on the president, what [he] personally knows about him. But [he] will do this after [his] release.”

Meanwhile, international aid pours into Georgia and its progress toward democracy is celebrated in the Western World.

Jay Heisler is a Canadian-born journalist who has worked in Sudan, the West Bank, Georgia, Northern Iraq and Lebanon. His writing has been published in Georgia Today, the Beirut Daily Star and The Dominion.

Georgian TV

North America's Guilt Industry

Stuart Neatby — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:47:52 +0000

Sudanese Slavery and the Christian Right

"It's all about money. They're exploiting people's guilt and they're making a fortune."

Dan Eiffe, manager of the Sudan Mirror, has been involved in Southern Sudan for decades. Through his work with the Mirror, an English-language paper based in Nairobi, as well as numerous other NGOs and aid organizations, Eiffe has become a well-known voice in Sudan and the international community. A former Irish Catholic priest, Eiffe is especially critical of efforts by fundamentalist Christians from Europe and the United States to stop the slave trade in Sudan.

Slavery, though a scourge in the area since long before Sudan became a nation-state, resurfaced as a serious issue in the 1980s. It became clear that soldiers and militias backed by Sudan's Northern Khartoum government were capturing women and children from Dinka villages and selling them into domestic servitude. In addition to being a source of profit, this practice served as a weapon of terror against civilian populations, in the same vein as mass rape and scorched-earth campaigns. To this day, Khartoum will only admit to "abductions."

When the international community learned about the resurgence of the slave trade in Sudan, there was uproar in Western countries. For the first time, Republican Christians like Kenneth Star and African-American activists like Louis Farrakhan had found a cause they could agree upon. However, in their ostensible efforts to free the exploited, many religious organizations ended up practising a different sort of exploitation.

Eiffe explains that there are many legitimate faith-based charities, in particular the Samaritan's Purse and Voice of the Martyrs, groups which he believes have been "genuinely committed" and should not to be tainted by the less scrupulous organizations. He will not mention the offending organizations by name, saying only that the majority are American fundamentalist churches.

Many of these churches will fly into Nairobi on chartered planes and stay in five-star hotels, before spending a brief amount of time in Sudan filming a documentary that they will use for fundraising at home. Very little of the money they raise ends up back in Sudan.

"They have a flying visit. They pay off some corrupt officials within the movement and they have everything organized for them," Eiffe explains. "They don't have any programs on the ground. They come here for a week or two and make a movie, then you don't see them again for 10 years. And people will fill their buckets. Their movie is very dramatic when you show it in affluent communities."

Most of the donors are elderly fundamentalist Christians. The fact that Khartoum is Muslim and many (but by no means all) of the slaves are Christians is especially highlighted when approaching this demographic.

"It's actually become a business. You can fly to the United States on a big salary and you become a big name. You're saving slaves in Southern Sudan's war."

Eiffe explains that the main way for potential donors to differentiate between good and bad Christian charities is to check if they have any staff, structures, or programs in Southern Sudan itself. Another important step is to check whether they have any other programs internationally, instead of just "picking something sexy somewhere" to ensure donations.

In addition to the financial exploitation involved, many critics suggest that the strategy taken by slave redemption programs actually encourages the slave trade. Many of the Christian charities will pay slaveholders for slaves, quite literally buying them back. This has led to reports of the slave trade increasing and even the possibility of slave prices rising as a result. There are also reports that people will claim to be slaves in order to make money once they are "redeemed."

There are political dangers as well. Accusations that Southern Sudanese rebels are backed by the United States are given more credence when American Christian groups keep such a high profile in the area. Khartoum is then able to claim to be a victim to Western crusaders and raise support among the Muslim world. This is, of course, unfounded. The Bush administration has made Khartoum an ally in the war on terror. And, just like the world superpowers who play a blood-soaked chess game in Sudan, the Christian Right has been fickle throughout the history of this conflict. Former US President Ronald Reagan gave financial and diplomatic support to Khartoum during the early years of Sudan's devastating civil war in the 1980s and once visited then-President Jafaar Nimairi with a group of Christian televangelists. The slave trade was active at this time.

There is a silver lining to this cloud, however. As Eiffe points out, the South was fighting a forgotten war, "a forgotten tragedy," and Christian charities raised awareness in the apathetic West. Although he cautions that an emphasis on the slavery issue ignores the political roots of the conflict and over-simplifies the world's view of it, he is glad that even a small amount of attention was given to Southern Sudan.

He remembers an NBC journalist who was sidetracked by a wildlife park when coming to investigate the slavery issue.

He quotes the journalist as saying: "Americans care more about dead elephants than dead Africans."

Tank

The Forgotten Powder Keg

Stuart Neatby — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:14:00 +0000

While world attention focuses on Darfur, Southern Sudan simmers

Jay Heisler will be travelling in Southern Sudan over the coming months and will be writing original material for the Dominion during that time. This is his first report from the region.

While world attention focuses on Darfur, the south of Sudan is a ticking time bomb, one that could draw the whole region into war. The 22-year civil war between the Arab North and the African South reached a cease-fire in 2005, but the peace is fragile at best. This is understandable considering the fact that over 2 million were killed in the conflict.

The government and the southern rebels, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and their political wing, the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), have already been waging a war of words, which reached a boiling point when the rebels stormed out of the new coalition government in November. However, many on the ground say that neither the SPLM nor Khartoum have anything to gain from war. The SPLM wants autonomy, not to take control of the country, and Khartoum has never been weaker. Bogged down in Darfur, and quickly losing cohesion among the various Arab groups and opposition parties, the Khartoum government cannot survive another war with the south. To make matters even worse for the despotic Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, there is a large population of southern refugees in Khartoum who could rise up and bring a renewed war to the capital for the first time.

As is always the case, the global superpowers are not helping matters. The US has had a love/hate relationship with Khartoum. They have backed the dictatorship in the past when the southern rebels seemed too leftist for their liking, and then backed the rebels after the end of the cold war. Khartoum is friendly with China and Russia, which makes them a prime candidate to be the next Baghdad. However, despite their help in arming and training the SPLA, Washington has been wary of directly attacking Khartoum. Not only would that create problems with China, but Khartoum has, like many despotic dictatorships, become an ally of sorts in the war on terror. Despite Washington's rhetoric about Darfur and the harbouring of Bin Laden, Washington has used Khartoum's help on several issues, including spying on insurgents in Iraq. This may explain why Sudan has yet to be carpet-bombed, despite its oil and its status as a rogue state.

China, however, may not protect Khartoum for much longer. Like the US, China is fickle, and is mainly interested in oil. If the SPLA gets the upper hand, China will deal with them instead. Like the US, China supports each side, sometimes at the same time.

To add to this powder keg, Ethiopia and Eritrea may push for war in Sudan, in order to gain territory or to continue their proxy war with each other. Chad may try to use this opportunity to undermine Khartoum, their hostile neighbors. Furthermore, Uganda and the Central African Republic may decide to step in as well. It seems that only the Sudanese, in both the north and the south, are resisting civil war.

Of course, multinational corporations have found a way to profit from all of this. Defense contractors have been active in the South, ostensibly building military bases, but possibly doing more sinister things as well. Western energy corporations, including Canadian Talisman Energy Inc. and Swedish Lundin Oil AB, have been happily dealing with the Khartoum regime, despite its human rights abuses. Like the US and China, their support for either side shifts with the tides. It goes without saying that incidents of child soldiers, massacres, mass rapes and scorched earth campaigns have yet to deter them from any involvement in either side. Canadian oil giant Talisman's activities in the region were accused by diplomat John Harker of actually prolonging the civil war. Ottawa has never brought any sanctions nor condemnation against them, although a divestment campaign organized by human rights groups prompted Talisman to withdraw from Sudan in 2003.

And then, of course, there is Darfur. A mess of different groups and different interests, Darfur has shattered Arab unity in the North. As Khartoum continues to stagger politically and militarily in Darfur, marginalize its opposition parties, and spar diplomatically with the south, there is the danger of a coup. The military or another Arab faction could take control, assuming that Bashir has become too weak to govern. This would be a nightmare scenario for the south. After all the diplomacy and peace agreements, the new government could say "we didn't sign anything" and war would return.

All of this remains completely ignored by the corporate media, who look away from the Middle East only long enough to report that Bush has criticized Khartoum about Darfur. Meanwhile, under the surface, the whole region is ready to explode.

Sudan Rally