http://musliminsuffer.wordpress.com/
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
IT DEPENDS ON YOUR DEFINITION OF "FREE"
Bush Gives 15 Million Muslims More Reasons to Hate Us
Wed Oct 4, 7:02 PM ET
SEATTLE--George W. Bush says lots of nice things about President
Nursultan Nazarbayev. On September 29 he portrayed the leader of
Kazakhstan, who came to Washington for a state luncheon, as a "steadfast
partner in the international war on terrorism." Nazarbayev, according to
Bush and U.S. state-controlled media, is leading a transition to
democracy and liberalizing his nation's economy. He's been lauded for
privatizing old Soviet-era state industries and inviting foreign
companies to invest in the exploitation of what may be the world's
largest untapped oil reserves. Kazakhstan, Bush says, "now is a free
nation."
It depends on what your definition of "free" is.
Considering that his Central Asian neighbors are ruled by megalomaniacal
despots (Turkmenistan) and mass murderers (Uzbekistan), or
disintegrating into anarchy and civil strife (Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan), President Nazarbayev's regime appears relatively benign.
But he's merely the best of a bad lot. Scratch the gloss of the gleaming
energy-boom-funded skyscrapers rising over the Kazakh metropolises of
Almaty and Astana, and it becomes clear that the United States is giving
the red-carpet, 21-gun salute treatment to another right-wing dictator
of the variety we propped up during the Cold War. Back then, selling out
our democratic values undermined our credibility on human rights and
provoked anti-Americanism. Today, the same policy is sowing the seeds of
the next 9/11.
Nazarbayev, the Communist Party boss of the Kazakh S.S.R. at the time of
the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has been Kazakhstan's strongman
since independence. He points to the 91 percent of the vote he received
in the most recent presidential election as proof of his popularity, but
international observers universally condemned the December 2005 vote as
tainted by fraud and violence.
It would have been difficult to lose an election like this. Galimzhan
Zhakianov, leader of the main opposition Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan
(DVK) party, had been rotting in prison since 2002. Finally, early in
2005, Nazarbayev had the DVK banned entirely for "inciting social
tension" and "extremism." A few weeks after promising to release
evidence that Nazarbayev and his family were involved in oil-related
corruption, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a former Nazarbayev cabinet minister
who joined the nation's sole remaining viable opposition party, For a
Fair Kazakhstan (NAZ), was found dead at his home in Almaty, a pistol
lying at his side.
Nurkadilov had been shot three times--twice in the chest and once in the
head. Kazakh authorities ruled his death a suicide.
Even after he won another seven-year term, misfortune continued to
befall Kazakhs who spoke out against Nazarbayev. On February 13, 2006,
reported Radio Free Europe, the bodies of Nurkadilov's replacement as
NAZ leader and four aides "were discovered on a desolate stretch of road
outside Almaty...their bodies riddled with bullets and their hands bound
behind their backs." Altynbek Sarsenbayev had recently announced his own
intention to release proof of Nazarbayev and his cronies' misuse of oil
revenues.
The government blamed five rogue officers of its KNB (ex-KGB) security
service for the contract killing. No one believes the official story.
The Kazakh regime, which presents itself as the kinder, gentler face of
Central Asian autocracy, has ruthlessly crushed freedom of expression, a
crucial building block of an open society. Journalists have been
threatened, beaten and jailed. After the leading independent newspaper
Respublika published an interview with a Russian politician that
criticized Nazarbayev in May 2005, it was ordered closed. A printing
house that agreed to publish a successor newspaper, Set-kz, was
shuttered as well. The state Internet monopoly, controlled by one of
Nazarbayev's daughters, censors block access to opposition and
independent websites.
Since a presidential proclamation signed by
President Bush in 2004 bans visits by corrupt foreign officials to the
United States, Nazarbayev--embroiled in a "Kazakhgate" influence
peddling scandal scheduled for federal court later this fall--was
legally ineligible to come to Washington last week. Consultant and
lobbyist James Giffen will soon face charges that he funneled more than
$78 million in bribes from his energy company clients, most of it to
Nazarbayev and his former prime minister. According to the Justice
Department, Giffen also gave Nazarbayev's wife fur coats and a
snowmobile, and even paid Nazarbayev's daughter's tuition at George
Washington University. U.S. officials call Kazakhgate one of the largest
violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in history.
According to a reliable source, high-ranking White House officials are
pressuring the Justice Department to drop the case.
Kazakhstan's geopolitical importance is obvious. It is the largest
producer of Caspian Sea oil, borders Russia, China and the other Central
Asian states, and has granted the U.S. Air Force landing rights at
Almaty's airport for operations in
Afghanistan. Moreover, it's a rare "friendly" country in the Muslim
world: Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian republic to have sent troops
to
Iraq.
In all the ways that matter, however, Nazarbayev presides over a police
state that is indistinguishable from his more notorious neighbors, such
as Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan. Karimov ordered and
personally supervised the massacre of at least 700 demonstrators in the
Uzbek city of Andijon. The May 13, 2005 incident, known in the region as
"Uzbekistan's Tiananmen Square," prompted criticism from the Bush
Administration and thousands of anti-Karimov refugees to seek political
asylum in neighboring republics.
Kazakhstan recently deported eight Uzbek refugees granted official
asylum-seeker status by the
United Nations to Uzbekistan, whose military police are infamous for
boiling political prisoners to death.
Nazarbayev appeared at a joint press conference with Karimov in March
2006, nearly a year after the Andijon massacre.
"Of course, we regret everything happened [at Andijon]," said
Nazarbayev. "However, it should be said that another end [i.e., not
killing the demonstrators] would have destabilized now the whole
region."
Destablization might have given Kazakstan's 15 million citizens, 99
percent of whom live in poverty while Nazarbayev steals the oil and gas
beneath their feet, a chance to liberate themselves. Sadly and once
again, the U.S. government is siding with a dictator over the people.
(Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central
Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis
of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)
source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20061004/cm_ucru/itdependsonyourdefinitionofquotfreequot
===
-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
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