Batfink's Beep -- 03-1-06

Worried about Democracy

March 1, 2006

There was a report in the Washington Times recently that despotic governments everywhere are getting better at, or at least more determined about, thwarting the work of the many pro-Democracy NGOs seeking to spread freedom abroad. Groups like the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the IFES, a Washington-based pro-Democracy group, are finding more and more that, on the heels of the color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon, and Kyrgystan, despotic regimes like Putin's Russia are taking steps to make things more difficult for them.

Said Lorne Craner, president of the congressionally funded IRI, "It used to be that groups like ours could fly somewhat under the radar. That certainly is not the case anymore."

It seems that the success of the above-mentioned Democratic revolutions have really gotten the attention of autocratic rulers of less-than-free countries, and, surprise, they see the problem, not as oppressed people wanting to be free, but as domestic policy meddling by thinly veiled foreign policy agencies based abroad.

One approach has been a rash of new regulatory and red-tape laws meant to make it harder for such groups to receive financing from countries like, well, us. More straightforward harrassment by law enforcement is also happening. From the Washington Times article (link requires registration):

In Belarus, longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko has severed virtually all ties between domestic democracy groups and foreign NGOs. Kazakhstan's parliament approved two laws restricting links between local and international NGOs.

The Washington-based Freedom House earlier this month was forced to suspend activities in Uzbekistan for six months after losing an appeal against charges that it broke the law by, among other things, providing Uzbek human rights advocates with free Internet access.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov has targeted the activities of foreign NGOs since May, when riots in the southern city of Andijon rocked his regime and sent relations with the West plummeting.

An estimated 200 Uzbek NGOs have been closed, and several prominent foreign groups, including the OSI and the media NGO Internews, have left the country.

"It's clear that in Uzbekistan and a good many other countries, there is a push back against us," said Thomas Melia, deputy executive director at Freedom House. "And the main motivation is typically to cut off domestic forces from their natural supporters abroad."

For their part, US officials deny that the NGOs are agents of US foreign policy. But it is easy to see why dictators trying to hold back the tide of freedom unleashed by the Bush administration when it freed Iraq and so showed other nations that we would actively work for freedom beyond the mouthing of platitudes, would hold it all against us. Life can't be quite as easy now that oppressed peoples everywhere are realizing that they really CAN affect policy, even in the most long-oppressed regions of the globe. Who'd have predicted that a street uprising in Lebanon, for example, would force Syria to withdraw its occupying militia in that country?

There are signs that the NGOs will do what they can to adjust, though, rather than just fold up their tents and bail. As Thomas Melia, deputy executive director at Freedom House, says, the blowback from the despotic governments they work against "certainly has forced us to step up our own game."

"We have a lot of other places where we could put our resources," he said. "Unfortunately, these crackdowns leave us with no other option than to try to help them."

"We're certainly having to learn how to deal in a much more hostile environment," he said. "Unfortunately, I would not be surprised to see more of this kind of pressure on us in the future."

Here's wishing them luck in their important work of spreading the good word that freedom works. It can't be a bad sign that the dictators feel themselves so under seige. If the winds of freedom really are blowing, as it seems they are, the new and desperate pushback by the despots can only serve, in the long run, to add further steel and determination to the aspirations of those who would throw off the yoke once and for all. Let freedom ring.

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