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Publications >> Democracy Newsletter
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National Endowment for Democracy News and Information Summer 2003 Newsletter
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NED Grantees Building Foundation for Democratic Reconstruction in Liberia
As rebels and government forces battled in the streets of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on June 27 and 28, 2003, many of the dozen groups supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) suffered extreme hardship. An email from Ted Brooks of the Committee for Peace and Development Advocacy (COPDA) reported, “COPDA offices were broken into, ransacked, and looted by Government militia fighters…leaving us temporarily paralyzed. On June 28 at about 12 noon, our accountant, Dioh C. Podee…decided to stop by at our offices. While climbing the stairs he was stopped by fighters, tortured, and his mobile phone taken away. On June 26, at 1800 hrs, LURD [Liberians United for Democracy] fired an 80 mm rocket artillery, which landed on the top of the Luke Building” housing the COPDA office. With characteristic resolve, Brooks declared, “Thank God we are all safe and have begun to clean up our offices to resume work.” Two staff members of the National Youth Movement for Transparent Elections (NAYMOTE) were accused of being anti-government and tortured by government forces, and another staff person was wounded in a missile attack near the U.S. Embassy. The offices of the Prisoners Assistance Program, the Center for Law and Human Rights Education, and the Justice and Peace Commission were also looted. Other activists reported that they had escaped the mayhem unscathed, and as this newsletter goes to press, no NED grantees are known to have been killed. Some civil society leaders did die in the fighting, and several other human rights activists who were being held in prison have disappeared. The beginning of Liberia’s torment can be traced back to the overthrow of the democratic, if imperfect, government of William Tolbert in 1980 by Samuel Doe, and Doe’s rigging of the 1985 elections. This paved the way for the rebellion led by Charles Taylor that began on Christmas Eve of 1989 and has resulted over the years in the deaths of as many as 200,000 Liberians in a civil war. That war was to have ended with the 1997 elections that made Taylor president. Instead, Taylor persisted in his warlord ways, and two new rebel groups, LURD and the Movement for a Democratic Liberia (MODEL), emerged to challenge him, resuming the cycle of death and destruction. Under pressure from an indictment for crimes against humanity by the Special Court in Sierra Leone for his role in fueling that nation’s conflict, Taylor has agreed to step down as president. As a result, restoring peace and democracy to Liberia could be possible. Despite the extremely dangerous and difficult conditions under which they have had to work, NED’s grantees in Liberia are poised to play a leading role in the democratic reconstruction of the country. Groups such as NAYMOTE, the Liberian Women’s Initiative, and the Movement for Democracy and Elections in Liberia are preparing the ground through training and civic education for the electoral process that will soon ensue. Ironically, Liberia’s security forces have been the greatest contributor to the insecurity of the country, but a pioneering effort by the Liberia National Law Enforcement Association is working to change the culture of these forces through training, educational forums, and policy advocacy. For many years the Liberian press has courageously championed democratic reform and human rights. NED has supported the efforts of Press Union of Liberia since 1989 to protect the freedom of journalists and to inform the Liberian public. The Liberia Institute of Journalism has received NED support to train community radio journalists, who will perform a critical role in bringing civic education and information to the tens of thousands of Liberians living in rural areas. Human rights education, monitoring, defense, and advocacy will be needed more than ever in post-Taylor Liberia. The Center for Law and Human Rights Education, Justice and Peace Commission, Prisoners Assistance Program, and Rural Human Rights Activists are all promoting a culture of human rights and the rule of law through a variety of programs using radio, street theater, legal aid, training, and community empowerment. Liberia’s problems are related to a regional crisis including Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire. Collaboration by civil society activists from all of these countries to pressure their governments to end their attacks on each other and adopt democratic reforms has begun to yield results. The participation of the Civil Society Movement of Liberia in the Liberian Peace Conference held in early June in Accra, Ghana, has helped to ensure that the voices of ordinary Liberians, and not just those of warlords and politicians, will influence the transition process in Liberia. NED’s longstanding commitment to Liberia’s heroic democratic activists has often been frustrated by that country’s perpetual violence and repression. Nonetheless, as Benedict Sannoh, a Liberian attorney and democracy activist, observed in remarks at NED last year, NED still remains the major organization supporting the civil society in Liberia. “Since 1997,” he said, “the Taylor administration has narrowed the political space for civil society in governance in Liberia. However, civil society groups have not been crushed. Not only are they developing strategies to remain relevant and carry out grassroots activities on the ground, [but] they are also forging cooperation and networking among themselves aimed at promoting human rights and democratization at home and addressing the security crisis in the region.” [Top]
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Fighting for Human Rights in North Korea: NED Honors Four Koreans for Their Work Ceremony Preceded by Conference on North Korea’s Urgent Human Rights Crisis
Awards were presented by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), who authored recently passed legislation allowing North Korean refugees to apply for asylum in the United States. Nearly 200 guests attended the event, which included a multi-panel conference, “Gulag, Famine, and Refugees: The Urgent Human Rights Crisis in North Korea.” In ways both personal and pervasive, each of the four awardees strives to draw international attention to the human rights catastrophe in North Korea. Yoon, who founded the Amnesty International chapter in South Korea before that country’s autocracy crumbled, founded the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights in 1996. The Alliance spreads awareness about conditions in the North, partly by providing a forum for escapees to share their stories. It also publishes detailed information about human rights abuses, has spawned an international human rights campaign on North Korea, and has created schools in the South to provide escapees with basic and civic education. Kang Cheol-hwan was just nine years old when he was sent with his family to the Yodok kwan-li-so (political penal-labor colony) because his grandfather had been accused of treason. Kang spent the next ten years in Yodok, where he was tortured, severely malnourished, and forced to perform hard labor. After escaping from the North, he worked with French activist and historian Pierre Rigoulot to write an account of his imprisonment, The Aquariums of Pyongyang. He now lives in Seoul and writes for the daily Chosun Ilbo.
An Hyuk was arrested after voluntarily returning to North Korea from China and confessing his escape to the authorities. Accused of spying, An Hyuk was eventually imprisoned in the Yodok kwan-li-so, as well. He escaped to South Korea from the North in 1992 and has since written two books, including Escape from North Korea, which he co-authored with Kang. He now works to rescue North Korean refugees in China. Soon Ok Lee was supervisor of the North Korean state material distribution center prior to her arrest in 1986 on trumped-up charges of embezzlement. She endured six years of horrifically brutal conditions in the kyo-hwa-so (long-term prison-labor camp). Three years after her unexpected release, she escaped to the South with her son. In 1996, she published Eyes of the Tailless Animals, a shocking account of the kyo-hwa-so system. Today Lee conducts a personal campaign to expose and eliminate North Korea’s prison-labor camps.
The daylong conference preceding the award ceremony, “Gulag, Famine, and Refugees: the Urgent Human Rights Crisis in North Korea,” was co-organized by NED, the Defense Forum Foundation, and the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. In a keynote address, NED Board member Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) asserted, “It is critical that as the United States and the international community seek to deal with the growing security threat posed by North Korea, the human rights atrocities committed by the regime in Pyongyang continue to be exposed, so that the world understands the character of the regime with which we are dealing.” The Refugee Crisis A parliamentary roundtable on the North Korean refugee crisis generated a lively discussion about addressing the overall crisis on the Korean peninsula. Participants included Cho Woong-kyu (a lawmaker from South Korea’s Grand National Party), Baroness Caroline Cox (of the British House of Lords), and Congressmen Ed Royce (R-CA), Joseph Pitts (R-PA), Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Curt Weldon (R-PA). Baroness Cox, who recently led a hearing in the British Parliament on North Korean defectors, said representatives of the European Union hope to visit North Korea in September for a firsthand examination of the human rights situation. A member of the International Parliamentarians Coalition for North Korean Refugees and Human Rights, she noted the particular importance of defining the status of North Korean refugees. Specifically, she explained, China’s flawed policy of blanket labeling these individuals as “economic migrants” must be exposed.
The Food Aid Conundrum Andrew Natsios, administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development and author of the Great North Korean Famine, spoke during the luncheon about North Korea’s food crisis. Though no longer technically experiencing a famine, the North continues to ration its food. It does so based on usefulness to the government rather than need, with the smallest rations going to political prisoners. Natsios says these prisoners typically starve unless they manage to augment their diet, as Kang Cheol-hwan did, using his rations to bait rats, which he would then eat. Though North Korea continues to receive food aid, Natsios said its government violates every norm for receipt of such aid. Natsios believes food aid should continue but with pronounced pressure from the international community for improved monitoring. Testimony of Gulag Survivors In a panel moderated by the Defense Forum Foundation’s Suzanne Scholte, the Democracy Award recipients testified about their experiences and ambitions. Kang Cheol-hwan described prisoners being forced to watch executions of fellow prisoners. Some of these “witnesses” seemed not to notice the executions as they desperately foraged for food, he recalled. “I don’t think we should continue to provide support to North Korea without reciprocity,” said Kang, believing that foreign aid sent to the starving nation in 1998 was kept from the masses and used to strengthen Kim Jong Il’s army if not its arsenal. Before being sent to the kwan-li-so, An Hyuk was detained for nearly two years in a secret detention center. He described some of the “crimes” of his fellow detainees, such as spilling ink on a picture of Kim Jong Il. He also explained the communication system prescribed for the prisoners: no talking but only four hand signals representing the most basic human conditions, such as a full bladder or severe illness.
Documenting North Korea’s Gulag This fall, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea will release an unprecedented report on North Korea’s political prisons, including aerial photos of encampments. A panel discussion on the importance of such documentation included the participation of David Hawk, an investigator working for the committee; Anne Applebaum, Washington Post columnist and author of Gulag: A History; and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who heads the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. North Korea’s leaders continually deny the existence of their prison-labor camps. “It would be easy enough for them to invite the Red Cross or the UN to verify the non-existence of these camps,” noted Hawk, but thus far, the North has refused to allow inspections. Applebaum reminded the audience of Stalin’s Politburo, which never worried their prison-labor camps were bad, only that they might look bad to the world. In that regard, as the truth about North Korea’s prison-labor camps is exposed, she said, whatever support remains for Kim Jong Il’s regime will finally begin to ebb. “This is not to say that words can make dictatorships collapse overnight,” she said, “but words certainly can make dictatorships collapse over time.” [Top]
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Chairman's Message
The Endowment has always placed high importance on programs that promote human rights, recognizing that democracy involves not only the right of the people to determine their own destiny but also a system that guarantees freedom of expression, belief, and association, as well as respect for the inalienable rights of all individuals.
Indeed, democracy is the only form of government that can assure that rights are institutionalized and not dependent on the whim of a particular leader or ruling party. And what about those countries that hold free elections but whose victors do not respect fundamental rights? Can they claim the democratic label? Obviously, free and fair elections are an important first step toward democracy. But leaders who fail to respect fundamental safeguards that protect the rights of their citizens can hardly be considered democratic. While groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights watch are critically important in documenting abuses and calling them to the attention of the international community, the Endowment’s approach has been to empower groups on the ground in these countries, groups that have taken on the burden of confronting the problems of their own societies and who will be instrumental some day in helping them move toward genuine democracy. In many countries, human rights programs represent the only kind of meaningful democracy-related work that can be carried out under the circumstances. From the outset, NED has been determined that it would not, in the words of the Statement of Principles and Objectives, “neglect those who keep alive the flame of freedom in closed societies.” Since the time the Statement was implemented, some of those societies have become more open, due in no small part to those who struggled for the freedom and dignity of their fellow citizens under the most adverse of circumstances. But many closed societies, whose rulers deny the most basic freedoms, remain. Recently, the National Endowment for Democracy honored with its Democracy Award a group of people who have dedicated their lives to bearing witness to the inhumane conditions in North Korea, a country that has the dubious distinction of being the world’s most egregious abuser of human rights. It is courageous individuals such as these, many of them unsung heroes working away from the international spotlight, who have formed the core of the Endowment’s human rights program. They are living testimony to the fact that even the world’s most inhumane situations are not hopeless.
Vin Weber [Top]
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NED Grantees Work to Reform Afghanistan Business Environment
After enduring decades of oppression and conflict, Afghanistan is only just beginning down the road to reconstruction. The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a core grantee of NED, is working to help the Afghan business community address a fundamental component of the rebuilding process: creating and embracing an open-market economy. CIPE reports that the will within the Afghan business community to promote democratic values and an open market is already strong, but the tools for achieving these goals are limited. Where they exist at all, Afghan business associations, think tanks, foundations, and other business organizations are generally weak. That in mind, Afghan-American businessmen founded the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) late last year in Washington, D.C., and through a NED-supported CIPE program, have since opened satellite offices in Kabul and Kandahar. The offices are managed and operated by Afghan citizens who were trained by the AACC earlier this year in data-collection methodologies. With their training, these staff people are working to capture a better understanding of the present environment and legal framework for business in Afghanistan, identify concrete barriers to a market-based economy and democratic reform, strengthen the role of business associations that protect entrepreneurs’ rights, and identify specific laws and regulations that foster corruption. The AACC project was formally initiated in December 2002, when the organization gathered more than a hundred representatives of the Afghan business community for two one-day roundtables, one in Kabul and the other in Kandahar. During these meetings, eleven members of the AACC moderated lively debates on banking, construction, agriculture, light manufacturing, transportation, import-export, women’s businesses, and handicrafts. Afghan entrepreneurs at the meetings worked to identify some of the most significant barriers to creating a sound business climate in Afghanistan, including corruption, bureaucracy, and lack of access to resources. They particularly cited the government’s lack of accountability and transparency in policy-making as a major hurdle: disengaged from the decision-making processes that dictate the formal market environment and burdened by high taxes, excessive regulation, and rampant corruption, private business owners are rapidly migrating into the informal sector. The Afghan Minister of Commerce, H.E. Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, who also attended the meetings, spoke about ways in which the Afghan government is working to improve business conditions. He described the revision of numerous laws, regulations, and codes to improve coordination, reduce corruption, and stimulate investment in the private sector, for example, and highlighted efforts to promote Afghan goods abroad and improve trade routes both inside and outside the country. Kazemi also discussed ways in which the government should work with the private sector to improve the investment environment, such as by strengthening linkages between the Afghan private sector and international private sectors (as is being done through this project). Evidencing the magnitude of the task before them, roundtable participants exchanged copious recommendations covering a broad range of territory, from security and rule-of-law issues to transportation, telecommunications, and general infrastructure challenges. Encouragingly, the AACC observed a general consensus among participants concerning the major obstacles to an open-market economy and strategies for overcoming them. Taking into account the realities of these entrepreneurs and the present flux in Afghanistan, the AACC is now working to create a strategy to recommend and implement reforms. Its initial efforts will be concentrated especially on reforms that foster small and medium-sized businesses, which are still being driven into the informal sector. Work is already underway with the objective collection by Kabul and Kandahar staff of data on existing regulations and the effects that these regulations are having on business. In addition, the AACC plans to hold regular stakeholder meetings to raise awareness of the problems facing the business community and to build a constructive public-private dialogue with the government to implement reform. To ensure that the voice of the private sector is heard, the AACC plans to engage the media and actively help journalists meet professional standards for reporting responsibly on corruption issues. Ultimately, the AACC will design and implement a national business agenda that will prioritize issues and provide a roadmap for economic reform in Afghanistan. That plan will incorporate democratic governance as an integral component, based on wisdom gained from observing other reforming economies. CIPE estimates that every job created through the private sector will directly benefit an average of six to eight people, namely those in the immediate family of the jobholder. On the larger social scale, an open-market economy and viable private sector are both closely related to security, stability, freedom, and prosperity—universal aspirations that have long eluded the people of Afghanistan. [Top]
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July 1 Protest in Hong Kong Inspires Region’s Democracy Activists
When Hong Kong was restored to China in 1997 after the era of British control, a peculiar experiment began. That experiment, embodied in a “one-country, two-system” pledge from China, drew skepticism from the start. Under Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the framework for governing the territory since the handover, Hong Kong is required to draft its own laws against “treason, subversion, secession, and sedition.” For nearly five years, Article 23 was virtually ignored by Hong Kong’s leadership. Last year, with pressure mounting from Beijing, Hong Kong officials finally went to the drawing board on it. Pro-democracy players quickly became frustrated over the secrecy of the drafting process and the rapidity with which the law was being pushed forward, without allowing comment or consultation from outside experts and opposition legislators. Public discontent—already high due to record unemployment rates, the government’s slow response to the spring SARS epidemic, and plunging property prices—amplified as people began to realize that their civil liberties were at stake and, furthermore, that the government was plugging its ears to their input.
Law Yuk Kai, chairman of Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, a NED grantee and leading civil society organization that tracks and reports on human rights developments in Hong Kong, agrees. “The protest showed that people are quite determined to protect their own autonomy and human rights,” he said, “and at least to express their discontent with the Hong Kong leadership.” Law says most of the discontent is, in fact, directed toward the Hong Kong and not the Beijing government and specifically toward Tung. “People are asking, ‘Does he [Tung] have two masters to serve?’” Law says, “He only knows one master—that is, Beijing. He is alienating himself from the general public.” The fallout of the July 1 protest thus far has been the resignation of the secretary of security and the financial secretary as well as the postponement of the vote on the anti-subversion bill. Tung announced the postponement on July 9, the day the vote was scheduled to have taken place. The Legislative Council, in the meantime, has gone into recess. Tung is hardly being lauded in Hong Kong for his eleventh-hour action, as the public waits to see what, if anything, the postponement will mean for Hong Kong’s autonomy in the final analysis. Law is unsure whether the demonstration will foreshadow a more liberal Hong Kong or lead Beijing to “tighten the leash.” The people of Hong Kong are not the only ones playing wait-and-see. “Beijing is still trying to figure out what’s happening here,” Law says. “They can’t really grasp what’s going on in Hong Kong, so I think they may be waiting to see what happens.” Likewise, Law is unsure whether the people of Hong Kong fully grasp what’s going on. His hope and hunch are that they are at least starting to recognize it as a window of opportunity. “This issue is really important,” says Law, “because people are finally seeing how democracy relates to their freedom, to their daily lives. Article 23 is teaching them an important lesson, so in a way we have to be thankful for it.” Law adds that people in Hong Kong place high value on their livelihood and living standard, but many of them have been unable to see how democracy is essential to either. “Some say, ‘Isn’t it true that we need freedom, not democracy?’” he says. “Now they are seeing that without democracy, we can’t really protect our freedom.” Despite the “one country, two system” pledge made by China, China’s President Hu Jintao has made it clear that if democratic reform in Hong Kong is to occur, it should proceed on a gradual basis. “The promise of one country, two systems, and high autonomy is not a promise for full democracy,” says Lee. “I personally do not believe the Chinese Communist Party leaders will allow democracy in Hong Kong unless they are sure of the results of the election. But what the CCP leaders think should not affect our determination to fight for full democracy, because history should be shaped by the people.” In recent weeks, the Hong Kong government has promised to produce and distribute a new, more detailed consultation paper based on the anti-subversion bill. At the same time, Law says, the Bills Committee is being pressured to continue pushing the legislation forward anyway. His hope is that the massive turnout at the July 1 protest and two subsequent protests will at the very least give the people of Hong Kong confidence that “people power” can be harnessed and build enough momentum to effect change. He believes an important lesson learned on July 1 by the people of Hong Kong is that if they speak out, they will not be alone. “I see this anti-23 movement as a social movement,” he says, “and the next movement should be pro-democracy. Otherwise, people will continually have to deal with issues like this, one by one…We have to treasure this moment of time. Because there are ebbs and tides. This is a tide, but for almost 60 years, we were living with an ebb. We have to work really hard now to keep the momentum going.” [Top]
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Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim Discusses Prospects for Civil Society in Egypt
In June of 2000, soon after undertaking projects to expose and curb fraud in Egypt’s electoral process, renowned Egyptian scholar and defender of human rights Saad Eddin Ibrahim was arrested by Egypt’s State Security forces along with 27 of his colleagues from the Ibn Khaldun Center. The seven-year prison sentence handed down to Ibrahim, who also teaches sociology at the American University in Cairo, was punishment for state allegations that he had tarnished Egypt’s image, accepted foreign money without approval from the government, and embezzled funds. On May 15, 2003, nearly three years after being convicted, Ibrahim addressed a standing-room-only audience at NED. A free and vindicated man as of March, he was characteristically eager to talk about civil society in Egypt.
Indeed, the Court of Cassation’s statement sets forth important principles of law, protecting the right of researchers to investigate and report on social problems in Egypt, the right of citizens to freedom of expression, and the right of lawful organizations to accept funding from non-Egyptian sources. “The fact that I was acquitted by the high court shows that there is a margin of freedom in which you can fight,” he said, “and we are determined to use that margin and expand it.” The Ibn Khaldun Center was sealed by State Security forces upon the arrest of Ibrahim and his colleagues, and guarded until their acquittal. After the guards departed, however, the center was ransacked. ”It was a very sad sight for me,” said Ibrahim, who founded the center and knew that the labor and financial resources required to rebuild would be substantial. Yet just six weeks after his visit to NED, Ibrahim fulfilled his commitment to reopen the center on its fifteenth anniversary, June 30. NED President Carl Gershman and NED Senior Program Officer for the Middle East Laith Kubba traveled to Cairo to attend the rededication ceremony. To read a complete transcript of Ibrahim’s remarks, go to www.ned.org/events/articles/may1503.html. [Top]
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