January 2009 Archives

The
most high-profile political murder since the 2006 slaying of Anna
Politkovskaya took place in Russia on Monday, when 34-year-old human
rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov was shot,
point-blank, in the head. The student journalist accompanying him was
also killed. Three days earlier, radio journalist Orel Zambrano was
assassinated in Venezuela, the second journalist killed there in as
many weeks. Human rights groups have denounced the murders, but few
seem to see that the conditions leading to violent crime in Russia and
Venezuela are no accident.

Putin and Chávez preside over a
pervasive sense of violence and insecurity in their capitals, which has
resulted in parallel, politically motivated attacks against the
opposition. In Russia, this trend has been illustrated by the shooting
of Politkovskaya and, more recently, the near-fatal beating of
journalist Mikhail Beketov, among many others. Last month alone in
Venezuela, there were 510 violent deaths, leading Foreign Policy
magazine to deem Caracas the "murder capital of the world."

In
Putin's Russia, attacks by self-described nationalists against
foreigners have gained international media attention -- helped in part
by a video of a gruesome beheading that has been spread on the
Internet. In Venezuela, three leaders of opposition student unions have
been killed in street attacks, including University of Zulia organizer
Julio Soto, who was shot 20 times in Maracaibo in October. Both
countries have experienced rising public demonstrations of discontent
during the economic crisis, and the rallies have been met with
heavy-handed repression by police.

Since Putin and Chávez are
said to rule with "iron fists," a menacing question arises: Why have
they been unable to stem the tide of crime in their streets? Is it a
reflection of incompetence, or is there some tacit benefit to keeping a
society imprisoned under a cloak of severe insecurity and moral panic?

Some
answers became clear to me during a recent visit before a congress of
student leaders in Caracas. These impressive young men and women, who
cooperate across the political spectrum, take on enormous risks in
assuming political consciousness. In Bolivarian Venezuela, political
discrimination has been institutionalized by the pervasive use of
blacklists, and those who oppose Chávismo accept a future of
divisiveness and lost opportunities.

This political landscape is
eerily similar to what has happened in Russia under Putin; the
citizenry experiences the same helplessness and fear in the face of a
leviathan cloaked in the misappropriated vocabulary of democracy.

The
similarities are striking: Whether its banner is "21st Century
Socialism" or "Sovereign Democracy," neither administration is
comfortable discussing the considerable fortunes that have been amassed
by government officials or the impunity of the corrupt. Both in Putin's
Russia and in Chávez's Venezuela, the state has become the principal
instrument used by predatory business groups, which employ the
authority of the courts, regulatory agencies and police to seize
assets, influence deals and enrich themselves at the people's expense.
This relationship is particularly noxious because it is grounded in the
insecurity of the populace.

While the relationship between Russia
and Venezuela is outwardly manifested by military showmanship, it is
actually an alliance of entrepreneurial convenience meant for a small
group of beneficiaries. For the heads of state-owned businesses, for
example, things are flourishing. A plethora of military hardware sales
agreements have been signed, while Russian national energy firms enjoy
multiple exploration licenses in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt that most
multinational companies would be denied on principle.

In both
countries, key members of the opposition are barred from participating
in the regime's continuous political campaign. The fight to suppress
real opposition is waged through constitutional amendments that create
an appearance of competent rule but actually are designed to exclude
opposition. What is not accomplished by faux legalism is carried out
through government-backed neighborhood militias or extreme nationalist
youth groups.

In my discussions with the Venezuelan student
leaders, I was struck by deep parallels with the conditions faced by
Russian civil society leaders, such as Oleg Kozlovsky, whose courage
has never faltered in the face of attacks, arrests, threats and
harassment from official and unofficial sources. It occurred to me that
the monstrous violence on the streets of Caracas and Moscow is perhaps
useful to both regimes -- and that in their incompetence at delivering
public security, they have found a convenience that contributes to
their grip on power.

The first step toward improving this
situation is to drop the pretense that these two governments have
constructed a vertical structure of power and recognize that they have
institutionalized a horizontal structure of incompetence -- one
characterized by violence, insecurity and impunity. It's time we
summoned the political will to hold such world leaders accountable for
the rights of their own people by all means available, regardless of
how much oil they export.

Robert R. Amsterdam is an
international lawyer who represents political prisoners in several
countries, including Eligio Cedeño in Venezuela and Mikhail
Khodorkovsky in Russia. He blogs at www.robertamsterdam.com.