Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

This is an important discussion and I welcome the opportunity to contribute. The OSCE is supposed to deal with Europe's borders as far as the Mediterranean and sets itself up as being a promoter of democratic values, protector of human rights and so on. However, we need to examine the organisation's history and its lack of teeth. A tokenistic organisation, it has not contributed in any way to the promotion of the values in question. It supported the bombing of Kosovo and there is no record of any opposition to the bombings of Serbia in 1999 or to the violent crimes perpetuated by former President Yeltsin against people in his own country when he bombed its parliament and killed 167 citizens. Neither the OSCE nor Dick Spring, the Minister of State's party colleague and the first Labour Party Minister for Foreign Affairs, condemned these actions. The boat was not rocked because Yeltsin was on a pro-privatisation bent. There was no opposition to the bombing of Libya. It is ironic that the head of NATO attended meetings with the OSCE at the height of the bombing campaign. In his speech to the OSCE, he acknowledged that conflict always involved the violation of people's human rights and stated that NATO's intervention had prevented massacres and saved countless lives. As we all know, that did not turn out to be true and there was no evidence of any massacre. The situation in Libya is more unstable than it was previously.

Although these points must be registered, what exposes the futility of the organisation more than anything else is the fact that Kazakhstan was given the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010. Is there any clearer hypocrisy than a country with Kazakhstan's record being at the helm of an organisation that puts itself forward as promoting human rights, the rule of law and democratic values, which it calls the pillars of European security? These lofty and meaningful ideals were to be upheld by Kazakhstan when the dogs on the street knew of that regime's domestic record. President Nursultan Nazarbayev is effectively a dictator and acts of repression by the country's Government against protests have been well articulated, although probably not enough in Ireland. The protest movement in Kazakhstan developed as a result of the country's neoliberal reforms, which decimated living standards, created a difficult economic situation, caused industrial production to plummet, led to high levels of inflation and forced factories to shut down and workers to be laid off. The problems with Kazakhstan's housing sector led to the formation of Kazakhstan 2012. This movement of residents responding to lies about credit and mortgages gave rise to a democratic and engaged series of protests and strikes. The response of the establishment, however, was brutal repression.

My colleague, Deputy Higgins, visited Kazakhstan as a Member of the European Parliament to meet victims of torture and take witness statements and personal testimony about torture by the regime. We attempted to highlight the atrocities being committed in Kazakhstan with the Department of Foreign Affairs but when we asked how it could square the circle of giving a state that was responsible for such abuse the chairmanship of the OSCE, it responded that hosting the chair would bring it into the fold of human rights and allow it to see the error of its ways. The Department suggested that the OSCE's discussions of human rights and democracy would rub off on the regime.

Unfortunately, these discussions failed to turn Kazakhstan into a democracy. As we speak, a leading human rights activist, Vadim Kuramshim, is on trial in Kazakhstan. Mr. Kuramshim, who has already spent ten years in prison, faces a further seven to 15 years for the crime of attempting to uncover serious corruption in the regional prosecutor's office. His lawyers and defence team claim that he has been denied the basic democratic right to an open and independent inquiry into corruption.

In another case, 37 oil workers are on trial for participating in mass unrest. Their supporters have expressed astonishment at the amount of nonsense being put forward by the establishment in its case against them. One of the oil workers stated in his testimony that he was taken to a police station, where:

people in masks asked me what I knew about the events on the 16th December, to which I replied nothing. Then they started to beat me. They asked me if I knew [a certain individual]. They claimed I had robbed an ATM with him, which I denied. Then the beatings got worse. They put a cellophane packet over my head. Then I got scared. I didn't know where to go, who to complain to. I signed the statement they put in front of me, accusing [the aforementioned individual]. But when I got out I went straight to his mother's and told her everything. I know that [he] was not involved in the strike. I refute all my earlier testaments.

Anonymous witnesses are giving evidence against these oil workers. Other victims have described their arrest and torture. One stated:

I shook all night from fear and cold. I couldn't get hold of myself. I asked the investigator where I should go – as the city was still under curfew. As I was making my way home, I was again arrested by soldiers. They were in masks and started beating me again. They released me in the morning. The next night they arrested me again. [They] forced me to sign a couple of papers. Then from time to time they came and took me again, threatening me that if I didn't do what they wanted, they would shut me up. I was afraid to leave my home.

This is the type of regime that exists in Kazakhstan, a member of the OSCE.

Will the Government assure us that the OSCE, which has long been a tokenistic body, will do something for a change? The first step should be the expulsion of Kazakhstan in order to demonstrate the international community's disapproval of the vicious repression that takes place in that country.

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