London, (16/11 – 57)

Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe has laid out the bankrupt country’s budget for 2024, drawing mixed reviews as he strives to meet the demands of an International Monetary Fund bailout program without sowing further public resentment ahead of expected elections.

Some observers applauded the proposals, not only for what they included but also what they did not, no new taxes on top of hikes already announced. But others expressed concern that the budget seemed designed to placate certain voters, and only temporarily, while not doing enough to help the struggling masses.

Sri Lanka’s election-year budget was presented on 13 November, and it straddles line between IMF and its voters. The 2024 plan is praised for ‘sticking to reform,’ but criticized for the apparent contradictions not doing enough to help the struggling masses.

Wickremesinghe unveiled the budget on Monday, announcing his government’s plan to increase tax revenue to 3.82 trillion rupees ($11.67 billion), up from this year’s estimated 2.6 trillion rupees. Two weeks ago, the government had announced a value-added tax (VAT) increase to 18% from 15%, effective from January, as part of efforts to meet targets set by the IMF.

The fiscal deficit target is estimated at 2.85 trillion rupees, or 9.1% of gross domestic product, higher than the revised 8.5% of GDP for the current year. “We are aware of the difficulties faced by the people of this country. The path toward a stable and developed economy is not beautiful. It is difficult, hard and challenging,” Wickremesinghe said in his budget speech, following a recent uptick in protests demanding salary hikes to overcome high living costs.

The president described a country at a crossroads as it attempts to climb out of bankruptcy. “If we successfully navigate through this challenging period, we can create a free and decent society. Instead, if we continue to build sand castles by giving relief to the people based on political motives, the country will again be bankrupt.”

Still, Wickremesinghe proposed new relief measures for civil servants and pensioners. The plans call for handing out an additional 10,000 rupees in cost-of-living allowances to 1.3 million government employees, while raising allowances for 730,000 public pension recipients to 5,025 rupees from the current 2,500 rupees.

Sri Lankans are reeling from an economic crisis that has driven up the costs of essentials, although inflation has slowed.   Meanwhile, in a nod to the IMF, Wickremesinghe proposed a massive 3 trillion rupee allocation for foreign debt restructuring and the settlement of international sovereign bonds under the program. After Sri Lanka defaulted on its foreign debt in 2022, the fund came to the rescue earlier this year with a $2.9 billion bailout.

The country failed its first review of the program in September, but reached a staff-level agreement to unlock a new tranche last month.

According to Wickremesinghe, under the debt restructuring supported by the IMF, public debt is expected to decline from 129% of GDP in 2022 to 95% by 2032. He emphasized the benefits of this shift toward sustainability — greater macroeconomic and financial sector stability — for the nation of about 22 million people.

Wickremesinghe reported that reform measures implemented over the last 18 months have already resulted in significant improvements in Sri Lanka’s macroeconomic position. A primary budget deficit of 5.7% of GDP at the end of 2021 turned into a primary budget surplus in the first half of 2023, he said. Tax revenue grew 50% in the first six months of 2023, despite a deep economic recession. The inflation rate has dropped from 70% in September 2022 to 1.3% in September 2023, and foreign exchange reserves have recovered to above $3.5 billion.

“The economy is being healed due to the correct procedures and methodologies we followed during the past year, building the foundation of this system,” Wickremesinghe argued.

The budget receives much of both applauses and criticism.

Murtaza Jafferjee, chair of the Colombo-based Advocata Institute think tank, praised the president’s budget. “He is sticking to the reform and economic restructuring pathway and is not being excessively political,” he told Nikkei Asia. “This is the kind of budget that we always needed, and the language is not sugarcoated and it is factually correct.”

Mujibur Rahman, a member of parliament representing the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya alliance, pointed out what he sees as an inherent contradiction in the plan. “From January, they are increasing VAT, which means the cost of living will increase further, and at the same time they say they will increase the allowance for government workers. So, he is giving from one hand and taking it from the other.”

Sunil Adihettige, a driver employed by a private company in Colombo, was also disappointed. “I was hopeful that the president will announce some relief so that the prices of food items and our monthly bills will reduce. But he only said government employees will be getting a salary increase, but as we are in the private sector, we won’t even benefit from this.”

“Overall, businesses were significantly affected by extensive taxation, but people are adjusting to these increases as they had no other choice and also because they understood the country’s situation,” said Imtiaz Buhardeen, an entrepreneur and investor in Colombo. “The only fear was the possibility of additional tax increases on Monday, but it’s a big relief that there are no new increases.”

Ranjan Jayalal, a trade union leader, suggested the support for government employees was little more than a ploy. “The allowance is expected to be paid from April onwards, but after another couple of months, there will be elections, and then everything will change,” he said.

The next election must be called by September 2024.

Jayalal added that poor people are facing such hardship that many don’t even switch on the lights in their homes due to high electricity costs.

Source

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Berlin (25/7 – 16.67)

The table is set for the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast to remain a geopolitical hotspot.

Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), eastern Tajikistan, is the home to the Pamir Mountains, also called “the roof of the world”, whose sharp mountain ranges and deep valleys resemble a lunar landscape. A far-flung frontier, situated in a troubled neighborhood, next to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, GBAO is a geopolitical treasure tethered to exterior interests: the authoritarian central Tajik government in Dushanbe, Chinese economic and military interests, and Russia, which historically frames the Pamirs as a part of its geopolitical backyard. The region’s inhabitants, the Pamiris, however, are seldom counseled.

In August 2021, desperation arrived in Ruzvat, a river community high up in the Pamir Mountains, in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), in eastern Tajikistan. The Panj River embodies the floating border between Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan, and the Taliban movement’s seizure of political power shook the ground on both sides of the river.

Since the independence of Tajikistan, the Pamirs in GBAO have remained a stronghold for various movements, and above all, an identity, that challenge the hegemonic Tajik nationalism bred by authoritarian Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon.

The Taliban’s successful power grab had swept through an Afghanistan militarily weakened by the abrupt American withdrawal after a 20-year presence in the country. The geopolitical map of Central Asia was, yet again, redrawn.

“The border closed, and along with that our livelihood was cut off,” Gulshan, a market vendor in Ruzvat, told me.

In GBAO, people have learned to decipher the geopolitical gales sweeping over the Pamir Mountains. The Panj River embodied the frontier during the Soviet-Afghan War and was a stronghold for the Afghan Northern Alliance, which militarily opposed the first Taliban government in Kabul in the later 1990s. Since the independence of Tajikistan, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Pamirs have remained a stronghold for various movements – and above all, an identity – that challenge the hegemonic Tajik nationalism bred by authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon in faraway Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital.

People have also learned how to stave off hunger. The sound of the river is ever-present from the threshold to Gulshan’s one-story-house. The view is hypnotic. A pallid winter sun looms just above the sharp mountain tops. On the Afghan riverbank, washed rugs dry in the sun next to tiny lots plowed by cows. It is an unforgiving environment adorned by the Taliban movement’s white flag.

“We often wave to the Taliban soldiers who patrol the river,” Gulshan told me. “They swing their Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and smile and wave back. They ride the jeeps that used to belong to the U.N. – the Taliban have just painted over the logo.”

Nowadays, waving is the only contact they have with their Afghan neighbors. Since the Taliban takeover, the border between the two countries remains closed, as well as the international market in Darvoz, next to a bridge border crossing. The source of income for river communities like Ruzvat is gone and has been replaced with nothing.

“We used to have our regular stand at the market in Darvoz, and we relied on trading and selling goods to Afghans,” Gulshan explained while walking up the slope to the Pamir Highway, a near-mythical stretch of cracked but paved road built by Soviet engineers in the 1930s upon historical trading routes entwined with the ancient Silk Road.

Along with her neighbor, friend, and colleague Nasreen, they now wave to passers-by in desperate hope that they will hit the brakes to purchase seasonal Bukhara pears, daily fresh tomatoes, or newly reaped onions displayed in buckets, upon cardboard boxes, or dangling from tree branches.

Their survival – like that of most residents of the border communities along the Panj River since the Afghan border closed – depends entirely on personal ingenuity.

In late November 2021, things got even worse in the Pamirs. A 29-year-old civilian, Gulbiddin Ziyobekov, was killed by Tajik police in Tavdem, a village south of Khorog (GBAO’s capital and largest city, with a population of around 30,000). The killing, described by witnesses as an assassination, sparked uprisings directed at the central government and Rahmon.

The following year, 2022, has been described as one of the worst years for human rights in Tajikistan since the end of the civil war in 1997, especially in GBAO. In May 2022, over a thousand Pamiris took to the streets of Khorog and Rushan, a strategic town along Pamir Highway, demanding justice for the killing of Ziyobekov and a governmental response to inflated commodity prices.

Dushanbe responded – with live ammunition, tear gas, mass arrests, torture, killings, and a four-month-long internet shutdown.

Local accounts estimate that more than 40 people lost their lives because of the uprisings in Khorog and Rushan; among them influential local leader Mamadboqir Mamadboqirov, who was slain in the streets of Khorog, having been on the central government’s hitlist ever since the mid-1990s. “Colonel Boqir,” as he was known, was a military commander for the Tajik Pamiri military forces and an outspoken critic of Rahmon. Hundreds of people have been arrested and tortured; private businesses have been nationalized and properties and financial capital seized by authorities.

In a symbolic gesture of total colonization, the Pamiri Ismaili flag was removed from a hilltop near Khorog.

With Mamadboqirov’s killing, there are few, if any, local Pamiri leaders left. Over the last three decades, the social structure of GBAO has been uprooted. The central Tajik government’s latest crackdown occurred while the rest of the global community has been focused on combatting inflation and addressing security issues in the wake of the Ukraine war. Rahmon and his peers have displayed their utter willingness and determination to erase whatever local autonomy GBAO had been granted after the civil war.

In GBAO, there is simply too much to gain in the eyes of exterior forces: the Pamir Mountains are a geopolitical asset not only for the central Tajik government in Dushanbe, but to Chinese economic and military interests. The region is an integral part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. And Russia considers the Pamirs a corner of its geopolitical backyard.

Much is at stake in the Pamir Mountains, and GBAO has been a geopolitical treasure tethered to exterior interests ever since the British and Russian empires drew swords on the roof of the world in the 19th century. GBAO covers nearly half of modern-day Tajikistan, and yet its population is merely 250,000 of the country’s 9.5 million inhabitants. Sharp mountain ranges cover large portions of the territory, and only a fraction – 3 percent – is arable land, but the earth contains many profitable natural resources, such as gold, uranium, and water.

GBAO remains, despite its riches, plagued by poverty and the lack of a basic social infrastructure. A century ago, when the region was integrated into the Soviet Union, the Pamirs welcomed an influx of engineers and settlers. The construction of the Pamir Highway paved the way for a modernization of eastern Tajikistan and gave the Pamirs access to neighboring Kyrgyzstan in the north, Uzbekistan in the west, and Afghanistan in the south.

“People used to have a reason to stop along the road – now, there’s only traffic coming from China or Kyrgyzstan, heading straight for Dushanbe,” Nasreen lamented. “Dust is all that lingers.”

Many of the answers to Tajikistan’s current political riddles can be traced back to the civil war between 1992 and 1997, a bloody conflict that some estimates say cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced more than 1 million people. The fall of the Soviet Union opened Pandora’s box, and various interests entered the battlefield in a quest for political power. Emomali Rahmon was one of them, and eventually ended up as the leader of the winning side of the war; one that had cast off its Communist mantle and replaced it with staunch nationalism and rampant nepotism.

On the losing side stood a cluster of opposition groups under the umbrella of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), led by the Islamic Renaissance Party, which had significant support in the Pamirs. The local government in GBAO even attempted to break free from the rest of Tajikistan and create an independent state. In the years after the 1997 peace treaty formally ended the war — and despite provisions in the peace agreement mandating space in the government for the opposition — Dushanbe routinely cracked down not only on the Islamist opposition but on local authorities in GBAO as well.

The highest price, though, has been paid by the local population, among them vendors like Gulshan and Nasreen. Desperation and despair are widespread, In 2021 more than 1.6 million Tajiks, most of them men, emigrated to Russia for work in what has become a routine flow of migrant workers. In Tajikistan countless families are dependent on remittances from abroad. In 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked concerns that the migrant economy would crater along with the Russian economy. But instead, rates of migration to Russia continued to increase following their 2020 pandemic slump, including from Tajikistan. The war, however, generated new risks for Tajik migrants, in particular that they would be recruited or coerced into joining Russian forces on the frontlines. 

“Many who make the journey to Russia are never heard from again,” said Gulshan.

The Tajik government’s latest crackdown is part of a pattern, where Dushanbe continues to target opposition forces and local authorities by aggressive means, often under the guise of “combating terrorism.” Eastward, in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities have increased their military presence along the Tajik border, raising concerns among some in Moscow about a decreasing strategic Russian foothold on the “roof of the world.”

The latest wave of repression did not lead to broad domestic blowback in Tajikistan, but the Tajik government runs the risk of triggering a backlash with each crackdown. Dushanbe might continue to justify repression under the banner of “counterterrorism,” but that could also pop the balloon of enforced authoritarian stability.

The table is thus set for GBAO to remain a geopolitical hotspot, wedged as it is between China’s repressive regime in Xinjiang, the central Tajik government in Dushanbe and its patrons in Russia, and the troubled situation in Afghanistan. And through it all, the people of GBAO will continue to seek out a life among the peaks and valleys of the Pamir Mountains, watching as the Panj River flows by.

“We either wait for a better future, or build one ourselves,” Adis concludes. “Pamiris have always been isolated and dependent on themselves; these past years don’t change that.”

Source

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Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Central Asia (15/6 – 60)

On 28 April, President Emomali Rahmon who has ruled Tajikistan since 1992 signed into law a Decree imposing the Procedure for “burying the bodies of terrorists neutralised in the course of a counterterrorism operation”. In the regime’s parlour, this means the bodies of those killed and/or assassinated.

The new procedure denies the families of those killed in what the regime calls “anti-terrorism operations” the possibility of burying the dead in a place they want, knowing where the dead are buried, investigating how the death occurred, and burying the dead with the religious or other rites the dead or the family would have chosen.

The regime’s “vanishing martyrs” is already backfiring, although the regime attempts to erase all traces of the killed from the social life and history books of the troubled country. According to social media posts circulated in Tajikistan and neighbouring countries in the region, flowers mysteriously appear on the gravesites of the slayed Pamiri’s.

For the dead such as these, the regime resorted to the usual suppressive measures to ‘warn’ relatives not to visit the graveyard. The regime and its KGB-style security apparatus wants them dead, forgotten and erased from the collective memory.

One prominent opposition leader said this move shows the Tajik regime and the KGB-successor are desperate to please the kleptocratic family. The tune of – these were all ‘terrorists’, is shale and holds very little credibility.

He added, “The more the Rahmon regime tries to supress us, the more ordinary Tajiks are joining the resistance. History is a cruel teacher as we saw other dictatorships.”

The new law states, that state authorities “determined by the organs of the initial investigation” are to bury such individuals at a place the states choose, “and the place of burial must not be revealed to anyone.” Burial records must not give the name of the individual, and the dead are to be transported to the place of burial in closed coffins which must not be examined.

Tajikistan bans the families of those killed in what the regime calls “anti-terrorism operations”, the right to burying the deceased in a place they want, knowing where they are buried, investigating how the death occurred, and burying the dead with the religious or other rites the dead or the family would have chosen.

The most immediate targets of the Procedure are Ismaili Muslims and others in the Mountainous Badakhshan Region (GBAO) who have been killed by regime forces in a so-called “anti-terrorism operation” since November 2021.

A human rights defender who wished to remain anonymous for fear of state reprisals told the reporters that, “I think the authorities want to punish the relatives of those they killed, as well as publicly threaten that people who protest the government will die and will not be buried as Muslims. This is all done to threaten the public”.

Local leaders are enraged by the regimes disrespect for Islamic culture of the Pamiri’s and some observers predict this policy will give further rise to the resistance against the dictatorship of President Rahmon and his ilk.

“The authorities are enforcing the Decree violently,” human rights defender and journalist Anora Sarkorova told western media. She knew of a case in early May 2023 when the secret police in Rushan tortured the relative of a protestor.

Sources in Tajikistan informed governments of Norway and the EU that the Tajik successor of the KGB, the NSC and Interior Ministry have also both recently warned relatives of protestors killed in 2022 not to put up gravestones with the names of the deceased. Warnings to relatives were reported as early as May 2022.

“If relatives will not listen to the warnings and decide to put up gravestones with names, they threatened the relatives with imprisonment,” sources told civil society bodies in Brussels.

Tajikistan’s legally binding international human rights obligations condemn such regime actions. In separate rulings on Tajikistan relating to men executed earlier under the death penalty, the UN Human Rights Committee used almost identical language to condemn refusal to notify relatives of the circumstances of the death, hand over the body of the deceased, and identify the place of burial. The UN Committee also stated that Tajikistan “is also under an obligation to prevent similar violations in the future”.

But the regime is impervious about calls for reason setting the stage for a new uprising. “Families were not allowed to conduct an Islamic ritual washing of the body themselves, to prevent them from seeing the injuries individuals had sustained”, Sarkorova added.

The Regime responds: “I have not even heard of such a Decree”.

Sodik Shonazarov, Senior Advisor of the Legal Policy Section of the Presidential Administration, refused to discuss the Decree with the reporters. He also refused to explain why the regime has banned Muslims burying their dead according to Islamic rites, and why the regime does not respect its human rights obligations relating to deceased people, their families and friends. He instead told reporters to talk to the Ombudsperson’s Office.

On June 7, Hamrokhon Davletov, Assistant to Ombudsperson Umed Bobozoda, took note of the questions on why Emomali Rahmon signed the Decree. When asked what the Ombudsperson’s Office is doing to guarantee the human rights the Decree violates, there were no replies or statements. The Ombudsperson is not independent of the regime and does not fully comply with the Paris Principles for National Human Rights Institutions.

Sanobar Baratzoda of the Interior Ministry’s General Section claimed that they not heard of such a Decree by the President.

The Assistant to the First Deputy Chair of the State Committee for Religious Affairs and Regulation of Traditions, Ceremonies and Rituals (SCRA) refused to discuss the Decree or human rights violations related to it. There was also no reply from SCRA spokesperson, Avshin Mukim.

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ND, SYRIZA, PASOK turn focus on specific constituencies as some monasteries show their colors

Greece’s political parties are embarking once again on the campaign trail, deploying a more surgical approach and with their attention turning to specific constituencies.

Ruling New Democracy is expected to focus on northern Greece, where nationalist Greek Solution and the religious-nationalist Niki parties have been flying high.

Tellingly, a block of monasteries in the remote community of Mount Athos, which had closed their doors to vaccinated pilgrims during the pandemic, are reportedly throwing in their lot with Niki.

It is also no coincidence that Niki leader Dimitris Natsios, a theologian and teacher, claimed on election day that it also had the “spiritual cover” of Mt Athos. Although the Holy Community has insisted it has nothing to do with this particular party, or any other, Niki has developed a network of contacts in the fundamentalist wing of the Athonite state, and they are now instrumentalizing electorally. These include a bloc of pro-Russian monasteries.

The higher-than-expected number of votes received by Niki and Greek Solution in northern Greece has also had an adverse impact on the ruling conservatives. Firstly, they led ND to lower percentages than its nationwide results. Despite its nationwide dominance, there were areas in the north that did not achieve a similar result.

The second problem, and perhaps the most important, is that the Niki party came out of nowhere on the eve of the election with its hard-line positions on Orthodoxy, and came very close to entering Parliament, registering 2.9% nationwide. This means that if it manages to pass the 3% threshold, combined with the possible entry of Zoe Konstantopoulou’s Freedom Sailing, then the bar of an outright majority for ND will also rise, even up to 39%. This will depend on the overall percentage received by the parties that are left out of Parliament. Therefore, continuous tours of the area are expected both by ND leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis and party officials.

For their part, SYRIZA and PASOK are turning their attention to regions where the difference between them was small, as well as to areas with a strong working-class element and in Attica. Looking to bounce back, SYRIZA is targeting areas where there is room for improvement, with its eye on specific audiences, including the grassroots of society, the unemployed and low wage earners.

Source: Eka Thimerini

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