ORYOL, Russia — Russian prosecutors say a teacher at a Federal Protective Service (FSO) academy heads a neo-Nazi group accused of several violent attacks in the southwestern city of Oryol this summer, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.

Viktor Lukonin, a professor in the academy’s physical education department, is suspected of leading a neo-Nazi group that calls itself “the head of groups linked to the Central Black-Earth Region of occupied Russia.”

Lukonin, 31, was fired from the FSO academy on July 29 and was arrested by police on August 8.

Law enforcement officials said today that from July 16 to August 5 the neo-Nazi group attacked several businesses and police stations in Oryol.

An Oryol court is charging the group with at least four crimes, including setting fire to a police station, an explosion at a local prosecutor-general’s office, and an explosion at the cafe Idira, which was owned by people from the North Caucasus.

Yulia Dorofeeva, an aide in Oryol’s investigation office, told RFE/RL that a probe into the explosion is still ongoing. Four people were injured in the incident.

“Currently we have seven people in jail aged 18-32,” she said. “We have also determined their connections to several other crimes.”

The neo-Nazi group claims on a website to have taken in part in “the destruction of seven police stations, two prosecutor-general’s offices, the
destruction of the store Eros, and attacking meetings and stores owned by people from the North Caucasus,” among other incidents.

Kirill Levit, deputy head of the investigation into the case, told RFE/RL that in the basement underneath Lukonin’s garage police found “the makings of a bomb manufacturing workshop” and confiscated two sawed-off shotguns, two pistols, and the components for homemade bombs and four Molotov cocktails.

Levit said the group was “seemingly planning more, increasingly violent attacks” and there are suspicions the group was part of a larger pan-Russian, neo-Nazi organization.

The FSO academy has refused comment on Lukonin.

Dmitry Kraukhin, a human rights activist in Oryol, told RFE/RL the rise of such extremist groups is a result of local authorities’ inability to deal with economic and sociological problems in Oryol in recent years.

“In my opinion it is sparked by too much societal stress, which was actually created by the government,” he said.

The Oryol Oblast has one of the lowest standards of living in Russia.

The Oryol neo-Nazi group also claims on its website to be part of the Primorsky Partisans, a group that attacked police stations in Russia’s Far East and is accused of responsibility for the killing of two police officers.

The Oryol group says on its website that “Oryol used to be a quiet provincial town warmed by the sun, but now it is on the brink of complete moral disintegration.”

They blame the change in the city on “people coming from the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as the police and prosecutor general.”

They pledge to carry out more attacks in the future.

The eight alleged members of the neo-Nazi group in police custody face 20 years to life in prison if convicted.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Russian_Professor_Accused_Of_Heading_NeoNazi_Group/2129439.html

Following a lengthy investigation, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch says the government of Kyrgyzstan played a role in facilitating the violent attacks against ethnic Uzbeks this past June.

In a new report titled “Where Is The Justice? Interethnic Violence In Southern Kyrgyzstan And Its Aftermath,” the group also says the government’s own investigation into the violence — which left many hundreds dead, thousands injured, and hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks displaced — has been marred by abuses.

The report is based on weeks of research and more than 200 interviews with Kyrgyz and Uzbek victims and witnesses, lawyers, human rights defenders, government officials, and law enforcement personnel. Satellite imagery and photographic, video, documentary, and forensic evidence was also analyzed.

Ethnic Uzbek refugees wait at the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border outside the village of Suratash on June 14.

‘Part Of The Problem’

Ole Solvang, HRW’s emergencies researcher and one of the authors of the report, says that although “the massive ethnic violence posed colossal challenges for Kyrgyz security forces,” the group’s own investigation found “that some of the security forces became part of the problem rather than the solution.”

And he tells RFERL’s Kyrgyz Service that the group hopes the Kyrgyz government will take the report’s findings into consideration as it conducts its own investigation.

“But more than that,” he says, “I think we hope that both the international investigation and the national commission will conduct an objective investigation on their own. And if they do, then I think they will come to many of the same conclusions that we do.”

The violence began on June 10 in the southern city of Osh, when a large crowd of ethnic Uzbeks gathered in response to a fight between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz. That night, several attacks targeting ethnic Kyrgyz inflamed the region and prompted thousands of Krygyz from surrounding villages to pour into Osh.

From June 11 to June 14, Uzbek neighborhoods were attacked and Uzbek homes and businesses were set alight. Several neighborhoods were burned to the ground.

“Witnesses in various parts of [Osh] told us more or less the same story,” HRW researcher Anna Neistat told reporters in Moscow on August 16. “During the violent riots, armored personnel carriers and other armored vehicles moved into the neighborhoods first. They removed makeshift barricades erected by ethnic Uzbeks to protect themselves.

“The APCs were followed by armed men in camouflage who were shooting the residents still on the streets, and then crowds of ethnic Kyrgyz civilians followed, torching and looting homes.”

The report acknowledged the government’s claim that Kyrgyz mobs stole some weapons and vehicles used in the attacks but says that can’t completely account for the use of military vehicles in the attacks.

Not Shown The ‘Will’

The report says evidence was found that in at least some neighborhoods, government forces were in control of the vehicles and that in some instances government forces who went into the neighborhoods to disarm residents living there either intentionally or unintentionally gave cover to violent mobs carrying out attacks.

At least 371 people — and that estimate is thought to be low — were killed and property damaged throughout several neighborhoods. A massive refugee crisis ensued as ethnic Uzbeks fled across the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border.

The report also deals with the aftermath of the June violence and contains claims that ethnic Uzbeks have been arbitrarily detained and ill-treated in custody. That’s despite personal assurances from President Roza Otunbaeva, who told the group she has personally instructed local prosecutors, police, and investigators to comply fully with the law.

“At the moment, I have no doubt that the investigation is being carried out with huge violations,” Neistat says. “First of all, I’m talking about large-scale illegal arrests. When we were [in southern Kyrgyzstan], we were overwhelmed by telephone calls, coming in literally every minute, about detentions in Uzbek districts.”

‘Incredible Tension’

The report contains information that Human Right Watch workers say they received about the torture and ill-treatment of more than 60 detainees, at least one of whom died as a result of injuries suffered in custody.

HRW reports that the Prosecutor-General’s Office recently released statistics showing that out of 243 people who have been imprisoned since the violence, only 29 are Kyrgyz, while 213 are Uzbek.

Neistat said that the way the Kyrgyz government handles the investigations will have a powerful effect on the communities.

“Incredible tension and distrust still remain between the two ethnic groups,” she says, “and it is clear that the methods currently used by the investigators only add to this tension.”

Alik Orozov, the secretary of the Kyrgyz government’s Security Council, told RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service that the government could have done more to keep the calm.

“We agree with some critics that the government forces did not make enough effort to keep the situation under control,” Orozov said. “The government forces were not able to take full control over the situation. I can say that during the first days — June 10 through 12 — security forces did not act appropriately.”

‘Must Be Checked’

But he doesn’t accept some of the accusations in the report — including that Kyrgyz forces took part in the violence against ethnic Uzbeks — and said the information that Human Rights Watch gathered “must be checked.”

“The information that Kyrgyz military forces opened fire [on ethnic Uzbeks], that armored personnel carriers came [into Uzbek communities], has to be checked,” he said. “So many people who started the clash — bandits — dressed in camouflage. So, everything should be accurately clarified.

“[It should be checked] whether Kyrgyz forces were involved or there were others dressed as military personnel. There were several such cases. Perhaps people saw guys in camouflage and thought they were Kyrgyz Army soldiers.”

Human Rights Watch has called on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to speed up the deployment of the small advisory police group its members have agreed to send to southern Kyrgyzstan to assist the Kyrgyz authorities in reducing ethnic tensions.

In Osh and elsewhere, people have voiced concerns that an outside force might only complicate matters and further escalate tensions.

Orozov said Bishkek is talking to the OSCE about letting its police group train Kyrgyz police forces from the south in civil rights protection.

written by Heather Maher, with contributions from Ashley Cleek and RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service

The U.S. debate about net neutrality — whether ISPs can discriminate against certain types of content — has been anything but sensible, with no shortage of hyperbole from both sides. What is a complex, legitimate, and healthy debate about regulation and the opaque and sometimes byzantine deals between ISPs and content providers has been reduced to a standoff between proponents of a “public” Internet and evil corporations bent on controlling your favorite blog.

If the Google-Verizon deal is anything to go by, rather than be the apocalyptic endgame where the “public” Internet is ravaged by criminal capitalism, the issue will rumble along through various administrations and FCC and Supreme Court rulings for many years. Net neutrality, in its absolute purest form, is a little like communism. A nice idea, but not really feasible. All bytes are created equal, but some are more equal than others.

Advocates in the United States argued that net neutrality isn’t just a domestic U.S. issue but potentially a global life-and-death struggle — The End Of The Internet As We Know It. In an April press release, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders called on the U.S. Congress to act in favor of net neutrality:

The idea here is that if net neutrality isn’t enshrined in U.S. law, then repressive governments will use the lack of legislation to further restrict their citizens’ Internet freedoms.

Possible, but unlikely. Why? Well, they don’t really need to.

For much of the world, especially people unfortunate enough to live in repressive societies, net neutrality is an oxymoron. Those 1960s American libertarian ideals enshrined in the early Internet and held so dear by net neutrality advocates didn’t always make it to Uzbekistan or Myanmar.

In repressive or semi-repressive societies, the Internet has always been at the mercy of meddling governments or unscrupulous ISPs, which will happily shut down or block opposition websites under government pressure. Ask an Internet activist in Uzbekistan what they think of net neutrality, and they’ll tell you there’s no such thing. In most places, you’ll be lucky if there’s even a net.

The worst Internet repressers don’t need a side door, under commercial pretenses, to control content, as they can do that already with impunity by more traditional means: leaning on ISPs to pull content, shutting down ISPs, smashing up servers, imprisoning muckraking bloggers.

Where a U.S. example on net neutrality might have more of an impact is in countries with repressive tendencies but who also are aware of the need to project a decent image to the West and the global rights community.

There has been a trend recently for governments to justify their Internet crackdowns with Western precedents. Writing about the Sri Lankan Internet, Sanjana Hattotuwa says that British or French surveillance schemes or Australian antipornography laws are “opportunistically seized by regimes like Sri Lanka to legitimize their own actions to clamp down on dissent.”

Shutting down ISPs or denying access to YouTube generates bad headlines, especially in Russia when you’re trying to start up your own Silicon Valley and your president has just been schmoozing with the folks at Twitter. The concern here is that without a global enshrined ideal of net neutrality, government controlled or government friendly ISPs can under the auspices of the “market” make bargain-basement deals with state friendly content providers to squeeze out opposition media.

As Jonathan Zittrain says about the U.S. market:

In countries like Russia or China, substitute the “consolidated” or the “well-heeled” for the corrupt or the loyal.

Opposition media in repressive states have long been denied access to printing presses, airwaves, or rights to primetime TV coverage. In the last few years in countries like Russia, the Internet has been something of an oasis of freedom of expression, especially with the rise of blogging. In the coming years, however, there will be continued efforts by governments to reverse those gains.

Unfortunately, that is likely to happen with or without a global ideal of net neutrality. Repressive governments will continue to act with impunity and won’t bother going through the side door of net neutrality legislation. Semi-repressive states will use examples from the West to justify their Internet clampdowns, but they are more likely to be antipornography laws, cyberterrorism campaigns, or liberally applied antiextremist laws than focus on net neutrality.

As Mong Palatino wrote for Global Voices:

There has been much talk in the United States about the danger of parallel Internets: the Internet of the haves and the Internet of the have-nots. Unfortunately, in repressive states those parallel Internets are already in place. Because of the digital divide, there is the Internet of the connected (in every sense of the word) and then the Internet of everyone else, where citizens might only occasionally log on in a government-monitored Internet cafe.

But the starker divide, already in place in repressive societies like Iran, is between those who access the real uncensored Internet through proxies and those who access what amounts to nothing more than a sanitized government-run intranet. For this rising proxy generation, global net neutrality is irrelevant and nothing more than a whimsical ideal.

– Luke Allnutt

http://www.rferl.org/content/What_Net_Neutrality_Means_In_Uzbekistan/2125005.html