Activists are hoping that a television audience of millions as well as visiting journalists and fans flocking to town for the May 22 event will scrutinize more than the glittering outfits or the purpose-built Crystal Hall, part of a Eurovision complex that will have cost this small country an estimated $277 million.

Forced evictions, unlawful expropriations, and house demolitions have characterized the capital’s “beautification” program.  Activists in Baku are now calling on Eurovision contestants to "Sing for Democracy" in Azerbaijan.  The recent release of a video petition dedicated to two journalists who have been killed, 70 political prisoners languishing in jails amid allegations of torture, and the families forced out of their homes to make way for Eurovision’s glittering facades is just one effort in a campaign activists will hope to escalate in the coming weeks.  The flagship event Sing for Democracy is now working towards is an open air concert on May 18. It is as yet undecided whether the authorities (including the wife of the president, who is heads the Eurovision committee) will grant the relevant permission.

International scrutiny and oversight are vital in this hydrocarbon-rich country, because in Azerbaijan asking certain questions or voicing dissenting opinions is not encouraged. Governance is highly authoritarian and centralized around the presidential family. Business dealings are opaque and corruption is endemic.  Rumors circulate involving lavish purchases and profiteering by the presidential family including the recent finding by a Radio Free Europe investigative journalist that a lucrative mining contract has been awarded to the president’s family.

Telling that story and others came at great personal cost to the journalist, Khadija Ismayilova, who was subjected to a blackmailing campaign in March, suspected by many, including Members of the European Parliament, who wrote a letter of protest to the president on her behalf, to be officially sanctioned. Civil society in Azerbaijan, including the media, has a key role to play in protecting the public interest – just as we expect them to do actively elsewhere in Europe.

Yet as events within the last month show, when journalists try to work they are intimidated, held incommunicado as in the case of Zaur Guliyev and Vugar Gonagov or beaten unconscious, as was Idrak Abbasov at the hands of State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) officials, when he tried to document illegal housing evictions linked to the SOCAR pipeline construction. Others have been forced into exile.

By contrast, the government is keen to use its state-controlled media to accuse local rights activists and foreign governments who speak out—in particular Germany—of scandalizing the country. Even those who work cooperatively with the government can fall foul of it. In the last two weeks a leading figure in the Azerbaijan chapter of the international Publish What You Pay—an NGO campaign which fights for transparency and civic oversight of oil and gas revenues  and which had enjoyed early success in engaging the government on such questions—was unlawfully detained following a public meeting.  This is despite the fact that Azerbaijan is signed up to allow civil society participation and oversight under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

Two liberal-leaning former members of the ruling party, including the former Minister of Economic Development, are also in jail serving long sentences for corruption – an indication that no one is safe once they get on the wrong side of the Presidential administration, absent the rule of law in the country.

International companies too have counted the cost of operating within this regime. Nestle withdrew from Azerbaijan in March in a decision which has been linked to corruption and the company’s alleged refusal to pay bribes or deviate from official tax payments. The many oil and gas companies , hungry for Azerbaijan’s oil and gas, must take note and demand high levels of transparency and human rights protection (from freedom of expression to property rights) in their dealings with Azerbaijan.

The stakes are high, not only for Azerbaijan.  Investigations into Azerbaijan’s networks of lobbying and influence in key European capitals reveal worrying trends; rather than extending European standards to Azerbaijan through its membership of the Council of Europe, Azerbaijan’s network of interest groups is seemingly undermining standards and values within these institutions.   Whilst former parliamentarians find employment as lobbyists for Azerbaijan, elected rapporteurs of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) are openly disregarded.

Christoph Strässer, PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) rapporteur on Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan has been prevented multiple times by the Azerbaijani authorities from fulfilling his full mandate;  “an unprecedented course of action” Strässer himself acknowledges.

At the same time, the EU has launched a judicial cooperation program with the government worth €800,000, and has signed up on paper to a Trans-Caspian pipeline with Azerbaijan amid jostling by national champions including the UK’s BP, France’s Total together with Statoil and others  for lucrative pipeline deals. Yet these companies need to reflect—as Nestle appears to have done—on the cost benefits to themselves and ordinary Azerbaijanis of engaging Azerbaijan without clear conditions on rule of law, transparency and, underpinning both these principles, human rights.

A good place to start a more comprehensive cooperation would be to support independent civil society groups and call on the government to allow these groups to participate in public actions, express themselves freely without fear of intimidation, and protest without being gagged and jailed.

Meanwhile, activists from Sing for Democracy continue to petition to hold their open air concert on May 18.  The festival will feature songs to freedom and human rights, and represent the best talent of Azerbaijan—a young, well educated and courageous citizenry who want their country to have a bright and democratic future, and to show it is part of the European family by deeds rather than expensive PR. It remains to be seen whether the authorities will raise their standards to meet those of their citizens by allowing this event to take place.

Nearly two years on from the ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan’s Osh and surrounding cities which left at least 470 dead, the country remains unstable. Nationalist and racist rhetoric is on the rise, and whilst the UNHCR has reported on the return of a number of ethnic minority refugees to their homes in the South, there are still fears for safety and the rule of law, and a credible risk of further unrest. The right of all citizens to apply to the justice system and trust that they will have equal access to justice and a fair trial regardless of their ethnic origin are cornerstones of human and national security and essential for progress towards stability.

Askarov’s trial was marred by physical attacks on his legal team and threats against defense witnesses by groups identifying themselves as relatives of a policeman in whose murder he is accused of being complicit. The proceedings were widely condemned as unfair by human rights groups and other international observers.

Worse has followed. A leading medical expert on evaluating trauma related to torture, diagnosed Askarov with sustained, severe, and lasting physical injuries since his arrest. He needs immediate medical help for persistent visual loss, traumatic brain injury, and spinal injury as well as treatment for a chronic and potentially life-threatening illness.

International human rights groups are watching this case closely. Over 50 organizations from Europe, the U.S., and the former Soviet Union have written to the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging them to raise the matter of Askarov with the authorities. Human rights organizations have also written to Kyrgyz President Atambayev calling for Askarov’s release on humanitarian grounds.

Similar calls have been sent to the Kyrgyz Ambassador in Brussels. Requests for a meeting to discuss the case have been ignored. Despite the best efforts of the international community, including the EU and U.S., to engage the Kyrgyz authorities there are few in the government willing to discuss the case–and little political will or courage, to act to correct a blatant miscarriage of justice.

Members of Kyrgyzstan’s ruling elite cannot continue to hide from their responsibilities to safeguard human rights and the rule of law for all Kyrgyz citizens. Askarov’s story, of reported police beatings and fears for his physical safety in the lawless courtrooms of Bazar Korgan in southern Kyrgyzstan, is symptomatic of failing justice. Ethnic Uzbeks face injustices meted out by a largely mono-ethnic police and security forces and court authorities. Despite the majority of the casualties of the violence being from the Uzbek community, official figures in late 2010 revealed that of 271 individuals in custody, 230 were ethnic Uzbek and 29 ethnic Kyrgyz. According to Amnesty International Kyrgyz courts have handed down 27 life sentences—all to Uzbeks. Those like Askarov, the director of Vozdukh (Air), a human rights group based in Bazar Korgan who previously highlighted police brutality against minorities, make easy targets for the settling of scores in an atmosphere of impunity and inter-ethnic tension.

It is in the interests of the Kyrgyz government to preserve national unity and stability by actively promoting reconciliation. The release of Azimzhan Askarov, reviewing other cases mishandled by biased courts, and prosecuting the torturers will go some way to relieving tensions. A stable future in Kyrgyzstan depends on citizens being able to seek redress and remedy through courts independent of political pressure, and civil society must be able to enter into a dialogue with the government on these issues, rather than speaking into the void.

This piece originally ran in Open Democracy.

Democracy doesn’t flow from a barrel of a gun but through respecting the will of the people. Chris Patten delivered this verdict in 2003, at the moment when the "democracy-promotion" agenda was about to be plunged into a geopolitical abyss by the United States-led invasion of Iraq. It proved a prescient challenge to the dominant way that the agenda had come to be pursued.

Patten, a former British government minister and the governor of Hong Kong, was at the time the European Union's commissioner for external relations. He went on to call on western leaders to abandon expediency as a foreign policy ("propping up pro-western strongmen for fear that what might replace them would be substantially worse"), and to practice democracy-promotion by making actions match rhetoric.

The message went unheeded in Europe as elsewhere. Europe continued for the rest of the decade to support autocratic leaders in its southern neighborhood, to the detriment of democracy and of local human rights-activists working to bring about change in their societies.

Thus, when the Arab uprisings began in late 2010 and early 2011, this explosion of "people power" owed nothing to international support. This was more than just a wake-up call to the European Union—it put the union on the wrong side of history. Throughout 2011, as the uprisings evolved, international actors rushed to catch up by offering a swathe of proposals to support the emerging Arab civil society. Such belated efforts to prove that these actors are now genuinely listening to local demands and backing local agents of change are inevitably shadowed by what came before.

Can Europe now fully learn the lessons of the last decade about the genuine way that democracy is promoted?

A Releasing Agent

An indication of how Europe might try came in December 2011 when European Union foreign ministers—with the encouragement of the Polish presidency of the union, then in the last weeks of its six-month term—discussed plans to establish a European Endowment for Democracy (EED). Such a body, if funded at even modest levels appropriate to its ambitions (up to around €30 million a year), could provide vital support for those engaged in civic activism. This could become part of a flexible strategy to foster democratic change without the stifling restrictions connected to "normal" EU assistance.

But how will this endowment add value to existing funding instruments at a time of economic upheaval? This has been the proper focus of debates among EU member-states on the issue so far. Most experts recognize that potential partners in need of support, but which don’t have the resources to jump through the administrative hoops associated with current EU programs, will welcome the possibilities of a more more flexible approach. A fresh mandate for the endowment would also make it compatible with existing instruments, in particular the need to preserve funding for core human-rights work under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR).

The EED concept is not new to Brussels, but the increased level of discussion reflects the fact that, in the wake the Arab uprisings, democratization has undergone a swift rehabilitation among EU policy-makers. It must be recognized, however, that participants in the transition from authoritarian rule in north Africa and elsewhere in the Arab region have good reason to be wary of outside intervention in all forms, and wish themselves to set the terms of engagement. The endowment will thus need to make room for a range of civil-society actors—many of them little understood by EU delegations in-country, let alone in Brussels—to take the lead in creating the form and agenda of EU assistance in this delicate area. In short, EU support must not come at the cost of local legitimacy.

A readiness to allow initiatives to come from the ground up, and offering a permanent, open cycle of support—rather than issuing calls for proposals cooked up by the European commission bureaucracy—would be a first crucial step in reversing established EU practices.

Who would benefit from the European Endowment for Democracy? Both past and current relevant experience—from Poland's Solidarity movement to the activist-bloggers of Tahrir Square—suggests that the most significant voices for change come from outside the dominant political parties. So initially, the endowment could make itself available to a variety of non-governmental actors unable to benefit under the criteria of the EIDHR.

The recipients could range from those with democracy aspirations in a different gear to national agendas (often these might be leading, but unregistered, NGOs), who might be awarded fellowships/placements in Brussels or member-states; media workers, and members of the diaspora with an explicit aim of improving participatory democracy in their country of origin; and adherents of political parties or think-tanks who support nascent democratic structures. Any support to political parties must, however, avoid ideological allegiances (real or imagined) and be non-discriminatory, supporting the overall growth of democratic systems and democratic culture rather than "backing winners."

A Bottom-Up Strategy

The EED, if it is to be effective, flexible and impartial in its decision-making and delivery, will need to function as a nimble and light nongovernmental entity, at some distance from Europe's institutions yet with the member-states' buy-in. The board will need to establish ground-rules to manage the higher levels of risk, and each proposal will require assessment based on individual contextual merit rather than a predefined set of global criteria. There will also need to be program officers with detailed regional knowledge who can invest in relationships and take necessary risks, and account for them to an executive committee. They will thus have greater leeway than grants officers working in delegations under the EU diplomatic banner.

A strategic board composed of former officials as well as civil-society representatives and member-state human-rights officials would provide fresh thinking and oversight. A rotating structure would help ensure greater transparency of decision-making, shared ownership, and the avoidance of conflicts of interest or capture of funding by "donor darlings" (well-performing favorites of multiple donors).

The endowment also offers an opportunity to test a bottom-up funding strategy. In the context of Europe's current financial troubles, cost is a major feature of any current debate among the member-states. Yet where the endowment is concerned, it is the targeting and flexibility of funds rather than their modest amounts (€20-€30 million from multiple donors, including member-states). In any case, actors are much better able to absorb and convert smaller grants into real activities than large sums. When coupled with procedures light enough not to distract resource- and time-constrained beneficiaries from their qualitative goals, this will equate to effective and efficient use of funds.

The broader idea that should guide the European Endowment for Democracy is to understand the risks being taken by those struggling to make a difference in closed countries or grappling with fast-moving transitions, and to seek to empower them in their efforts to foster change. The European Union should neither further clip their wings nor dictate a direction of flight but allow them—partners and agencies alike—the freedom to take the initiative. As Chris Patten suggested in 2003, if we truly believe that democracy is a universal aspiration then we need to treat it like one. This means having the confidence to give it space to develop and to focus resources that let it grow from the ground up.

Azerbaijan’s victory in the Eurovision song contest brings welcome attention to this often-ignored Caspian country. But success on the stage in Dusseldorf comes at a time when the government has been clamping down on the right of ordinary people to make their voices heard, both on the streets and online.

Days before Ell and Nikki's aptly named song “Running Scared” won the plaudits of the European judges, the European Parliament condemned a recent crackdown on journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists in the wake of a series of pro-democracy demonstrations in the country’s capital, Baku.

I spent last week with leading independent analysts and activists from Azerbaijan, who told me how between February and April of this year the government has arrested hundreds of people for participating (or intending to participate) in demonstrations; targeted activists on Facebook; and detained, beaten, and even disappeared journalists, lawyers, and bloggers.

Young bloggers such as Jabbar Savalan and Bakhtiyar Hajiyev have been sentenced to two years or more on what Amnesty International has called trumped-up charges. Another blogger, Elnur Majidi, based in Strasbourg, has been accused of plotting the overthrow of the government.

The government clampdown on attempts by citizens to speak out on human rights and democracy persists despite the country’s various international commitments.

Azerbaijan is a member of several organizations promoting European standards, such as the Council of Europe, and has signed commitments to reform under the European Union Neighbourhood Policy—but the level of commitment is superficial at best. As far as proving itself on the European stage, Eurovision is as good as it gets.

Four years on from the joint Neighbourhood Policy agreement with the EU, there has been backsliding on basic standards rather than progress on reform pledges. Parliamentary elections in autumn 2010 were assessed by international observers as flawed, and there has been a de facto ban on opposition gatherings in Baku since 2005.

Despite a promise to cut red tape for registering human rights organizations, the government has increased the administrative burdens and reporting requirements, recently forcing the closure of two organizations, including Human Rights House, which had worked as a hub for young and independently minded activists in the country.

Azerbaijan is the only country to refuse a special rapporteur's visit to its territory (the Council of Europe Special Representative on political prisoners), and a leading journalist, Eynulla Fatullayev, who dared to speak out critically about the authorities and the situation of human rights in the country, remains in jail on trumped up charges.

The Eurovision victory of Gasimov and Jamal is of little consolation for many activists languishing in Azerbaijani jails or threatened abroad. Their catchy love song steers clear of issues sensitive to the government and Eurovision is a different world from the common reality of censure and restrictions inside this country, once the Muslim world’s first democracy.

Nevertheless it can be a point of leverage. Next year Baku will host the song contest—and welcome the international media, much of which remains off the air in Azerbaijan. Before then, the authorities need to prove in practice that they can guarantee freedom of expression and assembly—universal rights underpinning the commitments it has signed up to at the Council of Europe and with the European Union.

The international and European media—essential to the success of the Eurovision contest—should stipulate their attendance on the existence of freedom of expression and a truly independent media in the country and the removal of restrictions to accessing external broadcasters.

The EU should be clearer in its expectations regarding Baku’s reform agenda and the state of democracy in the country. Azerbaijan’s oil and gas stocks will not guarantee a stable energy supply for Europe if the governing institutions restrict the basic rights of its people.

A competition that prides itself in bringing together over 40 competing countries and 120 million viewers should be held in conditions where the voices of ordinary citizens are free to be heard. The EU, European institutions, and international media can help Baku solve its Eurovision paradox before May 2012.

It is hard to imagine former Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali meeting in Brussels with the top EU leadership after recent events brought his 23-year rule to a dramatic end. But only because of that word “former,” rather than the word “dictator.” Apparently, meeting with the world’s nastiest tyrants is not considered an issue in Brussels.

Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso’s recent agenda features regular tête-a-têtes with Central Asian dictators. In mid-January, he and Energy Commissioner Oettinger went to the Caspian to persuade the president of isolated Turkmenistan to sell gas to Europe, passing by increasingly authoritarian Baku. In the face of protests from leading international human rights NGOs and Uzbek refugee activists, Barroso also recently received President Islam Karimov, for 21 years the leader of Uzbekistan, whose regime has relatively recently emerged from under EU sanctions following the massacre of some 700 civilians by government forces in Andijan in May 2005.

The EU’s willingness to meet with Central Asian hard-men, whose little-known regimes deprive citizens of their basic rights, is worrisome. Despite the bloc’s commitment to fundamental values and its relative trading power, the thirst for gas have led bureaucrats to the conclusion that the EU has more riding on the relationship with its counterparts than those on the other side of the table.

In terms of strategy and tactics it is the wrong conclusion. The current approach undermines EU leverage by underplaying the extent to which these regimes, surrounded by power-hungry Russia, energy-thirsty China and crisis-ridden Afghanistan are in the market for political supporters and that gas deals and leases for military bases are sold domestically as well as internationally in order to ensure regime-survival. It leads to meetings which are used to legitimize the leadership while the EU more often than not leaves empty-handed with regard its core demands, be they energy or security-related or – as many hope – getting a commitment to tackle human rights abuses. The recent Ashgabat trip is one such example; the EU’s "results-oriented" human rights dialogues, still to bear fruit in terms of political prisoner releases, are another.

Karimov’s visit was a chance for the EU to restate its still unfulfilled demand for an independent investigation into the Andijan massacre and make it a part of the negotiations. A statement released following the meeting went some way to meeting the concerns of NGOs, referencing individual cases and, notably calling on the Uzbek government to allow the International Labour Organisation to monitor its cotton harvest – where forced child labor is widespread. Yet the EU’s central demand for an investigation into the 2005 killings was not on the agenda.

Karimov’s tight control of the broadcast media ensures the Uzbek leader a public relations victory back home. By contrast, the Commission’s communications strategy looks to have resulted in an own goal: The blanket of silence surrounding Monday’s meeting indicates the level of official embarrassment. Unusually for a state visit, no press conference was planned – although a flashmob protest organized by Uzbek activists together with leading NGOs made publicity inevitable.

Barroso’s website featured a glowing presidential CV penned by the Uzbeks and referring to Karimov as the “Hero of Uzbekistan” until pressure from human rights groups led to its removal. Officials from NATO, the Belgian Foreign Ministry and the European Commission  lined up to give conflicting accounts as to who invited Karimov [for the record, Uzbek press credits Barroso]. The response of the top three Brussels officials further speaks to disarray: Catherine Ashton was out of town and Herman van Rompuy was not available for a meeting – reputedly on moral grounds.

Uzbekistan’s human rights situation continues to be nightmarish, even by Central Asian standards. Threats, intimidation, illegal punishment, and torture against critics of the authorities are routine. Since 2008, human rights activists have recorded at least nine deaths as a result of torture during investigations or in prisons. Uzbekistan is not yet a signatory of the Optional Protocol to Convention Against Torture and has not fully implemented the 2003 recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture. A recent reported rape of two sisters by police officers has not led to any convictions.

Despite international calls, children were yet again sent to harvest cotton in 2010, and a health activist tackling the growing HIV/AIDS problem were imprisoned for "offending the honor and dignity of the Uzbek people." Those who seek to tell stories like these are subject to frequent crackdowns: In 2010 alone, at least nine civil society activists and journalists were charged for alleged criminal offenses and some of them were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. In all 34 journalists have left the country following Andijan to escape persecution and critical websites are frequently blocked or closed down.

That the EU is receiving dictators from Central Asia while at the same time supporting democratic aspirations of Tunisians speaks volumes about the lack of a coherent human rights strategy.

Yet if Tunisia teaches us anything, it is that seemingly stable dictatorships can prove brittle when challenged, even by the least powerful. Up until Ben Ali’s ouster the EU championed Tunisia as reliable, “an example for the region” and had begun negotiations over “enhanced status” in relations without conditions. Now, even as European firms scramble to disassociate themselves from Ben Ali cronies the EU is counting the political cost of alienating a generation of activists, some likely heading for government. The lesson from Tunisia is clear: If international actors like the EU who identify themselves with fundamental freedoms wish to remain credible on the global stage, they need to speak out for the oppressed rather than having lunch with the oppressors.

The visit paid by the European Commission's president, José Manuel Barroso, and its energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, to energy-rich Turkmenistan on January 15 is the clearest signal yet of the European Union's desire to buy gas from a closed country famed for the eccentricities of its leaders and its abysmal human rights record.

Recent trends suggest it is unlikely that Turkmenistan's consistent failure to meet its own international human rights obligations and uphold the rule of law featured in any substantive way (the European commissioners issued no statement after the visit).

Turkmenistan is thought to have the fourth-largest gas reserves in the world, representing 4% of the world's total reserves. It is seen by the EU as a key potential supplier, part of an energy-diversification strategy premised on the need to reduce the EU's reliance on Russia, the world's leading gas supplier. All of this has served to elevate the geostrategic importance of a country hitherto isolated from the world stage. It also raises important questions about what it means for the foreign policy of democratically elected governments or, as in the EU's case, institutions that represent democratic systems towards abusive regimes on which they depend for vital energy resources.

Energy security and human rights are not mutually exclusive goals, as EU officials seem to accept too readily. Buying gas from Turkmenistan, a country with an obscure and half-secret budget, where corruption and patronage is rife and where European executives are forced give gifts to the president in return for contracts, is akin to pouring money into a black hole. The absence of rules-based decision-making—an absence that is reflected in its human rights record—runs counter to EU interests in creating a sustainable, rules-based contractual arrangement.

The high-level visit to the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, was the latest round of a delicate diplomatic jenga game. As part of its diversification strategy, the EU has been busy supporting commercial projects to bring gas from the Caspian to the EU notably the Nabucco pipeline and engaged in a number of diplomatic initiatives seemingly intended to win favour with the Turkmen side. Such overtures include a Partnership and Co-operation Agreement which the European Parliament looks set to ratify this spring, despite no evidence that Turkmenistan has moved on the basic human rights criteria required to go ahead; while the EU-controlled European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has weakened its principled stance towards the country, citing “political reforms” as a justification.

Under the EU's Influence?

Yet, while the EU has been busy, it is unclear that Turkmenistan is fulfilling its side of the bargain. International conferences and visits by Western gas-industry executives elicit lukewarm responses at best, and Turkmenistan's stultified decision-making structures and its weak and fearful bureaucratic cadre (shuffling of key ministerial portfolios is frequent) do little to boost confidence that the EU will get a safe return on its diplomatic investment. It is clear that despite—or because of—increasing interest from China, Russia and the EU in Turkmenistan's resources, there have been virtually no improvements for the five million ordinary Turkmens. Many are blacklisted from leaving the country; prevented from working or, in the worse cases, in jail on trumped up charges in prisons that, as exiled activists documented in a report earlier this year, are mediaeval in character.

The latest news from the country makes typically grim reading: conscientious objectors have been imprisoned; a leading mobile-phone company blocked and—here, on European territory—a leading exiled activist threatened with assassination. In these circumstances, the best chance the people of Turkmenistan have is international pressure on the government to wrest reforms in exchange for greater engagement. Such pressure is not going to come from China and Russia but from actors, such as the EU, that take, as their founding principles, the universal norms to which Turkmenistan has signed up but ignores.

A Stronger Hand

Likewise, it is unclear that engagement without preconditions is the way forward to creating the leverage the EU desires. The case of Azerbaijan, now a broker in a potential Trans-Caspian Pipeline, is instructive: since cooperation on energy took precedence in relations between the EU and that country, the EU has lost, rather than gained, leverage. There, the European stake in oil and gas industry and the growing self-confidence of the government has left the regime impervious to EU demands on human rights. At the same time, the human rights situation in Azerbaijan has worsened considerably, culminating in openly fraudulent parliamentary elections last November. As in Turkmenistan, the presence of a large number of international buyers vying for its hydrocarbons serves to strengthen the regime at the expense of sustainable, equitable development and the rights of its citizens.

All of this means the EU needs to play a strong hand towards Turkmenistan, citing clear conditions linked to its offer. The EU should not hesitate to leverage its substantial market by linking its offer to buy Turkmen gas and upgrade its relations to clearly articulated expectations of that partner in the human rights and transparency fields. A presidential decision to allow international monitors to visit prisons would be a good start; as would enabling people to assemble and associate to civic organizations. Abolishing the unofficial blacklists and bans on citizens leaving the country and initiating a review of political prisoners detained by the former president would also be a significant, though relatively painless step for Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, one that would signal that Turkmenistan is on the way to becoming a worthy partner for the EU. By making such expectations clear from the outset, the EU would boost its negotiating hand down the line when the payments start coming into Turkmen coffers.

At stake is more than a bilateral relationship with Turkmenistan: the EU risks undermining its soft power and mortgaging its freedom to act decisively in the future on core political concerns by hinging its foreign policy solely to energy needs. The fickle global gas market shows how dangerously short-termist and limiting energy realpolitik can be. Meanwhile, governments in the region are watching to see how low the EU will be willing to let the bar slip in order to feed its energy addiction. Without a strong, consistent and credible longer-term EU strategy on the difficult questions towards countries such as Turkmenistan, the EU risks ending up looking, at best, no better than the rest and, at worst, guilty of hypocrisy in pursuit of short-term gains.

At Ashgabat airport, authorities refused to allow them to board their plane on account of Elena Matieva’s activities as a journalist. A former reporter for Radio Free Europe, she had written critical articles and once attended a seminar in Europe. Since then she and her husband have been persecuted by the authorities: forced out of jobs; spied on and now, prevented from traveling.

The Matievs' story is sadly familiar. Thousands of Turkmen citizens are thought to be on an unofficial blacklist barring them from exiting their own country, even for medical care, to study or to visit family.

Turkmenistan, a country known mainly for its large gas reserves and the eccentricities of its former leader, languishes at the lower end of the league tables on press freedom, democracy and transparency, keeping company with the likes of Burma, Uzbekistan, and North Korea. It stands out among its Central Asian peers for its use of Soviet-style collective punishment, which persecutes relatives and acquaintances for the "crimes" of fathers, sisters, uncles, or clan members. Under its current president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan remains subject to one-man rule: ministers are hired and fired at the will; dissidents are persecuted and forced to renounce citizenship; thousands languish in jails where TB is said to be rife. Few, if any, international organizations are permitted access to the country to monitor abuses.

Turkmenistan—sitting on the world’s fifth largest gas reserves—is nevertheless a country with which the European Union has decided it can do business. Discussions have been opened about gas pipelines and a Memorandum of Understanding on energy cooperation signed. EU political leaders have leant their weight to commercial ventures such as the fabled, and troubled, Nabucco gas project. Successive EU dignitaries have visited Ashgabat to court the leadership, including Commissioner Oettinger in April 2010. This autumn the European Parliament will consider whether to give the green light to a comprehensive agreement which will normalize relations with Turkmenistan.

As part of this rapprochement, EU officials parrot government press releases highlighting "progress" in education, the holding of the first parliamentary elections, the opening of a handful of Internet cafes, the decision to agree to a human rights dialogue with the EU and to invite a Special Rapporteur, the release of the occasional human rights defender.

The untold story is that the Internet cafes remain expensive and highly controlled; that the parliamentary elections were fought only by candidates prescreened by the president. The fate of one independent candidate who was imprisoned for daring to stand outside the only party is still unknown. While Berdymukhamedov was lauded as a reformer for an early move to reinstate missing years in the education system to bring the country back into line with international standards, the government has since proved its authoritarian credentials by moving to bar students from attending universities abroad, denying their right to education and effectively putting an end to their prospects. It seems in Turkmenistan that one hand of the president gives and the other takes away.

According to proponents of rapprochement, Turkmenistan is "opening" and should be helped out of its isolation. However, if Turkmenistan is open for European business—and this is not entirely clear—it remains closed to human rights monitors. Any travellers who wish to see more than the Potemkin village tours offered to diplomats on brief visits out of the capital will be accompanied by state-appointed guides.

Others decide that being forced to collude with the authorities is not a price worth paying: Medicins sans Frontieres left Turkmenistan in December 2009 after 10 years working there. A report released by MSF details the problems in Turkmenistan’s health system witnessed at first hand—including falsification and manipulation of health statistics on mortality and communicable diseases. MSF’s agonizing dilemma about how far and where to compromise serves as a lesson for other international actors, including the EU.

Speaking out about human rights abuses and supporting persecuted human rights defenders when you have an interest in keeping the government happy is difficult. Yet it is necessary. Without an international outcry environmental activists such as Andrei Zatoka would be in jail on trumped up charges, and Annamamedov Matiev would not have received permission to travel for his eye treatment.

For the Matievs the story had a happy ending this time. But in the absence of rule of law, they and their compatriots remain prey to the whims of officials from immigration officers all the way up to the president. It's a lesson that international actors, including the EU, thinking of engaging in Turkmenistan, need to take to heart.

At a recent debate organized by the Open Society Institute–Brussels and attended by European officials, diplomats, and NGOs, Kazakhstani civil society activists argued that progress in human rights, freedom of media, freedom of assembly, and access to justice falls short of promises made by the Kazakhstani government prior to taking up the chairmanship.

To illustrate their concerns, members of the "Kazakhstan OSCE 2010" coalition presented The First One Hundred Days of Kazakhstan's Chairmanship of the OSCE (download pdf), which details infringements on media freedom, including the seizure of the weekly newspaper Voice of the Republic, as well as restrictions on freedom of assembly. Speakers also detailed the widespread practice of torture and ill-treatment in prisons and police facilities, noted by the UN special rapporteur Manfred Nowak and reaffirmed in a recent Amnesty International report No Effective Safeguards Against Torture, and voiced concerns about access to justice, arguing the ongoing case of human rights defender Evgeniy Zhovtis, who remains imprisoned following a procedurally flawed trial.

The NGOs called on the international community to urge the Kazakhstan government to:

• reform media legislation, including decriminalising libel;
• reform legislation on freedom of assembly and align it with international (including OSCE) standards;
• release Evgeniy Zhovtis and conduct a new investigation into the case;
• introduce effective safeguards against torture during arrest including an independent body to investigate torture allegations;
• implement fully its national Human Rights Action Plan.

In particular, participants called on the European Union to use "friendly criticism" in publicly pointing out these concerns. As Kazakhstan remains a strategic partner to the European Union and looks for closer ties, advancing the core human rights values and freedoms in the country will play only a positive role in providing the basic normative conditions necessary for a deeper partnership.