Labor officials in Kyrgyzstan are encouraging vocational schools to teach students the skills they need todo manual labor abroad, according to an article from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.
Despite the recent spate of hate crimes in Russia against these kinds of migrant workers [see previous post], the Kyrgyz people understand their fate.
Why go to med school if you’re going to end up laying bricks in Istanbul?
At least these vocational skills recognize some of the dangers of working abroad.
Knowing that many of these students will wind up in Russia, they teach classes on Russian language, law and custom. Many students in the capital, Bishkek, already speak Russian well, but this is not true of most residents of the countryside, especially in the south.
The government is so eager to export its youths because it simply cannot handle the number of unemployed Kyrgyz already in the country.
Workers abroad sending remittances back home prop up the Kyrgyz economy.
Officially, about 350,000 Kyrgyz are working in Russia and Kazakstan, but the unofficial count is closer to two million. Others find jobs in Turkey, China, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea.
Some proponents of the policy of preparing students for jobs abroad claim that working in other countries will give them skills to bring home later.
But how will working as electricians in Kazakstan help the youths of today become the leaders of tomorrow? And who knows if they will even come back?
Spend any amount of time in towns and villages in countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, and you will begin to wonder something.
Where are all the young people?
I’m not talking about the children. The children are there.
But many of them live with grandparents or a neighbor. Some live alone. It is fairly normal for them to go years without seeing their older brothers, sisters or one or both parents.
That’s because in order to support their families, many able-bodied citizens must look for work abroad.
In part because many of them speak Russian, many end up in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A science teacher at the school where I worked in Moldova showed me pictures of himself and other teachers working at a construction site together in Russia. Doctors and lawyers find it more lucrative to do manual labor abroad than to work in their chosen profession at home.
The situation is hard on families, marriages and children. And recently for Kyrgyz workers in Russia, it has been deadly.
The Kyrgyz parliament passed a resolution on Feb. 22 asking Russian lawmakers to recognize that racially motivated murders of Kyrgyz nationals have become a significant problem in Russia.
The issue isn’t new. Russia’s commitment to stopping hate crimes has been questioned in the past.
According to the RFE/RL article, “Human rights groups have consistently criticized Russian prosecutors for filing many racially motivated attacks as ‘hooliganism,’ a charge which carries lighter sentences.”
That was the case in March 2006, when murder charges were dropped against a group of Russian teenagers who attacked and killed a 9-year-old Tajik girl in St. Petersburg.
In February 2004, [Yunus] Sultonov, an immigrant worker from Tajikistan, his daughter Khursheva, and his 11-year-old nephew were attacked in St. Petersburg by a group of teenagers armed with baseball bats, chains, and knives.
Khursheva bled to death after being stabbed 11 times. Sultonov was badly beaten but survived, and his nephew managed to escape.
Roman Kazakov, who was 14 at the time of the attack and is considered a leader of the group, was handed the heaviest sentence — 5 1/2 years. Kazakov had initially been charged with racially motivated murder, but the jury reduced this charge to hooliganism, citing lack of evidence.
The six others defendants received prison terms ranging from 1 1/2 to three years.
According to the article, “St. Petersburg prosecutors report that 23 people died in racially motivated attacks in 2004, and 34 in 2005. According to police estimates, there are some 20,000 skinheads in the St. Petersburg region alone.”
Let me take you on a bit of a side trip to the Republic of Moldova.
From 2004-2006, I taught English in the town of Calarasi, just an hour outside the capital, Chisinau.
There were three secondary schools in my town: two for Romanian speakers and one for Russian speakers. I taught at a Romanian school.
Many of my students told me that Russian was their most difficult class. Some of them hated it. Other students spoke Russian with their friends in the hallways.
I worked with a gym teacher from the Russian lyceum to run an afterschool basketball program. She and I communicated in Romanian, but sometimes she struggled to remember words.
I spoke in English with my students in class. Sometimes when they saw me speaking with Moldovans outside of class, they’d say incredulously, “You speak Romanian?”
Other times, in the same situation, they would say, “Miss Kate, you speak Moldovan!”
Now Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin has proposed that the European Union recognize Moldovan as an official language distinct from the one spoken in neighboring Romania.
The article describes a scene in which the foreign minister of Romania addresses Voronin in French, saying that it is more advantageous for the two countries to share a common language.
Voronin answers in Russian that the decision belongs to the Moldovan people. He even suggests that Moldovan might have predated Romanian, saying, “We’re still having never-ending debates with Romania about which came first, the chicken or the egg.”
I know something the author of this article does not mention. Whatever you call it, Romanian or Moldovan, Voronin can’t speak it to save his life.
Voronin is a pro-Russia, Russian-speaking leader of the Communist party. Whenever he conducted a televised interview in Romanian, my students would come in to class the next day mocking his many mistakes. Magazines published articles making fun of the way he spoke.
Why is he the champion of the Moldovan tongue?
You won’t find the answer in the article.
In the past, Moldovans have been part of both Romania and the Soviet Union. Many Moldovans have lobbied to rejoin Romania. Others still think fondly of their days back in the U.S.S.R.
What better way for Russia enthusiasts to drive a wedge between Moldova and Romania than to claim that the two do not actually speak the same language?
The first time I traveled to Romania, I went to Bucharest by mini-bus on my own. Almost all of my fellow passengers were Moldovans. I was unsure how I would fare in another country by myself.
But hearing my first Romanian accent was like coming out into the sunlight. I didn’t miss a word. It was the same language I had learned, just more enunciated and thereby easier to understand.
Sure, there are slight differences. Some Russian vocabulary has made its way into the Romanian Moldovans speak. The accent is distinct. But calling the languages the two countries speak separate is like distinguishing “Ohioan” from what they speak in North Carolina.
Fine, when I did my undergraduate studies there, I had a different accent from some of my friends, and I didn’t know that you could call a ski cap a “toboggan,” but we were all speaking English. And Ohio is much farther from North Carolina than Moldova is from Romania.
As can be heard in my interview with Ukrainian immigrant Michael Arov, language is not just a topic of discussion in Moldova. Language is a key element in the identity of the Eastern European.
The common thread is the influence of Russian. As the former members of the Soviet Union have broken away, they have not lost Russian, the language that was in some cases forced upon them. Those who have grown up speaking Russian now feel national languages like Romanian or Ukrainian are the ones being forced.
Many Russians who have emigrated to these countries have not found it necessary to learn the native tongue. Members of neighboring communities sometimes find themselves unable to communicate.
As the European Union inches farther East, these issues stop being local.
That’s what an organization of opposition parties in Kyrgyzstan has done. Members of “Movement for Justice” have created their own “Public Parliament.”
The founders of the Public Parliament claim that it is not meant to replace the current parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh.
They say it is only a platform for them to express their views, seeing as they’re almost completely excluded from the actual government.
Kyrgyzstan’s parliament consists almost entirely of members of a single party – the one loyal to Kyrgyzstan’s president.
The parliamentary election, which took place Dec. 16, was marred with complaints of ballot-stuffing. More to the opposition’s dismay, electoral rules demanded that political parties win a minimum number of votes in each of nine regions in order to merit a seat. The most popular opposition party failed to earn a single spot, while the president’s party claimed 71 of the parliament’s 90 seats.
The alternative parliament is made up of 50 party leaders, politicians and civil society activists.
An alternative “cabinet of ministers” had been created earlier.
This article by columnist Kumar Bekbolotov from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting claims that some organizers want more than the freedom of expression. Bekbolotov says a clandestine revolutionary operation that has been in the works may take to the streets starting next month.
Finally, I found an article that mentions what the governments of breakaway provinces in former Soviet republics think of Kosovan independence.
In this article from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are quoted as saying that they will make appeals for independence to the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
They claim they have a “stronger case” for independence than Kosovo.
This video from Russia Today summarizes the argument:
Georgian officials, on the other hand, have said in the Georgian press that Georgia will not recognize Kosovan independence.
The RFERL article goes on to give an explanation of why Kosovo is distinct from other breakaway republics.
Sabine Freizer, a program director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, is quoted as saying:
“I think that it is extremely difficult to compare the former Yugoslavia with any other part of the world. The breakup of the former Yugoslavia was unique in itself.”
The United Nations resolution that resolved the 1998-1999 conflict between Kosovo and Serbia turned Kosovo into an autonomous province administered by the United Nations.
The resolution included language that allowed the status of Kosovo to change, foreseeing the possibility of future independence.
Freizer said:
“We don’t have any resolution that calls into question the territorial integrity of Georgia, for example. So this makes the case very different.”
Freizer recommends that breakaway republics seeking independence learn something from the case of Kosovo.
“The one lesson that I would maybe take from the Kosovo experience is that the best that [these territories] can do to get their case understood internationally is to show that they are responsible and to not make any excessive moves. To work on trying to build up their own structures, their own institutions and, most importantly, to defend the rights of minorities that are living on their territories.”
The protests ended violently when they were broken up by police after five days. It was reported that more than 200 people sought medical attention in the aftermath.
Now opposition members have threatened to hold a hunger strike starting this Friday if the rest of their demands are not met.
Most controversially, they want both the chairman of the Central Election Commission and the head of Georgian public television to resign.
The opposition party accused the election commission of failing to run a fair election.
And they accused the state-financed public television station of failing to offer unbiased coverage before the vote.
Today Bush called Kosovo’s people “independent” but stopped short of officially recognizing Kosovo as an independent state.
This doesn’t mean that Bush refuses to recognize Kosovo officially, but it might have something to do with the European Union’s failure to take an official position on Kosovo’s declaration of independence.
Led by Spain, a country long plagued by separatist issues of its own, several EU nations raised concerns about the possible effects of recognizing Kosovo.
Kosovo declared its independence yesterday in defiance of Serbia.
The BBC posted the opinions of Serbs and Albanians living in Kosovo here.
Countries including Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia fear that Kosovo’s success could inspire other provinces and minority ethnic groups interested in redrawing the map. China has taken up with this camp.
France, Germany, Italy and Britain have argued that Kosovo is distinct from other breakaway republics and that recognizing its sovereignty will not set off a cascade of independence movements.
Russia has made the ripple-effect argument perhaps more forcefully than any other nation.
However, Russia is one of the few countries to recognize the breakaway republics of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia has offered citizenship to the residents of these provinces. Why not support their independence?
In fact, for Russia Abkhazia and South Ossetia are more beneficial as they are right now — unrecognized breakaway states.
If for instance they do get independence, then similarly Chechens, Ingush and other ‘peoples’ living in Russian part of the Caucasus, could argue for ‘Abkhazia’s precedent’ — although improbable, but conceptually very possible thing to happen.
Moreover, for Russia Abkhazia and South Ossetia are very good bargaining chips against Georgia, and with their independence, they would lose their value.
While in a Russian-language bookstore on Chicago’s famously international Devon Avenue on Sunday, I met two Ukrainian immigrants, Michael Arov and his mother, Anna Arova.
Michael took a moment to speak with me about his cultural background, Russia and Kosovan independence.
“The streets of Pristina have been filled with people cheering and shouting, with cars honking their horns in a continuous cacophony.
“They drive round and round draped in flags, young men perched precariously on the roofs jiggling up and down with joy. In the midst of mayhem, an old man closes his eyes and reverentially kisses a scarf emblazoned with the word ‘Kosovo.’”
In Parliament, Thaci said:
“I ask from you to speak to your children and to your grandchildren and to your nephews and nieces and to explain the meaning today. It has been a long journey of sacrifices.
“…We are creating the new history in front of us… We are becoming an equal part of the democratic world.”
The United States and most countries in the European Union have indicated they would support an independent Kosovo.
Russia and Serbia have made it clear they would not.
This broadcast from Russia Today explains the concerns of some countries that Kosovan independence will spark new conflict in other breakaway republics, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.
Watch it for a good, concise history of South Ossetia.
Thaci described the declaration as the final step in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. (To see a BBC timeline of events for Yugoslavia, click here.)
The background is long and bloody, but let me give you the basics.
The boundaries of Yugoslavia, originally called “The Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes,” were first drawn at the end of World War I.
By the end of World War II, Yugoslavia included Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. Two provinces in Serbia were given autonomous status: Vojvodina and Kosovo.
These regions had not been united during the fighting of World War II, but rather had committed atrocities against one another.
Ethnic groups had fought in civil wars. Croatian fascists had welcomed invading Germans and set up concentration camps. Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats were killed.
By 1992, during the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Yugoslav Federation also began to fall apart. Bloody conflict between countries and ethnic groups recommenced as Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia declared independence.
In 1998, the Kosovo Liberation Army, supported by ethnic Albanians who make up the majority of the country, rebelled against Serbian rule.
The ethnic conflict resulted in two NATO airstrikes in 1999 and the forced expulsion by Serb forces of tens of thousands of Kosovan Albanian refugees.
Kosovo became a United Nations protectorate. Many ethnic Albanians returned to their homes, and many ethnic Serbs fled.
To see Kosovo’s current ethnic breakdown, click here.
In today’s declaration, Thaci stated that all residents of Kosovo, no matter their ethnic background, are to be considered equal citizens.
Other countries including the United States are expected to declare their support for independent Kosovo tomorrow.
