However, one category of VIP’s is not enjoying the football matches
in the stadiums of the Ukraine: the European politicians.
Their reason is the supposed unfair trial and molestation during
imprisonment of former Prime Minister and presidential candidate Yulia
Timoshenko of the Ukraine. Timishenko was a pro-EU politician, who served two
stints under former president Viktor Yushshenko. Her policy was rather aimed at
the Paris-Berlin axis than at Moscow, the capital of ‘big sister state’ Russia.
There was also a small, but undeniable overture between the NATO and Ukraine in
those years; something that gave PM-at-the-time Vladimir Putin, the former and
current president of Russia, the willies. The visible results of this Ukranian policy
were two gas wars, based on Russian accusations of Ukrainian gas theft, and a
very icy atmosphere between Moscow and Kiev.
During Timoshenko’s first stint under President Yushshenko,
she and her whole government team had been fired, due to accusations of general
corruption. However, two years later Timoshenko returned as a Prime Minister
after elections in which her party won 22.3% of the votes.
While reaching for the presidency, Yulia Timoshenko lost the
elections in 2010 from former president Viktor Yanukovich, who returned to power. In
December 2010, the new government started an investigation against Timoshenko on
abuse of government money and in August 2011, she was arrested.
On April 20, 2012 Timoshenko started a hunger strike that
lasted until May 9. She accused the Ukrainian government that she had been
molested in prison and received a powerful blow at her stomach. Timoshenko’s daughter
witnessed that she had seen a blue spot of 8 to 10 centimeters at her mother’s
belly.
This abuse against Timoshenko and the ‘political component’
of the corruption process against her was enough reason for many European
politicians to officially skip the EC football in Ukraine and stay at home
during the matches in the former Soviet republic.
To set things straight: I am against any form of physical or
mental violence against (political) prisoners and when the accusations of
Timoshenko against the Ukrainian government are true, I disapprove of this behavior
in the strongest sense. I am also not especially pro-Ukraine. Just like in its
big neighbor Russia, there is a lot of corruption, abuse of government power
and hidden or openly displayed racism and hatred against minorities there.These are things that I openly despise. Especially the treatment of minorities is something that the EU countries fortunately have left behind in the seventies and eighties.
However, there are also some things pointing to change in the Ukraine: everybody remembers the protests of the famous topless women against everything that is wrong in the country today. This is a small step in the right direction, which hopefully might be followed by more steps.
Now that is out of the way, however, it is good to take a
look at the situation in the Ukraine. I don’t know if the accusations against
Timoshenko are valid, but she seems to have some appearances against her, as
she also had been accused of corruption in 2005 by her former ally Yushshenko.
My point is that the whole European Union remembers
Timoshenko pro-European stance, while current president Yanukovich is an old
hoodlum and sails a pro-Putin, pro-Russia course, which makes him very suspect
in European eyes. Almost all European politicians therefore automatically
assumed that Timoshenko is innocent of the corruption accusations and concluded
that it was a disgrace that she was tried and imprisoned. The truth is: we don’t
know yet if Timoshenko is guilty or innocent, so maybe the EU should take a more
objective stance towards the Ukraine than it currently does.
And there is another point: when the Olympic Games were
organized in Beijing in 2008, the human rights situation in China was ‘questionable’
at best. There is no country in the world that organizes more executions of
citizens per annum than China: often after a very quick and opaque process in
which the civil rights of the defendants have been massively violated. Opponents of
the regime are stalked by the security forces and arrested at will on controversial
accusations or even without any form of process.
The Chinese communist party adopted a kind of market-economy
that brought extreme wealth to a small group of privileged citizens and
party-representatives and moderate wealth to the millions of workers in the
factories. Although this market economy propelled China to the second position in
the international list of strongest economies, there is a chance of a snowball
in hell that the communist party will voluntarily abolish government power in
the next twenty years. The elections of the new central and local leaders in
China are still an extremely opaque and carefully executed process that hardly
any normal Chinese citizen has any kind of influence upon.
Even the slightest hint of protest and unrest among the
Chinese population leads to draconic countermeasures of the communist
government. Massive police violence and lethal use of force must take away any
lust of protesting from the Chinese people.
It doesn’t matter if these protests are against the central
and local governments or against the billionaire owners of the successful
factories. There should be peace and quiet in China: at all costs.
From the protesters at the infamous Tiananmen Square revolt in
1989, several people are still imprisoned today; 23 years later.
In the many cases of corruption, crime and abuse that have
been discovered in China during the last decade, there is a steady trend that
the higher ranked, politically involved people (i.e. members of the communist
party) walked or bought off their punishment, while the people without status
could receive a neckshot or underwent very long imprisonment terms.
All this didn’t bother the politicians in 2008! Almost all European
politicians were more than happy to cuddle with the Chinese leaders Hu Jintao
and Wen Jiabao and to sustain the glorious Chinese fairytale of the best and
most tightly organized Olympic games in history.
Nobody cared that all known protesters had been proactively
imprisoned during the Olympic games. After some obligatory chitchat on Human
Rights and the Chinese Protection policy, it was business as usual: money for nothing and chicks
for free in China.
Now in 2012, everything has changed and the European
politicians saw their chance to show their most humane face to the world. Visiting
football matches in the Ukraine? How do you dare to think so after what
happened with Timoshenko?!
Human rights are one thing, but money is another. The
conclusion is simple: China is the economic king of the world and the Ukraine is
just a foot soldier.
With this conclusion I end this tale on hypocrisy and
economy in the European Union.
No comments:
Post a Comment