Treason and repression

From the International Herald Tribune:

Two members of an ethnic minority centered near Azerbaijan's border with Iran went on trial Thursday on treason charges, the latest case reflecting concerns of Iranian influence in the former Soviet republic.

The article goes on to claim that the arrest reflects "a tug-of-war for influence between the secular, democratic West and Iran, its large southern neighbor," which is fine as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it doesn't go very far.

This country is fraught with ethnic tension -- obviously any Armenians in the country are suspect, but it goes much deeper than that. As recently as six months ago in a village I visited, a Christian church was pulled down by the police, with no particular reason given. The members of that parish must now make a trip of about an hour and a half, to an entirely different region, to get to the nearest church. And that's a bigger trip than it sounds, as most families don't have cars, and must rely on the local marshrutkas, which make few trips. They could, of course, take taxis, but the drive is terribly expensive, and increasingly so, as inflation continues to hit the poor hard.

What's more, the treason charge stems from the publication of a newspaper:

The trial in Azerbaijan's Grave Crimes Court in the capital, Baku, stems from accusations that the newspaper Talysh Voice, whose name comes from the Talysh ethnic group, preached separatism and ethnic bias and insulted members of other groups including majority Azeris.

Talysh Voice editor Novruzali Mammadov and another top official at the newspaper, Elman Guliyev, were arrested in February and are being tried behind closed doors.

The newspaper business is a most dangerous game here, and the government is more than happy to crack down. The law imposes harsh punishment for anyone who "insults" anything anywhere near related to the government.

The government does seem to be vaguely aware of its credibility problem on the issue, recently releasing one jailed journalist. But the conditions are put in such a way that everything sounds friendly, but only to ears that don't know how to hear:

"The judge told me that this decision will not affect my journalism activities in the region," Nasibov said. "He said, ’This year is a probation period for you, and during this time, you can’t distribute false information or be involved in any illegal or inflammatory activity. So you should work in a constructive and objective way. If you do that, you shouldn’t have any problems." [emphasis added]

Given that simply reporting the facts in this country can often be inflammatory, the government may as well have kept him in prison.

Enough about me...

I've been harping on corruption a bit, so this from a friend might have a few interesting things to say. There are parts of it I disagree with, but the characterization of the education system comes from a long time in the trenches, and the take on corruption is pretty apt:

I remember, when I arrived in this country a year and half ago, how excited and optimistic I was about working in the education system here.

And then I started working in the education system, and reality came crashing down around my ears.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning for class, and I think to myself, why bother? What I do doesn't matter. Our presence here is a joke. The government doesn't expect us to do anything really meaningful. In fact, the government has designed their education system so that it's practically impossible to do anything meaningful. By anyone. Ever.

I could teach my ears off and the kids wouldn't learn anything. But it's not just limited to English Language. Their curriculum, which is mainly the absentminded memorization of a collection of facts -- often times these facts are just plain wrong -- doesn't matter because the kids who can afford it will purchase their grades by slipping money inside their grade books. And the kids who can't afford it will pass anyway. The American "No Child Left Behind" system has nothing on education here. Their lowest grade possible is "passing".

But it really doesn't matter that the kids buy their grades, because the are able to buy their college entrance exams as well. And once they buy that, they can buy their grades in college also (it's more expensive, of course). And once you've purchased your college degree, you can go on to buy your job. I've met English teachers who can neither understand nor speak one word of English. Their family decided that they should be an English teacher, and the right palms were greased along the way, and now a new generation of children will be able to grow up, learning nothing because their teacher has nothing to impart.

The education system here, like most of the ministries, are farcical shadows of their previous soviet institutions. Having grown up during the Cold War, I have a healthy respect for what the Soviet education system was. The Soviet Union was not a major competitor in the Space Race without educating their children properly so that they could grow up and help contribute to their government's goal of world domination. Because, let's be honest, that is what the Super States are really after ... eventually. Or, if not domination, then at least deferentiation, where all the lesser countries of the world make decisions that most benefit the Super State in dominance, whether they want to or not.

But the Soviet Union collapsed, and the new republics are now scrambling to pick up the scraps left behind, and mould themselves into a new (or an old) identity and stake their claims on the global playing field. And that's exactly what Azerbaijan is doing right now. They've declared themselves a democracy, because America is in ascendence and Democracy is the "in" government. But democracy is just as much a farce as the education system is, if not more. Azerbaijan is one of the world's 10 LEAST democratic countries in the world. In fact, there are countries that aren't even democratic that have more practicing democracy than this place. The people here don't pretend like they have any power to change that. They know they don't. Not only do they know who the next president will be, the know who will be president after that. [probably the current president's wife -- ed.]

And the people who have so effectively grasped at this power will hang on to it, tooth and nail.

One of the ways in which they are doing this is by neutering the education system. The network of bribes and the tradition of corruption embedded in the schools and universities is favored and encouraged by the government, because an uneducated people is so much easier to keep repressed than an educated populace. Why educate the people? They might realize how crappy their lives are, or, worse yet, they might realize that they have the power to change their own lives, and define their own future. But an ignorant population will simply accept that this is the way things are, and go about their smallish lives and continue allowing the powers that be to exploit them beyond decency.

So why do I wake up in the morning and go to school? Because "Drops Make a Lake". And maybe, somehow, the work I'm doing here will help one person come in to their own. Maybe that one person will ask the right questions at the right time, and an intellectual revolution will occur. Maybe. And the mornings when I can't drag myself out of my bed ... I don't feel so bad anymore.