Russian Federation , 424000, Republic of Mari El, Yoshkar-Ola, ul. 70- letiya VS SSSR, 20.
Phone/fax (+ 836 2) 412 901. E-mail:kudokodu@mari-el.ru Website: www.kolumbmari.ru, www.kudokodu.ru
Speech by Vladimir Kozlov
Member of the interregional nongovernmental organisation
Mari Ushem (The Mari Union),
Chairman of the All-Mari Council (Mer Kanash)
Poro keche! Dear friends and colleagues,
In the name of the Mari nongovernmental organisation Mari Ushem (The Union of the Maris) whom I represent as a member and consistent supporter, and the All-Mari Council (Mer Kanash) whose Chairman I am currently, may I express my gratitude for the invitation to participate in the work of the Federal Union of Euro-pean Nationalities.
On behalf of the Mari people, I would like to pass our warm greetings and con-gratulations to all the participants on the occasion of the anniversary forum, the 50th Congress of the FUEN.
It is moving for me to speak at a high forum like this for several reasons. First, up to the mid-1990s nongovernmental organisations of the Maris had hardly had any representation at the European level. The second reason is that, during the last four years of the 21st century, the issue of Maris has been wider and wider raised at the international level. In a quiet and placid region of the Russian Federation like the Republic of Mari El, protest actions broke out because of violations of fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens, disregard to ethnic problems and lack of respect to the indigenous Mari people on the part of the authorities.
This situation gave the ground for numerous appeals to higher federal institutions of the Russian Federation, including President Vladimir Putin as the guarantor of constitutional rights of Russia’s citizens. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that our letter on behalf of the Mari people, addressed to the president of Russia, reached him. Al-though we received a reply from the Presidential Administration.
Leonid Markelov was re-elected as the President of the Republic of Mari El on 19 December 2004. We firmly declared and continue declaring that he won his sec-ond term only by inspiring fear and using blackmail, bribery, psychological pressure and physical retribution of opponents applied by his government. This was con-firmed by the fact that immediately after the elections, on 21 December 2004, a pro-test picket was held in front of the House of the Government. In his speech on the lo-cal television, President Markelov irresponsibly called the picketers an opposition intending to make a coup in the republic, and referred to the support of the President of the Russian Federation. However, it is the government of Mari El under Markelov whose policies time and again contradict the Russia’s interests and undermine its prestige. This has become particularly obvious in the last years as the Republic’s authorities have brought the local economy into disorder, the rights and freedoms are trampled upon, people have been largely impoverished, any dissenting opinions are persecuted, and all-out moral and psychological pressure is being applied against the citizens disliked by Markelov.
Today, fear reigns over the republic whose people are expecting from the Presi-dent’s administration the promised retribution for their dissent. These expectations have been confirmed by the mass dismissal of public officials at various levels, as well as of common employees who dared to demonstrate their opinions.
During his four years in power, the team formed and led by Leonid Markelov has demonstrated its administrative failure, acting as a destructive force as concerns building up the Republic and driving it out of the economic and moral crisis. Those short-sighted ‘ideologists’ have sharply aggravated the ethnic issues in the Republic of Mari El. They have compromised themselves as public leaders by constant disre-gard to and occasionally barefaced mockery over the ethnic sentiment, by violating the rights of citizens, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities of the republic. Be-fore the elections, in October 2004, First Deputy Head of the Government Nikolai Kuklin humiliated and offended feelings of the Maris by hinting in his television ap-pearance that the Maris are neither capable nor worthy of holding administrative po-sitions. It was a direct derivation of the viewpoint of President Markelov who, in-stead of conducting a discussion on ethnic issues, offers only cattle-raising to the Maris.
As a result of policy marked with Marifobia conducted by the administration of the Republic of Mari El, today there are absolutely no people descending from the republic in the Russia’s federal representative bodies: neither in the State Duma, nor in the Council of Federation, nor in the Representative Office of Mari El at the Ad-ministration of the President of the Russian Federation. In the Government of the Republic of Mari El, only three or four public employees of Mari origin have re-mained. Let us compare this with the mid-1990s when over 30 per cent of the gov-ernment employees were of Mari nationality, or with the end of 2000 when they made up over 25 per cent. Today, there are just a few persons.
We qualify this as a rough violation of the European Convention For the Protec-tion of Human Rights And Fundamental Freedoms prohibiting any discrimination ‘[…] on the ground of sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opin-ion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth, or other status’.
Under these circumstances, national specialists are forced to leave Mari El in search of normal human treatment and respect to their professional skills. Only dur-ing the last four years, a dozen of Mari Ph.D.’s and Ph.D.Candidates, and a good number of people of science and culture had to leave the republic. The Maris who acquired higher education have no problems in finding a job outside their republic and are appreciated as highly skilled professional experts. A gloomy impression arises that somebody’s dishonest cat’s-paw is gradually ousting native residents from the republic are replacing them with amateurs. It is also alarming that this is a planned action intended to finally abolish the Republic of Mari El as a distinct sub-ject of the Russian Federation. Is not this scheme designed to obliterate a national administrative entity through the notorious ‘integration of regions’? Which means that, under the pretence of social stability, the potential of an ethnic minority is de-stroyed.
Mari El is the only republic in Russia where the Mari people should fully de-velop its culture and its art, where they should fully realise their constitutional rights, and where the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens ought to be fully ob-served. Today, the Maris are deprived of all this. This is the reason why the young Maris who study at various educational establishments in Russia and abroad, chose not to return.
Once an leading agrarian region, the Republic of Mari El is now among the most backward regions of Russia in the socioeconomic development and living standard of the population. Poverty prospers in those rural areas where the Maris make up the majority of the population. Enterprises of the republic are intentionally driven bank-rupt, many of them have already ceased to exist and their personnel has joined the army of unemployed. In connection with the sharp deterioration of socioeconomic situation in the republic, the mortality has notably surpassed the birth rate.
All this has caused stormy discussions, in Russia as well as abroad, on the need to protect the Mari culture and on the infringement of fundamental rights and free-doms of citizens in the Republic of Mari El. Already in 2002, representatives of Fin-land, Estonia, Great Britain and Sweden discussed ‘the Mari issue’ in the European Parliament.
The resolution of the 6th Extraordinary Congress of the Mari People, convened in April 2002, reads:
‘Instead of creative activity to the benefit of the citizens who elected him, Presi-dent of the Republic of Mari El is engaged in ‘search’ for enemies and political op-ponents. He intentionally demonstrates lack of respect to the Mari people, and seeks to sow discord among its leaders. The disrespect shown by Markelov to the history, traditions and sacred places of the Maris, and his desire to suppress democratic elements in the public life have proved that the President is illiterate in nationalities issues and that the principles of democracy are alien to him. The 6th Extraordinary Congress of the Mari People finds that manifestations of the antidemocratic practice in the republic are increasing and the authoritarianism is aspired to suffocate the will and the energy of the peoples of Mari El.’
Despite the fact that during the half of the century the Maris have become an eth-nic minority in their native republic, they want to continue as a nation and to be equal among equals. Therefore we consider the mass dismissal of public officials of Mari origin, obstacles in teaching the native language, physical violence against leaders of nongovernmental associations, manifestations of Marifobia in the mass media, persecution and physical retribution for opinion as deliberate acts against the future of the people of Mari on the part of the acting government of the Republic of Mari El.
What else can explain why the Russian-language newspaper The Mari Pravda, an official publication of the Government as well as of the National Assembly of the Republic of Mari El, offended the Maris on 15 June 2001 by using such expressions like ‘…every Mari not infected by the virus of Nazism’, ‘…regular fascism’, etc.
This way the malicious insulting of Maris was started four years ago when the peoples of Russia were getting ready for the sad date, the 60th anniversary of the be-ginning of the Patriotic War, and this way it still continues now when the Maris, to-gether with other peoples, are to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the victory.
Is this just a grotesque concurrence or a deliberate policy of the Markelov’s gov-ernment? We hope that this, too, will be given a proper evaluation.
The Republic of Mari El is small; nevertheless, all problems of the great country, Russia, are reflected in it. Suffice it to say that, geographically located in Europe, Mari El has been somewhat influenced by Asia. The Maris are settled mostly live on the coasts of the River Volga, next to Russians, Chuvashs and Tatars.
The republic is multinational: people of various ethnic origin live side by side in mutual tolerance cultivated during the Soviet period. In addition, the population is multiconfessional and includes Orthodox Christians, Lutherans, as well as Pagans.
Mari El has always been considered an agrarian region. In the 1970s–1980s the republic was among the leaders in cattle-raising and in the agroindustrial develop-ment in general. This may explain why in the 1990s when the military-industrial complex came to a decline and the kolkhoz system collapsed, the republic entered a systemic crisis to which it was unprepared.
Incidentally, Mari El can serve as a model for rather precisely evaluating the moods of Russia’s voters. The way people vote here, the whole Russian province votes. The city of Nizhny Novgorod which is centre of the federal district the Re-public of Mari El belongs to, is used by political scientists as an indicator to deter-mine the political temperature in the whole country.
One of the reasons why many problems show up in this republic more sharply than in the neighbouring areas, is the extreme weakness and the undeveloped state of the civil society due to the lack of such necessary prerequisites as strong political parties and authoritative political elites. The existing local elites are fragments of the previous layer – or, to be more precise, the class – of directors, ‘strong industrial leaders’, party nomenclatura people and functionaries of the Komsomol (Young Communist League) of the last enrolment. They usually have certain property passed into their possession in the Soviet period either through the privatisation or during the later redistribution of property.
The national elite is rather weak and passive. However, if all problems will re-main neglected, it might produce leaders capable of mobilize people by a radical de-mand for greater independence of the republic, as already happened in 1989–1991.
Summing up, we find that the situation in Mari El is an example of rough viola-tion of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly its Article 19:
“1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”
As well as its Article 25:
‘Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinc-tions […] and without unreasonable restrictions:
a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;
b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by uni-versal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors;
c) To have access, on general terms of equality, to public service in his country.’
Lately the situation in the Republic of Mari El was discussed in a section of the European Parliament where MEPs paid serious attention to the breaches of human rights and democratic principles in this subject of the Russian Federation. The mat-ters of concern, in particular, were the freedom of expression, the security of citizens, the preservation and development of the Mari language, and the access to education in the native language.
The most serious objective for us today is to put an end to political persecution and intimidation in the Republic of Mari El, and to achieve that the human rights be fully observed.
Vladimir Kozlov
Chairman of the All-Mari Council (Mer Kanash)