Politics as Usual in Ukraine

What is Viktor Yanukovych up to? The outgoing Ukrainian prime minister and loser of Sunday's presidential election  by a tally of 52 percent to 44 percent has decided that, in contrast to the rest of the world and some 12,000 election observers sent to Ukraine from over 40 countries, the election results are fraudulent. On Monday evening, Yanukovych said that he would never concede defeat because, he claimed, the Ukrainian constitution and human rights were violated in the election. After all, the strategy worked for opposition leader and apparent president-elect Viktor Yushchenko, right? After the Nov. 21 election, he rallied his protesters in central Kiev long enough to get the Supreme Court to throw out the election results.

But before we get too down on good old Yanukovych, it's worth noting that all he is doing is playing politics Ukrainian style. Remember, this is a country where an opposition candidate for president (Yushchenko) is poisoned by dioxin during the campaign. This is a country where supporters of one candidate (Yanukovych) threaten to form an autonomous region if their candidate doesn't win. This is a country where journalists were only just recently given the green light by the government to broadcast non-biased campaign reporting on the state-owned airwaves. In short, Ukraine is not the brand-new baby democracy in swaddling clothes that western newspapers would have you cuddle. Rather it is a hardened teen criminal just entering a youth correctional facility.

So what's Yanukovych's game? There are two possibilities. The first: This is how you do opposition in Ukraine. In order to be taken seriously, you don't just attack the policies of the president or candidate you are opposing. You have to attack his legitimacy as well. Thus, Yanukovych's position that Yushchenko is a puppet of the West whereas Russian support for him was "more episodic". In other words, this is the first opposition shot across the new government's bow that it is going to have a rough go of it.

The second possibility is that Yanukovych really intends to go through with a court battle. After all, just one day before the election, the Supreme Court handed him a legal cudgel to pound away with. On Saturday, the country's highest court ruled that, in contrast to a package of election reforms passed by the country's parliament, people with handicaps or serious illnesses could vote from home. Following the decision, however, only a few hours remained for them to apply for the right and for the election commission to organize the delivery of ballots to their homes. Needless to say, it didn't happen. And Yanukovych is right, the election -- that part of it at least -- was unconstitutional.

The bottom line is that this sort of politicking has been going on in Ukraine for years. It's only now that the rest of the world is getting a glimpse of it. For the West it is a bit shocking. For Ukraine it is politics as usual. (3 p.m. CET)

A Note on Death in Ukraine

Ukraine's Minister of Transportation was found dead in his country home on Monday evening. Heorhiy Kirpa, a staunch supporter of Yanukovych in the just-finished presidential elections was found with a gunshot wound and a pistol lying nearby. The opposition had accused Kirpa of helping to organize November's massive election fraud. The speculation is that he killed himself, which, of course, could be true. Last December, a journalist investigating government corruption, Volodymyr Karachevtsev, was found dead hanging on the handle of his refrigerator in his home in southern Ukraine. He was the victim of a tragic accident, said authorities. That, of course, could also be true. (2:30 p.m. CET)

Year in Review: "The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time"

"Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq," United States President George W. Bush proclaimed repeatedly in 2003 and 2004.

Then the first photos of cruel abuses, sexual humiliation and even Iraqi prisoners who had been killed began to surface. The scene of the crime: the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a former torture hell created by Saddam that was later taken over by the occupying powers. The culprits: US military personnel, secret service agents and employees of private contractors. The international community reacted to the gruesome glossies with disgust and anger -- especially the world's 1.3 billion Muslims for whom the pornographic images of the torture confirmed their worst nightmares of a decadent Western society.

"We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutelage," said former Marine Lt. Col. Bill Cowan. For Bush, the apparent daily acts of torture at Abu Ghraib don't "represent the American that I know. ... The actions of these few people do not reflect the hearts of the American people."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accepted "responsibility" for the events at Abu Ghraib and described the "abuses" as "un-American." What he didn't do, however, was call it torture. "My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture," he said at a May press conference. As critics called for Rumsfeld resignation, Bush stubbornly stood behind him and Vice President Dick Cheney called him "the best secretary of defense the country has ever had" and, in a visit to the Pentagon, "thanked him for his magnificent work."

Part of the work he will be remembered for is what could become the potential Photo of the Year for 2004 -- it shows an Iraqi man draped in a black sheet and hood with wires attached to virtually every appendage from his head to his penis. He's balancing on a box and his tormentors are threatening to electrocute him. But the "abuses" at Abu Ghraib went far beyond simple physical tormenting -- naked victims were threatened by dogs and prisoners were forced to engage in sexual acts with one another. In their sadism, the prison guards showed a disturbing amount of pleasure and little regard for the injustice of their actions. This attitude was perhaps best exemplified by Lynndie England, who became the poster child of the torture scandal and would later say: "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

There are still 1,800 photos and videos that haven't been publicly released -- the only people who have seen them are members of Congress. People who have seen them say they are far worse than anything yet released -- they are said to show prisoners who have been beaten to death, the rape of female prisoners by guards and male prisoners being sodomized and tortured with rubber clubs, broomsticks and fluorescent light sticks.

Abu Ghraib isn't the only place where the Bush administration has allowed torture to happen. In the global war against terror called by Bush after the Sept. 2001 terror attacks, the government has abandoned the Geneva Convention and all recognition of human rights -- at least when it comes to its dealings with suspected Taliban fighters from Afghanistan or al-Qaida members. Bush has degraded them to "illegal combatants," for whom neither national nor international law seems to apply. The US brought more than 600 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, a lawless zone, but in June the US Supreme Court, surprisingly, ruled that US justice laws must also apply to the prisoners.

They may well get their day in court in the end, but for these prisoners, the torture began with the trip to Gitmo. They were forced into orange overalls, hoods were placed on their heads and their hands and feet were chained as they were tied to the walls of the cargo jet bay in which they were flown to Cuba. Once there, they were placed like animals at the zoo in outdoor cages. To get them to talk, Rumsfeld issued 24 new orders for their handling these "exceptional" prisoners -- it essentially gave prison overseers at Guantanamo carte blanche for torture. Prisoners could be intimidated with dogs, "removed" from their clothing, put into isolation for up to 30 days at a time, forced to undergo 20-hour interrogations after being forced to stay awake for 60 hours -- all while having bright lights shined in their faces and at times being forced to stand up for four hours at a time. But apparently that wasn't enough for Rumsfeld, who issued a written statement that he "stands for eight to 10 hours a day. Why are they only limited to four hours?"