Euromaidan and use of force

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan, Editor – January 22, 2014)

Is there a double standard in how the West responds to violence in Ukraine? Or is the issue more complicated?

The United States has threatened possible sanctions against Ukrainian authorities after new violence erupted Sunday on Kiev’s streets, where anti-government demonstrators set a police bus on fire and pelted riot squads with rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Pro-government lawmakers in Ukraine have slammed statements from Western politicians for their supposed double standards. Given the forceful measures often used to put down popular riots in Europe and the United States, is there a difference how Ukraine’s authorities and Western authorities respond to unrest?

According to some political experts, the West’s reaction is based on a simplistic, black-and-white understanding of what is happening. Also, unlike protest movements in the West, Euromaidan is posing a serious threat to Ukraine’s government.

Threat of sanctions

Sunday’s rally – which saw tens of thousands of demonstrators gather on Kiev’s Independence Square against legislation limiting protests – was one of the most violent since the start of demonstrations last November, when Ukraine abandoned an association treaty with the European Union. On Sunday, six police cars were burned and about 70 police officers were injured, according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. Clashes continued the next day.

“From its first days, the Maidan movement has been defined by a spirit of non-violence and we support today’s call by opposition political leaders to re-establish that principle,” said a White House statement issued on Sunday. “The U.S. will continue to consider additional steps – including sanctions – in response to the use of violence.”

Sanctions were also suggested by Canada’s immigration minister, Chris Alexander, who addressed a gathering of Ukrainian-Canadians in Toronto on Sunday.

The comments appeared to come in response to wide calls for sanctions from Ukrainian opposition leaders like Vitali Klitschko, head of the Udar party, who earlier urged the EU to impose sanctions on Ukrainian authorities.

U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden called on dialogue between the Ukrainian government and the opposition. She categorized Ukraine’s recent legal crackdown on protest as a “[move] to weaken the foundations of Ukraine’s democracy by criminalizing peaceful protest and stripping civil society and political opponents of key democratic protections under the law.”

The European Council voiced concern over the recent violence, calling on Monday for broad dialogue to end the political crisis.

Earlier, the EUcalled on Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to revise the laws hurriedly passed by parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, last Thursday restricting protest activity and imposing stricter penalties.

Pepper spray and mass arrests

As protests escalated in Kiev, with radical activists trying to take over more government buildings, attacking police and setting cars on fire, riot squads reportedly responded with pepper spray, rubber bullets and water cannons in sub-zero temperatures (Ukrainian police have denied the use of rubber bullets).

While harsh, tactically the methods hardly appear any worse than those used by authorities in Western cities when faced with riots.

Police in Portland, Oregon, used pepper spray to disperse an Occupy Portland protest in November 2011. At a similar protest that month in California, two police officers doused protesters who were sitting on the sidewalk with pepper spray. A student would later complain that he coughed up blood as a result.

Riot squads responding to protesters in Oakland, California, were widely reported by bloggers to have used rubber bullets and stun grenades, even though rioters were hardly setting police cars on fire. In Madrid in November 2012, riot police fired rubber bullets on demonstrators protesting against government austerity measures.

Sunday’s demonstration in Kiev initially emerged as a protest against the legislation imposing limitations on protests. The limitations include a ban on the unauthorized installation of tents, provisions to arrest protesters wearing masks or helmets, and fines and longer jail terms for violations.

When compared to foreign legislation, however, the measures didn’t appear to be much more restrictive than those in Western countries.

And while Ukrainian (and Russian) authorities usually resort to precision arrests, rounding up about a dozen people over Sunday’s unrest (Russian authorities charged 28 people over protest riots in May 2012), authorities in Britain and the United States have been known to arrest thousands.

For example, 2,138 people were found guilty and sentenced over three days of riots against police brutality in London in August 2011, according to the British Ministry of Justice, with 1,405 getting real prison terms averaging 17 months.

British authorities are also empowered to restrict rallies, with the Public Order Act of 1986, for instance, allowing for marches to be banned outright. Offenses that include saying things that are threatening, abusive or insulting could land a protester in jail for up to six months, according to a pamphlet published by the National Union of Students, an NGO that advocates for civil liberties. Assaulting a police officer carries a penalty of up to six months. Life in prison is possible if the assault caused grievous bodily harm with intent.

‘Distorted picture’

When Western governments decry police violence in Ukraine, they do so from a simplistic understanding of what the protests are about, according to Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Russia in Global Affairs journal and chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. It’s not that the West is deliberately applying double standards, it’s that its understanding of the situation is distorted.

“When these [police] measures are applied in the middle of a political crisis, even if they are completely appropriate and correct and don’t differ from norms in other countries, their effect is going to be different,” Lukyanov told The Moscow News.

“What is happening in Kiev is reviving the agenda from November and December, the pressure on Ukraine’s government to agree to concessions or even to leave,” he added. “The escalation [of Euromaidan] is an excuse to hold Ukraine’s government responsible. The topic of sanctions is going to be more widespread.”

According to Lukyanov, Western politicians see the events in Ukraine simply as an issue of peaceful, pro-European protesters being confronted by a brutal, corrupt regime. “There is the same simplified black and white picture in Syria, and that picture leads to the statements we are hearing,” he said. “It’s not a double standard per se, it’s that they see a distorted picture.”

Apples and oranges?

Some experts believe, however, that one shouldn’t compare Kiev’s protests to Western protests such as the Occupy movement at all. They say that the Euromaidan protest and the police crackdown are taking place in an entirely different political context than in the West. That, in part, gives rise to critical statements coming from Western leaders.

“In America there are independent courts. There is a whole social infrastructure for protesters, and the authorities are very careful with these organizations,” Alexei Makarkin, deputy director at the Center for Political Technologies, told The Moscow News.

Makarkin also pointed out that Congress could never pass laws restricting protests as quickly as the Ukrainian Rada. “Something like that could never happen [in the United States],” he said.

Another major difference is the nature of the protest movements themselves. Euromaidan is widely seen as a real destabilizing force in Ukraine, whereas something like the Occupy movement is not.

“In the West, we haven’t seen a protest movement that actually poses a threat to the government, and we probably won’t see one any time soon,” Lukyanov said.