By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — How democratic is a country in which a person who reveals breaches of an international agreement can be put on trial in a closed court, under secret laws and in violation of the constitution? That is the question that apologists for Russian President Boris Yeltsin are now trying to dodge, as scientist Vil Mirzayanov faces a court on charges of revealing state secrets.
A senior chemist in a military-related research institute, Mirzayanov in a September 1992 press article revealed that researchers for the Russian armed forces had until shortly before continued to develop and test an extremely powerful poison, capable of serving as the basis for new types of binary chemical weapons.
This was long after Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin had pledged that Moscow would respect agreements under which the development and production of chemical weapons was banned.
In his article, published in the journal Moscow News, Mirzayanov did not name the substance involved or provide chemical formulae. Among Western experts on chemical weapons, his revelations reportedly caused little excitement.
But among the Russian military establishment, the response seems to have been apoplectic. Pressure was brought to bear, and Mirzayanov was arrested and charged. In October 1992 he spent 12 days in Moscow's Lefortovo prison.
His case finally came to trial on January 24 this year, in a court closed to the public and to journalists. By this time Russia had a new constitution, adopted in the referendum of December 12. The human rights provisions of this document include a stipulation that no person can be prosecuted on the basis of laws that have not been published in the press.
As well as being inherently flimsy, the case against Mirzayanov is in clear violation of the new constitution. The charges are based almost entirely on legislation that had never been made public.
In the hearing on January 24, the panel of three judges systematically knocked back the arguments of Mirzayanov's counsel that the charges were outside the country's "basic law" and should never have been brought. At the end of the day's proceedings, the dissident chemist stated that he would no longer take part voluntarily in a closed trial that violated the constitution.
On January 27 Mirzayanov, who had been free pending the resolution of the case, was again arrested. Over the next four days he was subjected to subhuman treatment, simply because no special allowance was made for him in a brutal prison system. Crammed at first into a 15-square-metre holding cell along with some 50 other prisoners, he was later transferred to a cell that contained six other detainees, but only four mattresses.
By this time human rights organisations had swung into action, calling on the authorities to free Mirzayanov and drop all charges against him. The Helsinki Watch organisation described the charges against Mirzayanov as "fundamentally unfair", arguing that the case violated "not only the Russian constitution, but also basic human rights standards".
From the pro-Yeltsin political bloc Russia's Choice, however, there was no suggestion that the case was improper, much less that the authorities should abandon it. A statement issued by Russia's Choice on January 31 confined itself to expressing the hope that the Moscow court would "in the shortest time possible finish dealing with the Mirzayanov case in strict accordance with the constitution and the law".
As the attention on the case grew, Mirzayanov was moved to a cell with one other prisoner. From Russia's "democratic" president, meanwhile, there was nothing but silence.
For liberal opinion in Russia, the Mirzayanov case has provided a reminder that the collapse of "communism" has not ended the power of the "military-industrial complex" and the security services — just freed these forces from pretending to defend the interests of workers. Mindful that military personnel voted strongly for authoritarian-nationalist candidates in the December 12 elections, Yeltsin clearly prefers to accommodate the generals rather than confront them.
If this extends even to violations of the constitution, then what is Yeltsin's new constitution worth? Western journalists who were dismayed by the outlandish powers which this charter gave the president often suggested that the document was redeemed by its guarantees of human rights. But what if the court system and the executive power join in ignoring these guarantees?
No-one should really be surprised that Yeltsin seems to regard the human rights clauses of the constitution as purely advisory. The president had his drafters include provisions in the "basic law" that allow him to override many of these clauses by declaring a state of emergency, something he is allowed to do with almost derisory ease.
Mirzayanov is not the only person facing reprisals for helping to expose the flouting of the chemical weapons agreement. At least one other scientist is now in danger of arrest on similar charges. After the military-industrial complex sought to brush off Mirzayanov's revelations, chemist Vladimir Uglev declared that he had personally been involved in synthesising the chemical concerned.
Uglev has since worked at the Shikhany-2 site in Saratov province, where chemical weapons are being destroyed. There, he states, he has collected evidence that this destruction is being carried out on the cheap, in ways potentially disastrous to the environment. According to Uglev, the weapons are first blown up with explosives, and the still highly toxic residues are then buried in ravines and pits.
The authorities have not responded to Uglev's demand for a halt to these practices. He has now stated that unless he receives such a response by February 4, he will call a press conference and reveal the formula of the substance over which Mirzayanov was charged.