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The Current Transcript for February 8, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: theme]

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VOICE 1: You’ve got to understand dirty tricks—

TED CRUZ: Is it a dirty trick to pass on your news stories, you're in the business, would you think it was a dirty trick if I was forwarding an ABC story or is it just a dirty trick to pass on CNN stories?

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, that's a very defensive Ted Cruz doing his best to deny and deflect after his campaign was caught spreading [clears throat] rumours about fellow Republican Ben Carson ahead of the Iowa caucuses, a move now widely seen to have hobbled Mr. Carson. But if it was indeed a dirty trick, should we be surprised? The country's electoral history is riddled with nasty swipes and sophisticated undermining moves from politicians who profess godliness and virtue while plotting vice. In one more day in New Hampshire, they get the opportunity to do it again. In a moment, anything for a vote. Also today, a little love and vindication for Justice.

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He is nowhere near ready for adoption right now. We're working with him both behaviourally and medically to get him to that point but we're definitely looking a long way down the road.

AMT: Justice is a dog found bound in tape an abandoned for dead. His human tormentor has been sentenced to a federal penitentiary, but animal rights activists point to this disturbing case as an example of why animal rights issues in this country need to be strengthened. We will hear the arguments in half an hour. And it began as just another day in a market in Tajikistan until Rustam Goluv was confronted by the authorities.

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So, three police officers hold me on the chair and they shave my beard there.

AMT: In that Central Asian republic, police are bragging that they forced the shaving of 13,000 men with beards and put a stop to hundreds of women wearing hijab. The government claims it is fighting radicalization. Its critics say an oppressive government is trying to silence dissent. We are there in an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

'Dirty tricks' in Republican Iowa caucuses reflect long history of campaign tactics

Guests: Elias Isquith, Joseph Cummins

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DONALD TRUMP: I have been opposed to Obamacare from the day they conceived it, and Ted Cruz comes out with an ad that I'm in favour of Obamacare, can you believe this? Just like he did with Carson. Where Carson, he said, left Iowa. He's out of the race! Vote for him. Did you hear about this one? He said he left Iowa. Carson's a nice guy, Ben. So Ben is all of a sudden getting calls that he quit the race. These guys said he quit the race, he's gone, he's out, send your votes to him. What kind of people are we dealing with, with these politicians? What kind of people do we have running for office? No, it's honestly, really, really dishonest, and I think I know why. You know why? Because he was born in Canada.

AMT: Well, that is Donald Trump on the US Republican presidential nomination campaign last week offering his explanation for why Ted Cruz, and not Donald Trump, was the winner in the Iowa Republican caucuses. According to Mr. Trump, it came down to a dirty trick on the Cruz campaign's part. In a few moments we'll look at a long history of so-called dirty tricks in US presidential politics because, of course with New Hampshire votes one day away, there is even more opportunity for those who partake in dirty trickery. But first, more on what did or did not really happen in Iowa last week and whether it may have in fact given Ted Cruz the edge. Elias Isquith has been covering the race closely as a staff political writer at Salon.com. He's in New York City. Hello.

ELIAS ISQUITH: Good morning.

AMT: So, just remind us what happened in the lead up that had other Republican candidates accusing Mr. Cruz of dirty tricks.

ELIAS ISQUITH: Sure. So, in the final couple days before the caucuses were set to begin, rumours sort of started percolating and spreading among the evangelical community and that rumour was, as Mr. Trump just said, to the effect that Ben Carson, Dr. Ben Carson, was going to be leaving the race soon. His campaign's been faltering for some weeks now and he has been in a very heated competition in Iowa. He was rather, with Ted Cruz, for the evangelical vote. So, what ended up happening is a lot of evangelical voters who generally would have supported Dr. Carson were under the impression that because he was leaving the race, if they wanted a more evangelically-minded Republican to win the caucuses, they should throw their vote towards Senator Cruz instead of “wasting it” quote unquote on Dr. Carson. In all likelihood this did have--maybe not enough to do with the sense that Cruz might have won anyway against Trump, but it certainly had very likely a large effect on how well Cruz did, and specifically how much of the evangelical vote he secured.

AMT: So, was that dirty tricks or was that electoral fraud?

ELIAS ISQUITH: It seems a stretch to say that it's fraud, you know something that would hold up in court, but it certainly is tricky at the very least. It's the kind of move that your listeners will hear there's definitely a history in American politics and it's the kind of thing where it's not really a black and white, a legal action, that was taken but ethically it certainly is pretty suspect. There were incidents like people who are part of the Cruz campaign and in charge of running these caucuses where, the person who kind of represents a campaign, often has a lot of power because this isn't typical go into a voting booth and vote type of election. This is a little more arcane and strange, and anyway there were examples of these people all communicating “oh hey the Carson campaign is out” and so that had a large impact and not against the law perhaps, but certainly there's a reason that the governor of Iowa, who's a Republican, subsequently described the Cruz campaign as unethical and the Carson campaign spent a good two days complaining about it. It was brought up in this weekend's debate. There's certainly a normal, expected amount of sort of sharp elbows in American politics, but this definitely crossed even that line towards what we call dirty tricks.

AMT: Okay, so what is Cruz saying now?

ELAIS ISQUITH: Cruz is now trying to obfuscate the issue as much as he can. He's basically trying to argue that all he and his campaign did was pass along information from a CNN report to the effect that you know, Dr. Carson would not immediately be going to New Hampshire after Iowa, he would take a break and go down to Florida. CNN’s push back is really strong on this, to a degree that's not that common in American media from a mainstream media outlet. All that saying that Ted Cruz is lying about what their initial report was, and they have some ground that they're standing on because he actually has used that line before. He used it during the debate, but he used in the week prior to that as well, and when CNN pushed back, he stepped away. He said CNN did get the reporting right, you know, my mistake. But then the debate on Saturday night, suddenly it was CNN’s fault again. So, he is sort of entering, as you heard in that audio clip, he's trying to kind of get into the weeds of litigating. Did CNN say it, when did they say it, and that takes the focus off of him in theory and suddenly makes it into a story about the media malpractice.

AMT: Okay, and what's the fallout, what's the potential fallout for him if he is seen to have—if Cruz versus his campaign, is seen to have really done this?

ELIAS ISQUITH: It is unlikely that’s going to have a big impact in New Hampshire just because New Hampshire tends to be a state where the evangelical Republican voter base is not especially influential to the outcome, usually. But, there is reason to think that this will sour him or potentially give him damage that he needs to address with the broader evangelical Republican community, because even if they say they did not expect Dr. Carson to prevail, and even if they generally agree with Ted Cruz's ideological positions, they're going to look askance at this kind of dirty trickery happening, especially what is seen as within the evangelical community. It will be seen at the very least as gauche and troublesome, and so he's probably going to have to address that.

AMT: Hence the reason why he's trying to distance himself and say it was the report?

ELAIS ISQUITH: Exactly.

AMT: And that thing at the end there, why do we know he did it, because he was born in Canada? [laughs]

ELAIS ISQUITH:[laughs] Well, yeah that’s Trump being Trump. In the final days before the Iowa caucuses, he was trying to basically put in to Cruz's campaign by raising the quote unquote “issue about whether or not he can even legally run for president”. You know, most people in the media and a lot of people sort of, who are not within the Donald Trump world, kind of scoffed at that but the poll showed it was actually getting some traction. Cruz was stumbling for a bit and some believe that's the reason that his campaign decided to start getting creative, shall we say. So Trump is just going back to what he thought worked before, as well as his kind of typical demagoguery.

AMT: As things move forward, what are you watching for in New Hampshire this week on the dirty trick front?

ELIAS ISQUITH: Well, for New Hampshire it's probably going to be a little more difficult for the kind of creative uses of communication, shall we say, that the Cruz campaign engaged with. Partially because as I said, caucuses are strange and unique and they give people on the ground a lot more power than a primary does, where you just go into a voting booth and you make your choice. That said, what people should keep an eye out for is mailings and things along those lines that are going out to people that are made to look perhaps like they're coming from the government, or some sort of penalty for not voting. This is something that the Cruz campaign also did in Iowa that got a lot of criticism. They sent out these mailers that were sort of drawn up to look as if it was the state government warning the person receiving them that have a quote unquote “grade” on how often they vote, and they should make sure to go out and vote so their grade doesn't stay low. So, something you know, it's unlikely you will see the exact same thing because everybody is going to be on the lookout for it, but it seems very likely that people are going to be highly vigilant to make sure that nobody is getting either phone calls, e-mails or mailers that sort of in any way suggest something that is not true like say, Dr. Carson leaving the campaign has happened.

AMT: Okay, Elias Isquith, thanks for your thoughts today and we’ll be waiting to see what else you find. Thanks.

ELIAS ISQUITH: Thank you. That is Elias Isquith, staff writer for politics at Salon.com. He's in New York City. Now, we contacted the Ted Cruz campaign to see if it wanted to comment on the allegations against him and his campaign on this program. We have not heard back. It may seem like American politics gets a little bit nastier with each passing year. According to my next guest, dirty tricks have a long, if less than distinguished history, in the US political process. Joseph Cummins is the author of several books about politics including Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Campaigns. Joseph Cummins is in Maplewood, New Jersey. Hi.

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Hi, Anna Maria, how are you doing?

AMT: I'm just fine and I'm really curious. So, let's start with the Iowa thing and Ted Cruz. Where does what happened there with Ted Cruz and Ben Carson rate on your scale of dirty tricks?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Well, I have what's called a sleaze metre in my book so the needle is pointing kind of around the seven or eight on that in terms of dirty tricks. The surprising thing about it is that it's a little bit crude for politics these days. It's a little bit obvious and easy to trace for politics these days, and your previous guest, Elias Isquith, spoke about the letters that were sent out in Iowa, which I think it was worse than the Ben Carson thing, and that was a, if you were an Iowan and you received a letter saying that you were being graded on your voting scores, i.e., if you didn't vote you were a kind of voting deadbeat. But it wasn't only that, the letter which looked as if it came from the state government also contained your name and the names of your neighbours and how they voted, so the whole point would be that you would be shamed if you if you didn't vote and Cruz was expecting a higher voter turnout would mean you know, more votes for him which I think is even worse, actually.

AMT: So, let's get out the sleaze o’ metre. What is the nastiest dirty trick you've come across in an election campaign?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: You know, New Hampshire seems to bring it out in people. 1972 in New Hampshire was a very nasty primary campaign and that was Richard Nixon, a sitting president and he was running against Ed Muskie, the Democrat, and an anonymous letter was sent to a New Hampshire newspaper claiming that Muskie had used a slur against French Canadians, and that letter turns out to have been written by Dwight Chapin, who was a White House aide at the time. There were other letters written on Muskie’s stationery which were not sent by the Muskie campaign, claiming that Hubert Humphrey, one of Muskie’s rivals, had been arrested for drunk driving. Of course, when it turned out this wasn't true, it came back on Muskie. So, that was pretty nasty and I think Elias is right to say that you we have to watch out for a lot of these mailings purporting to be from a party or a state government, when in fact they are not. When you come down to it, the kind of dirty tricks that we have these days are nothing compared to what has happened in the past. So, you know, we had in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater, he actually created a committee of people, a group of people called The Five O’clock Club that were in the Executive Office Building not far away from the White House, who sat down and thought up some of the nastiest dirty tricks, all the way from creating a children's colouring book which purported to show Barry Goldwater in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, way up to actually using a CIA official, Howard Hunt, who later figured in the Watergate scandal, to infiltrate the Goldwater campaign and send Barry Goldwater's position papers back to the Johnson White House, even before Barry Goldwater could make his announcement.

AMT: Okay, I have to stop you there because that's just too much to absorb in one statement. So, he does a cartoon putting Goldwater in the KKK-- Now this is a 1964 Lyndon Johnson. This is after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and Johnson is running for--he's taken over as president and he's running again, right?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Right—

AMT: SO, he’s got a lot of things in his favor, and he's still playing dirty tricks?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: And he's still playing dirty tricks because what he wants to do is crush Goldwater. He was using, because Barry Goldwater tended to say intemperate things such as let’s drop a nuclear bomb on the Kremlin and aim for the Mens’ room [laughs]. So, he's using a lot of scare tactics just the way a lot of candidates these days are using scare tactics about ISIS, Johnson is using scare tactic to show that people should be afraid of Goldwater. So, his minions in the Executive Office Building sent out hundreds of letters to Dear Abby and Ann Landers, who were the advice columnists of the time, claiming to be from a citizenry aroused and fearful of Barry Goldwater. He organized psychiatrists to claim that Barry Goldwater was clinically paranoid. Interestingly, a bit like we see today with people claiming that Donald Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. So—

AMT: Did people know at the time—

JOSEPH CIMMINS: No.

AMT: Or did they think this was just coming out of-- this was organic, this was grassroots?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: This was the interesting thing, this was the whole point about the 1964 election, which is that people did not know at the time because at that time we did not have what you might call a more aroused journalistic presence as we would in 1972 with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who reported on what happened in Watergate and eventually forced Richard Nixon to resign. But, everyone inside the political world knew about this. So, when you have Richard Nixon in 1972 claiming quote “Well, Watergate was just another political bugging”, and people felt he was being disingenuous. In fact—

AMT: He was right.

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Exactly.

AMT: In your book you’ve got, E. Howard Hunt was working for Johnson on dirty tricks and then he goes and works for Nixon on the Watergate scandal?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Yes, but when he worked for Nixon, he had left—

AMT: My head spins.

JOSHEPH CUMMINS: I know. The 1960s were a really nasty era for dirty tricks and actually played mostly by the Democrats. Republicans did have something to complain about, but you know, dirty tricks in American history, American political history, are nothing to be surprised about. In fact, they are the status quo, that's the way things are done. When a campaign is run more cleanly, that's a problem. You hear them referring to Ben Carson today constantly all the other candidates say quote unquote, a “nice man”. Nice translates into a loser in this context.

AMT: Well, what's the difference between a dirty trick and overblown rhetoric?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Well, I think a dirty trick is something that in some way subverts the electoral process. So, I think for instance, what happened with Ted Cruz, it remains to be seen how much of an effect that had on the evangelical vote. But that really was a dirty trick because it was an attempt to subvert the electoral process, just like what I described happening in 1972 and certainly what happened in 1964. However, if you’re Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, and you're calling William Howard Taft quote “a fathead with the brains of a guinea pig”, as he did, that was probably just overblown rhetoric.

AMT: What do you think is the most common dirty trick today?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: I think the most common dirty trick today is basically people doing what the Cruz campaign did, but doing it in a much more hidden fashion. I think that's the interesting thing that happened with the Cruz campaign with both the instance of the letter and the Ben Carson announcement, and that they seemed to think that anyone would be paying much attention to what they were doing. It's common today and it’s been common for the last 25 years for candidates to have huge opposition research staff, and they spend most of their time digging up as much dirt as possible on the candidate. But, usually that's disseminated in a fashion where you can't really trace the person who is doing the disseminating.

AMT: So what lessons can voters learn from the failures or successes of dirty tricks in the past as they try and move forward today?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Well, I think there are two things that can happen. I think they should not be surprised by them. I think most American voters who would probably admit that oh yeah, politics are dirty candidates; do dirty things, but I think back somewhere in their hearts they have this kind of shining vision of a time in the past when everything was right, when people ran against each other with fairness and we spoke about philosophies of government, etcetera. So, they need to--once they kind of lose that idea, I think that they will get use to the way politics really are in America, and then you make your decision listening, paying attention, reading a lot of different sources, not just the sources that may happen to agree with your own political point of view, and then coming to a conclusion.

AMT: How complicit in the media is this? Does the media need to sort of really hold people to account when these things happen?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: They do, and I think they do much more so than they used to. I think they definitely need to call people on dirty tricks. I think there are a lot of sources within the media. There are a lot of bloggers out there, there are a lot of websites out there aside the mainstream media that do do this. I would like to see the mainstream media coming more forcefully on this but I think with the Ted Cruz thing, that they jumped on it pretty quickly, in part because CNN was being attacked.

AMT: But sometimes because you've got a real partisan media, sometimes they will look the other way for certain candidates and harp on the other, right?

JOSEPH CUMMINS: Yes, they have. It depends on who they happen to be for, but I think that was much more prevalent the past. In the past, essentially presidential candidates “owned newspapers”, quote unquote. They had so many connections to newspapers that newspapers purporting to be impartial were not impartial at all. I think since the days of Woodward and Bernstein, we've seen a shift away from that, I think you do have a lot of fair, independent minded voters out there who will call dirty tricks when they see them.

AMT: Okay, well there is lots going on this week so we'll have to watch even more carefully on that front. Thank you, Joseph Cummins.

JOSEPH CUMMINS: All right, thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: That's Joseph Cummins. He's the author of Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises and US Presidential Campaigns. He joins us from Maplewood, New Jersey. What do you think? Let us know about what you think of the so-called dirty tricks campaigns underway in the United States. Tweet us, we are @thecurrentcbc. Find us on Facebook or you can go right to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link.

Activist calls for animal charter of rights as protection from cruelty

Guests: Camille Labchuk, Doug Sawyer

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My client is happy with the sentence; that's what he wanted and that’s what he got. As a defence lawyer I'm not as excited as he is but he wanted to go to a penitentiary and that’s where he’s going to.

AMT: Well, that's defence lawyer Ahmed Amar. His client is Michael Hill who has been sentenced to two years in prison for a crime against an animal. This is a rather disturbing case to hear about, I’ll warn you. Michael Hill is a resident of Amhurstberg, just on the edge of Windsor, Ontario. He pleaded guilty to willfully causing unnecessary pain suffering or injury to a dog. He abandoned the dog in a field behind a shopping centre last December. He left it to die after he wound tape tightly around the dog's snout, it’s neck, and it’s legs. Luckily, a man walking his own dogs nearby spotted the dog. The dog was taken to the Windsor Essex County Humane Society and it has since been in the care of people such as Melanie Coulter.

SOUNDCLIP

When he was found he had tape on his muzzle very tightly, he had tape around his neck, and around all his paws. The tape on his mouth especially was what caused the most damage. Because it had been on there for so long and so tightly there was no blood flow and circulation and so a lot of the tissue inside his mouth had died.

AMT: The seven year-old Patterdale Terrier has been given a new name, he's now called Justice. After several surgeries, staff at the Humane Society say Justice is recovering well, though it will be several months before he's ready to be adopted.

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He really likes people. You would think that he might not, but he is very positive towards people. He approaches them, he doesn't seem fearful of people. He does have some emotional, I guess is the best way to put it, response and trauma as a result of the incident. So he's in a foster home with one of our behaviour team and she's noticed in some situations, especially at night and certain situations that probably bring back what he experienced, that he's had some trauma. But he is very good with people. He does have a serious love of toys so he loves his squeaky toys. But also sometimes loves to keep them a little too much so we're working with him on resource guarding. But he is a very happy, playful, energetic little guy.

AMT: Well, once the story of Justice the dog got out, people in the Windsor area and beyond were outraged. More than 60,000 people signed a petition calling for Michael Hill to receive the maximum sentence of five years in prison but both the Crown and defence had been seeking a two-year jail term and that is what the court handed down last week. Camille Labchuck is a lawyer and the executive director of Animal Justice, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to animal law. She joins us from Millvale, Prince Edward Island, hello.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Hi.

AMT: What was your reaction to that two year sentence that Michael Hill was given?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: I think it's the longest sentence for an animal cruelty offense that I've ever seen. Certainly the reaction to Justice’s situation was swift as well. Canadians know that animals are the most vulnerable group in our society, they've got no voices of their own, and they can't tell the police if they're being abused, so that's why people were so outraged when Justice was mistreated. But I think we saw the criminal law working quite well in this case. The perpetrator was arrested quickly, he was charged, he never got bail, and now he's pled guilty, and he’ll spend the next two years in a federal penitentiary.

AMT: So the case of Justice the dog shows us the law working. Can you give me an example where in your view it is not working or has not worked?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Sure. Our cruelty laws in Canada are pretty broad. The criminal law protects animals from unnecessary suffering and provinces on top of that have their own regulatory laws which generally prohibit unreasonably causing distress to an animal, so these laws are pretty broad. The problem is not that they don't work it's that they're not enforced. No matter how good our laws are, if they aren't enforced, then they might as well not exist. The best example of this is Chilliwack Cattle Sales in British Columbia. It’s the country's largest dairy farm and in June of 2014 there was an undercover investigation at this farm and it revealed appalling conditions. There were wounded cows, workers kicking, punching, and beating cows with metal pipes. The BC SPCA recommended charges against Chilliwack Cattle Sales as well as eight employees. But that was June 2014 and the prosecutors still haven't laid charges. So an extremely high profile case, national exposure, graphic documented abuse, and no charges. It's in situations like these where the law isn't applied that we don't get justice for animals.

AMT: And that's a case of a company. In the case of individuals and how they treat their pets, you made the point that this was the longest sentence. Have there been other cases that nobody does anything about in terms of pets?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: I think every now and then it's possible for a case to fall through the cracks, but I think the majority of the evidence shows that when it comes to animals like cats and dogs people are outraged. There's extreme pressure to prosecute, and prosecutions do happen. Our law works very well when the victim is a cat or dog. The problem is more when we get into situations involving other animals and industrial situations in particular.

AMT: The laws that we have now, animal cruelty laws, you have argued they need to be updated.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well, our criminal laws are pretty good. Certainly there are some small updates we could do just to make them even better. I'm actually expecting the new Liberal government will want to move quickly with these updates because they have been interested in this in the past. But we can do better on things like dog fighting, we can do a better job of including wild and stray animals in some of the offenses, we can clarify the offense of neglecting animals. But I want to be clear that these are minor updates, the basics are there and the basics work. If you ask prosecutors they'll tell you that they could get convictions for cruelty.

AMT: Your organization is proposing an animal charter of rights and freedoms. Can you tell me what that is?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Yeah. The animal charter is a modest proposal but the idea behind it is that we know, for a long time now, that our cats and dogs are individuals with personalities. We know they can be happy and sad, and experience pain. And we now recognize, as a society, that animals on farms, animals in zoos, animals in labs, they're no different from our cats and dogs. So the animal charter is a document that proposes some protections for animals from suffering, abuse, and neglect, which they largely have. But also some positive rights so that the animals have the ability to enjoy some freedom to engage in natural behaviours and to socialize, which in short are the things that make life worth living for any animal.

AMT: And how would that manifest itself? What would that mean?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: One other thing that the charter would do is give animals standing to have their cases heard in court in cases where they're being abused and they're not being respected. This is really important and it goes along with the question of enforcement. If an animal is in a bad situation and the law enforcement authorities refuse to take action, the animal effectively has no remedy even though that animal might be in conditions that could be illegal. I'll give you an example of this, there’s an elephant named Lucy at the Edmonton Zoo. She's 40 years old, she's kept in Canada's northernmost zoo all by herself without any other elephant companions. For an incredibly social creature like an elephant, this is the equivalent of solitary confinement and she's also got serious medical problems. So in 2010, some animal advocates sued the City of Edmonton which operates the zoo and asked the court simply declare that the city was violating Alberta’s animal protection laws by causing Lucy to suffer. The lawsuit was quashed by the courts which basically said it was an abusive process but that Lucy didn't have standing and no one had standing to bring the suit for her on her behalf.

AMT: And so standing would essentially mean person recognition rights, would it not?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well personhood is sort of a legal term of art, it’s sort of a legal fiction that means that animals would have some sort of legal status, so in this case standing to be heard in court. Corporations, municipalities, are considered persons. At one point, women didn't used to be considered persons, now they are. So personhood is really what we make of it. We're proposing that animals be given personhood so that they can get in the door to a court room and get protection if they're being abused. That doesn't mean that they're treated like humans under the law, it doesn't mean that they have human rights, it means, in our situation, that they have standing in court.

AMT: There was an effort in United States over the treatment of chimpanzees, to give them person rights.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: That's right, there's a fantastic organization that's really pushing the boundaries of civil rights called the Nonhuman Rights Project. They filed a number of cases on behalf of chimpanzees in New York State, and next they're going for elephants in another state. But they're saying to the courts, they're using an ancient Habeas corpus statute which allows the release of a prisoner from unlawful detention. And they're saying that chimpanzees can be persons for the purpose of that statute and they should be released from their unlawful confinement.

AMT: If you grant animals the types of rights you are proposing, where would that leave farmers who rely on owning and sometimes slaughtering animals for their livelihood?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well personhood doesn't mean that animals necessarily are not owned, it doesn't spell the end to animal use as we know it. If a farmer is not abusing his or her animal and perhaps the animal being treated well then perhaps they now have no issue. But in situations like the undercover investigations that keep popping up in Canada where animals are being treated terribly and we see appalling abuse behind the closed doors of farms, certainly farmers need to clean up.

AMT: Well I want to bring someone else into this conversation to discuss some of that; Camille Labchuk, stay with us. Doug Sawyer owns Ghost Pine Ranches in Pine Lake, Alberta; it includes 100 cattle, 20 horses, a dog, a cat, and a pet goat. He is in our Calgary studio. Hi, Doug Sawyer.

DOUG SAWYER: Good morning.

AMT: So as you're listening into this, I’m curious to know what you're thinking. What do you think of an idea of an animal charter of rights and freedoms?

DOUG SAWYER: As long as it doesn't change the way we operate in terms of being able to own animals, I certainly agree that any kind of abuse in our system works well in terms of charging people when an animal has been abused. If we use it effectively it works well, what we need to look at is how do we prevent this? And that's certainly something that we're interested, as an industry, in ensuring that these types of cases both on the pet side but in particular from my perspective on the on the agriculture side that we do a lot more to try to prevent these from happening. To me it's not good enough just to get a charge after it happens. We need to do work on the prevention side.

AMT: So you have I guess what would be referred to as the medium size cattle ranch, is that right?

DOUG SAWYER: Yes.

AMT: Okay. What steps do you take to ensure your animals wellbeing?

DOUG SAWYER: I got into the cattle industry because I love working with the animals, obviously first of all. So you have a moral obligation to the animal and as long as you have that you're going to be just fine. We also have a financial aspect to this. A healthy, safe, well cared for animal certainly earns more money than one that's not cared for. You have a very valuable asset there that you have to take care of and it's vitally important. 99.9 per cent of our producers take very good care of their animals. That other .1 per cent that do these bad things to animals, I can't explain it and I fully agree we need to prevent it and we need to charge them to the maximum. They don't need to own animals, simple as that.

AMT: And how would you define animal rights, Doug?

DOUG SAWYER: Well for us, animals don't have rights, but we have the right and the obligation to own animals. With that right comes the obligation to take care of our animals. It's not only a moral obligation, it’s a legal obligation. And that needs to be entrenched and it is. Again, from the legal aspect, the charge side, that works well. Now we need to work on the prevention side. So what we've done is we put in codes of practice. All of our all of our livestock industries have solid codes of practice on how to take care of animals and that allows us to take a look at the upfront side. So if a producer, or an animal owner, or animal caregiver, isn't living up to the codes of practice we can go to him and say, hey, you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing here, you’re getting into a gray area here. Get it back to the black and white, get it back to the positive side.

AMT: Is there a difference, in your view, between animal rights and animal welfare?

DOUG SAWYER: Absolutely. Animal welfare is about the wellbeing of the animal. One thing I always say when we talk about this topic no matter what it is, it has to start with the animal and end with the animal. People are what's in the middle. But really when we talk about animal welfare or animal rights and how we relate them to humans is one part of the topic but the major piece of this topic is how it affects the animal and what's best for the animal.

AMT: Camille, I want to bring you back into this conversation. What is the difference between animal rights and animal welfare in your view?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: I think sometimes the distinction between them gets overdrawn. Animals in a sense already have legal rights and that we protect them from certain abuses and we’re supposed to provide them with appropriate food, water, and shelter; the problem is that they don't have any way to enforce these rights if they're being violated. Doug brought up prevention and some of the efforts the industry has taken ostensibly to prevent abuses on farms; in my view it's highly problematic that the government has largely left the industry to self-regulate. So instead of a situation where we see vigorous policing and enforcement of animal protection laws on farms, and in other industries like labs, like the fur industry, what we see is a situation where industry especially makes up their own rules and follows those rules as they see fit. And so long as inspectors aren’t going in there and laying charges in the case of legal violations, animals are not being protected and that's exactly the case that we saw in Chilliwack where charges have not been laid over 18 months later for cattle abuse.

AMT: Doug what do you think of that? Is there too much self-regulation in your view?

DOUG SAWYER: No I think that we have good laws, as Camille said, that are being enforced by our provincial SPCA’s and all of the peace officers within each province. So I think that what we do as an industry goes above and beyond the regulation. Now the problem is, and I fully agree with Camille, that when we do get somebody outside of those laws, they need to be dealt with rather swiftly. There's no excuse for these abuse cases to be not dealt with. Certainly from an industry perspective, we agree, we want them dealt with. First of all, again, it goes back to the animal. Nobody wants to see an animal in stress, or suffering, or abused. Secondly, as an industry, and I say this secondly, it's bad for our whole industry, we don't want this.

AMT: How do you balance animal rights with needing to own animals for your livelihood and slaughter animals?

DOUG SAWYER: Well we certainly need to own animals. Animals for us are our livelihood and they're a big asset for us. So we need the right to own animals and that needs to be made clear. However, that does not allow people to in any way abuse them.

AMT: But Camille and Doug, what do you say to those people who don't believe animals should be slaughtered for meat and they would argue that is abuse?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well I don't think we’re at the point where we're going to end that practice tomorrow. What really worries me is that even though our criminal laws work pretty well in the case of discrete animal abuse, when we look at the factory farming industry we see every time these undercover investigations come out, no matter which farm, we see horrible situations. The regulations certainly aren't perfect to ensure animal protection as well, for example we've had over 30,000 animals die in barn fires in the last month across the country. Part of this is because the industry can't even be bothered to install sprinkler systems in the barn and the government has never forced them to do so. We've got farm animal transport standards that are still the worst in the western world. Animals in Canada can be transported in freezing cold or blistering heat in open sided vehicles, and deprived of food. We’re falling far behind other countries. So make no mistake, while I think the criminal laws are pretty good to protect animals, we still have a long way to go for regulatory purposes and the industry can't be left to self-regulate.

AMT: What do you say to that criticism, Doug?

DOUG SAWYER: Well I think that certainly are our regulations and the rules that we operate under are the standard that we operate under. But as a livestock owner and an animal owner, we often go above and beyond those because we have to take the best care we can of our animals. And we're certainly not shipping animals in any sort of duress conditions. If I have an animal that I need to get to market, I can't allow it to be transported in a horrific manner that gets it there so it's not in prime condition.

AMT: Okay so you believe in that but how is it policed amongst those who might not believe that?

DOUG SAWYER: Well we actually have both types of policing. First of all, we have very stringent regulations that we transport animals under and we have all of our officers out there on the road checking, watching livestock. Also from an industry perspective, when we take our cattle from my farm or from the feedlot that actually feeds them down to the plant, we have the checks both at the beginning and at the end. So the police and the CFIA are there to ensure those animals come off the truck in prime condition. Secondly we have our industry standards, we have our own training program with the industry that all of our truckers have to be certified to bring animals into these plants. So we ensure that they get there in pristine condition because that's the most important thing for us both as moral and as an economic factor. They have to get there very healthy and in very good condition and we've got studies that show that we're doing that and we continue to revamp them. If there's anything we can do better we want to do better.

AMT: Okay so let me just ask a question though, you both seem to agree that the treatment of animals matter and you have disagreements on how that might go forward. Even if animal welfare is ensured, the relationship between farmers and animals inherently becomes an exploitative one. Camille, when you talk about a charter of rights, how does it not legally go to the point where then the very idea of the slaughter of animals for food becomes an issue, legally, down the road?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well what the charter is really concerned about is suffering while animals are alive. That's why it has provisions that would protect animals from abuse and neglect and give them the ability to enjoy life and participate in normal and natural behaviour. But I have to respond to what Doug said a moment ago.

AMT: Well no, I want to pick up on that though, normal and natural behaviours, does that mean slaughter at the end? How does that not open it up to change the whole meat industry in terms of actually slaughtering animals for food?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: We're really talking about the conditions that animals experience while they're still alive. If we're going to be using animals, which I think we are for the foreseeable future, we've got an obligation to treat them well. And that means that we can't continue to allow eight million animals every year to show up dead or dying after being transported because, Doug, that's the reality of what happens in Canada.

AMT: Okay. Doug what do you want to say to that?

DOUG SAWYER: Well certainly certain segments of agriculture need to improve the way that they deal with them and that's where that number comes from. I can only speak for the livestock industry, cattle industry because that's where I'm actually from. And certainly we see far different numbers than that. We're bringing our cattle to the processing plant in very good condition and the number of incidents that we have is less than .3 per cent.

AMT: Camille, are you saying that the laws we have are not policed, or we just need stronger laws, or both?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Well our criminal laws are fine. What we need are stronger regulations, especially for the livestock, the farming industry. We have the worst regulations in the western world and that's a fact. The European Union is outpacing us, New Zealand is outpacing us, Australia is, so we need to do a much better job in this area. Industry can't be left to self-police, it's time for the government to step in. The government needs to enforce the law where standards exist and set higher standards for the rest of the cases.

AMT: Okay and you are arguing that to do that you need an animal charter of rights?

CAMILLE LABCHUK: No, they are separate things. The government could act tomorrow to improve standards for animals on farms, but at the same time we need to start looking at giving animals these legal rights under the law so that they can be assured that they've got protection and assured that they have some way to go to court to enforce those rights.

AMT: Okay we have to leave it there. Thank you both for this conversation today.

CAMILLE LABCHUK: Thank you.

DOUG SAWYER: Thank you.

AMT: I've been speaking with Camille Labchuk, lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice, a not for profit organization which advocates for animal law. She's in Millvale, PEI. Doug Sawyer owns Ghost Pine Ranches in Pine Lake, Alberta. He joined us from Calgary. What do you think how far is too far for animal rights or how far should we go? Would you support a charter of animal rights? Tweet us @thecurrentCBC, post on our Facebook page, or email us from our website www.cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the contact link. You'll also find a previous conversation that we had about the ethics of granting person rights to animals in the wake of some high profile court challenges in the United States involving chimpanzees. Again, you can find that at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent.

Tajikistan fights extremism with beard/hijab crackdown

Guests: Rustam Gulov, Sojida Djakhfarova, Eric McGlinchey

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current. There's hardly any part of the world that isn't on guard today in the fight against radicalism but new reports out of the Central Asian country of Tajikistan suggest authorities there have taken a surprising and even disturbing approach to their efforts to curb what they consider to be extremist Islam. Police in the majority Muslim country have been targeting beards. In one province alone last month they are reported to have forcibly shaved the beard of nearly 13,000 men. And women are being targeted as well; nearly 2,000 have been forced to stop wearing the hijab, while nearly 200 shops and stalls selling head scarves have been closed. It is all in the name of cracking down on radicalism and foreign extremist influence, according to the authorities in Tajikistan. But the unusual practices have human rights activists concerned. They're suggesting it may have more to do with domestic politics and a crackdown on the opposition. Rustam Gulov is a Tajik blogger and an activist who had his beard shaved by police last April. He joins us from Khujand in Northern Tajikistan. Hello.

RUSTAM GULOV: Hello.

AMT: Can you tell me about your experience? What happened to you?

RUSTAM GULOV: Okay, it happened around one year ago, April 2nd, near the central market of Khujand City, some guys, three guys stopped me and they asked me about my beard, why do I have this, what is the reason for having beard, and it was very strange for me. And I asked them, who are they and what are their reasons that they ask me some questions. They introduced themselves, that they are police officers and they have an order that no one has a right to have beards now and they said that they will detain me and go with them to the police department. All the way, I asked them that, what is the reason? What is the legal purpose of doing this?

AMT: So, they took you to the police station?

RUSTAM GULOV: Yes.

AMT: And what did they do there?

RUSTAM GULOV: There, they shaved my beard.

AMT: Okay, so they took you to the police station and had someone shave your beard off? Like, how did that happen?

RUSTAM GULOV: They are three guys, three police officers held me on the chair and a fourth shaved my beard.

AMT: And how big a beard did you have?

RUSTAM GULOV: It was not so big, maximum it was around one centimetre, so no more.

AMT: And was it painful? Did you-- If somebody holds you down and shaves you, it sounds to me like it would be bit dangerous.

RUSTAM GULOV: I don't know. It was very terrible for me and, of course, painful because they didn't care about if I sensed any pain or not.

AMT: Did they tell you why you couldn't have a beard?

RUSTAM GULOV: Oh, they said they have an order from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and this is the order of the minister to shave the peoples’ beards. I asked them, could you show me this order? But they said to me that they cannot show me any orders and this is a secret order and that’s why they wouldn’t show me anything.

AMT: Did they explain? Was it because a beard represents religious Islam? What—why?

RUSTAM GULOV: Oh, I tried to explain to them that it’s my right to have a beard or not. It’s part of my religion, it’s part of my image, for example, but none of them listened to me and didn’t care about this.

AMT: Did you have a beard because you're Muslim? Was it part of your faith to have that beard?

RUSTAM GULOV: Yes, of course, yes. Because having a beard for Muslim men is part of the religion. That’s why I think this is a restriction of my religion, a restriction of my freedom of faith.

AMT: And have you kept your beard off now? Are you afraid to grow bear now?

RUSTAM GULOV: Yes. Yes. After [indecipherable] honestly, I sometimes I fear about [indecipherable] that it could happen in the future, but I [indecipherable].

AMT: Okay, Rustam Gulov, thank you for speaking with me.

RUSTAM GULOV: Thank you very much.

AMT: Rustam Gulov is a Tajik blogger and activist. We reached him in the city of Khujand. Now we did ask to interview various representatives of the Tajik government. We were either--they either declined or we did not hear back. More than 90 percent of Tajikistan’s seven million citizens may be Muslim, but the government is officially secular and continues to impose limits on religious practices. Officially and unofficially, President Emomali Rahmon has been at the helm of the country since the early 1990s, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And after experiencing a brutal civil war in the mid-nineties, Tajikistan is, today, one of the poorest nations in Central Asia. To help put that crackdown on beards in perspective I'm joined by Sojida Djakhfarova. She is the director of the Tajik Service for Radio Free Europe and we've reached her in Prague in the Czech Republic. Hello.

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: Yes. Hi, Hello.

AMT: What do you make of Rustam’s experience of having his beard forcibly shaved?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: I think Rustam’s case is one of the few cases that become public. Dozens of other cases related to forcibly shaving a beard are hidden from the media and society. We try to get reactions to cases that we had complaints of forcibly shaving beards, but officials usually deny the cases that we asking them to make a reaction. Only once or twice high ranking officials admit it.

AMT: And in fact that number I gave at the beginning, 13,000 men who had their beards shaved off, the police actually were kind of bragging about that, right? That's a police claim that they did that many.

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: The person who made these statements, he’s a local chief of police.

AMT: Okay.

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: So he said that he did not openly say that supposedly shaved beards, but he was kind of sarcastically saying that he brought to order. So it means the same, that they either force people to shave their beards or they forcibly shave their beards. In Tajikistan, lately, they made a lot of restrictions to hijabs and Islamic clothing. This paranoia started several years ago.

AMT: Okay. But that is that is that sort of a smokescreen for what they really want to do?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: They want to say that they don’t think that this is a crackdown on religion. We don’t accept any other dresses a part from our traditional dresses [indecipherable].

AMT: Okay. So what is this all about? What is the government trying to do here?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: I think, fear of increase of extremism or society to become too religious in Tajikistan. The country is located in Central Asia. It has a long border with Afghanistan, which is the main source of instability not only for Tajikistan, but for the whole region, and the concentration of militants along the border with Afghanistan from outside who enter Tajikistan. In addition, 1,000 young people joined ISIS in the last two years. This is another threat. So, officials think that by bringing people or forcing people to leave under the secular rule, under secular law could prevent extremism. But in some cases, in many cases it brings absolutely different or opposite reactions from people.

AMT: Well, and what is it last year, there was a commander in Tajikistan’s special police force who actually, very publicly, left and went to work with ISIS?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: You know, this was a big failure for Tajik officials when Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov defected and joined ISIS last May, if I'm not mistaken. They can see his decision or his joining ISIS as betrayal and immediately a criminal case was opened up against him and he got on the list of International Wanted men. It's a painful question for officials when you mention his name, especially when he appeared on YouTube blaming officials for cracking down on the religious freedom of people. And he gave one reason why he left Tajikistan. He said, because of restrictions I left Tajikistan because I couldn’t take it anymore.

AMT: And all of this is happening against the backdrop of a very divided politics in Tajikistan right now. The main opposition party is an Islamic party, is it not?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: Yes. Islamic party was banned and it was declared as a terrorist group. Islamic party-- Islamic Renaissance Party is one of the biggest [indecipherable] party which has thousands of followers and it played a significant role in society because Islamic party was a part of [indecipherable] civil war in Tajikistan and it was also part of the peace agreement. So the fact that the party left or was forcibly removed from the scene, this is a significant move, because, first of all, it was the only Islamic party officially registered in Central Asia and it was a subject of proudness for Tajik officials to show how they are tolerating Islamic expression and Islamic party and Islamic parties to sit at the parliament. They always brought it as a good example of tolerance in Tajikistan. So when they banned the party and declared it a terrorist group there is a big hole now. Other parties who are actively participating in political life just step back because they just put them in danger.

AMT: So you have this political opposition, you have a government opposed to any outward sign of the Islamic religion because it says, ostensibly, we have to crack down on radicalism and terrorism. What's the economy like?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: Tajikistan has more than one million migrant workers in Russia who does not--people who do not find jobs because of high level of unemployment in the country. Economy in Tajikistan is in bad shape for many years since the last recession. But the current financial crisis makes it even more. People face a very difficult time in Tajikistan, but the people never express this publicly.

AMT: Well, let me ask you, if the head of the security police leaves and joins ISIS and 1,000 young people join ISIS, it may not be the right tactic, but when the government says it's concerned about radical Islam and the potential for jihadists, does it not have a legitimate concern?

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: In some cases, yes. If you take a look at the political situation in Tajikistan and especially hopelessness among young people who can’t find a good job and good opportunities to make a career in his or her own country and then you see the lack of education because people don’t have enough money to educate their children and all together all those facts definitely lead young people who are not educated, who does not have any jobs, do not have any hope to change [indecipherable] by peaceful means. So, the only way is to go and join some groups.

AMT: Okay, well, thank you for sharing your perspective with us.

SOJIDA DJAKHFAROVA: Okay, okay, thank you.

AMT: That’s Sojida Djakhfarov, Tajik service director for Radio Free Europe. We reached her in Prague. Well, all of the so-called ‘stans of Central Asia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan are struggling with economic and political instability and rocky democratic traditions. In fact, late last week to Tajikistan’s constitutional court approved an amendment and got rid of presidential term limits, meaning President Emomali Rahmon can continue to run for re-election indefinitely. The new rules also lower the minimum age of a president from 35 to 30 and conveniently paves the way for Mr. Rahmon’s son Rustam Emomali to run for president in 2020. How about that? For the broader context of what is happening in this region of the world I'm joined by Eric McGlinchey. He's an associate professor of government and politics at George Mason University. He's the author of Chaos, Violence, Dynasty: Politics and Islam in Central Asia. And Eric McGlinchey is in Washinton, DC. Hello.

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: Hi. Thank you for having me.

AMT: Let me begin first by focusing right on Tajikistan. As you listened to my last two guests, what is going on there?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: I think it's interesting to get the two different perspectives of Rustam and Sojida. I think, from Rustam’s perspective, he's an ordinary person who happens to practice Islam and then from Sojida’s perspective, she articulated a view which I think is shared by a certain portion of the Tajik population that growing signs of religiosity intersect with the potential for growing radical Islam. And I think there's two different views in the Tajik population, one that perhaps would side with Sojida, one that sides with Rustam and they don’t really overlap. I think a lot of people who are becoming more active in religion don't necessarily see this as a threat or as anything that's extremist and then people who are more familiar with a secular tradition see the increase in religious symbolism on the street or in the narratives in the newspaper and are somewhat alarmed. So there's a real tension in Tajik culture and its attention that the population is struggling with.

AMT: There are reports of several thousand fighters from across that region joining ISIS. Does the government have a problem with radicalization?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: The first thing I would encourage people do is to take a look at these reports with a critical eye. I've looked at the numbers and you know the numbers-- a thousand Tajik fighters or the thousands from Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. These numbers are suspect, to say the least. We don't have people on the ground, obviously, researching who is fighting with ISIS. It would be very hard thing to do. So those sources tend to be government officials, often Tajik government officials or Uzbek government officials or Russian government officials who are forwarding these claims and then they’re picked up by journalists and we have a little bit of an echo chamber effect. We don't have good—I don’t think we have a good measure of how many people are actually fighting with ISIS, so I'd be very suspect of these figures. I'd also be suspect of these claims that radical Islam is a problem in Central Asia.

AMT: So, of course, there are critics who also say that this is happening because the government is looking for an excuse to hang on to power and get rid of opposition parties. So, how much does, sort of, the power structure in this area of former Soviet republics play into what we're seeing on the ground?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: I think this is the linchpin of the whole thing here. These are secular autocracies, across the board, secular autocracies, maybe with the exception of Kyrgyzstan which is somewhere between democracy and autocracy, and they struggle for legitimacy. Particularly a country like Tajikistan which hasn't seen the economic growth that Kazakhstan has seen. What does the government say it can do for the people? And one thing that it tries to say is that it is the defender of the population against growing radical Islam against the spectre of extremism coming across the border from Afghanistan. It's an attempt by the government to demonstrate to the population that even though it is autocrat it is protecting them from all these external threats.

AMT: With the exception of Kyrgyzstan, whose president was elected in 2011, all the leaders in this region have been in power for decades now.

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: Yes. Rahmon, he came to power in a little bit more of a contentious way than say the long serving autocrats of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, who actually were the first secretaries, the Communist first secretaries under the Soviet rule. And I think that's part of the reason why Tajikistan has had a harder go of it than, say, the long serving leaders in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

AMT: And he's, in fact, trying to make sure that his son takes over when he can't rule.

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: This is the Achilles Heel of these autocracies. They don't have clear succession mechanisms, so what do you do as you get older? I mean, Rahmon has the advantage that- compared to Karimov in Uzbekistan and Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan- he's younger so he can expect to stay in power for quite some time, so the aging out dynamic that we see across the border is not as dire as it is in Tajikistan, so that is one source of stability for the Rahmon government.

AMT: Now, this whole area of Central Asia has sort of had its own turmoil since the fall of the Soviet Union, since the republics went on their own. You tell us to be careful about the narratives we hear coming out of there from different governments, but how do Western powers play into this region as well?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: There's been a couple different stages of interest among Western powers in Central Asia. I think there was the initial optimistic stage where a lot of the engagement from Western countries was for democratization efforts, for economic reform efforts. And I think that characterized most of the 1990s. That changed dramatically in the early 2000s with the uptick in, well, with the initiation of military activity in Afghanistan following 9/11. So it shifted from a lab for democracy to geo-political interests for conducting military operations. And now that Afghanistan is no longer as front and centre as it has been in the past I think Western countries are struggling to understand what exactly their interests are in Central Asia. There's a rethinking that's going here in Washington and I'm not quite sure that our own government has arrived at a conclusion for why the United States should be interested in Central Asia.

AMT: How much influence does Russia still have there?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: Russia has a tremendous influence in Central Asia for a number of reasons, as your guests, I think Sojida in particular was talking about the migration-- So the migrant workers, particularly large numbers coming from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. So this is a major source of economic revenue for these countries, the remittances. The other thing is the media is more or less- probably more- dominated by the Russian press than any other press, so a lot of the information that comes into these countries is being interpreted through the Russian media lens that shapes a lot of how Central Asia views the outside world.

AMT: So would Tajikistan’s leadership have the tacit approval of the Kremlin when it says we need to crack down on what we perceive to be terrorism?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: Yes, I think Moscow's interests and Dushanbe’s interests do overlap here. I think Russia has been concerned or as least has articulated their concern for growing extremism and I think that dovetails with what the autocratic government in Tajikistan is doing.

AMT: And so is extremism a threat in your view in this region?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: It's an overblown threat. I mean, I think we have a few data points- the, you know, Colonel Khalimov defecting- here is one case that we do know of. And so there are these stories out there. That said, I think we have to be very careful not to make the fallacy of composition just because we have a few people, a few prominent people that we know of who have become extremists. This is by no means support for the conclusion that extremism is a threat. You know, I live in Northern Virginia and there's many stories about radical Islamists in Northern Virginia. We probably have more here in Northern Virginia than in Tajikistan, at least according to press reports. I think it's overblown and I think most people- and I think you get a sense that talking to Rustam- yes, there's a growing religiosity, a growing practice of Islam, but I think it would be a far, a far leap to say that this is any indicator of the growing likelihood of extremism.

AMT: Given the kinds of authoritarianism that we're seeing there and given the fact that we're seeing crackdowns that people are very uncomfortable with, will these governments last or should we expect to see more turmoil in this region?

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: A couple of points here. One, Sojida was advancing the argument that crackdowns on Islam can promote extremism. What I found in my research is, actually, I wouldn’t say it’s the opposite, but it's different. I mean, Islam becomes a place where people find refuge. People turn to religious communities to find some refuge from an oppressive state, to find meaning, to find support, to find, you know, in times of need religious organizations can provide help. So crackdowns, broadly in Central Asia, don't encourage extremism, but rather encourage retreat to these non-state entities and many of them are religious entities. And it's not just Islam. There's all different kinds of religious groups that are serving this function because of what the state's doing. As far as the instability of these states, weak governments, and I would put Tajikistan in this category of weak governments, are susceptible to uprisings. And I think that's probably what was driving this crackdown on the Islamic Renaissance Party. I think the Rahmon government was afraid that this was a party that could mobilize opposition and use this charge of extremism as an excuse to get rid of the party.

AMT: That might then come back to bite him.

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: Yes. I think the Tajik government in particular is one of the more vulnerable regimes in Central Asia.

AMT: Okay. Thank you for your thoughts on this.

ERIC MCGLINCHEY: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

AMT: Eric McGlinchey, associate professor of government and politics at George Mason University. He's in Washington, DC. Now, later this week we'll talk more about the spectre of Islamic extremism when I’m joined by two-time Pulitzer-nominated reporter Rukmini Callimachi. She's a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. She's been covering Islamic extremism, focusing on groups such as al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State. To do that she's been cultivating sources from that world, members of terror groups, people who align themselves with them. She told the podcast long form how that all started for her in Senegal a decade ago.

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I got the phone number of one of their commanders, a guy called Omar Ould Hamaha. I don't want to flatter myself, but I think I somehow struck almost a kind of friendship with him. It sounds very weird to say that. First I would call him once a week. Then I called him twice a week, then three times a week. And, you know, in the course of things you would call him and he would he would call me back and I'd say, I'm so sorry, Omar Ould Hamaha, I’ve got to take a call from my mom. The next time he would call and he'd say, Rukmini, how’s your mom? And the sort of wall between the terrorists and the journalists began to sort of erode and, not to make light of it, but on a human level you connect with another human being.

AMT: I’ll be speaking to Rukmini Callimachi, the New York Times correspondent covering ISIS and Islamic extremists later this week. That is our program for today. We're going to leave you today with another segment from the new CBC original podcast Backstory. With the Rio Olympics six months away, CBC’s Scott Russell is looking back at the dirtiest race in history. The 100-metre men's final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics with Ben Johnson. You can find more about the Backstory podcast and subscribe at CBC.ca/backstory. Right now, Scott Russell gets the last word. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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SCOTT RUSSELL: I remember distinctly being woken up in the middle of the night and it was someone from Reuters on the other end of the line from London. And they said, I'd like to ask your opinion about Ben Johnson. And I was in a total state of bewilderment and I said, well, I mean, fantastic. A Canadian has won the 100-metre final. What a historic moment. I'm sure all Canadians are very proud. I know that we here in Seoul have been celebrating for quite a while. It's a fantastic occurrence. And he stopped me dead in my tracks and said, no, no, you don't understand. Johnson's tested positive. The medal’s gone [voice echoes].

REPORTER: Shocking news here in Seoul. Ben Johnson apparently testing positive for anabolic steroids showing up in his system…[voice fades]

VOICE: Oh, it’s devastating. I thought he would have known not to take steroids. Oh, wow.

BEN JOHNSON: I just want to say that I never would do the such things as they said I did—

[crowd cheers]

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Feb. 8, 2016 episode transcript

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