COULD CENTRAL ASIA MARK WATERSHED IN EU HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY?
President Vladimir Putin on November 21 participated in a campaign rally in Moscow’s Luzhniki sports complex that was organized by Unified Russia and the national For Putin! movement, Russian media reported. RFE/RL’s Russian Service reported that no international or independent media were allowed to cover the event. ITAR-TASS reported that Putin entered the facility as Soviet-era hymns played and urged the estimated 5,000 people gathered there to vote for Unified Russia on December 2. “The exclusive importance of these elections lies in the fact that they are happening just a few months before the election of a new head of state,” Putin said, referring to the presidential election in March 2008. “And if there is a victory [for Unified Russia] in December, then there will be one in March.” Putin criticized the party’s opponents — obliquely referring to the Communist Party and the Union of Rightist Forces (SPS) — by saying that when they held key government posts in the 1990s, “they ac
