Speaker Bio:

Image

Maxim Eristavi is the only openly gay journalist coming from Ukraine, one of the few in Eastern Europe. Self-described 'bridge-builder', his work concentrates on amplifying and explaining stories from global frontline battles for equal human and civil rights. He is a research fellow with the Atlantic Council, a DC-based foreign policy think-tank; co-founder of the Russian Language News Exchange, the biggest support network for independent journalism in Eastern Europe; policy adviser at the European Parliament; writer for Washington Post, Politico, Foreign Policy, among others and sits on the managing board of Kyiv Pride, the biggest pride event in the post-Soviet space. Eristavi is a 2015 Poynter fellow at Yale University with a focus on informational wars and pan-regional LGBTI civil rights movements. Find out more at maximeristavi.com

 

The evidentiary weight of North Korean defectors’ testimony depicting crimes against humanity has drawn considerable attention from the international community in recent years. Despite the ramped-up attention to North Korean human rights, what remains unexamined is the rise of the transnational advocacy network which drew attention to the issue in the first place. In their new book, North Korean Human Rights: Activists and Networks, Andrew Yeo and Danielle Chubb lead a team of scholars in tracing the emergence and evolution of North Korean human rights activism. Together they challenge existing conceptions of transnational advocacy, how they operate, and why they provoke a response from even the most recalcitrant regimes. In this event, Professor Yeo draws particular attention to the politics of North Korean human rights in both domestic and international contexts. He explains the relevance and importance of human rights even as the diplomatic environment on the Korean Peninsula shifts from pressure towards engagement.

Image

The Republic of China on Taiwan spent nearly four decades as a single-party state under dictatorial rule (1949-1987) before transitioning to liberal democracy. This talk is based on an ethnographic study of street-level police practices during the first rotation in executive power following the democratic transition (i.e. the first term of the Chen Shui-bian administration, 2000-2004). Summarizing the argument of a forthcoming book, Dr. Jeffrey T. Martin focuses on an apparent paradox, in which the strength of Taiwan's democracy is correlated to the weakness of its police powers. Martin explains this paradox through a theory of "jurisdictional pluralism" which, in Taiwan, is  organized by a cultural distinction between sentiment, reason, and law as distinct foundations for political authority. An overt police interest in sentiment (qing) was institutionalized during the martial law era, when police served as an instrument for the cultivation of properly nationalistic political sentiments. Martin's fieldwork demonstrates how the politics of sentiment which took shape under autocratic rule continued to operate in everyday policing in the early phase of the democratic transformation, even as a more democratic mode of public reason and the ultimate power of legal right were becoming more significant.

Image

Nemtsov is a documentary film about the late leader of the Russian opposition, directed by his friend and colleague Vladimir Kara-Murza. The film chronicles a remarkable political life. It is a story told by those who knew Boris Nemtsov at different times: when he was a young scientist and took his first steps in politics; when he held high government offices and was considered Boris Yeltsin’s heir apparent; when he led Russia’s democratic opposition to Vladimir Putin. The film contains rare archival footage, including from the Nemtsov family. Nemtsov is a portrait. It is not about death. It is about the life of a man who could have been president of Russia.

The film is in Russian, with English subtitles. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Image

Vladimir Kara-Murza is vice chairman of the Open Russia movement and chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. He was a longtime colleague of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Kara-Murza is a former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian State Duma. He has testified on Russian affairs before parliaments in Europe and North America and played a key role in the passage of the Magnitsky Act, a US law that imposed targeted sanctions on Russian human rights violators. Twice, in 2015 and 2017, he was poisoned with an unknown substance and left in a coma; the attempts on his life were widely viewed as politically motivated. Kara-Murza writes regular commentary for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, World Affairs, and other periodicals, and has previously worked as a journalist for Russian broadcast and print media, including Ekho Moskvy and Kommersant. He directed two documentary films, They Chose Freedom (on the dissident movement in the USSR) and Nemtsov (on the life of Boris Nemtsov). He is the author of Reform or Revolution (Moscow 2011) and a contributor to Russia’s Choices: The Duma Elections and After (London 2003), Russian Liberalism: Ideas and People (Moscow 2007), Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law (London 2013), and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Stuttgart 2018). Kara-Murza is a recipient of the Magnitsky Human Rights Award, the Sakharov Prize for Journalism as an Act of Conscience, and the Geneva Summit Courage Award. He holds an M.A. (Cantab.) in History from Cambridge. He is married, with three children.

This event is cosponsored by the Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies and the European Security Initiative.