US charm tour to Tiraspol fails to impress locals

Colleen Graffy, left, visited Pridnestrovie Tuesday to answer questions from local journalists (file photo: US Embassy)

TIRASPOL (Tiraspol Times) - "No statehood for Transnistria." That was the offputting message from Colleen Graffy, refusing to objectively consider the validity of Pridnestrovie's 1990 declaration of independence under the main principles of international law.

Speaking to the press from the OSCE's Tiraspol office, a diplomatic mission, the United States deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Colleen P. Graffy, stated that the United States does not recognize Transnistria's independence. Instead, she repeatedly mentioned the 'territorial integrity' of neighboring Moldova, a country which declared independence in 1991 - a year after Pridnestrovie had already left.

" - I thought this was a very strange woman," said Ionel Florea, 38. "She comes from a country which declared independence unilaterally, without asking permission from the British at the time. We did the same, except we did it more democratically. We held a referendum. Moldova didn't do that when it declared independence, and neither did the United States. Our referendum showed clearly that almost everyone here wants independence, even the Moldovans who live here."

Graffy: "Referendum was not democratic"

Playing to a tough crowd Tuesday, Colleen Graffy failed to impress her audience when she advocated the United States' wish to promote democracy and human rights in Pridnestrovie as well as worldwide.

Graffy confirmed that the United States does not send observers to elections in Pridnestrovie, yet at the same time has no problem with point blank calling all of its elections undemocratic. To hear the United States say it, the 17 September independence referendum was not a democratic act.

" - This was not an expression of the will of the inhabitants," claimed Colleen Graffy, since "elections were not free and transparent."

The US State Department representative refused to explain on what basis her country decides that elections in Pridnestrovie are not democratic, free or transparent. Despite numerous invitations, it has never sent any election observers, and has repeatedly abstained from visiting Pridnestrovie to see the process first hand. Instead, election statements have been written in advance and opinions formed from Washington without the benefit of first-hand observance. In contrast, Western journalists who covered the elections called them free and fair. Reports by BBC, Associated Press, and more than thirty other mass media outlets found no indication of anything less than a normal, democratic election process.

Colleen Graffy is a former chairman of Republicans Abroad for the United Kingdom. She has been an outspoken advocate for human rights, in particular the situation in the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison which she has visited and which she feels is a nice place to be.
In a recent BBC radio interview, she explained that she "had visited Guantanamo and witnessed no unpleasant interrogation, no torture and plenty of sports facilities." Graffy showed her interviewer a sample tube used for force-feeding prisoners and explained that "it had no metal edges and was therefore humane."

From a public diplomacy standpoint, she also commented to the BBC on the prisoner suicides in Guantanamo: "Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move."

Territorial integrity confusion

In Tiraspol, she refused to acknowledge any right of the citizens of Pridnestrovie to self-determination of their own future, despite the fact that the population is equal to the population of Montenegro, the latest country to be recognized by the United States and to join the United Nations:
" - The United States wants a peaceful resolution of the conflict" and remains committed to "the territorial integrity of Moldova," declared Colleen Graffy during her visit to Tiraspol.

But just days ago, Graffy's colleague - U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Daniel Fried - announced a willingness to overlook the principle of territorial integrity in order to solve conflicts in Eastern Europe.

Declaring in relation to Kosovo that "we cannot go back to the situation of 1999," he indicated that in the bigger picture, there are more important issues than a blind adherence to a territorial integrity which for all practical purposes is already rendered moot by events on the ground. While the principle of territorial integrity is a valid principle, it is merely one of a series of principles that make up the body of international law. A 1975 Cold War invention, it is a rather new principle which often collides with the much older and more established principles of democracy, human rights and self-determination.

In 1921, the 28th President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, gave freedom-loving people everywhere new hope when he declared that "no people must be forced under a sovereignty under which it does not wish to live." Since then, the number of sovereign states in the world has more than tripled. In the process, self-determination aspirations have clashed with territorial integrity, but as Eddie Beaver, of the U.S. Navy, has previously reported for The Tiraspol Times, "in most of these cases, the democracy and human rights to self-determination have trumped the stale statism of territorial integrity."

See also:
» Kosovo precedent takes shape as USA rules out return to the past
» As democracy spreads, new countries will be born