Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 37

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 37

(September 12, 2008)

Volume 8, Number 37
September 12, 2008

BIGOTRY MONITOR

A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union
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RUSSIA TO LAUNCH NEW ANTI-EXTREMISM UNITS. Russia’s Interior Ministry will set up units to resist extremism and guarantee the security of individuals requiring protection from the state, according to a presidential decree posted on an official website, according to a brief item dated September 11 by Interfax-AVN, an Internet news service usually specializing in military news and owned by the independent Interfax news agency. The report offered no commentary.

The units for resisting extremism are to be formed within the divisions combating organized crime, the decree says. It also orders the formation of "units to guarantee the security of individuals entitled to protection from the state and also to safeguard the property of such individuals." The divisions combating economic crimes are expected to fight corruption and organized crime in the economy as well.

MULTIPLE ATTACKS ON DAGESTANI WORKERS IN MOSCOW. Three times over the past week, neo-Nazis attacked construction workers from Dagestan, the national daily "Moskovsky Komsomolets" reported on September 8.

The first attack took place on August 31. At 1 a.m., at least 50 neo-Nazis threw firecrackers and smoke bombs at the train cars where Dagestani workers live on Moscow's Sevastopolsky Prospekt. The attackers also screamed threats. About 30 construction workers fled the train cars in panic, at which point the neo-Nazis assaulted them with fists and gas-powered pistols. The violence went on for some 20 minutes. On September 4, the extremists attacked again. Construction workers who had not left Moscow out of fear for their safety built a metal fence around the train cars. However, two days later, the neo-Nazis wrecked the fence and beat the Dagestanis again, three of whom ended up with broken limbs. Police now guard the site. The newspaper report noted that the Belarusian workers living in train cars next door to the Dagestanis were left unharmed.

TWO ATTACKS ON CENTRAL ASIANS IN MOSCOW. Neo-Nazis assaulted a Tajik man in Moscow, beating him and breaking bottles over his head, according to a September 8 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The victim was found on August 15 lying in his blood with fragments of bottles around him. On August 10, a group of youths attacked a Central Asian man on a Moscow suburban train after complaining that he was speaking in his native tongue on a cell phone. The fight escalated into attacks on all non-Russians found on the train. Police detained several suspects.

NEO-NAZIS SUSPECTED IN BOMBING IN MOSCOW. Neo-Nazis may be behind the bombing of a funeral attended by Azeris in Moscow, according to the national daily "Kommersant" dated September 6. One person died and two ended up in the emergency room after a bomb exploded inside the Artizan restaurant. Police are investigating the likelihood that neo-Nazis set the bomb but are also looking into other theories, including the possibility that a bomb went off accidentally. However, Azeris attending the funeral were adamant that the bombing was a racist attack.

AFRICAN STUDENT ATTTACKED. An African student was attacked in Moscow, according to a September 10 report by the Jewish.ru web site. The previous day, the student was admitted to the hospital with a concussion and facial fractures. The 19 year old victim studies at the Friendship of Peoples University.

SUSPECT DETAINED IN MURDER OF ANTI-FASCIST ACTIVIST. Moscow police have detained a suspect in connection with the murder of anti-fascist activist Alexei Krylov, 21, who was stabbed to death by an estimated 15 neo-Nazis on March 16, according to a September 8 report by Interfax. Police released no details about the suspect.

NEO-NAZIS FACE HATE CRIME MURDER CHARGE IN VORONEZH. A group of neo-Nazi teenagers face hate crimes murder charges in Voronezh, a city known as a hotbed of far-right groups, according to a September 5 report by the Itar-Tass news agency. The five teenagers, aged between 17 and 20, allegedly murdered a 15 year old boy who tried to join their group, called Russian National Resistance, after determining that his skin was too dark and his features too Asiatic. Police found his body with 14 stab wounds. That same day, prosecutors allege, the suspects attacked another Asian-looking teenager. In addition to the charge of "murder motivated by ethnic hatred," the suspects are accused of "forming an extremist organization." If convicted, they face between 10-to-20 years in prison. Their trial date is pending. All five suspects are in pre-trial detention.

YOUTHS CHARGED WITH HATE CRIMES IN UFA. A group of youths in Ufa, Russia (Republic of Bashkortostan) face hate crimes charges, according to a September 4 article posted on the web site of the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda." The suspects are accused of multiple attacks on students from Turkey and Vietnam in May 2008.

FAR-RIGHT LAWMAKER DETAINED IN IZHVESK. Police detained a far-right member of the city parliament in Izhvesk, Russia (Republic of Udmurtiya) and charged him with the equivalent of a parole violation, according to a September 5 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Vasily Kryukov of the party known as People's Will allegedly broke his written pledge not to leave the city until his trial date and ignored a summons to make himself available for questioning by investigators. Originally he ran afoul of the law on November 30, 2006 when police went to his office to investigate the distribution of extremist literature. Kryukov allegedly assaulted a police officer at the time.

AMERICAN TV SHOWS ACCUSED OF EXTREMISM. On September 8, prosecutors accused the Russian television station 2x2 of promoting extremism with an episode of the iconoclastic U.S. cartoon "South Park" and violating children's rights by airing shows such as "The Simpsons" and "The Family Guy," “The Moscow Times” reported. The Moscow City Prosecutors’ Office said that a commission of experts had determined that the “South Park” episode "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" was extremist in character because it promotes "hatred between religions." The prosecutors have asked the Basmanny District Court to rule that the episode encourages extremism.

The director of the 2x2 network, Roman Sarkisov, disputed the findings of the commission's report, which was issued last month. "I don't think there's any extremism in ‘South Park,’ which is shown all around the world," Sarkisov said. In March, 2x2 received a warning for showing the cartoons "Happy Tree Friends" and "The Adventures of Big Jeff." It quickly pulled them. Under media laws, a media outlet loses its license after two warnings. Sarkisov speculated that his network’s legal troubles may be linked to business. "Someone is trying to get our frequency," he said.

CRACKDOWN ON JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES CONTINUES IN RUSSIA. In the latest instance of government action against Jehovah's Witnesses and other minority Christians in Russia, officials in Ufa (Republic of Bashkortostan) have banned a planned Jehovah's Witnesses congress, according to a September 9 report by Interfax. About 1,300 Jehovah's Witnesses planned to hold a mass prayer service in a rented building until the local Prosecutor's Office banned it.

At the same time in Dzherzhinsk (Nizhny Novgorod Region), the city government is "searching for a technicality" to block the construction of a Jehovah's Witnesses prayer hall on an empty, burned out lot, according to the national daily "Kommersant" dated September 9. About two dozen people gathered in an officially approved protest action outside the construction site calling for the project to be halted. An official from the city government acknowledged that the city is collaborating with the Russian Orthodox Church in opposing the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses, who have been trying to build their prayer hall since 2004 but have been delayed by official actions. In 2006, the city organized a public meeting of residents to discuss the construction project, during which a Russian Orthodox priest and other speakers warned about the danger posed by "sects." The meeting ended in a resolution condemning the project.

"Kommersant" quoted a legal expert saying that the construction project is legal under the Russian Constitution's protection of freedom of religion. The article ended with a one paragraph "explainer" that referred to Jehovah's Witnesses as "one of the oldest totalitarian religious organizations." The fact that "Kommersant," one of Russia's most professional newspapers, used that sort of language indicates the level of hostility toward Jehovah's Witnesses and some other minority Christians in the country.

RUSSIAN MUSLIM LEADER DECLARES JIHAD AGAINST THE U.S. Talgat Tadzhuddin, one of Russia's two rival chief muftis, has once again declared jihad against the United States, this time because of its support for Georgia, according to a September 8 report by the online news web site Gazeta.ru. "The USA are fiends of hell who impose spiritual assimilation on anybody who strikes back against their filthy hands," the mufti is quoted as saying, further characterizing the West as "enemies of the human race." An August 29 BBC report carried an additional quote from the mufti: "We [Muslims] should help Russia in its jihad against the USA. Muslims have experienced their aggression more than anybody else. And now in alliance with Moscow we have a chance to pay them back for all of the suffering that the Americans have inflicted on the Islamic world. We call upon Muslims and Russian Orthodox to join in a united Islamic-Orthodox jihad against the Empire of Satan."

Muslim and Orthodox commentators have criticized the mufti's statement. In 2003, Mufti Tadzhuddin called for a jihad against the U.S. in reaction to the war in Iraq, but he then kept silent on the subject, reportedly at the insistence of the government.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, THE QUESTION BEHIND GEORGIA’S ENTERING A WAR * * * “I don’t believe that the Georgian government started [the August 7 military action against South Ossetia], but I condemn my government’s action to respond with a full-scale military conflict,” David Usupashvili, leader of Georgia’s opposition Republican Party, was quoted as saying in “The Washington Post” on September 9. “The main fundamental question is why [President Mikheil] Saakashvili and his administration … did not think Russia would respond with all in its power, guns and tanks.”

STRAWS IN A WHIRLWIND
The European Union (EU) will send 200 monitors to Georgia no later than October 1, joining U.N. and other international observers, according to an August 8 agreement between the Russian government and French President Nicolas Sarkozy acting on behalf of the EU. Russia said it would withdraw its troops within 10 days of the EU deployment. But the tense standoff between Russia and the West over the larger question of Georgia’s sovereignty over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia remains unresolved. Russia has declared its recognition of the independence of the two regions “final” and “irrevocable” and has pledged to sign military pacts with both. Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said he had given his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev a letter from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, vowing to abstain from the use of force, a pledge demanded by Russia.

1. EU-RUSSIA THAW? After his talks in Moscow, President Sarkozy said that negotiations on a new EU-Russia partnership could resume "as early as October" if Russia complied with the agreed-upon measures in Georgia. The meetings had been originally scheduled for September but the EU froze them until a Russian pullout of Georgia. "Things are perfectly clear: we want partnership and we want peace," Sarkozy said.

President Medvedev chimed in. "Our country values the European efforts ... we do not want a deterioration of our relations," Medvedev told Sarkozy, who was accompanied by EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Then the three Europeans left for Tbilisi to meet with Georgian President Saakashvili. The shuttle diplomacy was necessitated by the refusal of both Russia and Georgia to engage in direct talks.

On September 10, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov ruled out the possibility that EU observers would be allowed into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In Brussels, however, Solana promptly announced that the EU observer mission "will be deployed with the spirit that it can deploy everywhere," including the two breakaway regions.

As we go to press in the morning of September 12, the Associated Press (AP) cited “a senior Western diplomat” to the effect that talks with Russia have collapsed on the issue of sending additional international monitors to the two breakaway regions. The official told the AP that Moscow refused to approve 80 extra military monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to keep tabs on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The official says the decision has thrown into question the sincerity of Russia's pledge to withdraw its troops from key areas of Georgia later this month.

2. SAAKASHVILI IS CRITICIZED IN GEORGIA. While Russian troops continue to be dug in at strategic locations throughout undisputed Georgian territory, behind the scenes the Russian government continues to work on its declared objective of ousting President Saakashvili. However, with wartime restrictions on criticizing the government lifted last week, “public recriminations have begun,” reported “The Washington Post” in a “dispatch dated September 8 from Tbilisi, under the headline “Georgians Question Wisdom of War with Russia.” “The Post” quoted Alexander Rondeli, head of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, to the effect that the group around Saakashvili consists of “patriots” but cautioned: “Maybe their experience is not enough, and they are revolutionaries rather than experienced statesmen.”

3. EU TO BOOST LINKS WITH MOSCOW’S FORMER SATELLITES. But what in the long run may turn out to be the most significant part of the new European diplomatic offensive, EU leaders announced on September 8 in Brussels that "recent events illustrate the need for Europe to intensify its efforts with regard to the security of energy supplies." The EU objective now is to use its relations with Moscow's former satellites to boost its own energy security by creating supply routes which do not go through Russia, Brussels officials told the radio Deutsche Welle. Also in the works is a review of “the whole range of the EU's relationships" with Russia and Georgia in order to see where it could "reinforce" the EU’s current policies, sources in the French government, told the DPA news agency. The talks are also to focus on how the EU can promote democratic reforms and reconciliation in parts of the former USSR where Russia and the West are competing for influence.

Diplomats said the meeting could include talks on how to handle Belarus, where the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko in the summer released the country's last political prisoners in what was seen in Brussels as a step toward greater freedom.

4. HOT RUSSIAN RHETORIC THREATENS POLAND. Russian rhetoric grew hot in advance of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s first official visit to Warsaw since the outbreak of the war in Georgia. The Polish decision to allow the United States to install a missile shield on Polish territory is a "very dangerous game," which had upset the military balance between Washington and Moscow, Lavrov told the Polish newspaper “Polska” on September 10. Earlier that day, a Russian general threatened to target the planned missile shield sites with ICBMs.

"Poland appears not to have understood that it has become a party to a very dangerous game," Lavrov warned in a sharp language recalling his Soviet predecessors. "This means Poland took revenge on us for defending the Ossetians. This is rather small-minded behavior as well as a political mistake."

5. RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA EQUATES ETHNIC AND POLITICAL RUSSOPHOBIA. The Sova Information-Analytical Center in Moscow has called attention to a dangerous trend in Russian government propaganda about Georgia and Georgians. Increasingly, the center's analysts say, Moscow's spokesmen fail to draw a clear distinction between those who happen to be members of a particular ethnic group and those within that group who may manifest Russophobic tendencies. The officials’ failure to maintain that distinction, the center argues, contributes to xenophobia among Russians and thus encourages attacks on Georgians and other ethnic groups.

6. GEORGIA CHARGES RUSSIAN ‘ETHNIC CLEANSING.’ Georgia has accused Russia before the U.N.'s highest court in The Hague of conducting a long-running campaign of "ethnic cleansing" in Georgian territory, European news agencies reported. Russia defended its actions before the International Court of Justice, claiming that a Georgian assault on the rebel region of South Ossetia last month left Russia no choice but to send in tanks and troops.

7. TATAR INDEPENDENCE AN ABSTRACTION NOW—BUT IN THE FUTURE? On September 9, “The New York Times” suggested that Russia might have inspired separatism among its own numerous nationalities when President Medvedev formally recognized the independence of the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In an article of well over 1,000 words, “The Times” focused on Tatarstan, an energy-rich republic in the middle Volga region that advertises its “powerful and diversified industry, high intellectual potential, and qualified labor.”

“The Times” noted that the two declarations of independence in the Caucasus were swiftly followed by an appeal by the All-Tatar Civic Center expressing the devout wish that Tatarstan would be next. Rashit Akhmetov, chief editor of the opposition paper “Zvezda Povolzhya,” was quoted as saying that Moscow’s decision to recognize the independence of two Georgian regions “made Tatarstan’s cause seem, as Rashit Akhmetov put it, ‘not hopeless.’” Akhmetov’s key reaction was that “Russia has lost the moral right not to recognize us.”

“The Times” also cited Lawrence Scott Sheets, identified as the Caucasus program director for the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that tries to prevent and resolve global conflicts. “In the long term, [the Russians] could have signed their own death warrant,” Sheets was quoted as saying. “[Tatar independence is] an abstraction now, but 20 years down the road, it won’t be such an abstraction.”

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