Volume 8, Number 40
October 3, 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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NEW ANTI-EXTREMISM AGENCY PROPOSED, REACTIONS ARE MIXED. On September 30, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation called for a new, separate law enforcement agency to battle extremism, “The Moscow Times” reported. Addressing the State Duma in a hearing on extremism, Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin said such an agency is needed because federal and local authorities have been "ineffective" in preventing hate crimes in recent years. He said 356 extremist crimes were registered last year, up from 130 in 2004. He pointed out that through the first six months of this year, authorities registered 250 extremist crimes, 73 of them committed in Moscow. Hate crimes are up while the number of terrorist acts is falling, he said. From January through June, he said, there were 19 “religiously or racially motivated killings” in Russia, all but two of them in Moscow.

On the same day at the Kremlin, President Dmitry Medvedev told military officials appointed to top command posts that "special attention should be devoted to the fight against extremism and nationalism." He cited a recent a recent “harsh verdict handed down to a group of youngsters” who had committed hate crimes in the Russian capital. He called the sentences “a serious lesson for those who are trying to rock our society and disrupt the civic peace established in Russia."

After the Duma hearings, deputies issued a statement calling the spike in hate crimes "a real threat to the foundations of the constitutional system" that "undermines social stability."

However, “The Times” quoted lawmakers and human rights activists as skeptical about a new agency to fight extremism. "This is simply harmful," said Gennady Gudkov, a member of the Duma's Security Committee. "We would be relieving those who should be fighting extremism of their constitutional responsibility." Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the Sova Information-Analytical Center, which tracks hate crimes, said she feared that the proposed agency would be "directed toward the political opposition" and be "a corruption machine." She added that the true number of hate crimes in the country is much higher than the figures provided by the authorities.

GRAVEST THREAT TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM COMES FROM RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES. The gravest current threat to freedom of thought, conscience, and belief in Russia comes from the federal government's approach to combating religious extremism, Forum 18 News Service stated in its survey released on October 1. In the wake of the 2002 Extremism Law, moderate Muslim literature has been outlawed as inciting religious extremism, which the news agency, focused on religious freedom in the former USSR, questions. That law has led to “harassment and sometimes prosecution of alleged authors, distributors or simply readers,” the survey said, and the authorities have subsequently begun to level religious extremism charges against other confessions, including traditional pagans, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Baptists. According to the survey, some religious communities continue to complain of restrictions through petty bureaucracy, such as the loss of legal status for unlicensed educational work or not engaging in financial activity. Long-running problems persist—such as state disruption of religious events, obstruction of access to and retention of property for worship, and bureaucratic visa denials for foreign religious personnel.

The survey criticized the June 2002 Extremism Law's definition of extremism which contains a number of clauses describing such activity in a religious context: incitement of religious hatred; propaganda of the exclusivity, superiority or inferiority of citizens according to their attitude towards religion or religious affiliation; obstruction of the lawful activity of religious associations accompanied by violence or the threat of violence; [AND] committing a crime motivated by religious hatred. While the survey found such formulations defensible, the government's record in seeking to apply them causes concern.

GYPSIES THE MOST OPPRESSED MINORITY IN RUSSIA, SAYS EU COMMISSION. The Council of Europe's anti-racism commission found that the Roma (also known as Gypsies) are the most oppressed minority in Russia, the national daily "Vremya Novostey" dated September 24 reported. "Gypsies, like people from the Caucasus, are stopped 20 times often more by police than people of Slavic appearance," said the commission's deputy chief Michael Head, a conclusion seconded by Russia's human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

But Galina Kozhevnikova of the Sova Center observed that people from Central Asia are more likely to fall victim to neo-Nazi violence.

The commission also found that the Russian government has not taken the necessary steps against neo-Nazis and that migration laws contribute to discrimination against migrants. Both the European commission and Kozhevnikova found that Russian police have increased the number of neo-Nazi arrests, though hate crimes laws are still rarely applied.

SKINHEADS ADMIT TO KILLING 20 RACE-MOTIVATED MURDERS. On October 1, the leaders of a skinhead gang charged with hate crimes admitted to committing 20 race-motivated murders and attempting 12 more, Interfax reported. Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky went on trial with seven others at the Moscow City Court for allegedly carrying out a series of racist murders and other crimes in Moscow, an unidentified participant in the trial told Interfax. While the proceedings are closed to the public, the source told Interfax that Ryno and Skachevsky "fully admitted their guilt" as charged.

City prosecutors have accused Ryno, Skachevsky, and seven other defendants--aged from 15 to 22--of committing 20 racist murders and 12 other racially motivated attacks from August 2006 through October 2007. Three other defendants admitted partial guilt, while two others--Svetlana Avakumova, 22, and Denis Lavrinenkov, 17--pled not guilty, the source told Interfax. It is unclear how the remaining two defendants pled.

According to reports in national media, Ryno, a student at an icon painting school, has told investigators that he began his murder spree on August 21, 2006, the same day a bomb killed 13 people at Cherkizovsky Market. Ryno and Skachevsky were arrested in April 2007 on suspicion of killing Armenian businessman Karen Abramyan. Abramyan, 46, was stabbed 20 times in Moscow and died in the hospital.

MOSCOW COURT SENTENCES NEO-NAZIS FOR MURDER. The Moscow City Court gave four neo-Nazis sentences ranging from suspended sentences to 12 years in prison after they were found guilty of murder, assault, and incitement of ethnic hatred, according to a September 26 report by Jewish.ru. The trial involved the October 2006 murder of a Kyrgyz man, whom the gang, two of whom were members of the neo-Nazi group Slavic Union, killed and robbed. Two of the defendants were also found guilty of a separate assault on a Chinese man. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia criticized the verdict which President Dmitry Medvedev called “a serious lesson,” as too lenient.

TWO WOMEN CHARGED WITH INCITING RACE HATRED. Two women in Ivanovo, Russia face charges of inciting ethnic hatred after allegedly distributing leaflets accusing migrants of sexually abusing women, according to an October 2 report posted on Jewish.ru. The leaflets called on Russian women not to marry foreign men. A court will decide whether or not the leaflets fall under Russia's anti-extremism laws.

RUSSIAN ANTI-MIGRANT GROUP TO WORK WITH GERMAN NEO-NAZIS. Russia's far-right Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) has announced plans to collaborate with the neo-Nazi German National Democratic Party (NDP) and other extreme nationalist groups in Europe, the Sova Center has reported. Sova quoted Aleksandr Belov, one of DPNI's leaders, as saying last month that "we see the NDP as out most reliable ally in Germany" and that the Russian group's "collaboration" with that party "will not be limited" to meetings like one planned for Moscow this winter but involve other as yet unspecified "interactions" as well. Belov said that the Moscow meeting will include not only representatives of the NDP but also representatives from Great Britain, Sweden, and more than 40 other European countries. Belov emphasized that "the nationalists from Germany and Russia must by all means develop the existing potential of cooperation."

In his blog “Window on Eurasia,” former U.S. government nationalities expert Paul Goble called the DPNI-NDP linkup particularly worrisome because “DPNI enjoys close ties with some members of the Russian government and has regular access to state-controlled media.” Goble quoted German officials who have identified the NDP as "a threat to the constitutional order." According to a recent German government report, the NDP calls for the development of a popular front rather than the advancement of its interests as a party while it maintains views about Hitler and the Nazi past that are consistently "racist, antisemitic, and revisionist."

RUSSIA CAN LOSE ITS FAR EAST REGION, MEDVEDEV WARNS. Addressing a conference on social-economic development in the Kamchatka Region on September 29, President Dmitry Medvedev warned that if the government fails to take immediate steps, Russia could “lose” its Far East, a declaration that one local news agency thought implied that Russia faces far more serious problems in the region than the Kremlin has acknowledged up to now.

As reported on the web site RBCDAILY.ru, Medvedev said that "if we do not step up the level of activity of our work [in the Russian Far East], then in the final analysis we can lose everything" and the region could become a source of raw materials for Asian countries. The consequences of further inaction, he warned, could manifest themselves quite quickly and "end in an extremely dramatic way" much as the Soviet Union did 17 years ago. He called on the Russian government to "take administrative decisions" and not to get tied up with "other problems.”

In reporting Medvedev’s declaration which it called "unprecedented," RBCDaily.ru also cited the views of other Russian officials. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told the news outlet that Moscow should "repeat the triumph" of Sergei Witte, the tsarist official who directed the transfer of population from European Russia to the Russian Far East. Sergei Shoigu, a cabinet member in charge of emergency situations, was quoted as saying that tsarist methods would be useful, including the offer of interest free loans to those willing to move to the Far East and freeing from the draft all men who do so.

But other experts interviewed by RBCDaily.ru disagreed. For instance, Maksim Perov, a former department head at the ministry of regional affairs, said that the Far East is "completely cut off from the rest of Russia” and must "orient itself" toward Asian countries rather than to European Russia.

EU TO STOP RADICALIZATION OF MUSLIMS IN PRISONS. Officials from France, Germany, and Austria have prepared a manual to help prison authorities prevent their jailhouses from becoming incubators for Muslim extremists, the Associated Press (AP) reported on October 1. The manual was distributed at a two-day closed-door conference of European security experts and will be given to prison officials. For security reasons, its contents will not be released to the public. In France, Muslims make up a large part of the inmate population, even the majority in some prisons, the AP dispatch noted, and “a disproportionate number of Muslims” are in prisons elsewhere in the European Union.

Prisons "can be a facilitator and an accelerator" of radicalization and inmates are often "strongly destabilized" and therefore malleable, Christophe Chaboud, head of France's Anti-Terrorist Coordination Unit told the AP. "It is not a question of religion but of confrontation with the West."

Some 80 inmates in France—out of a prison population of 64,000--are considered hard-core extremists, the AP quoted National Prison Administration Director Claude d'Harcourt as saying. "The problem isn't the 80,” d’Harcourt said. “It's the circle around them--200 to 300 who could be tempted," and whether those who become radicals take action once out of prison.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, AN OPPOSITIONIST’S PLEA * * * "Of course [the West] should not shut doors to the Belarusian political regime,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Alyaksandr Kazulin as saying. Kazulin ran against Aleksandr Lukashenko in the 2006 election and was recently given an early release from jail, where he was serving a 5 1/2-year sentence for his role in protests following the vote. “It's necessary to work with them, teach them how things should be done in the civilized world and civilized community. But I think it has to be clear that dialogue means cooperation, and cooperation suggests steps toward each other. That's why if the West takes a step toward the Belarusian political regime then this regime would have to make the necessary corresponding steps--not declarations, not statements but concrete actions and real changes for the democratization of Belarusian society."

KEEPING UP THE DIALOGUE
Some basic things do not change in the former Soviet space while European leaders keep pushing, talking, and hoping. They welcome every small step toward democratic standards even when control remains with the heirs of Joseph Stalin determined to keep it total.

1. ONE STEP AHEAD, TWO STEPS BACK--OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND? As up to 300 European Union (EU) monitors prepared to deploy in Georgia on October 1 according to the EU-Russia agreement, Moscow declared that it would not allow them to enter a buffer zone its military created to surround separatist South Ossetia, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The dispatch called the statement “another example of Moscow stalling on compliance with a cease-fire agreement it had reached after the August war with Georgia over breakaway South Ossetia.”

But a few hours later, at least two EU patrols entered a Russian-controlled buffer zone around South Ossetia for the first time in what they said was a smooth start to their peacekeeping operation, Reuters reported. They passed Russian checkpoints. “A smooth deployment is critical to the success of the peace deal and will test Russia's willingness to stick to its terms,” wrote the Reuters correspondent who accompanied the patrol.

The dispatch also reported that after lengthy discussions with Russian commanders, a second patrol entered at Karaleti, in an area where human rights groups say paramilitaries have been looting and attacking ethnic Georgian villages since the war, forcing thousands to flee. "Patrols made first contact with authorities and [the local] population," an EU spokesman said. "They also passed different Russian checkpoints and entered the so-called adjacent areas." A spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, now on a visit to Georgia, said: "They have been able to go wherever they planned to go." The EU mission told Reuters that it hoped to coordinate a "step-by-step" Russian withdrawal and the return of Georgian police to the zones to avoid a security vacuum that roaming militias could exploit.

Georgia welcomed the EU patrols' entry to the buffer zone. "It is once more confirmation that when the international community is unified and resolute, the Russians are compelled to comply," said National Security Council Secretary Kakha Lomaia.

Russia has repeatedly said the EU monitors will not be allowed inside South Ossetia or Abkhazia, both of which it has recognized as independent states. Moscow says it can guarantee security in the rebel regions, where it plans to post more than 7,000 troops.

2. THE WEST MUST RECOGNIZE THE TWO REGIONS’ INDEPENDENCE, LAVROV SAYS. Russia has prepared a number of initiatives for the UN conference in Geneva scheduled to open on October 15 on ensuring "the demilitarization of Georgia," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian journalists aboard a plane flying back from the UN General Assembly session in New York, Itar-Tass news agency reported on September 30. Lavrov revealed that Russia has prepared draft agreements between Georgia and Abkhazia and between Georgia and South Ossetia and presented them for the consideration of its UN partners, another dispatch from the semi-official Russian news agency added on the same day.

Lavrov told the Russian press that he expected the discussion on extending UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers' mandates in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be “difficult.” He pointed out that the UN mandate in Abkhazia and nearby Georgian districts is due to expire on October 15, while the OSCE mandate in South Ossetia and nearby Georgian districts ends on December 31. "Therefore these mandates will need to be extended quickly and on the basis of new realities,” Lavrov said. He made it clear that the West must abandon its “categorical opposition” to recognizing the independence of the two regions Georgia considers its sovereign territory. He suggested that South Ossetia and Abkhazia support the idea of outside observers on their territories--but not before the West recognizes “the new reality” of the independence of the two regions.

3. BELARUS ELECTIONS FELL SHORT OF OSCE STANDARDS. The EU took it as a good sign when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko allowed more than 500 monitors from the OSCE into the country to monitor the September 28 parliamentary elections. However, OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights found that despite “some minor improvements,” the elections “fell short of OSCE commitments.”

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the OSCE’s assessment “is likely to have a damning effect on efforts to improve ties between Belarus and the West. The EU had indicated that it would review its sanctions regime against Minsk if the OSCE gave a positive assessment of the vote.

Lukashenko had released political prisoners and allowed more than 70 members of the political opposition to participate in the vote, RFE/RL noted. “He also expressed confidence that a clean vote would help bring Belarus closer to Europe and further from Moscow's aggressive attempts to raise energy prices,” the radio recalled. “Now it appears Moscow will remain the more influential force. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced on September 29 that he will travel to Minsk next week, a step that appears to reflect Kremlin satisfaction with the vote's outcome.”

Roughly one out of every four candidates competing in the vote was a member of the political opposition. But Lidziya Yarmoshyna, the head of the country's Central Election Commission, announced that not a single member of the opposition won a seat in the 110-seat chamber. "I can only comment [on election] figures," Yarmoshyna was quoted as saying ever so tactfully. "As far as the question of why [opposition candidates] didn't win is concerned, the voters didn't back them. I would understand if the difference in the voting figures was close; one could discuss the issue. But if you look at the difference between opposition candidates and those who won the vote, the figures are not compatible at all."

Belarusian Party of Communists leader Syarhey Kalyakin, registered as the top vote-getter among the opposition candidates, won only 15.6% of the vote in his district. “Such results would be unsurprising in a typical Belarusian election, which ordinarily have the appearance of tightly orchestrated events that leave little to chance,” the radio pointed out. “But President Lukashenko, reeling from a series of rows with Moscow over mounting gas prices and seeking closer ties with the West, wanted it to seem different this time. The EU, in turn, had indicated it could reward a clean election by easing sanctions. So Lukashenko had taken steps to ensure the vote would resemble, at least outwardly, a legitimate political contest.”

The opposition has called the vote a sham, and on Election Day, some 800 of its activists staged a protest march in the capital Minsk. They charged that advance voting allowed the government to dump opposition ballots because the early stages had not been closely monitored.

In its preliminary report, the OSCE complained that ballot-counting was conducted behind closed doors, making it impossible to monitor. "Our observers reported that although voting was well conducted throughout the day, the integrity of the process was undermined by the vote count, which was judged bad or very bad in almost half of the observations," a spokesman for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly was quoted as saying.

Anatol Lyabedzka, head of the opposition United Civic Party, said that the vote count favored pro-presidential candidates because only a handful of opposition members were included in the country's election commissions. He stated: "We do not recognize this [election] campaign as fair or legitimate because only 0.05% of our people were included in [election] commissions counting the votes, and 99.95% of commission members are people politically or economically dependent on Lukashenko." Former opposition presidential candidate Alyaksandr Kazulin said that the opposition has "a lot of facts and evidence" proving voter fraud. But he encouraged the West to continue a dialogue with Minsk.
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There will not be a newsletter next week on account of Yom Kippur.

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