Volume 3, Number 1
Friday, January 3, 2003

BIGOTRY MONITOR
A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, andReligious 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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Three new developments have deepened Russia's most serious human rights -- and political -- crisis.

1. SUICIDE ATTACK ESCALATES CONFLICT IN CHECHNYA. On December 27, two trucks filled with explosives rammed into Chechnya's government compound in Grozny and reduced it to ruins. As of December 31, the death toll rose to 83, according to NTV television, and Interfax reports that 15 people are in critical condition. From sketchy reports it appears that clashes between Russian troops and the rebels have increased in intensity. On December 30, a landmine explosion killed a Chechen police officer and a Russian serviceman, and unknown assailants shot to death two Russian soldiers in a crowded market.

In a televised statement after the suicide attack, President Vladimir Putin called the bombing "an attempt to disrupt the political process in Chechnya'' and vowed that it would not interfere with efforts to find a political solution to the three-year conflict. "They can increase the number of victims, including among their own people, but they won't be able to disrupt the process of finding a settlement," he said, "and they won't be able to achieve their more sinister goal of disrupting the stabilization of the republic and the strengthening of Russia's statehood as a whole." Putin's strategy is based on a referendum on a pro-Russia constitution scheduled for March, which is supposed to pave the way for the election of a new Chechen president. Putin rejects offers of peace talks by elected Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, whom Russian officials have accused of complicity in the suicide attack as well as in the takeover of a Moscow theater in October 2002. Maskhadov denies the charge.

2. RUSSIAN COLONEL ACQUITTED IN KILLING CHECHEN WOMAN. The second blow to prospects of a settlement was the acquittal on December 31 of Col. Yuri Budanov, who acknowledged strangling in March 2000 a 17-year-old Chechen woman, Elza Kungayeva. The North Caucasus District Military Court pronounced him "temporarily insane" at the time of the murder, and he is to undergo compulsory in-patient psychiatric treatment. "With this trial, Russia hoped to showcase a commitment to accountability," said Elizabeth Andersen of Human Rights Watch (HRW). "But even in this clear-cut case, justice was flouted." Vissa Kungaev, Elza's father, told HRW that his family is disappointed by the verdict and that they plan to appeal the case. Other reports mention the likelihood of an appeal to Russia's highest court, and if that fails, the case may be taken to the European Court of Human Rights.

Over the past three years, HRW has monitored Russia's efforts to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by its troops in Chechnya. Its research found that officials have sought to shield Russian servicemen from justice as they routinely failed to take basic investigative steps. In most cases, investigators never identified any suspects and only a handful of cases have made it to the courts. Calling the acquittal "a travesty of justice," Andersen said: "If Russian authorities continue to shield servicemen from accountability and deny justice to their victims, the conflict in Chechnya may never be resolved. The vicious cycle of abuse and impunity must be broken."

"There is no hope any more for Chechens that the crimes of Russian forces against the civilian population will be punished," Tatyana Kasatkina of Memorial, a Russian human rights group, told Agence France Presse (AFP). "The Budanov case was so clear-cut, and yet the murderer has escaped punishment." Interviewed by "The New York Times," Arsen Sakalov, a leader of the Chechnya Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy organization, commented: "What can be said about justice in Chechnya? Everything that happens proves that there is no justice there."

3. RUSSIA SHUTS DOWN OSCE MISSION IN CHECHNYA. Also on December 31, the Russian government announced the shutdown of the mission in Chechnya of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), stationed in the northwestern Chechen city of Znamenskoe, thus ending any permanent international monitoring in the republic. Reports say that representatives of the 55-nation OSCE, which is devoted to easing conflicts across Europe and Central Asia, "negotiated intensely" to renew their mission, which began in mid-2001 and expired on midnight, December 31, 2002.

Angered by OSCE criticisms of Russian abuses against civilians, Russian officials insisted that the six-person mission limit its mandate to providing relief aid. "Unfortunately, not all our partners proved willing to assess the situation correctly and acknowledge the new reality in Chechnya," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said. "This meant we were unable to agree on a new mandate for the OSCE mission." According to the AFP, American diplomats "spearheaded" the effort to change the Russians’ minds; however, the Russians presented their plan as "a take-it-or-leave-it affair." Ivanov observed that OSCE negotiators still do not understand that Russia is "faced with international terrorism."

In New York, HRW protested. "Closing down the OSCE mission is part of Russia's strategy to cut off scrutiny of human rights conditions in Chechnya and portray the situation as normalizing," Elizabeth Andersen said. "First they announced closure of the camps for people displaced by the conflict and now they are shutting out the OSCE." Andersen pointed out that "Russia allowed the OSCE back into Chechnya in June 2001, as a goodwill gesture prior to President Vladimir Putin's first meeting with President George Bush, whose administration had been critical of the war in Chechnya. It is very important that the U.S. and other OSCE member states continue to impress upon Russia the importance they place on this mission."

RUSSIA'S HUMAN RIGHTHS OMBUDSMAN DECRIES ATTACK ON SYNAGOGUE. Oleg Mironov, Russia's human rights ombudsman, has raised his voice about an attack on a synagogue in Kostroma. "One should not turn a blind eye to such incidents, which threaten civil peace in a multi-ethnic and multi-faith Russia," he said on December 24, according to Interfax. Mironov was referring to "a group of hooligans" breaking the windows of the building and writing offensive words on the fence surrounding it. "What is especially alarming about this is that it is not the first incident," Mironov was quoted as saying in a release issued by his office. "Antisemitic statements have been written on the synagogue and the nearby buildings before, and an attempt has been made to set the building on fire." Mironov has contacted the prosecutor of the Kostroma region.

SKINHEADS ATTACK JOURNALISTS. Two journalists on the staff of the Khabarovsk newspaper "Molodoy Dalnevostochnik" were severely beaten with metal rods and hospitalized with broken limbs on December 21, Itar-Tass reported. A later report blamed skinheads. The victims are editor-in-chief Oleg Chuguyev and reporter Irina Polnikova. No sign of robbery has been reported. Suspicions of the motive focus on articles the newspaper published on local extremists and skinheads.

Itar-Tass adds that over the past ten years representatives of the mass media have been targeted in about ten similar assaults in Khabarovsk.

MOSCOW COURT ORDERS NEW TRIAL OF EDITOR CHARGED WITH ANTISEMITISM. On December 23 last year the Moscow City Court upheld the appeal filed by war veteran Boris Stambler against the ruling of the Zamoskvoretsky Court that declined to open a criminal case against Viktor Korchagin, editor of the antisemitic magazine "Rusich," Interfax reported. As a result, the Moscow City Court has cancelled the ruling of the Zamoskvoretsky Court and ordered a new trial.

Stambler had repeatedly asked three prosecutor's offices to open a criminal case based on two issues of "Rusich," one of them titled "The Jewish Occupation of Russia." Stambler contended that the publications are antisemitic and encourage guerrilla warfare against Jews. In addition, Stambler argued that Korchagin's articles contain materials that promote intolerance of the Orthodox religion. However, in spite of the fact that in 2000 and 2001 the Press Ministry issued two warnings to Korchagin for inciting ethnic strife, the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office declined to open a criminal case. Undeterred by the setback, Stambler filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General's Office. On April 5, 2002, the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal case against Korchagin. However, the case was dropped six months later, citing lack of evidence. On November 10, 2002, the Zamoskvoretsky Court declined Stambler's appeal that asked for another criminal case to be opened against Korchagin.

RUSSIANS KILL TAJIK WORKERS, DEPORTING TAJIKS FOMENTS TERRORISM. The director of a Tajik anti-terrorism research center called Shchit ("shield" in Russian) D. Nazirov, has appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to change the new practice of deporting Tajik migrants and charging them high fees to enter the country, according to the Tajik newspaper "Vecherny Dushanbe" which published excerpts from Nazirov's open letter on December 13. He wrote that as 70 percent of the Tajik population - half a million people -- live below the poverty line, it is essential for Tajiks to seek work and "a piece of bread" in Russia. Blocking them from doing so could give rise to "terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking," he argued.

According to Nazirov, a new regulation that took effect on November 1, 2002 requires a payment of $100 from every foreigner entering Russia and demands the same from those already in that country. He noted that on November 15, Russian law-enforcement agencies began to deport foreigners, including citizens of Tajikistan. "If all plants, factories, and construction companies worked at full capacity in Tajikistan, these people would be unlikely to leave their homes in search of work," Nazirov wrote. "By the way, we have already 'got used' to (although it is impossible to become accustomed to) receiving every week several coffins containing the bodies of Tajik citizens who have been beaten up by sticks and stones by Russian neo-fascists only because they were doing the most dirty and common jobs to earn a loaf of bread on the territory of the Russian Federation. According to our information, as of December 3,650 citizens of Tajikistan had been killed in Russia this year!"

Nazirov warned Putin that Russia's deportation of Tajiks "will add to the number of jobless in our country and this will consequently create a potential basis for extremism, terrorism, and drugs trafficking." He pleaded that Russian law enforcement agencies stop the deportations "in order not to create another hotbed of terrorism in the country, where Russia has military bases." He reminded Putin of the Eastern saying: "It is difficult to make friends, although a careless word can make enemies in an instant."

ALL IS QUIET ON THE EXTREMISM FRONT IN ALMATY, POLICE CHIEF SAYS. Religious organizations of an extremist character and foreign missionaries spreading radical ideas gain no support among residents of Almaty, the former Kazakh capital, according to the head of the Almaty Main Interior Directorate Police Major-General Kalmukhanbet Kasymov in an interview with the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency on December 29. "The situation in Almaty is quite stable and calm," he said, asserting that proponents of religious extremism "have no platform or masses which they may rely upon." He noted that the municipal police detain distributors of extremistleaflets "in ones, twos, and threes," and they are mainly non-residents trying to find comrades in Almaty.

Kasymov said that about 30 religions are operating in Almaty and the municipal police get "very strong support" from them in the fight against the spread of extremist ideas. "If they have information that a non-resident is distributing extremist literature, they immediately tell us and we go and confiscate it," he said. Kasymov added that it is thanks to such cooperation that the police suppressed "just recently" the unlawful activities of an organization headed by a person who came from Afghanistan. Members of that organization, Kasymov noted, had created an underground Islamic school where they forcibly kept and beat their pupils with sticks and forced them to study religious literature. He said that a total of 251 registered and six unregistered religious and public associations are being monitored in Almaty, the largest Kazakh city with a population of 1.3 million.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK "The moral element of the rehabilitation of the tsarist family began with the burial of their remains five years ago in the imperial mausoleum in St. Petersburg," the British newspaper "Guardian" quoted a source on the Presidential Commission investigating the fate of the imperial family, founded by President Vladimir Putin. "The canonization by the Russian Orthodox Church was another important step. The juridical [rehabilitation] is a necessary and last step."

WARTIME VATICAN FILES TO BE RELEASED STRESS CHURCH OPPOSITION TO RACISM
The Select Release of Documents Will Not Settle Arguments Over Pius XII's Wartime Role

On February 15, the Vatican will declassify documents on its relations with Germany in the years preceding World War II, a spokesman told the press on December 28. But - and it is a big "but" - the spokesman explained that a large part of the files dating back to one of the critical periods - from 1931 to 1934 - were "nearly completely destroyed or dispersed" during the 1945 Allied bombing of Berlin and a fire at the apostolic nuncio's palace. That destruction of the files was news to scholars contacted by this newsletter, and some of them recalled instructions reportedly left behind by the ailing Pope Pius XII that his personal letters must be burned, and they were.

The 1931-1934 period is one of the much-debated times of Roman Catholic submission to the will of Adolf Hitler, when the powerful Catholic party in the Reichstag could have challenged the Nazis but did not. Instead, it chose accommodation, and many historians suspect that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, as the future pope was then known, had a major influence on the policies of the Catholic party.

News agency accounts state flatly that the release of the documents represents, in the words of the Associated Press (AP), "the Vatican's response to demands by Jewish groups for access to archives dealing with Pope Pius XII, the World War II pope." Papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said that the files will shed light on the relations with Nazism and make clear the "condemnation of racism" by the Church.

In fact, the documents to be released do not deal with the papacy of Pius XII but with the years between 1922 and 1939, when he was a Vatican diplomat in Germany and instrumental in negotiating the concordat between the Holy See and the Third Reich, signed in 1933.

Last February, the Vatican said that it would make public its Germany-related archives to help end what it called the "unjust and ungrateful speculation" surrounding Pius XII's wartime actions. That pledge was made at a time of renewed criticism after a panel of Catholic and Jewish scholars studying the Vatican's wartime record said it was suspending its work because the Vatican had not released all its wartime archives. Jewish groups went as far as urging Pope John Paul not to proceed with plans to beatify Pius XII, the pontiff from 1939 to 1958, until the historical record is clarified.

Responding last October, the Vatican said the documents would be released in January. But earlier this month, the head of the Vatican archives, the Rev. Sergio Pagano, informed AP about missing that deadline by a few weeks because of the vast amount of material that needed to be handled. The Vatican has said the documents will show historians "the great works of charity and assistance'' by Pius XII for prisoners and other victims, regardless of nation, religion, or race.

Few if any scholars expect great revelations from the selection of documents the Vatican has seen fit to let "qualified scholars" - though not the public - peruse. "You can be sure of one thing," commented a student of the Vatican's wartime role. "Nothing will be disclosed that might hurt Pius's reputation."
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