Volume Two, Number 1
Friday, January 4, 2002

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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U.S. HAS CUT DOWN ON FOREIGN SUPPORT FOR CHECHEN FIGHTERS. The United States has "made some progress in cutting off" financial and military support for "foreign terrorists," such as the Jordanian-born fighter known as Khattab, who operate in Chechnya, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow told "Ekho Moskvy" in an interview on December 28. (Russian officials have long claimed that Khattab is closely linked with Osama bin Laden.) But, Vershbow steered clear of the Russian government line identifying the Chechen struggle for independence as a bin Laden project. He cautioned that it is important to distinguish between foreign terrorists like Khattab and rebels who have championed Chechnya's independence bid. "Clearly those who have chosen to take up arms against Russian authority can't simply be destroyed by military means," he said, calling a military solution "a blind alley.'' He added; "We do continue to have concerns about the human rights situation inside Chechnya and abuses that have sometimes been carried out by Russian forces.'' Vershbow also called on the Russian government to help protect media freedom and voiced concern about a bankruptcy case against TV6, the country's last major independent television station. He said that Secretary of State Colin Powell had raised the issue in his talks in Moscow early last month.

RUSSIA INTENSIFIED ITS WAR IN CHECHNYA, SAYS PARIS DAILY. Over the past two months Russian repression in Chechnya has intensified, according to the December 27, 2001 issue of "Le Monde," one of the most influential dailies in Europe. Relying on information obtained from Memorial and other human rights organizations, the newspaper described the appearance of Russian "death squads" in Chechen villages as having become as "ordinary" as the helicopters bombing the mountainous south and the 45,000 Russian soldiers in the republic pillaging and killing. "The 'searches' are systematic, conducted by masked men, with dogs on a leash, that we see everywhere," "Le Monde" quoted Mylene Sauloy, a documentary film-maker, who had just returned from Grozny. Also quoted was Oleg Orlov, president of Memorial, who said that during the "searches" over the past two months, Russian troops carried off televisions sets, mattresses, and pillows, and demanded money, threatening to take with them local youths. According to Orlov, 300 people who were rounded up during these raids have been officially acknowledged as "disappeared," but Memorial believes that the real figure is "a good deal higher." Orlov called the Russian soldiers "uncontrollable," not obeying orders from their command, while "organized gangs made up of representatives of the Russian public force are engaged in abductions, acts of torture, and assassinations."

RUSSIA'S HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER REPORTS NO PROGRESS IN 2001. Unlike Russian leaders ebullient in their praise for the accomplishments of 2001, the government's Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov dismissed the idea of progress in the human rights sphere, according to an Interfax report on January 2. He cited "police outrages" as remaining on the list of human rights violations. "Beatings by policemen cannot be tolerated," he said. He added that in Russia the individual citizen acting alone "feels absolutely helpless, should the police, prosecutors, and the court launch an agreed-upon onslaught on him. Unfortunately, courts are often manipulated by the police." He extended his remarks to political rights. "Problems in the defense of human rights are telling on the observance of the citizens' political rights, which can be seen from the recent presidential elections in Yakutia," he said. "Sometimes elections are not elections at all, but are either an appointment or an attempt to buy a deputy's mandate. People have become weary of these practices and no longer trust the authorities."

Mironov brought up an even more basic complaint. "How can one seriously talk about human rights if charges for energy and for traveling by railway will increase by more than 35 per cent this year?" he asked. "The Russian citizens, many of whom live below the poverty line, will have to pay more for gas, heating, and electricity. This is just inadmissible!" He denounced as "a flagrant violation of human rights the practice of cutting off heat and electricity in the winter in some of the Russian regions. This is telling on the citizens' health, and it goes against the constitution which says that Russia is a socially-oriented state."

In contrast with Mironov's cri de coeur, much of the Russian news media struck cheery tones in assessing the year 2001. "Trud" went as far as declaring that "Russia objectively lived the best year in its modern history."

VORONEZH SKINHEADS TARGET AFRICAN AND ASIAN STUDENTS. During the first ten months of 2001, the Voronezh office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported 72 crimes against foreign students in the city, the local newspaper "Moyo" noted on November 27, 2001. According to the article, skinheads concentrated their attacks on foreign students from Africa and Asia, especially right after sport and musical events. Large groups of skinheads routinely stream out of the local stadium and head for Voronezh State University to smash the windows of dorms where foreign students live and to beat those they can find. Skinheads also distribute neo-Nazi literature sent from Moscow. In the newspaper's estimate, about 200 skinheads live in Voronezh.

RUSSIAN YOUTH MOVEMENT TO COMBAT RACISM. In the far northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk, an organization called the Democratic Union of Youth has announced an essay competition to combat discrimination against people from the Caucasus, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The project was prompted by the mass violence that broke out on October 30 last year at Moscow's Tsaritsyno market, as well by a skinhead attack several months ago in Arkhangelsk, during which two Georgians nearly lost their lives. RFE/RL quoted a local anti-racism activist to the effect that while inter-ethnic tensions are not particularly high in Arkhangelsk, negative feelings toward people from the Caucasus exist, partially because of their dominant position in outdoor markets. Another reason is the widespread perception that they are more likely to be engaged in criminal behavior than Russians. However, local crime statistics do not validate this belief.

U.S. CONGRESS GIVES EXTENSION FOR REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT BUDGET. The U.S. Congress approved a provision to ease refugee processing. Lawmakers recently granted a one-year extension of the Specter Amendment, which will help facilitate refugee processing of Jews, evangelical Christians, and other religious minorities in the former Soviet Union. The Labor, Health and Human Services bill also includes funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which provides grants to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and other Jewish social service agencies for initial resettlement needs of refugees from the former Soviet Union, Iran, and elsewhere. In 2001, HIAS received approximately $8 million from the office, specifically for job skills and placement programs.

CHRISTMAS EVICTION FOR TURKMEN ADVENTIST FOR HOSTING SERVICES. Marina Ismakaeva, a Seventh Day Adventist, has been evicted from her apartment and made homeless, Keston News Service has learned. The eviction order was issued by the Turkmenabad city court on December 21 on the grounds that an unregistered community of Adventists had been meeting in Ismakaeva's home. The eviction followed a recent tightening of the repression of Protestants by Turkmen authorities. For instance, an elderly blind Baptist was threatened with eviction for hosting a Baptist service that was raided by the secret police. The raid led to large fines for some 40 worshipers, the expulsion of three foreign citizens, and two-week imprisonments for several participants.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "Russian democracy is still imperfect," wrote London's "Financial Times" in its roundup editorial on the year 2001. "It lacks fully fledged human rights protection, media freedoms, and the rule of law. Mr. Putin, the ex-KGB man, is not an altruist. Western support should be matched by healthy skepticism."

THE CHANGING FACES AND STORIES OF JIHAD FIGHTERS
Captured Foreigners Who Joined Taliban Now Fear Forcible Repatriation

Those recruited to fight fundamentalist Islam's war against the infidels have many faces and nationalities, and the case histories they present to visitors may or may not represent the full truth. Two seemingly discrete groups stand out in the small sample of the 3,500 Taliban fighters held at Shibarghan prison whom correspondent Carlotta Gall interviewed for her report in "The New York Times" on January 1. Members of the first group are fervent in their faith and declare their readiness "to die a martyr's death in a holy war." A second group is composed of those who tell foreign journalists -- in this case an infidel who also happens to be a woman -- that the jihad they had gone to fight "turned out not to be a holy war, but a battle against fellow Muslims."

Some of those interviewed claim to have been misled by Taliban recruiters; others emphasize that they had left their native lands for Afghanistan to escape persecution for their religious beliefs and to live in a state under Islamic law. Much like Ukrainian and Latvian prisoners of war who had fought on the German side during World War II, the Shibarghan prisoners tend to describe themselves as victims of circumstances beyond their control, and they minimize the extent of their participation in the lost war.

The prisoners who present an immediate human rights problem are those who say that they fear forcible repatriation because they will be executed in their home countries. They are the prisoners who impressed correspondent Gall as appearing "most afraid" and "frightened" by the threats of their Afghan guards telling them that they will be sent home. Their fears of persecution seem justified, which may enable them to secure assistance as refugees according to the UN definition. However bizarre it may appear, their oft-stated intention now is to seek political asylum from the new Afghan government they had fought.

The prisoners who come from countries of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, such as Uzbekistan, now a U.S. ally of convenience, do not have good prospects of dodging repatriation, though Afghan officials might allow at least some of them to slip across the border and return home where the authorities may not know about their Afghan adventure. If extradited, a particularly grim future awaitsMuslims from China, where repression of the Muslim minority is severe, state control is tight, and Muslims are routinely accused of being "separatists" and "terrorists" and sentenced to long terms in labor camps. A prisoner willing to give only his first name said that six months ago he had fled the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, once a predominantly Muslim-inhabited area, because he wanted to live in Muslim Afghanistan. He expressed the hope that the new Afghan government would allow that, as he would never want to go back to China. "When they captured me, the soldiers said I would be handed back to China," "The Times" quoted him as saying. "They will shoot me in China. What can I do?"

A murkier case was presented by a 22-year-old carpenter from Pakistani Kashmir. He said he had gone to Kabul after hearing on the radio about the Americans waging war on Islam and bombing Afghanistan. His father objected, arguing that he would fight Muslims and thus the war did not qualify as a jihad. But the son disagreed, saying, "But I want to be martyred. I hope to go to paradise. It is better than life on earth."

However, when asked by "The Times" if he would now consider joining the jihad in Indian Kashmir, where Muslim militants ambush Indian forces, he answered in the negative. "Jihad is very difficult there," he said. "You have to go on foot in the mountains."
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Copyright (c) 2001. UCSJ. All rights reserved.

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