Volume 3, Number 3
Friday, January 17, 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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WAR ON TERROR WEAKENED BY U.S. FLOUTING HUMAN RIGHTS, HRW SAYS. Global support for the war on terrorism is diminishing partly because the United States too often neglects human rights in its conduct of that war, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in releasing its "World Report 2003" on January 14. While terrorists violate basic human rights because they target civilians, the United States undermines the same principles when it overlooks human rights abuses by anti-terrorist allies such as Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, and Afghan warlords, HRW said in its annual survey of human rights around the world. "The United States is far from the world's worst human rights abuser," said Kenneth Roth, HRW's executive director. "But Washington has so much power today that when it flouts human rights standards, it damages the human rights cause worldwide."

The White House did not comment on the report directly. A spokesman said, according to "The New York Times": "The United States is the world's leader when it comes to promoting human rights. And while we are fighting terrorism, we are also recommitting ourselves to the fight for freedom, dignity, and human rights."

The New York-based international monitoring group charged that the war against terror has provided an excuse for other Western countries to slacken their support for human rights. For instance, European leaders virtually abandoned efforts to pressure Russia, an anti-terrorist ally, to end its abusive conduct of the war in Chechnya.

Covering 58 countries in the 558-page report, HRW identifies positive trends such as the formal end to wars in Angola, Sudan, and Sierra Leone, as well as peace talks in Sri Lanka. Negative developments included the outbreak of serious communal violence in Gujarat, India, and the continued killing of civilians in wars from Colombia to Chechnya, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Governments continued highly repressive policies in Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, and Vietnam.

In its National Security Strategy, the Bush administration seemed to recognize the connections between repression and terrorism, and had taken some steps to promote human rights in countries directly involved in the struggle against terrorism, such as Egypt and Uzbekistan, HRW observed. The United States has also tried to advance human rights in places where the war on terrorism was not involved, including Burma, Belarus, and Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, HRW stated, the U.S. government's engagement on human rights has been compromised by its unwillingness to confront a number of crucial partners, and its refusal to be bound by standards it preaches to others.

"To fight terrorism, you need the support of people in countries where the terrorists live," said Roth. "Cozying up to oppressive governments is hardly a way to build those alliances."

According to HRW's report, in 2002 the U.S. government actively tried to undermine important human rights initiatives such as the International Criminal Court, a new international inspection regime to prevent torture, and a UN resolution calling on nations to fight the war on terrorism in a manner consistent with human rights.

POPE URGES THE KREMLIN TO STOP EXPELLING CATHOLIC CLERGY. On January 13, Pope John Paul II called on Russian authorities to stop expelling Catholic priests and bishops, according to a Reuters report. Speaking to diplomats accredited to the Vatican, the pope said he had been greatly pained by "the plight of Catholic communities in the Russian Federation, which for months now have seen some of their pastors prevented from returning to them." The record reflects that last April, Russian authorities prevented Bishop Jerzy Mazur, a Polish citizen based in eastern Siberia since 1998, from returning to Moscow from Poland. Several priests have also been prevented from returning to their parishes or dioceses in Russia and were declared persona non grata while traveling outside the country. The Vatican appealed to the United States and other states to use their influence toward resolving "the crisis" in Moscow.

The Polish-born pontiff minced no words. He was quoted as saying: "The Holy See expects from [Russian] government authorities concrete decisions which will put an end to this crisis." According to the Vatican, 1.3 million practicing Catholics live among Russia's 143 million people. Others put the figure much lower.

According to "Novye Izvestiya" of January 15, official Russian response to the pope's statement has been "decidedly aloof." The deputy chief of staff of the Russian government, Aleksei Volin, said in a radio interview that the government will not react in any way. On the other hand, Russia's Orthodox Church has made it clear that it is determined to block Vatican plans to strengthen the Roman Catholic position in Russia. Orthodox leaders have repeatedly charged that Catholics are out to "poach" converts among the Orthodox. Tensions between the two churches have risen since last year, when the Vatican took steps to strengthen its structures in Russia by creating four fully-fledged Catholic dioceses.

According to "Novye Izvestiya," a deputy to Metropolitan Kirill, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations, said that the "Vatican is trying to create a picture of supposed total persecution of Catholics in Russia out of isolated incidents of refusal of a visa, which any state in the world has the right to do." Last week, the Orthodox Church again emphasized its position that improvement of relations is up to the Vatican. "The prospect of better relations depends entirely on the will of the Vatican," Patriarch Alexi II told the Moscow daily "Kommersant."

MOSCOW'S MAYOR URGES MANDATORY REGISTRATION OF ALL MIGRANTS. At the same time as the Bush administration has adopted an aggressive strategy to register aliens, important Russian personalities are calling for tighter regulation of migrants.

Unregistered migrants are responsible for more than 40 percent of all crimes in the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was quoted as saying on Center TV, which is owned by the city government. Appearing on a program on January 14, Luzhkov called for mandatory registration for all migrants throughout the country. He said that his "city is not a safe place," and he proposed "to confront" the country's leadership: If they want to see "a trend in crime reduction, order should be established -- order on the borders, order in migration, and order in registration. … There cannot be two positions or opinions in this issue." He suggested using "the tax inspectorate's control over people who rent their flats to migrants" and the collection of information about migrants "from divisional police inspectors and street cleaners." However, he cautioned, "efforts by one city are not enough for a successful fight against crime and international terrorism."

The day after Luzhkov's television appearance, Viktor Zakharov, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) for the Moscow region, called for the introduction in the Russian capital of compulsory registration for all visitors, Itar-Tass reported.

FAR RIGHT PARTY REFUSES TO DISAGREE WITH ITS LEADER AND MAY FACE BAN. On January 11, the far-right National Great Power Party of Russia (NDPR) sent an announcement to the mass media to the effect that remarks by its co-chairman, Boris Mironov, do not reflect the NDPR's official position. The announcement followed an interview, published by "Moskovskie Novosti," which quoted Mironov as saying that citizens of “non-indigenous nationalities" should not be allowed to vote or to be elected. The Ministry of Justice found Mironov's statement "an appeal to infringe on the constitutional rights of citizens" and gave the NDPR a warning.

The NDPR statement argued that the point of view expressed by Mironov "is of a strictly personal nature and does not reflect the party's stance on the nationalities question," since "no restrictions on citizens' constitutional rights are envisaged in the NDPR's official documents." The party leaders contended that "citizen Mironov is not proposing any unlawful infringement on the constitutional rights of citizens but proposing to change the Russian Constitution," which "is not illegal."

However, the law enacted last year "On Countering Extremist Activity" requires that public organizations whose leaders have made extremist statements "publicly express their disagreement with the utterances or actions" of their leaders. As the NDPR announcement says nothing about disagreement with Mironov's statement, the Justice Ministry is expected to decide that the requirements of the law have not been met, and it may file a lawsuit to ban the NDPR. The NDPR claims to have 11,000 members and offices in 70 of Russia's 89 regions.

Alexander Brod, director of UCSJ's Moscow bureau, condemned the NDPR announcement as "demagogy," issued only because the party is facing a ban. In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he pointed out that the NDPR has used Mironov's antisemitic statements in its newspaper and in leaflets distributed by its regional branches. The Moscow bureau of UCSJ recently sent a letter to the Justice Ministry and the Prosecutor General's Office demanding that charges of inciting ethnic, religious, and racial strife-- a criminal offense -- be brought against Mironov.

COURT BACKS CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST RUSSIAN ORTHODOX TEXTBOOK. The Meshchansky Municipal Court of Moscow has defined as unfounded the refusal of the Ostankino District Prosecutor's Office to institute criminal proceedings against the publication of the textbook titled "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture," Interfax reported on January 13. Lev Ponomaryov, executive director of the Movement for Human Rights, who initiated the hearings, told the news agency: "The decision of the prosecutors is illegal, and the court has compelled them to do away with the violation."

In June 2002, the Movement for Human Rights asked the prosecutors to start criminal proceedings against the textbook compiled by A. Borodina, as it instigates inter-ethnic and inter-religious discord. After the prosecutors replied that they did not have enough grounds to institute criminal proceedings, the human rights activists turned to the courts.

UN PROSECUTOR VOWS TO GET BOSNIAN SERB LEADERS. The chief United Nations war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, vowed that the United Nations tribunal in The Hague will not shut down until it tries Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic. In an interview with the Swiss daily “Tages-Anzeiger," she said that the tribunal "cannot close its doors before bringing them to justice." She revealed that last week she told President Jacques Chirac of France that the failure of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia to arrest Karadzic is "scandalous." General Mladic's hiding places in Belgrade are well known, she added.

GERMANY BANS ISLAMIC GROUP, THIRD SINCE SEPTEMBER 11. Germany's Interior Ministry has outlawed the Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir for spreading antisemitic propaganda. Police raided 30 properties of the group in five of Germany's 16 states, seized propaganda material but made no arrests. The group also has a German-language magazine and a web site. According to the Interior Ministry, this is the third such ban since the adoption of anti-terrorism legislation in Germany in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Inciting racial or antisemitic hatred has long been outlawed in Germany.

“I will not tolerate organizations here engaging in anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli hate propaganda,'' Interior Minister Otto Schily told a news conference on January 15. He said that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been active in Germany distributing leaflets with antisemitic messages at mosques, Islamic centers, and especially in universities. Schily, who has a reputation as a tough-minded, innovative politician, pointed out that Hizb ut-Tahrir is especially dangerous because it has “sought contact with the far right. It must be quite clear that such organizations have no business [being] in Germany."

SPAIN RELAXES NATURALIZATION LAW, VOWS CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. The Spanish government expects more than one million foreigners to apply for Spanish citizenship, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said in a television interview on January 13. What a Reuters dispatch calls an imminent "deluge" of applications follows a recent relaxation of immigration and naturalization laws. While tightening visa requirements for countries outside the European Union (EU), the new law makes it easier for foreigners with Spanish relatives to apply for citizenship. The government's objective is to increase the country's population, which has one of the world's lowest birth rates.

At the same time, the conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has taken the lead in the EU to stamp out illegal immigration, which it blames for much of the country's soaring crime rate. Immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants is expected to be routine soon. According to Reuters, Aznar said that his cabinet would approve this week a series of measures to increase prison terms for traffickers of illegal immigrants and for those who sexually exploit immigrants. At the moment, transporting illegal immigrants carries a prison term of six months to three years. The government plans to raise that to between three and eight years, with a maximum of ten years if the illegal immigrants are forced into prostitution or pornography. "To refuse to take action would not only sacrifice public safety but it would harm the integration and reputation of the immigrant community," Aznar was quoted as saying.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * “There is no room in our country for antisemitism, racism, xenophobia or for manifestations of religious intolerance,'' the Paris daily "Le Monde" quoted French President Jacques Chirac as saying in a letter to Rabbi Gabriel Farhi of Paris who recently survived a stabbing attack by a man shouting "God is great!" in Arabic.

XENOPHOBIA GAINS GROUND IN RUSSIAN OFFICIALDOM
Reporter Finds Ominous Signs but Discounts Chances of an All-Out Attack on Foreigners

With the U.S. Peace Corps "made redundant" in Russia, the small monitoring team of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expelled from Chechnya, and a respected U.S. labor activist Irene Stevenson, the AFL-CIO's pointwoman in Russia, turned away at Sheremetevo Airport last month upon her return from a trip abroad -- "all in the space of a few weeks -- other foreigners are wondering who could be next," Natalia Yefimova wrote on January 13 in "The Moscow Times." She quoted experts as saying that this latest series of "diplomatic hassles" for foreigners from the nonprofit sector "reflect the steadily growing influence of the intelligence agencies under President Vladimir Putin and a realignment of their priorities with those of the state writ large."

"So far," Yefimova noted, carefully calibrating the importance of her survey, "the restrictive measures have been aimed at non-Russians believed to be nosing around in sensitive areas or somehow doing damage to the country's prestige. They don't pose a threat to foreigners across the board. But that could change if the Kremlin loses hold of the long leash now restraining the special services."

She quoted Nikolai Petrov of the Moscow Carnegie Center as saying that the enhanced power of the intelligence agencies "is like a gas that expands, filling up all the available space." Rather than resulting from some recent event, the current tightening of the screws reflects the traditional thinking of the secret police, whose members Russians call chekists after the original Bolshevik agency Cheka: "no information, no problems." Under former President Boris Yeltsin, Petrov argued, the chekists "felt this was impossible, unacceptable. ... Now they believe they have carte blanche inside the country to do whatever is convenient for them."

An unidentified "senior foreign diplomat" involved with Russia for nearly 20 years agreed. "It's an old battle being fought on a new battlefield," he told Yefimova. The intelligence services have gotten a boost from the West's new tolerance for their methods since the terrorist attacks of September 11, the diplomat observed, as well as from the weaknesses of other institutions, such as an anemic nongovernmental sector, an unfair and overburdened court system, and a passive diplomatic corps.

However, Yefimova's survey found no indication of an imminent all-out offensive against foreigners. "If a person doesn't stick his nose in anything, if he doesn't make contact with people and organizations that pose an inconvenience to the government, if he doesn't pass on some kind of unofficial information," Petrov said, "then he can go ahead and work and feel completely safe."

"The current authorities see what they can do and what they can't," Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political Technologies, told her. "Foreign policy is no longer based on emotion, as it was for much of the '90s, but on cool common sense and pragmatism." But the leaders also want to show that Russia is on equal footing with its Western partners, Makarkin cautioned. And it will happily get rid of “eyesores" that suggest the contrary -- such as the Peace Corps, which is meant to help developing nations, or the special status of U.S.-funded Radio Liberty, which was revoked last October -- if it can do so without jeopardizing its overall well-being.

The experts Yefimova consulted agreed that the business community would not feel a crunch anytime soon. "Some business people have complained generally that bureaucrats are becoming more arrogant, more confident, but nothing more sinister than that," said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank.

Nevertheless, those who have been hurt by the new policy are anxious, Yefimova found, and one example is Irene Stevenson of the AFL-CIO, who headed a Moscow-based organization and lived in Russia for nearly 15 years. She recently helped provide legal aid for an air traffic controllers' strike that managed to foul up the work of regional airports and forced a sizable wage increase. "I'm hoping it's something not politically directed against me or my organization, but just a misunderstanding," Stevenson told Yefimova.

Others are not so sure. "What makes the incidents seem ominous is the heavy-handed, undiplomatic way Russia handled them," Yefimova noted. "When imposing restrictions, the government either fails to offset them with constructive counterproposals or presents such compromises much later, after the damage to relations has already been done. Federal agencies often do a poor job coordinating and give contradictory explanations for their actions -- or no explanation at all." For instance, Stevenson is still in the dark about the cause of her deportation on December 30. Similarly, no official reason was given when Moscow refused to extend the visas of 30 Peace Corps volunteers last summer. "It was very frustrating," Alex Wendel, who had worked as a teacher in Sakhalin and was among the volunteers denied re-entry, said in a telephone interview from his native Kansas City, Missouri. Yefimova noted that months later, after Moscow announced that it would accept no more volunteers, the Foreign Ministry explained that Russia had outgrown the need for such aid.

Yefimova was not surprised that Federal Security Service Chief Nikolai Patrushev had a different take. He told reporters in December that the volunteers had worn out their welcome because they were too inquisitive, collecting “socioeconomic and political information." He alleged that one of the volunteers had a CIA background and was hunting for information about Russia's military industry. Makarkin did not hold back: "The special services of all countries harbor an internal dislike for information gathering by outsiders. There's no surprise there."

Yefimova cited the recent record: "The latest wave of visa denials for foreigners working in sensitive areas, such as environmental protection or Chechnya, is not the first one since Putin -- himself a former KGB agent -- rose to power." She quoted Makarkin again: "For now, the authorities seem to be keeping the anti-outsider zeal of the intelligence agencies within some logical bounds." Makarkin had one more dark thought, and Yefimova chose it as the conclusion of her article: "What's dangerous is the prospect of a chain reaction going out of control: Today they kick out one group, tomorrow another, and so on. That would be most regrettable."
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