Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 3, Number 4

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 3, Number 4

(January 24, 2003)

Volume 3, Number 4
Friday, January 24, 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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Russia is a land of many time zones. Parts of the past have immense power over the present, and Russians are tempted to repeat their mistakes. The following are four news items under the rubric of déjà vu.

1. RUSSIAN ORTHODOX VANDALS ATTACK SAKHAROV MUSEUM. On January 18, six individuals vandalized the Moscow museum dedicated to human rights hero Andrei Sakharov by pouring red paint on the walls and paintings and smashing windows in a room housing an exhibition titled "Danger, religion!" museum director Yury Samadurov told Agence France Presse. Police were called and promptly arrested the group, but most of the exhibition of works by some 40 artists had been destroyed. The perpetrators explained that the exhibition offended their Russian Orthodox beliefs, Samadurov said. He acknowledged that some of the art were "fairly revolting works which could shock people. It's modern art."

According to Moscow police, members of the group identified themselves as "church followers," the Interfax news agency reported.

The museum houses numerous archival documents, photographs, and samizdat publications from the Soviet era. A nuclear physicist who became a peace activist and a dissident, Sakharov died in 1989. In 1975, he won the Nobel Prize for his efforts on behalf of freedom of speech and democracy in the USSR.

2. RUSSIAN ENVOY RULES OUT TAKING MURDER OF AZERIS TO INTER-STATE LEVEL. Russian diplomats assigned to former Soviet republics do not always treat them as independent states. The most recent example is the Russian ambassador's reaction to rising anger in Azerbaijan in response to the increasing number of Azeris murdered in Russia. "The recent killings of Azeri residents in Russia are not by nationalist groups" but are the result of internal clashes among criminals and happen for "various social reasons," Russia's ambassador to Azerbaijan Nikolay Ryabov told Baku’s Sarq News Agency, which published his remarks on January 21. "We will not turn a blind eye to them, but it is absolutely unacceptable to take this to an inter-state level," the ambassador sternly noted. Ryabov contended that Russian authorities are "very harsh in cases in which so-called skinheads and similar groups are involved. Such matters are thoroughly investigated at the level of heads of the law-enforcement bodies, and the ambassadors of both countries also take part." Ryabov said that the current increase in the number of instances of violence directed against Azerbaijanis is "coincidental."

However, the Azeri news agency did not accept the Russian envoy's words as the absolute truth. It noted: "Despite assurances from the Russian ambassador, as well as statements by other officials in Moscow, the recent cases of violence against Caucasians, especially Azerbaijanis, have increased since the October 2002 terrorist act by Chechen gunmen in a Moscow theatre…Those cases [of violence] were committed not only by individual criminal nationalist groups, but also by local law-enforcement bodies."

The news agency did not spare Azeri officials from criticism. It cited "unofficial circles in Baku" linking the murders to "the inactivity of the Azerbaijani leadership in this regard, as well as with the inconsistent implementation of the law against extremism adopted in Russia in 2002." Quoting reports in the news media, the news agency said that in recent weeks, the bodies of about 20 Azerbaijanis were brought home from Russia, and they had all died violent deaths.

3. GORBACHEV'S FORMER TOP AIDE FEARS RUSSIA'S PAST POISONS ITS FUTURE. On January 14, Canada's CBC-TV featured a documentary on the struggle against "mass amnesia about mass murder" that engages Aleksandr Yakovlev, former Soviet ambassador in Canada. Appearing on the program as a commentator, "New Yorker" editor and Pulitzer Prize winning Moscow correspondent David Remnick characterized Yakovlev as Mikhail Gorbachev's "good angel -- intellectually, spiritually, and politically." CBC reporter Dan Bjarnason called Yakovlev "an aging oracle" who warns Russia that "its lethal past is in danger of poisoning its future." Yakovlev said that there might not be "another country in the world that is so dense with crosses, with graves of people. We lost 100 million people during the twentieth century." He said: "We, all of us, must recognize what happened... until we do, we don't have the right to live." He advised: "Don't be afraid of your friends. The only thing they can do is betray you. Don't be afraid of your enemies. The only thing they can do is kill you. Be afraid of indifferent people."

Bjarnason described Yakovlev's odyssey from a Communist believer to an architect of glasnost as "incremental." One critical early experience gave him an impetus. At war's end in 1945, a train chugged through his hometown, Yaroslavl, packed with returning Red Army soldiers, former prisoners of the Germans. They expected to be welcomed as heroes. But Stalin decreed that any Soviet soldier the Germans captured was a traitor. To Yakovlev's shock, they were all sent off to the gulag. The train platform was full of women. "Ninety-nine percent women, screaming, shrieking, crying, calling out names," he recalled on the CBC program. "The trains' windows had bars on them. Through them, those tired, unshaven men were throwing out little pieces of paper. They had their names on them. They were hoping someone would pick up the papers and pass on to their loved ones that they were still alive. From the German camps right into ours. Very few survived, very few."

Yakovlev offered somber thoughts about Russia's present and future. "We love stepping on the rake, the old rake which comes up and hits you on the head," he said. "We love to repeat our mistakes. I'm very worried about confusing our hopes and dreams with reality. We've already had our future, but our past is still ahead of us... If we continue being indifferent, we'll again fall into the slavery in which we've been for the last thousand years."

4. U.S. OFFICIALS SEE PUTIN GIVING SECURITY SERVICE MORE LEEWAY. In an article in "The Washington Post" last week, Sharon LaFraniere bracketed the expulsions of 27 Peace Corps volunteers, the end of the seven-year mission of the monitoring team in Chechnya of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OPEC), and the revocation of the Russian visa of American labor activist Irene Stevenson. According to "The Post" correspondent, "the expulsions" exposed "tension within [President Vladimir] Putin's government between officials who want to further Westernize the nation and those who fear that the West already has too much influence here. They have also deepened worries among U.S. officials about the amount of leeway Putin gives Russia's security services, especially in the two months since Chechen terrorists seized more than 800 hostages at a Moscow theater." Quoting U.S. officials, "The Post" noted that what is at stake "is the depth of Putin's commitment to a democracy based on Western values of individual and human rights."

"Clearly there is a trend emerging," the newspaper quoted Alexander Vershbow, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, as saying: "Forces here that may not be fully convinced of the wisdom of Russia's democratization and its integration with the West . . . are flexing their muscles." Vershbow added: "We are trying to convince the Russians that these kind of actions not only spoil the atmosphere but have real and tangible consequences for the achievement of their own goals of attracting more foreign investment and being accepted as a reliable partner for dealing with international challenges."

PUTIN CALLS FOR PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF FOREIGNERS IN RUSSIA. In a statement that seems to put distance between the head of state and recent actions by state authorities, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed on January 22 the need to protect the interests and rights of foreigners living in Russia. "We should agree with human rights organizations which are emphasizing the need for more careful consideration of foreigners' interests and rights as well as those seeking asylum in Russia," Putin told a State Council session according to the independent Interfax news agency. Mistakes in immigration policy "aggravate ethnic and religious strife," he said. Another issue that should be taken into account, Putin suggested, is that trade union organizations "pointed to a loss of working places by the local population" due to a flood of foreign labor.

TWO JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES MURDERED IN ASTRAKHAN. A 26-year-old Jehovah's Witness and her grandmother were murdered last week in the village of Yandyki, Astrakhan region, according to a January 20 report by the Regions.ru news agency. The bodies of Olga Fedotova and her grandmother, also a Jehovah's Witness, were found three days after they were beaten to death in their home. Police found crosses carved into the bodies of the victims and drawn on the walls of their home. According to the police, the motive of the crime was either a rape/murder or a murder "based on religious motives."

The Russian news media routinely defame Jehovah's Witnesses. Week after week, the central and regional press publish articles accusing Jehovah's Witnesses of promoting suicide, breaking up families, and brainwashing members. The Russian Orthodox Church puts down the Jehovah's Witnesses as a "sect," and even the Regions.ru report on the murder used that pejorative term.

SKINHEAD GANG ATTACKS ULYANOVSK JEWISH CULTURAL CENTER. On January 19, a group of skinheads attacked the Jewish cultural center in Ulyanovsk, according to separate reports by NTV, UCSJ's Moscow bureau, and the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. "Armed with metal chains, teenagers were hurling bottles into the windows of the center in broad daylight and chanted antisemitic slogans," said the television reporter. Upon hearing the glass break, a group of adult males ran out of the synagogue and caught some of the skinheads in a nearby store, but as they were dragging the skinheads to the police, another six skinheads attacked the Jews and freed all but one of their comrades. Police arrested that skinhead, 16, who confessed to belonging to an extremist organization in the city.

Employees of the Jewish center counted about 10 attackers. Last year, the center was vandalized on April 17, and a Jewish youth leader named Aleksandr Golynsky was savagely beaten near his home.

SKINHEADS KILL HOMELESS UZBEK. Police arrested two skinheads earlier this month in Nizhny Tagil, Sverdlovsk Oblast, for the January 2 murder of a homeless Uzbek man, according to a January 13 report by RIA-Novosti. Albek Khalmadov was stabbed 15 times by the two Novouralsk residents. Shortly after the crime, police picked up the skinheads, the report continues, and they confessed that they had killed Khalmadov because "they don't like homeless people and non-Russians." A source in the local prosecutor's office told the news agency that the accused killers face at least ten years in prison if convicted.

THREE CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS PRESS FOR DROPPING JACKSON-VANIK. On January 17, a trio of congressional Democrats declared their intention to eliminate a Cold War trade provision that Russia views as an unjustified badge of shame, while also ensuring "a meaningful role" for Congress in negotiations to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization (WTO), Reuters reported. They are Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee; Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee; and Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee. They said they would soon introduce a bill to remove Russia from the provisions of the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which Congress passed in 1974. That measure required that the Soviet Union and other "non-market economies" allow free emigration to be eligible for normal trade relations with the United States. According to Reuters, U.S. officials credit the measure with enabling 573,000 Jews and other refugees from religious persecution to emigrate to the United States since 1975, and a further one million to settle in Israel in the same period. Since 1994, the White House has found Russia to be in compliance with Jackson-Vanik.

The three Democrats believe that "graduating Russia" from the Jackson-Vanik restrictions would strengthen U.S.-Russian bilateral relations and the resulting "permanent normal trade relations" would "reinforce the progress Russia has made on a number of important issues." Until recently chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus was opposed in the past to lifting Jackson-Vanik for Russia -- but not because of emigration concerns, according to Reuters. Instead, as Russia has been negotiating its terms of entry into the WTO, Baucus wanted to maximize U.S. leverage in those talks. "Our legislation would recognize that Russia fully meets the freedom of emigration requirements in Jackson-Vanik," the three sponsors said in their joint statement. "At the same time, our legislation maintains the expectation that Russia will make additional progress on trade liberalization, religious freedom, human rights, and democratic reforms."

The three Democrats foresee no serious Congressional opposition to the legislation they hope to be able to introduce as early as next month. Their bill grew out of consultations between the Bush administration and Congress last year before the dispute over U.S. poultry exports arose and blocked the administration’s plan to remove Jackson-Vanik. Though Moscow eventually lifted its ban on U.S. poultry imports, it still restricts imports by means of a quota.

"It's time to move away from confrontations with the business community and to work together with them to improve the prospects for human rights and civil society in Russia," said Micah Naftalin, executive director of UCSJ. "At present the business climate concerning investment in Russia is poor." Naftalin, who supported the lifting of Jackson-Vanik last year, expressed the hope that the adoption of the new legislation would encourage the Russian government's economic advisers to pay more attention to human rights issues.

25 ILLEGAL MIGRANTS DIED LAST WEEKEND, TRYING TO REACH SPAIN AND ITALY. Over this past weekend, authorities found the bodies of a total of 25 illegal immigrants off Spanish and Italian shores. The searches for survivors continue.

Moroccan rescue workers found the bodies of 16 sub-Saharan Africans who drowned while trying to reach Spain by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a dinghy, according to the Associated Press on January 18. Officials suggest that the would-be immigrants died when their inflatable rubber boat sank in rough weather near Tangiers. Three others were rescued. Last year, at least 120 people died as they tried to navigate the nine-mile strait that separates Africa from Spain, according to Morocco's Association of Families of the Victims of Clandestine Immigration. Also on January 18, Spanish police found three more bodies off the island of Fuerteventura, bringing to five the number of dead since 14 illegal immigrants were reported missing in a boat accident last week. On January 16, police arrested 12 people who swam ashore, but listed 14 more passengers as missing. The immigrants had arrived in the waters off Spain's Canary Islands, about 75 miles from the African coast. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have condemned Spanish police treatment of illegal immigrants, charging rapes, deaths in cells, arbitrary arrests, deportation, and ill treatment of children.

On January 19, a small boat was found off Italy's southern coast with six people dead, apparently from the cold, and six others were taken to the hospital suffering from hypothermia, according to Reuters. Five of the survivors said they were Turkish Kurds; the sixth was a Greek, suspected as part of a smuggling network. The was reported to have been stolen from a Greek port.

On January 22, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar rejected the idea of admitting to the European Union (EU) countries on the southern Mediterranean rim, according to Reuters. Aznar, an increasingly vocal advocate of stopping illegal immigration to the EU, is known to be especially eager to exclude Morocco. "Other Mediterranean states could have a special relationship to the EU but membership for these states would go too far," he told the German weekly "Wirtschafts Woche." "At some stage we have to fix geographic boundaries. The EU can't stretch as far as the Congo." Similar sentiments were expressed recently by European Commission President Romano Prodi, who said Morocco and other countries eyeing closer ties with the EU should be allowed to join EU policies but not its institutions.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "By analogy with Rene Descartes' famous 'cogito ergo sum,' the Soviet diplomatic and military motto, whether conscious or unconscious, was 'I am America's rival, therefore I exist,' or, to be more precise, 'I am America's equal rival, therefore I exist,'" wrote Andrei Piontkovsky in the periodical "The Russia Journal" dated January 17-23. "For many representatives of the Russian elite, losing the West as a threat feels like a loss of personal status."

UN REPORT: CENTRAL-EAST EUROPEAN ROMA LIVE UNDER AFRICAN STANDARDS
West Europeans Fear Mass Roma Migration and Crime Wave

The living conditions of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe are more characteristic of sub-Saharan countries such as Zimbabwe or Botswana rather than of Europe, according to a just-released report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). One out of every six Roma is "constantly starving" and one out of every three Roma last had a formal job in 1990, the report found. Most of the Roma, especially the youth, are said to lack the skills and education needed to make a living wage.

Formerly known as Gypsies, the Roma constitute the largest ethnic minority in Europe, with communities in every country on the continent, their numbers disputed within every national jurisdiction. They are rightfully called the poorest of the poor. In the five countries covered by the UNDP survey -- Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania -- more than half of the Roma interviewed said they went hungry at least a few days every year, and one out of three Roma children failed to complete elementary school. Only 20% of Roma were found formally employed, while another 20% worked in the shadow economy. But in some of countries, up to 70% of Roma households live on state welfare.

The report calls on the five countries surveyed -- with an estimated combined population of five million Roma -- to do more to reduce Roma poverty and to fight discrimination against them. As Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are slated to join the European Union (EU) next year, and Romania and Bulgaria to follow in 2007, many West Europeans fear that this impoverished, much-maligned, and famously fast-growing population may become a source of mass migration and create a crime wave.

According to the report, the EU has so far spent almost $70 million to help the Roma. The report calls for free textbooks and hot meals in schools for Roma children, affirmative action by local governments, and the development of incentive programs for employment.

The UNDP report, titled "Avoiding the Dependency Trap -- A Human Development Report on the Roma Minority in Central and Eastern Europe" is billed as "the first cross-border comprehensive survey" of the Roma community. The report expresses pride in "parting with conventional wisdom." It asserts: "A question that has so far been mainly cast in terms of Human Rights is now gaining a new, 'developmental' dimension. The policy implications are immense."

Some observers who have been following the plight of the Roma and attempts to improve their lot suggest that the "new, developmental dimension" and the human rights component are parallel priorities rather than rivals, and that one cannot work independently of the other. Raising Roma standards of living and achieving their educational and judicial equality can be pursued at the same time.
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