Volume 2, Number 5
Friday, February 1, 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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BUSH REITERATES HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA, REDEFINES ENEMY. In his State of the Union address on January 29, President George W. Bush avoided mentioning the phrase human rights. But he repeated his commitment to that cause, even broadening it by declaring that "America will always stand firm for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance." He identified the enemy, terrorism, as embracing "tyranny and death as a cause and a creed." When lumping together states such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as constituting "an axis of evil," Bush chose the word "axis" that echoed the World War II description of the pact linking Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and expansion-bent Japan. Perhaps his strongest statement came toward the end of his speech, in his summary of truths the nation learned from the tragic events of September 11: "Evil is real, and it must be opposed."

NEO-NAZI GROUP IS GAINING STRENGTH IN KOSTROMA OBLAST. A few days ago, a Jew who asked to remain anonymous traveled to the city of Kostroma, northeast of Moscow, and told Jewish communal leaders about increasingly brazen neo-Nazi activities in the nearby city of Nerekhta, writes Andrey Osherov, head of the Kostroma Jewish community and UCSJ's monitor in the region. Over the past year, the Kostroma community, the largest and best organized in the region, has tried to help the Jews of Nerekhta to build a full communal life. But the project could not get off the ground because the violent neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU) is rampant in Nerekhta, which is littered with RNU leaflets. Antisemitic and anti-Caucasian graffiti seem to be everywhere. The slogans include "Beat the kikes" and "Beat the black-asses," which is a contemptuous term for people from the Caucasus. Antisemitic literature and audio and video cassettes that incite ethnic hatred are openly distributed. Jews are afraid to respond to calls to stand up and protest.

The RNU actively recruits supporters among the local youth, the man from Nerekhta said. RNU gangs terrorize Jews and people from the Caucasus, and there are reports that the RNU has purchased explosives in the village of Burmakino in Yaroslavl Oblast. In December, the door of a Jewish family's apartment was set on fire. Jews are constantly being threatened, and advised not to engage in work to attract Jews to community life.

Until recently, the RNU branch in Nerekhta was headed by Vasily Yurevich Khorev, a former organizer for the local Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the Nerekhta equivalent of a department of public works. The RNU in Nerekhta has felt free to act because the chief of the city police, Nishchev, is a former classmate of Khorev's, the man from Nerekhta said, and added that Nishchev is in the habit of "not noticing" what the RNU is doing. Without a doubt, he is a sympathizer as well. Now Khorev is trying to build up the RNU in Kostroma.

Early last month, the Kostroma Jewish community received alarming news came from a Jewish family in the village of Loparevo in nearby Galich District. Skinhead youths with RNU armbands attacked a 15 year old Jewish boy at the Galich train station. They attacked in a pack, and the boy now needs medical treatment for a concussion and several other injuries. In Galich the RNU works fairly openly and recruits in the city schools. The city administration is of course aware of the RNU's activities but has taken no measures against them.

NEO-NAZIS IN MOSCOW MUSEUM CELEBRATE HITLER AND SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK. An event on January 20 billed as "a poetry reading" in Moscow's Mayakovsky Museum celebrated the memory of Adolf Hitler by playing video footage of Nazis torturing and executing Jews, according to a report by Aleksandr Shmeyman posted on the web site "jewish.ru" on January 29. The event was organized by the People's National Party, which distributed to visitors its rabidly antisemitic newspaper "Ya Russky!" (I am Russian!) offering articles with headlines such as "As long as pogroms aren't near, Jews won't convert." Antisemitic literature distributed included the monarchist newspaper "Tsarsky Oprichnik." Videotapes of Nazi Party rallies, Hitler's speeches, and Holocaust footage of Jews being tortured and killed were also on sale. The reporter characterized the presentation as "very professionally done" and wondered where the People's National Party got the money for it. The poetry reading consisted mostly of slogans praising Hitler and the September 11 terrorist attacks, to which the audience responded with shouts of "Beat the kikes!" and "Sieg Heil!" Ruslan Bichkov, editor of "Tsarsky Oprichnik," reportedly called for the extermination of Jews. After his declaration, "If you are a Russian, then you should kill a kike," the room erupted into applause, the report said.

ORGANIZER OF ANTISEMITIC RALLY ARRESTED IN SARATOV. Slowly and undramatically, Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code banning communal incitement is being applied. According to a January 25 broadcast on the Saratov television channel Telekom, Vitaly Sosnin, the alleged organizer of an antisemitic demonstration in Saratov's Lipki Park last September, was arrested late last year and charged with inciting ethnic hatred. According to Telekom, it may be the first time that Article 282 will be put in practice in the Saratov region. Originally, Sosnin had to sign a document promising that he would not leave the city while the investigation was in progress. But, according to the report, his refusal to cooperate with the investigation led to the order to detain him.

EMISSARIES OF ISLAMIC GROUP CHARGED WITH INCITING RELIGIOUS STRIFE. Article 282 in the Russian Criminal Code is being put to use in Yekaterinburg as well. Itar-Tass reports that on January 29 the Prosecutor's Office of Yekaterinburg, the center of the Sverdlovsk Region in the southern Ural Mountains, filed criminal charges against emissaries of the radical Islamist organization Nurcular (Followers of the Light) for inciting religious strife. The news agency quotes a spokesman for the Sverdlovsk regional branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) as saying that the case is based on material collected by the FSB. The spokesman added that the emissaries, one a citizen of Uzbekistan and the other of Azerbaijan, went to Russia to disseminate the ideology of the Islamic sect, founded in Turkey by Sheikh Saidi Nursi. The two men brought with them more than 2,000 copies of booklets propagating the Islamic Revolution and the creation of Great Turan, an empire of all Turkic-speaking peoples that, according to their theory, must incorporate territories of many contemporary countries including the Russian Federation. They also distributed antisemitic literature.

AZERBAIJAN CRACKS DOWN ON PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS. Two leaders of the unregistered Pentecostal church called Living Stones have been arrested and are serving fifteen-day prison terms, sources in the Azerbaijani capital Baku told Keston News Service. The two -- Yusuf Farkhadov and Kasym Kasymov -- were detained in Sumgait, a town close to Baku on January 18, when as many as 15 police and National Security Ministry officers raided a prayer meeting held in a private apartment. Farkhadov and Kasymov were found guilty under Article 310 of the Administrative Code, which punishes "petty hooliganism." "All they were doing was praying," one church member told Keston. Ten others attending the meeting were taken to the local police station, where they were interrogated about the church and forced to write statements, then released. The officers also searched the apartment and took away all the religious literature they could find. The church has tried to register with the authorities to gain legal status. They filed an application which "lay around for a year and a half," the church leader told Keston. "Then last autumn it was returned. They said there were errors in the application." "The Azerbaijani authorities seem intent on closing down many Protestant churches," notes Keston specialist Felix Corley, who predicts that the current re-registration drive will result in the denial of registration for most Protestant congregations.

TRANSDNIESTER CHURCH GIVEN NEW DEADLINE FOR DEMOLITION. A Baptist church in the town of Tiraspol, the capital of Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniester, was given a new deadline for demolition, Keston News Service learned. On January 23, officials from the State Building Inspectorate visited the building which stands in the yard of a private home and ordered the Baptists to "think again" about continuing to use it as a church, according to the family of Vasili Timoshchuk, pastor of the church. The officials set February 15 as the new deadline to halt the use of the building as a church or face demolition. Originally, the commission of the State Building Inspectorate told members of the Tiraspol Baptist congregation on November 8 that if they did not pull down their prayer house or transfer it to residential use by December 25, the authorities would demolish it, on the grounds that the building had been put up illegally 13 years ago. That deadline passed without the Baptists changing their use of the building. "They gave us nothing in writing," Timoshchuk's family reported of the latest visit, "all the warnings were verbal." The family added that in the wake of the visit, the church wrote to the president of the unrecognized Transdniester entity, Igor Smirnov. Pastor Timoshchuk also telephoned Pyotr Zalozhkov, the commissioner of religion and cults, who reports to Smirnov. "Zalozhkov didn't want to discuss the issue and put the phone down," Keston was told. An official of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) mission in the Moldovan capital Chisinau assured Keston that the OSCE is following the case.

UKRAINIAN SYNAGOGUE VANDALIZED. A synagogue in the Ukrainian city of Nikolaev was vandalized during the night of January 27, according to the Nikolaev Jewish community's web site. Unknown individuals smashed windows and scrawled graffiti, "Kikes, get out of Ukraine," on the walls of the synagogue. The Jewish community has asked police to investigate.

HEADQUARTERS OF ETHNIC RUSSIAN PARTY IN UKRAINE FIREBOMBED. On the night of January 29, unknown attackers firebombed the Kyiv headquarters of the Russian Bloc electoral union, created to represent Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine, according to Moscow's Mayak Radio. One room was gutted, and the fire destroyed the furniture and a computer. The radio's correspondent speculated that "the terrorist attack" was carried out by "nationalists upset by the growing influence of the recently formed Russian Bloc" which has united several ethnic Russian organizations and may do well in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. The attack has not been reported in the Ukrainian press as of yesterday, according to UCSJ's Kyiv monitor Aleksandr Baryshnikov.

TERROR CAMPAIGN MOUNTED AGAINST SERBIA'S HELSINKI COMMITTEE. In recent weeks "nationalistically oriented, civil society actors" as well as "governmental and significant opposition forces" have attacked the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia with "hate speech," threatening phone calls, and burglaries, according to a statement issued on January 25 by the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. The Serbian committee has faced "severe attacks" since its establishment in 1994, the statement noted, especially during the NATO air campaign in 1999. But in recent weeks, harassment has escalated "into deliberate obstruction and intimidation." On January 23 Sonja Biserko, the chair of the committee, wrote a letter to Serbian Minister for Interior Dusan Mihajlovic, detailing a pattern of "constant telephone threats" and public "hate speeches" by politicians from the ruling coalition. She charged that recently, the privately owned news media as well as the government newspaper "Borba" have been attacking her on a daily basis. In addition, an attempted burglary targeted the Helsinki Committee's office, and burglars entered the apartment of her deputy, Slavija Stanojlovic.

** * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "I was doing my duty, I have no regrets," a January 30 Reuters dispatch from Moscow quoted "Vasily," a professional executioner out of work since 1996 who acknowledged having shot with a pistol some 50 convicts over 25 years. "First I couldn't help thinking: it was a dirty job, but it was a job, and I lost it. Then I realized that I had exchanged prison barracks for something much better. I built a house from red brick and I have a little plot. But I have one little problem - I can't bring myself to slaughter a pig or kill a chicken. So I make my son do it. And he laughs and says, 'Father, you're such a little softy.'"

SCANDAL PUTS IN LIMBO GERMAN PLAN TO BAN NEO-NAZI PARTY
Court Delays Action on the Neo-Nazi Group Regarded as the Most Dangerous in Germany

At an otherwise genteel off-the-record gathering of academics, government officials, and think-tank scholars in Washington last year, German visitors got into a heated debate with their American colleagues over the German government's decision to seek a ban on the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, known by its German initials NPD, which many experts call the most dangerous of the country's various neo-Nazi groupings. While several Americans waxed eloquent citing the Bill of Rights and freedom of expression enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as the universal standard for democracies, the Germans were pragmatic and blunt. They argued that the American historical experience of freedom is unique, and that standards crafted on this continent do not automatically apply to a country like Germany, which is freighted with living memories of Nazi genocide. The issue was left unresolved. But one German concluded his remarks with a pledge that his government will "choke off" the neo-Nazi threat -- whatever that takes, and even if it upsets American civil libertarians.

The odds now are no better than 50-50 that the German government's all-out effort to ban the NPD will be successful this time. For more than a year now, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry for Constitutional Protection have built a case, based on the NPD's incitement of violence and promotion of antisemitism, xenophobia, and contempt for democratic values. Last year, both houses of parliament -- and the minister-presidents of all 16 states -- backed the central government's appeal to the country's highest court to ban the NPD. But upon the discovery that one and possibly four more NPD witnesses have served as informants for Germany's domestic intelligence, the Constitutional Court decided to postpone its February 5 hearing, stating that it must study the implications of hearing a case based on informant testimony.

If the court declines to discuss the case, the failure to achieve a ban will be due to the thoroughness of the German effort, not to slackness or sabotage that one might automatically suspect if all this took place in, say, Russia. It appears that German government agencies might have hired too many informants, some of whom penetrated the NPD and others who turned against the NPD program and were ready to quit the party but were talked into staying so they could furnish reliable inside reports for the authorities. Informants and investigators alike might have been overly conscientious to build an airtight case against the NPD. Some observers argue that the politicians most zealous to institute the ban are "politically correct types" more concerned with improving Germany's image overseas than with the actual threat to German democracy posed by a small party that claims a membership of 7,000.

Founded in 1964, NPD's advocacy of uncompromising extremism and violence keeps attracting new members, especially among the youth. Though the party is not responsible for all extremist crimes, knowledgeable Germans, especially those in the government, maintain that it has contributed decisively to the increasing problem of violent crimes against minorities by calling on supporters "to take their fight into the streets." In 2000, the last year for which complete official statistics are available, right-wing extremist crimes registered with the police totaled 12,000, up nearly 60 percent from 1999. Violent right-wing crimes were up 8.9 percent in 2000.

The meeting in Washington last spring was dominated by the enthusiasm of the German officials, who were convinced that they were on their way to defeating the neo-Nazis by securing a ban on the NPD and applying a set of other tactics as well. An ambitious program then evolving was multi-faceted and partly secret: contacting NPD members and offering assistance to those who seem disenchanted or wavering with suggestions such as: Why don't you start a new, "normal" life, perhaps in another city and with a new name if you wish.

If this month or next the court decides to dismiss the case for the ban on procedural grounds -- which appears to be an easily defensible course legally -- the scandal over a bungled investigation will probably hurt the ruling Social Democrats in the September elections. Another likely victim is Interior Minister Otto Schily, a gifted politician of good intentions and a role model for many. He may cite his age and exit from politics. On the other hand, court approval for a ban will not stop NPD members from beating up Asian and African immigrants and firebombing synagogues. However, without a doubt, the collapse of a high-visibility effort to outlaw the party will prompt right-wing extremists to boast, once again, that the future belongs to them.

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Copyright (c) 2001. UCSJ. All rights reserved.

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