Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 2, Number 6

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 2, Number 6

(February 8, 2002)

Volume 2, Number 6
Friday, February 8, 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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MOSCOW MAYOR LUZHKOV PLEDGES ACTION TO CURB EXTREMIST YOUTH. Special agents have infiltrated extremist youth organizations operating in Moscow, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told the press on February 6. According to Interfax, Luzhkov said the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the city police have learned to monitor such organizations and to "foresee their intentions and stop their meetings." He cautioned: "Skinheads by themselves are not an object of struggle. If a person has decided to shave his hair off, it does not mean he has become a public enemy." He said that law-enforcement units and the city authorities will be combating "not skinheads but the offenses and crimes they commit." Illegal actions of soccer fans will not be overlooked either, he added. Three days earlier, police detained a 24-year-old leader of the violent neo-Nazi movement Russian National Unity (RNU) in Moscow's metro, according to a report by "MK-Novosti" on February 4. Identified only by his last name, Leonov, he was arrested for posting RNU leaflets.

RACIST VIOLENCE FLARES, BUT OFFICIALS DENY RACISM. On January 19, about 15 skinheads severely beat a Chinese student in St. Petersburg, on the city's main street, Nevsky Prospekt, according to UCSJ's local monitor Rudolf Masarsky. The skinheads followed student Van Chao Yi as he and two female Chinese friends came out of a metro station. While the young women got away, the skinheads caught Van Chao and did not stop beating him until he was nearly unconscious. But he managed to get up and made his way to his dormitory. He was taken to a hospital where he was treated for a concussion, a damaged eye, and numerous cuts. According to Masarsky, passersby on the busy street did nothing to stop the attack. No police were present. "The skinheads didn't take money or things from Van Chao," Masarsky told UCSJ, "so to call this a robbery is impossible. However, the authorities don't want to call it a racist crime." He recalled that last fall, foreign students filed a complaint about skinhead attacks and were told that there are no such incidents in the city - and no racism.

On February 2 in Moscow, a diplomat from the Kenyan embassy was beaten by two teenagers near the embassy building. The attackers were arrested.

In Oryol, some 200 miles to the southwest of Moscow, the Department of Internal Affairs has formed a special task force to investigate a series of attacks on Chinese students living in the city, according to a January 31 report by "MK-Novosti." The decision came a few days after seven skinheads were arrested for being part of a group of youth who beat eight Chinese. The news report said that the investigation found no ties between the attackers and extremist organizations and concluded: "Probably, that is why the seven young racists were charged with hooliganism, and not with inciting ethnic hatred." The charge of race-driven violence carries a stiffer sentence than hooliganism, and, more importantly, it would require the authorities to acknowledge that racism exists in Oryol.

NEO-NAZI TERROR IN KOSTROMA PROTESTED. Chief Rabbi of Russia Beryl Lazar and UCSJ sent a joint letter to Governor Viktor Shershunov of Kostroma Oblast, protesting the inaction of local authorities in the face of physical and verbal attacks on Jews by activists of the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU). The letter calls upon Governor Shershunov to take action to ensure that local police mount serious investigations of recent incidents of antisemitic violence and that the RNU's recruitment drive in schools be stopped. (See details in Bigotry Monitor of February 1, Vol. 2, No. 5.) "Despite an improved cultural atmosphere for Jews under President Putin, dangerous pockets of antisemitism remain in many provincial cities," said Micah H. Naftalin, UCSJ's national director. "Local authorities cannot afford to be lax in the face of the significant threat that extremist groups like the RNU pose towards Jews and other minority groups in a country as diverse and historically unstable as Russia."

KURSK ANTISEMITES TARGET STATE DUMA DEPUTY FEDULOV. Antisemitic vandals painted on a building in Kursk the name of an ethnic Russian State Duma deputy alongside swastikas and stars of David, according to a January 28 report posted on the Russian Jewish web site "sem40.ru." Known for his activism against antisemitism, Deputy Aleksandr Fedulov recently paid for gifts to be sent to the Officers' House for delivery to poor children, and the graffiti appeared on a building next door. The author of the "sem40.ru" report speculated that the graffiti was not the project of angry antisemites but of people working for Kursk Governor Aleksandr Mikhaylov, whom Fedulov sharply criticized for antisemitic statements in a "Kommersant" interview last year. Fedulov made a speech shortly afterwards expressing concern with "the public judeophobic statements of the Communists Makashov, Kondratenko, and Mikhaylov" which are "just a link" in a chain of antisemitic events he listed. Fedulov also attempted to get the State Duma to pass a resolution condemning these and other antisemitic acts.

NOVOCHERKASSK COSSACKS DELIVER ANTISEMITIC ATTACK ON EDITOR. Local Cossacks sputtered antisemitic abuse at the Jewish editor of a newspaper that often runs articles criticizing the city administration of Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, according to a February 4 report by the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, the leading source of information on violence and persecution against the FSU news media. The event, a roundtable discussion on ethnic relations at the city's Pushkin Library on January 17, turned into an onslaught against the writings and the person of Anatoly Yasenik, chief editor of the newspaper "Vecherny Novocherkassk" who also serves as chairman of the local Jewish community. Yasenik was singled out as the chief culprit among a group of Jews supposedly provoking inter-ethnic conflicts. He was not invited to the public meeting that was attended by Mayor Anatoly Volkov and Chief Rabbi Elyashiv Kaplun of the nearby city of Rostov-on-the-Don. According to the report by the press watchdog group, the city administration has tried several times to shut down "Vecherny Novocherkassk" and attempted to intimidate its writers through law suits, inspections, and threats to throw them out of their offices. The report's author speculated that the Cossacks' antisemitic attack on Yasenik was only the authorities' latest move against his newspaper.

POLICE, COSSACKS JOIN FORCES IN NORTH CAUCASUS REGION. Cooperation between police and Cossacks and other paramilitary groups is becoming common throughout Russia. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the head of the Stavropol Krai police, Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Saprunov, and the Ataman of the Terek Cossack brigade, Vasili Bondarev, have agreed to form a joint unit to "protect" public order in their region. The units are supposed to patrol streets, monitor immigration, and prevent acts of terrorism, banditry, and illegal weapons shipments.

BELARUS REGIME USES NEO-NAZIS TO ATTACK OPPOSITIONISTS. Skinheads and members of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity (RNU) have recently carried out a series of attacks against youth-oriented opposition groups, according to a January 30 article in "Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta," an independent newspaper often critical Alexander Lukashenko's dictatorship. The newspaper reported a January 29 press conference by the unregistered Belarusian Party of Freedom (BPS) that warned about "a new wave of fascism in Belarus." Activists said that around 40 neo-Nazis attacked eight BPS members on January 15 in Kuropaty. One victim of this attack was hospitalized with multiple injuries, while another suffered a broken rib. Four days later, 25 skinheads attacked six BPS members in Minsk, near the Oktyabrskaya metro station. The next day, BPS members prepared themselves and met a group of 20 skinheads with roughly equal numbers. But this was the one confrontation that the police stopped before it began. BPS leader Sergey Vysotsky told the press that his group wants to avoid bloodshed, but that with the increasing number of neo-Nazi skinheads poised for attacks, the situation "is getting tense" and in the absence of police reaction, the BPS is "ready to bring order to the city streets ourselves." Belarusian oppositionists have frequently charged that the regime is using extremists like RNU members to terrorize them.

PATRIARCHATE CONDEMNS BIBLE-BURNING PRIEST; HIS TRIAL POSTPONED AGAIN. On February 3 "religious fanatics" led by defrocked Georgian Orthodox priest Basil Mkalavishvili set on fire a warehouse outside the capital Tbilisi, burning some four tons of Jehovah's Witness and Baptist literature, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. The Georgian Baptist Union says that Mkalavishvili was accompanied by about 150 followers traveling in three buses. Mkalavishvili, who calls his group the Greek Old Calendarist Church, told journalists that the books had been imported from the United States. Other sources say that the books were mostly Bibles and biblical stories for children and that the warehouse belonged to the Baptist Union. Mkalavishvili announced that 76 tons from the same shipment are stored in Kutaisi and that in a few days he and his followers would go there to destroy them.

The following day Metropolitan Daniil Datuashvili of the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate told Keston News Service that he condemned the book burning and demanded that the government take "immediate, serious measures" to arrest all those who took part. Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili of the Baptist Union expressed his alarm at the latest twist in what he called Mkalavishvili's "long-running reign of terror" against religious minorities, which over the past few years has included about a hundred attacks on Jehovah's Witness, Baptist, and Pentecostal services, meetings, and property. "This is the first time that his group has burned Bibles," he told Keston, "though in the past they have burned Jehovah's Witness newspapers and magazines." On January 11, shortly after a Mkalavishvili raid on a Protestant service, Elena Tevdoradze, chair of the parliament's human rights committee, called for his arrest. She added: "It is very strange that he has not been arrested already." On February 5, a judge postponed Mkalavishvili's trial for the second time, after his followers packed the courtroom and threatened witnesses and the court.

POLICE OFFICERS SENTENCED FOR TORTURING SUSPECT TO DEATH. A Tashkent court sentenced four Uzbek police officers to 20-year prison terms for beating a suspect to death, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on February 1. The victim, Ravshan Haitov, 32, died from torture just hours after police took him into custody on October 17, 2001 for alleged membership in the banned Muslim group, Hizb ut-Tahrir. Authorities returned his corpse to his family the next day. The official cause of death was then given as a heart attack. In a December 2000 report on torture in Uzbekistan, HRW documented seven deaths in custody as a result of torture. HRW hailed the convictions as "a good first step" but emphasized that countless other cases of police brutality have gone unpunished.

EUROPEAN COURT FINDS BELGIUM GUILTY OF VIOLATING ROMA RIGHTS. On February 5, the European Court of Human Rights found that the Belgian government violated the European Convention on Human Rights when it expelled, in October 1999, 74 Roma from Slovakia who sought asylum in Belgium, the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) reports, welcoming what it calls a "landmark decision." The Strasbourg court awarded 10,000 euros (about $9,000) in damages to the Romani family Conka, who had filed a complaint. According to the Budapest-based ERRC, a public interest law organization which assisted the Conka family's appeal, the ruling is not only the first ever by the Strasbourg court involving an expulsion of Roma, it is the first time the court has ever found a violation of Article 4 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention, which bans the collective expulsion of aliens. It is, ERRC adds, the first time that the court has found a West European country in violation of the convention where Roma rights are involved. ERRC points out that the Belgian decision to proceed with the deportation on October 5, 1999 followed the Strasbourg court's decision on the same day requesting Belgium to stay the deportation for eight days to permit consideration of whether the action violates the law.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * In an op-ed article in "The New York Times" of February 5 titled "Is the Human Rights Era Ending?" Michael Ignatieff, professor of human rights at Harvard's Kennedy School, wrote that the human rights movement "has to challenge directly the claim that national security trumps human rights. The argument to make is that human rights is the best guarantor of national security. The United States, to encourage the building of secure states that do not harbor or export terror, will have to do more than secure base agreements. It will have to pressure these countries to provide basic political rights and due process. As the cold war should have taught us, cozying up to friendly authoritarians is a poor bet in the long term."

HAIDER AND JEWISH LEADER MUZICANT REACH "A SENSIBLE SETTLEMENT"
But the Battle with Austria's Far Right Continues

Attorneys for Jorg Haider, the de facto leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, and Ariel Muzicant, the head of the country's Jewish community of 12,000, have come to an agreement. In a joint statement issued on January 31, Haider withdrew his remarks that had offended Muzicant because of their antisemitic content, and Muzicant dropped his lawsuit, with its 14 charges of slander.

Neither side lost face, nor compromised deeply held convictions. Muzicant called the agreement a "sensible solution" and explained that it was not his intention that Haider "get down on his knees." Haider seems to have gained more, as many Austrians believed that he would lose in court, though that is always hard to predict, given the complexity of slander laws and the independence from the government that judges guard zealously. Haider's public explanation was that he did not want to face several years of legal wrangling -- which may be taken to mean that he loathed the idea of going through a lawsuit that would have exposed his nasty temper and ill-chosen words. While he routinely explains the latter in the context of the former, his followers admire the "straightforward" and "truthful" phrases he utters in what he calls, only semi-apologetically, "the heat of the moment." But even when carefully weighed, his words targeting "aliens" and "the destructive effects" of their ways of life and ideologies are coded, and his followers and enemies alike know exactly what they really mean.

Haider appears to be following a long-range strategy of gaining respectability. He might have thought that his moment was at hand when his party came in second in the elections of November 1999. But his party could join a coalition led by the conservative People's Party only on the condition that he stays out of the government. He accepted that humiliating deal in February 2000 and surprised friend and foe by resigning as the head of the party. He is said to feel vindicated that by September 2000, the European Union cancelled the political sanctions imposed on Austria following his party's joining the coalition. His followers - and many others who are not - are unimpressed with the EU explanation that Austria did not abandon its commitment to human rights. Haider stayed on as governor of Karinthia, which keeps him away from the bright lights of the former imperial city. But members of his party sandwiched in the coalition government are faithful to him; he is still their revered "spiritual leader." They keep him informed and they ask for his counsel. He may be out of sight but not out of mind. Polls indicate that his popular support has dropped several percentage points. But Western Europe seems to be veering to the right, and Austrians watch every hint of a mood shift. At 52, athletic and movie-star handsome, Haider is waiting for his time to come.

At the same time Haider leaves no doubt that he has not adjusted his views that have a distinctly racist cast, especially when it comes to Jews. It is difficult for him to talk about Jews or a person of Jewish origin he does not approve of without sounding like an antisemite. Of course he denies the charge, and he acts surprised and hurt when people, including Jews, find his statements redolent of his bias. After settling his legal tiff with Muzicant, he said it was most important to him that the Jewish community in Austria not feel threatened, and he added that his Freedom Party has a good relationship with the Jewish community. Few people accept that announcement at its face value.

From time to time, Haider raises his voice. Last month he attacked the Czech government for refusing requests to shut down its outmoded nuclear reactor, and he threatened to block the Czech application for EU membership. He got into a nasty exchange with Czech Premier Milos Zeman, and Freedom Party General Secretary Peter Sichrovsky used the opportunity to criticize the Prague government for not dealing with the subject of Holocaust compensation. Czech Jewish leaders promptly responded that Sichrovsky was factually wrong, and the debate quickly turned shrill because Sichrovsky, who is, strangely enough, Jewish, gave the impression of representing Jews. Austrians love a scandal, the more scurrilous the better, and they delighted in this one. But quite apart from the anomaly of the Haider-Sichrovsky alliance, much of the population is uneasy about the aging reactor in Temelin, some 70 miles from Vienna. With national elections scheduled for October 2003, Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel of the People's Party will have to consider the mood of his country -- as well as Haider's readiness to exploit it.

At the press conference announcing the agreement, Muzicant acknowledged that he and Haider "differ profoundly over many issues." He foresaw future confrontations between the Jewish community and the Freedom Party. But the bottom line, he concluded, is that one must "be careful in one�s choice of words so as not to insult" anyone. Emperor Franz Josef would have approved.
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