Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 3, Number 7

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 3, Number 7

(February 14, 2003)

Volume 3, Number 7
Friday, February 14, 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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PUTIN WARNS INTERIOR MINISTRY ABOUT SPREAD OF EXTREMISM. On February 6, President Vladimir Putin told a meeting in the Interior Ministry that "one cannot ignore the expansion of the geography of extremist groups" which increasingly provoke ethnic and religious conflict, according to Itar-Tass. He accused extremist groups of playing up problems of uncontrolled migration, taking advantage of the "migrants' social difficulties." In another general statement that may portend changes, he called for more law and order in the sphere of migration.

Combining two major campaigns he has been engaged in, Putin declared that the effectiveness of measures against terrorism and extremism determines the security of the people and the country. He reminded his audience that last year Russia lived through "numerous acts of outrage committed by extremist groups, as well as high-profile terrorist attacks in Moscow and elsewhere." He criticized the investigators whose work he described as not always up to par.

At the same time, he seemed to reassure his audience by promising "no revolutions" in the modernization of the Interior Ministry. "If something is to be changed, it will be done gently and with the participation of the ministry itself," Putin said. "Any steps to modernize a structure as complex and with so many responsibilities as the Interior Ministry should be checked over and over again, and be designed only to enhance its effectiveness." He hinted that one of the changes would be a new emphasis on "crime prevention measures."

Itar-Tass, the official news agency, did not interpret the president's vague statements; nor did it record the reactions of his audience.

There may or may not be a connection, but a few days later Putin signed a bill providing additional government pensions and other privileges to children of victims of Soviet-era political persecution. According to a statement by the presidential press service on February 10 quoted by the Associated Press, the new law gives people whose parents were victims of political repression while they were minors the same rights as those granted to the repression victims. Repression victims have been receiving government benefits, and human rights activists have been lobbying for a law extending the benefits to the children of the victims. Last month, both houses of parliament voted for the bill.

According to official statistics, more than 20 million people suffered in the political purges between the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and Josef Stalin's 1953 death. More than half of them died. Children of the victims were routinely sent to state orphanages where conditions were sometimes as harsh as those in prisons, and many of them died of malnutrition and mistreatment.

POLITKOVSKAYA WINS OSCE HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY AWARD. Also on February 10, independent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who has gained international acclaim by reporting extensively on the war in Chechnya, won the 2003 Prize for Journalism and Democracy. The prize is given annually by the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to journalists who promote the principles of human rights, democracy, and the free flow of information. The award includes a gift of $20,000.

"Granting her this honor is a strong statement of the Parliamentary Assembly in support of courageous and professional journalism, for human rights and freedom of the media,'' assembly president and British lawmaker Bruce George said. Politkovskaya has ignored strict Kremlin controls on war reporting and focused on the killings and violence perpetrated by Russian troops. Unlike most of the Russian news media, Politkovskaya and her newspaper, "Novaya Gazeta," have adopted an anti-war position. In October, a group of Chechen rebels who seized a Moscow theater asked her to serve as a mediator.

SKINHEADS KILL MAURITIAN STUDENT IN ST. PETERSBURG. At a tram station near St. Petersburg's Mechnikov Medical Academy, unidentified teenagers brutally beat Akhish Ramgulan, an 18-year-old medical student from the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, who died several hours later, Moscow's Center TV reported on February 8. According to the television station, the four attackers are members of extremist youth groups, and the incidents marked the skinheads' second attack on foreign students in St. Petersburg last week. The first attack involved Indian students walking along the city's main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt.

Being attacked in public places has become an ordinary event in recent years for the 1,300 foreign students of the Medical Academy, the television correspondent reported. A Jordanian student was quoted as saying that an attack "can happen at a bus station, near the hostel, and in the underground. It can happen everywhere." An Indian student added: "All of us are living here with fear." Appeals to the police yield no results, the correspondent learned from the students.

Also appearing on the program was St. Petersburg Prosecutor Ivan Sydoruk. "We have operational data about people who can commit crimes," he said. "But we do not have complete information about the informal youth groups." The correspondent added: "If the police manages to detain someone, the person is usually a teenager, and the law is lenient with teenagers. Their adult bosses watch their actions standing aside and therefore cannot be prosecuted. The police, however, cannot always succeed in detaining criminals." On February 12, the local newspaper “Nevskoye Vremya" reported that three skinheads have been arrested in connection with the murder, and one of them is nicknamed “The Fuhrer."

SKINHEAD GROUPS ATTRACT MORE MEMBERS IN SARATOV. "A sharp rise in interest towards the skinhead movement has been registered among youth in Saratov," said a report posted on the web site of the newspaper "Izvestiya" on February 5. Based on interviews with volunteers at an emergency hotline for youths with psychological problems, the article reported the presence of at least 1,000 skinheads "and members of various religious sects" in the city. The press service of the local Interior Ministry told "Izvestiya" that there is no special police unit for working with skinheads in the city, nor is there a need for one.

PROSECUTOR AGAIN REFUSES TO CHARGE EDITOR FOR INCITING ETHNIC HATRED. For the second time, the Ostankino District Prosecutor's Office in Moscow has refused to bring charges of inciting ethnic and religious hatred against the editor and publisher of an antisemitic textbook, according to a February 7 report by the Blagovest news agency, which specializes in religious affairs in the former Soviet Union. Last June, the organization For Human Rights requested that criminal charges be brought against the editor and distributors of "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture," a textbook that has been distributed to schools in Moscow and some surrounding regions. The plaintiffs argued that the textbook takes a "primitive antisemitic position" on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, arguing that it happened because the Jews were obsessed with "earthly well being and power over other peoples" rather than spiritual values. The director of For Human Rights, Lev Ponomaryov compared this claim to Nazi propaganda, which also attributed "amoral qualities to a defined ethnic group."

On January 13, the Meshchansky Municipal Court of Moscow found that the decision by the Ostankino District Prosecutor's Office was unfounded, and ordered a second study of the case. Less than a month later, the Prosecutor's Office has issued a second refusal, using, according to a For Human Rights representative, the same arguments as in the first round, partially based on testimony from expert witnesses that the Meshchansky Municipal Court disqualified. The decision of the Prosecutor's Office found "an absence of an intention by the author and publisher" of the textbook to incite ethnic and religious hatred. Observers suggest a legal flaw: unlike its Soviet era predecessor, Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code, which prohibits communal incitement, does not require that intent be proven.

FAR-RIGHT PARTY HOLDS MOSCOW PROTEST AGAINST WAR ON IRAQ. On February 8, about one hundred members of the National Great Power Party of Russia (NDPR) staged a protest rally in Moscow against the looming war in Iraq, UCSJ's Moscow Bureau reported. An additional 300 people gathered to observe the demonstration that offered slogans such as "Russia for Russians," "Death to Zionism," "Down with Kikes, " "Stinking Kikes," and "The Kikes themselves organized the Holocaust," and signs such as "Zionists -- Hands off Iraq!" and, incongruously enough, "Bush is today's Hitler." Copies of "Mein Kampf" and the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" circulated freely, along with antisemitic newspapers.

KRASNODAR DUMA DEPUTY CALLS ZIONISM 1,000 TIMES WORSE THAN FASCISM. In a February 8 interview published by the Krasnodar Kray newspaper "Kuban Segodnya," State Duma Deputy Oleg Mashchenko called Zionism "the main enemy of the peoples of Russia." "Kuban Segodnya" is an official publication of the Krasnodar regional administration and has published antisemitic and racist articles in the past. When asked if he could name "our enemy," Mashchenko replied: "The USA is declaring a war that could turn into a Third World War, and it doesn't understand that it is acting according to an alien, unseen order. The main enemy of the peoples of Russia and other states is Zionism." He went on to say that "Jews are just as much hostages to Zionism as the Germans are to fascism. After all, you can't say that all residents of Germany are fascists! However, Zionism is a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times worse than fascism." Zionism, he concluded, is an invisible, "centuries-old trend that aims at world domination" through a world government.

OPPOSITION LEADERS QUESTION THE LOYALTY OF UKRAINE'S ELITE. More than 300 representatives of Ukraine's top leadership are members of a Masonic lodge, the Order of St. Stanislas, and the Masonic rules are more important to them than their country's Constitution, warned recently Oleksandr Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine. In a sardonic article published on February 7, "Izvestiya" called the revelation "sensational." "If we are to believe Moroz, the Masonic lodge has been joined by the entire upper stratum of the government, the security service, the Office of the Prosecutor General, the MVD, and the Ministry of Defense," the Moscow daily continued. "They have been joined by the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and deputies and Lyudmila Kuchma, wife of the Ukrainian president and 90 generals." Moroz told "Izvestiya" that "the president now has to say why Ukraine's highest officials are assuming Masonic commitments. None of the members of the lodge is entitled to hold public office." "Opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko believes that the Masons need to be broken up," the article added. "But how is this to be done if just about the entire national leadership is in the lodge?"

"Izvestiya" hinted darkly that such an ample documentation on "a Masonic conspiracy in Ukraine" must be an eye-opener for right-wing nationalists. But to other observers, the attack on the loyalty of supposed Freemasons may have a not-so-hidden antisemitic edge. A February 5 "Moscow Times" article on efforts in the Russian Orthodox Church to canonize Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible mentioned that for some of the Orthodox faithful, Freemasons and Jews are interchangeable. According to a "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" article two years ago, Evgeny Marchuk, head of the Security Council in Ukraine, publicly denounced "a Chasidic para-Masonic group" supposedly blocking Russian gas supplies to Ukraine, and a similar accusation is now coming from the opposition leaders, though without the Chasidic prefix.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * The current draft revising the 1991 Federal Law on Mass Media "is a regrettable statement of the failure, after 13 years of reform, to create and establish a democratic media culture within the Russian Federation," wrote Aidan White, head of the International Federation of Journalists, in a February 10 letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It is our view that successive governments have failed to create the conditions for media freedom as enjoyed in other democratic countries."

THREATENING "BODY AND SOUL"
New Studies Report Coercive Sterilization of Roma Women in Slovakia

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have raised a serious new charge of widespread human rights violations in Slovakia, and the government is under pressure from the European Parliament to conduct a thorough investigation.

Roma (also known as Gypsy) women are being coerced and in some cases forced to submit to sterilization in eastern Slovakia's government-run health facilities, according to a new report released by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights and a Slovak group called Poradna pre Obcianske a Ludske Prava (Center for Human and Civic Rights). The investigative report, titled "Body and Soul: Forced Sterilization and Other Assaults on Roma Reproductive Freedom in Slovakia," documents more than a hundred cases of Roma women either forcibly or coercively sterilized or offering strong indications that they had not agreed to be sterilized. The report is based on 230 interviews with Roma women in 40 settlements in eastern Slovakia. It also documents extensive racism and verbal and physical abuse directed against Roma women in public hospitals, including the denial of patient access to their own medical records and segregation in patients' rooms, maternity wards, restrooms, and dining facilities.

"The Slovak maternal health system discriminates against Romani women in almost every respect," said Barbora Bukovska, executive director of Poradna pre Obcianske a Ludske Prava. Ina Zoon, a consultant on the report, added: "It is unacceptable that this is happening in the very heart of Europe. We urge the Slovak government to swiftly end these practices."

Roma make up at least one-tenth of Slovakia's population of 5.5 million, and the European Union (EU) considers Roma poverty the country's worst social problem. Moreover, the Roma population is increasing more rapidly than the rest of the nation.

Specialists point out that the practice of forced sterilization stems from a racist policy instituted under the communist regime that provided monetary incentives to Roma women to undergo sterilization. The policy was formally rescinded more than a decade ago following the "Velvet Revolution" yet has survived the regime change. As an applicant for membership in the EU, Slovakia has committed itself to the "rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities."

Interviewed on the local "Radio Twist" on January 28, Slovakia's Health Minister Rudolf Zajac complained that the charges by the nongovernmental organizations "do not give us sufficient information which would make it possible to file a criminal suit. We need the full names of the doctors and the dates when these things were supposed to have happened. Unless Roma as well as non-Roma citizens exercise civic courage and point to these things, our possibilities are exceptionally restricted." On the same day, Slovakia's Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration and National Minorities Pal Csaky threatened to sue the author of the report "Body and Soul" for failing to report a crime to the police, according to the Slovak news agency SITA web site. If the report turns out to be false, Csaky said he would sue for slander.

Also on January 28, Jan Marinus Wiersma, the European Parliament's rapporteur on Slovakia, called the report "shocking" and warned that if the Slovak authorities fail to examine the alleged forced sterilization, the impact on Slovakia's joining the EU would be negative. According to the Slovak news agency TASR’s web site, Wiersma said that if such sterilizations do occur, "they must be stopped instantly." He added that he expected a full official Slovak response in March when the European Parliament is scheduled to discuss Slovakia's accession to EU in 2004.

In a statement issued on January 30, the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) confirmed that coercive sterilizations continue to be performed on Roma women and disclosed that it had collected its own evidence in field missions to Slovakia last fall. The ERRC estimated that cases in which there may be criminal malpractice -- a woman was sterilized though she had not given any form of consent -- constitute no more than 10 percent of all sterilizations of Roma women. But, the ERRC cautioned, even in such cases there is the possibility that forged consent signatures may exist, "given the evident presence of ill will and malicious intent on the part of some members of the Slovak medical community." Nevertheless, the ERRC noted, the overwhelming majority of the sterilization cases fall into "a gray zone:" though some form of consent was given for sterilization, that consent was based on "misinformation, manipulative information, pressure, tricks, bluster, etc" by the authorities.

While stressing the preliminary character of its research, the ERRC said that there are similar concerns of "abusive sterilizations" taking place in the Czech Republic and Hungary. "Given the high levels of anti-Romani sentiment throughout Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the strength of doctrines of paternalism in medical practice in the region, we have no compelling reasons to believe that the issue is absent elsewhere," the ERRC statement said. "Slovakia is of particular concern due to the extent and frequency with which the idea of coercive contraceptive measures have emerged as part of public discourse on Roma in the country. However, we have reason to believe that if all facts could be known, differences between Slovakia and other countries of the region would be ones of degree rather than kind."
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