Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 2, Number 8

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 2, Number 8

(February 22, 2002)

Volume 2, Number 8
Friday, February 22, 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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ANTISEMITIC EDITOR WINS LIBEL SUIT IN VOLGOGRAD. A court in Volgograd ruled in favor of the editor of one of Russia’s most vociferously antisemitic newspapers, according to "Obshchaya Gazeta" of February 7. For the past seven years Stanislav Terentev-an ex-KGB officer who edits the Volgograd newspaper "Kolokol" (The Bell)-pursued libel charges against editor Anatoly Karman of another local newspaper, "Oblastnye Vesti," which in 1994 published an article calling Terentev a "neo-fascist" and his newspaper "a Black Hundred horror." "Oblastnye Vesti's" characterizations were based on "Kolokol's" routine propagation of hatred for "kikes" accused of "genocide" against the Russian people and Terentev's close ties with local and national hate groups. Nevertheless, the Sovetsky District Court ruled in Terentev's favor twice during the 1990s, only to have those decisions overturned by the Oblast Court.

A January 1995 decision by the Judicial Chamber for Information Disputes Under the President of the Russian Federation recommended to the Prosecutor General’s Office that it open a case against Terentev after finding that his newspaper incites ethnic hatred and thus liable for prosecution under Article 282 of the Criminal Code. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office dragged out the case and eventually dropped it.

Now, the same Sovetsky District Court ruled in Terentev’s favor again, but this time the Oblast Court has allowed the lower court’s decision to stand. According to "Obshchaya Gazeta," Judge Natalya Seryshevaya argued that as Terentev is a son of a World War II veteran and "takes an active part in the political life of our city," Karman's description of Terentev as a "neo-fascist" "insulted the honor and dignity of the plaintiff, dealing a blow to his reputation and subjecting him to moral suffering." The judge also found that "Kolokol" articles "do not contain propaganda of ethnic hatred, propaganda of the idea of racial purity, nor calls to incite ethnic enmity or discord, but there are criticisms of political streams like Zionism, Freemasonry, and Judaism." Editor Karman and his "Oblastnye Vesti" have to pay Terentev a hefty sum for damages. The district court ordered a compensation of 40,000 rubles but the Oblast Court lowered the sum to the equivalent of $1,300. Karman plans to appeal to the European Court on Human Rights.

SALVATION ARMY WINS RIGHT TO WORK IN MOSCOW; EARLIER COURT RULING REVOKED. On February 7, the Constitutional Court of Russia has revoked the September 12, 2001 court judgment that had dissolved the Salvation Army in Moscow on account of its failure to obtain state re-registration. The Constitutional Court found that Russian authorities had misinterpreted the law. It ruled that the formalistic pretext of missing a re-registration deadline does not provide sufficient grounds for an order for dissolution. In effect, the Constitutional Court accepted the argument of Anatoly Pchelintsev and Vladimir Ryakhovsky of the Moscow-based Slavic Center for Law and Justice that challenged the legality of the Russian law provision on the basis of which the Salvation Army in Moscow was dissolved. The Slavic Center believes that the new ruling is not only a major victory for the Salvation Army but it is crucial for other organizations that have been denied re-registration and face the threat of liquidation. The Slavic Center attorneys say: "It is a real breakthrough in our fight for religious freedom in Russia."

ROCK CONCERT LAUDS HITLER, CALLS FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING. Some 200 skinheads attended a neo-Nazi rock concert at the nightclub Tornado in Samara on February 8, according to UCSJ’s Moscow Bureau Chief Aleksandr Brod. The concert was organized by Viktor Guzhov, former head of the regional branch of Russian National Unity who now leads the local branch of the similarly neo-Nazi National People’s Party of Russia. The nightclub was decorated with swastika flags as two local bands, White Resistance and Clark Works, sang songs in praise of Adolf Hitler and called for violence against ethnic minorities. One song suggested: "Stand up Russian people, destroy the black rabble!" Former Samara deputy mayor Oleg Kitter showed up, and the skinheads applauded him and celebrated the recent court ruling that cleared him of charges of inciting ethnic hatred. In his address to the crowd, Kitter called for violence against "kikes" and thrust out his arm in the Nazi salute.

SKINHEADS ATTACK PASSERSBY IN MOSCOW AND ST. PETERSBURG. On February 17 the independent radio station "Ekho Moskvy" reported skinhead violence on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg the night before. In Moscow, tenth grader Hasan Aliyev, an ethnic Azerbaijani, was beaten up by five skinheads. In St. Petersburg, some 200 youngsters, including skinheads, went on a rampage after leaving a late night show at a cinema. They walked over to Prospekt Kultury where they beat up passersby and smashed shop windows. They broke the windows of a kiosk belonging to a businessman of Asian origin. According to the St. Petersburg Main Directorate of Internal Affairs, the youngsters were not drunk or under the influence of drugs. "Ekho Moskvy" reported that no one was detained, though the police are aware of the identity of the attackers.

ANTISEMITIC BOOK PUBLISHED IN UKRAINE. A new book in Ukrainian published in Lviv, titled "Whom Does the Lord Choose?", contains antisemitic writings from more than 50 authors, according to UCSJ’s Lviv monitor. The 556-page anthology is mostly made up of articles that appeared between 1992 and 2000 in the antisemitic newspaper "Za Vilnu Ukrainu." The authors deny the Holocaust and claim the existence of various Jewish conspiracies. Though the book clearly violates laws banning the incitement of ethnic hatred, it is sold in bookstores all over Lviv.

CZECHS REJECT SCHINDLER FOR THE LIST OF LOCAL GREATS. On February 14, the regional assembly of Eastern Pardubice, Czechoslovakia, voted against including Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, on a list of the region's outstanding personalities, the Associated Press reported. Schindler was born in Svitavy, which is located in the region. However, an advisory council decided that he had been a member of the Nazi Party and is "too controversial" to be added to the list. Industrialist Schindler's rescue of Jews became famous to millions across the globe due to Steven Spielberg's 1993 Oscar-winning film "Schindler's List."

MILOSEVIC TRIAL STOKES EXTREMISM IN SERBIA. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial in The Hague has generated in Serbia a strong right-wing nationalist backlash, including antisemitism, according to Milanka Saponja-Hadzic, the Belgrade correspondent of the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR). She attributes much of the antisemitism to the Obraz movement and the Student Association Sv. Justin Filosof at the Belgrade University philosophy faculty. Professor Vladimir Ilic of the Belgrade School of Philosophy told IWPR that "antisemitism in Serbia brings together a range of conservative protagonists, including Milosevic's supporters, the extreme right, parts of the Orthodox Church, and groups that wish to rehabilitate classical fascist antisemites such as Nikolaj Velimirovic and Dimitrije Ljotic from the time of the Second World War." Books by Bishop Velimirovic, who once praised Hitler, are now reprinted along with other antisemitic literature in defiance of anti-discrimination laws. Moderate sections of public opinion are "deeply troubled," Saponja-Hadzic reports, especially because the government rarely rebuffs "inflammatory outbursts." If the trend continues, she adds, "it could not only boost the anti-Hague mood but lead to violence against liberal dissenters."

MUSLIM CLERIC CHARGED WITH SOLICITING MURDER. London-based, Jamaican-born Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, 38, whose lectures and audiotapes have called for killing Jews and other non-Muslims is now under arrest in London and faces the rarely used charge of "soliciting murder," "The Times of London" reported on February 21. The newspaper, which found his tapes on sale in Muslim bookstores for 10 British pounds each, was recently told by him: "We do not in any way promote terrorism and we do not command people to carry out terrorist acts." The report also quoted a barrister explaining that the charge of "soliciting murder" is "much wider" than the more common charge of "incitement to murder," and the prosecution does not have to "show that the intended victim is within the jurisdiction." Although the maximum penalty is life, "The Times" noted, a typical jail sentence is between six and twelve years.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * In an open letter dated February 15, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) demanded the "immediate and unconditional" release of Grigory Pasko, the naval captain turned environmental journalist who has already served 22 months of his four-year prison term. On February 12 and 13, Russia's Supreme Court struck down the laws that helped convict Pasko on espionage charges. IHF wrote: "The Pasko case represents another opportunity for the Russian court system to establish a precedence and ensure that the European Convention on Human Rights is upheld, and to show the world that Russia is making further steps towards becoming a country governed by the rule of law, where individuals are protected against government violations of their human rights, not only on paper, but in real terms."

THE DICTATOR'S LAST SHOW Milosevic Is Ready to Harangue and to Interrogate Endlessly at the Hague Tribunal

Humankind did not have an opportunity to see and hear Adolf Hitler standing trial. He chose silence by committing suicide, and many who knew Slobodan Milosevic, both friends and enemies, expected him to follow suit. Instead, the former Yugoslav president who had once studied law decided to speak in his own defense, not only because he thought that no lawyer would be up to the job of representing him but, he said, because for the past seven months he had not had a chance to address the public. Perhaps he is by now realistic enough to recognize that this may be his last chance to plead his case -- and for a seemingly unlimited number of hours.

He glowers at the tribunal he does not recognize, and he is contemptuous of the courtesy he is treated with. When watching a video of the crimes his troops committed, his face is as expressionless as the back of a shovel. When he speaks, he is like a drunk in a bar, dumping on his audience whatever comes to his mind, and his mind is relentlessly focused on his exalted sense of himself that defeat has not dented and on his long list of enemies he presents as despicable, devious hypocrites. He will prove, he said, that he is a victim of a vast conspiracy, so is his nation - which is probably what Hitler would have harped on. "The Serbs did not start the war," Milosevic declared at the outset. (Hitler was careful to fabricate incidents, and he claimed his wars were defensive.) It was the West that decided to dismember the Yugoslav federal republic, and the arch-plotter was Chancellor Gerhard Schroder who carried out "Germany's revenge" for Serbia defeating Germany in two world wars. NATO -- not he or the Serbs -- committed genocide. The West "pushed Bosnia into a civil war," and the global news media was "assigned the task of serving as an instrument of war and of disinforming the public." The world was blind to the fact that "the Kosovo bandits" were part of the international terrorist conspiracy, aimed to strike at "the heart" of Yugoslavia, even before it struck at the United States on September 11, 2001.

In everything he did, Milosevic said he represented "the will of the people," and in the dock with him is "everybody who lent support" to him: "the government, the parliament, the various political organizations, the media - they all stand accused here." Indeed, this is one claim of his that is hard to dismiss - and even harder to acknowledge. His support was widespread, and at least early on in the wars of Yugoslavia he would have carried Serbia by a landslide. But he took his mandate a step further, projecting himself as the embodiment of Serbia's aspirations thwarted for centuries - not far from Hitler's self-image as "the man of destiny" and "an instrument of Providence."

Now Milosevic intends to defend himself by arguing that he was elsewhere when alleged killings by his troops took place. But the prosecutors aim at meeting a different legal standard for war crimes guilt: that he knew or should have known what his underlings did, and that he failed to block them.

A pudgy 60-year-old with a face and a physique that would allow him to pass for Everyman anywhere in Europe, he does not look like a monster. His demeanor does not instill fear. Stripped of his title, his bodyguards, and his power to order tanks to the streets, he is pathetic, repeating himself and unable to come up with a graceful phrase -- just like Hitler's henchmen were in Nuremberg. A lifelong communist, Milosevic seems averse to change a word in the slogans he coined: "The police and the army defended the country courageously and honorably.'' And: "Our defense was a heroic defense against the aggression of the NATO pact.'' His sense of humor is coarse. So far his best line had to do with the prosecution soon reaching the point of having to rely on a hairdresser for testimony - a reference that was meant to point to chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte's bleached hair. But this time there is no admiring multitude that would roar back its approval, and at the end of the session he is escorted from the courtroom to his solitary cell where video cameras keep a watch over him.

Dictators tend to believe that their rule will go on forever, and some of them refuse to give any thought to an exit strategy. With Allied armies closing in from all sides, Hitler forbade his men to plan for the Nazi movement going underground. Milosevic is more creative. He has promised to pursue an aggressive defense strategy that so far featured his decision to summon witnesses such as Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, and, most important, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroder. Dubbed a brilliant tactician, he may prove a master in the art of cross-examination. After Milosevic embarrassed the first witness for the prosecution - an ethnic Albanian politician who used to be a top Communist - other witnesses may withdraw, afraid that Milosevic will expose their dirty secrets from the past.

But the court may not agree to host the Milosevic Show for the next two years, the estimated length of the trial. In the end, the former dictator is likely to be left with just one option: to accept his fate as a martyr, a serial loser in the wars of Yugoslavia. * * * *

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