Volume 2, Number 9
Friday, March 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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NEW RUSSIAN PARTY ATTACKS 'LIBERAL DEMOCRATS' AND JEWS. On February 23, a group of 12 Duma members, neo-Nazis, World War II veterans, army officers, and Cossack leaders formed the People's Patriotic Party of Russia, a new party that calls for a better deal for ethnic Russians and explicitly accuses Jews of stealing the country's wealth, "Moscow Times" reported. Meeting in the Moscow region town of Moskovsky, 187 delegates from 70 regions elected as their leader Gen. Igor Rodionov, once defense minister under President Boris Yeltsin. The party plans to run in the State Duma elections in 2003 and will fight for "an independent Russia" free of the "foreign experience thrust upon us by the West." According to Interfax, Rodionov, a State Duma deputy from the Communist faction, told the gathering that the new party "considers the liberal democrats who are in power now our enemies." "Gazeta" quoted him as saying: "Liberalism has been and remains the most destructive force in Russia." Rodionov also singled out Jews for attack, saying that they occupy key positions and control the majority of industrial enterprises and media. "They must return what they have looted in Russia and publicly repent to the Russian people for the crimes that Jewish terrorists and extremists have committed," he said, according to "Gazeta."

Vladimir Miloserdov, the head of the party's executive committee who has been the leader of an ultra-nationalist organization called the Russian Party, named Soviet leaders such as Leon Trotsky and Yakov Sverdlov as Jews "who committed grave crimes against humanity." "And add Yegor Gaidar to these criminals," he said in a telephone interview, referring to the head of the team of liberal economists who spearheaded economic reforms in the early 1990s. "He stole the savings of our older people and doomed them to the life of beggars. Look on the list of Russia's richest people and you will see no ethnic Russians among them," Miloserdov claimed.

Communist leaders, some of whom made similar antisemitic statements in the past, expressed skepticism about the chances of the new party. "Their political prospects are miserable," Sergei Reshulsky, an outspoken Communist in the Duma, told "Moscow Times." "People will laugh at them." Reshulsky could not say whether Rodionov, as a Communist Party member, would be punished for violating party discipline. Other analysts also believe that the new party will quickly become marginal. Vladimir Pribylovsky, from the Moscow-based Panorama think tank, suggested that "any new opposition party in Russia is doomed because the country's political ground is almost totally dominated by [President Vladimir] Putin."

PUTIN’S CHOICE: LOYALTY TO THE PATRIARCHATE OR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. The current rift between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church is prompting a reassessment of the increasingly intimate relationship between the Russian government and the Orthodox Church. In an opinion piece in "The Wall Street Journal" on February 25, Geraldine Fagan, Moscow correspondent of Keston News Service, presented an intricate picture of church-state relations in Russia. She argued that the Kremlin's "Westward tilt" since September 11 has also made Putin "reach out to the Vatican." She cited Putin's "dear hope" of a papal visit to Russia during his term of office, expressed in a recent interview with the Polish daily "Gazeta Wyborcza." But if Putin is really serious about religious freedom, Fagan wrote, he will insist on "the constitutional separation of church and state in Russia," "stop pandering to the whims and historical grievances of the Moscow Patriarchate," and "come out more strongly in support of the Catholic Church's legal right to carry out its activities in accordance with its own hierarchical and institutional structure." Fagan recommended as "a first step" the granting of Russian citizenship to two of the new Catholic bishops, which authorities have "persistently denied." But the broader issue is more difficult than the current controversy about Catholic dioceses. Fagan proposed that "The Kremlin must take the lead if the Russian people are ever genuinely able to choose, change and possess religious convictions in accordance with their own consciences, and not, as the patriarch said this week, be predetermined 'culturally, spiritually, and historically' to be 'the flock of the Russian Orthodox Church.'"

RUSSIA STEPPED UP WAR ON CHECHEN CIVILIANS AFTER 9/11, HRW CHARGES. Soon after the United States launched the war against terrorism, Russia intensified its abuses against Chechen civilians with torture, arrests, and looting, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged in a 72-page report released on February 28. In a typical “sweep,” said HRW Russia specialist Rachel Denber, Russian troops block off a village in an effort to capture rebels taking shelter among noncombatants. "They go in, arbitrarily detain people, beat them, take them off for torture, and loot," she said. "Looting doesn't mean taking a piece of jewelry but backing a truck up into a house and taking everything that is valuable."

LOCAL POLICE SHUT DOWN ADVENTIST CHURCH. While Azerbaijan’s central authorities profess tolerance toward minority faiths, local police have their own ideas. For instance, on February 24, police in the town of Gyanja broke up the Sunday service of the local Adventist church and banned services until the church obtains its re-registration certificate, according to Keston News Service. "The police said that our church had no document allowing a meeting," Pastor Ivan (Yahya) Zavrichko, the head of the Adventists in Azerbaijan, told Keston News Service. However, Ilgar Balakishiev, the head of the Department of Social Order of the Gyanja police, who was identified by the Adventists as leading the raid, denied that he had taken part. "It was the city authorities -- I wasn't there," he said on the phone. He warned that if Keston quoted him, he would take Keston to court. Namik Allahverdiev, a deputy chairman of the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, and his colleague Aleksandr Kozlov, in charge of Christian affairs, confirmed at the offices of the State Committee that the raid had taken place. "Such raids are unpleasant, especially when they take place in the middle of services," Kozlov said. The Gyanja Adventist church is subjected to "periodic" raids, Zavrichko said. "Every two or three months they visit during services and check up on who is there." Other Protestant groups in Gyanja face similar pressures. Some have been fined, but local Protestants have asked Keston not to publish these incidents for fear of making things worse.

The 200-strong Gyanja Adventist church has been functioning for decades. It has registration with the Ministry of Justice as a branch of the Baku Adventist church. But it submitted its re-registration application with the State Committee in December 2001 as an individual church. The State Committee found "mistakes" in the application -- as it did in the two other Adventist applications - and "corrected" versions were submitted at the end of January. Kozlov told Keston that the state committee is expected to approve the Adventists' re-registration applications "very soon."

Members of various faiths have told Keston that especially outside the capital Baku, local authorities often put great pressure on communities they do not like. "Local authorities think that if groups haven't got permission they can't meet," Kozlov said. He added that last December the State Committee hosted a meeting of heads of local administrations and explained that they should not touch religious groups, and if they have doubts about a group they should phone the State Committee.

ANTISEMITIC DEMONSTRATION IN LVIV. About 200 people attended an antisemitic demonstration in Lviv, Ukraine, according to a February 20 report by the "Politicheskaya Ukraina" web news service. The rally was organized by the Organization of Idealists of Ukraine -- the publisher of the viciously antisemitic newspaper "The Idealist." Participants shouted: "Kikes out of Ukraine!"

'HOUSE OF TERROR' OPENS ITS DOORS IN BUDAPEST. On February 24 more than 30,000 people filled the street in front of the House of Terror, a new museum housed in a gray, neo-Renaissance style building on Andrassy Boulevard, the Champs Elysees of the Hungarian capital. Between 1937 and 1945, the building served as the headquarters of the extreme-right Arrow Cross Party that the SS put in power on October 16, 1944. Strangely enough, after the Red Army's conquest of Hungary in 1945, the Communist secret police decided to use the same property and incorporated the cellars of adjacent buildings to devise an extensive labyrinth of tiny prison cells. In the house marked No. 60, the two totalitarian regimes interrogated, tortured, and killed many thousands of their leading enemies, some real and others imaginary. In an article on February 27, editorial page editor Helle Dale of "The Washington Times" singled out two signs exhibited in the museum. One from a Communist prosecutor: "We can learn [about] the class struggle from the justice of the fascists." The other was a sign in the cellar, instructing prison guards: "Don't just guard, hate." Hungarian press accounts featured a third slogan, also from the Communists: "Confession of a crime is the queen of evidence."

"Before opening day, the streets outside the House of Terror filled with Hungarians holding candles in a quiet, mournful vigil," Dale wrote. "On the morning of the opening itself, the Socialists [the former Communists] issued a statement apologizing to 'anyone who was mistreated in the second half of the 20th century,' but also condemning 'the falsification of history.' If they win the next election, the Socialists promised to make the museum a monument to 'remembering and reconciliation.'" Upon opening the museum, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said: "Reconciliation is always an expression for those who committed the crimes. Memory is for the victims."

ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE SURGES IN FRANCE. "Antisemitic Crime Surges, Worrying French Jews," was the title of an article in "The New York Times" on February 26. The report found that the attacks target Paris suburbs "where poor and working-class Jews and Muslims live side by side in bleak housing projects." Noting that so far no one has been killed, "The Times" cited government statistics reporting that acts of violence against Jews have increased from one in 1998 to 9 in 1999 to 116 in 2000, and under the heading of "other antisemitic incidents" ranging from threats to arson, the number zoomed from 74 in 1998 to 603 in 2000. While 2000 is the last year for which statistics are available, the government has already noted another "sharp increase" since September 2000, when fighting between Israelis and Palestinians began to intensify. The surge reflects the turmoil in Israel, the article said, and the attackers are often Arabs from the lower ranks of society. Increasingly, Jewish leaders speak out, criticizing the government for minimizing the problem and for failing to denounce the mounting threats, insults, and assaults directed at French Jews.

In Garges-lès-Gonesse, the dateline of "The Times" report, the bus that takes children to a Jewish school has been attacked numerous times over the past 14 months. The first time, a knife was thrown through an open window. The second time, three men blocked the bus with their car. In the third incident, one man smashed a window with a tire iron while his companion threatened the driver with a gun. Most recently, rocks were hurled at the windows. "The Times" quotes Jewish leaders who see a political component in the lack of outcry over the wave of violence: More than five million Muslims, many of them from the former French North Africa, live in France -- but only 600,000 Jews.

The French press gave much space to a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on February 20, telling American Jewish leaders that he was troubled by the threats to French Jews and that his government was making preparations to settle them in Israel. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine declared that to denounce France as "an antisemitic country is odious." Elie Barnavi, Israel's ambassador in France, suggested that it was "very exaggerated" to say that the Jewish community was "threatened by violence."

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "The United States and Russia are closer today -- politically, economically, and militarily -- than at any time in our history," Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, U.S. Ambassador to Russia, said in a speech at St. Petersburg State University on February 22. "Even before September 11, President Putin had made a strategic choice. He had concluded that Russia's future economic growth and political influence could be best assured through closer relations with Europe and the United States, rather than through the competitive, confrontational approach of the Soviet past. For his part, President Bush was already determined to move beyond the constraints of Cold War thinking and forge a new relationship with Russia based on genuine partnership and on Russia's integration into the family of democratic nations."

EU TO STUDY CZECH EXPULSION OF ETHNIC GERMANS AND HUNGARIANS
Long-Festering Human Rights Controversy May Now Be Addressed

"There is no such thing as 'was,' only 'is,'" William Faulkner once said. The Czechoslovak government's expulsion in 1945-46 of up to 3 million ethnic German inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia, better known as Sudeten Germans, and some 100,000 ethnic Hungarians of Slovakia as a collective punishment for their alleged pro-Axis sympathies is now being challenged as incompatible with human rights standards. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has championed the cause of ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring states, raised the issue on February 20 in Brussels, telling a committee of the European Parliament that he "expected" that once admitted to the European Union, the Czech Republic and Slovakia would repeal the decrees, promulgated by President Edvard Benes of Czechoslovakia, that provided the legal framework for the expulsions and the expropriation of the properties of the expellees.

What took those who sympathize with victims of postwar collective punishment in Czechoslovakia this long to press their case at a European forum? With some exceptions, leaders of Germany and Austria -- the two states that received the Sudeten German refugees -- thought it unwise to speak up on behalf of their brethren. Those close to Orban say that Jurgen Schroder, a German Christian Democrat, surprised Orban with the question in the course of a wide-ranging committee hearing, and that Orban felt he had no choice but to give a candid answer. "No comment" would have signified his acquiescence in the "Benes decrees" which he had for long considered unjust but chose not to bring up in bilateral talks lest "the excellent relations" with the Czechs and Slovaks suffer. (Angered by his comment, the Czech and Slovak prime ministers, who were supposed to meet with him this week in Hungary, promptly cancelled their visits.) Orban's view is that wrong judgments from the 20th century should not be carried over to the 21st. But, he says, he has no plans to make the Benes decrees an issue in bilateral contacts or in the EU. His opponents charge that his need to capture the nationalist vote in the national elections this April account for his statement.

European newspapers point out that the issue, dormant for years, originally hit the front pages in January when Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman, who is about to retire from politics, struck an undiplomatic chord, telling the Austrian magazine "Profil" that the Sudeten Germans were Hitler's "Fifth Column" and deserved their expulsion (See Bigotry Monitor of January 25, Vol. 2, No. 4.) One politician who promptly protested was Edmund Stoiber, whom the German Christian Democrats had just named their candidate for the post of chancellor. According to the Paris daily "Le Monde," Stoiber, whose home state of Bavaria absorbed 2 million Sudeten Germans, is influenced by his wife, who is of Sudeten German origin. Speaking on Austrian television on February 3, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel went a step further by suggesting that Austria and the Czech Republic should negotiate a joint statement that would "say once and for all that the Benes decrees are no longer valid and that they represent a dead wrong." The same day Vaclav Klaus, a former Czech prime minister and leader of the Civic Democratic Party, told "Profil" that the demand to drop the decrees is "unrealistic" and that "symbolic moves" may be called for, even though they cannot achieve anything.

In an age moving farther and farther in time and tenor from World War II, it should be recalled that strong pro-German and pro-Nazi sympathies did exist among a large portion of prewar Czechoslovakia's ethnic German population. But the evidence of their collective loyalty was not tested in court. Besides, some of the ethnic Germans were not Nazis, and quite a few were Social Democrats and even Communists. As for ethnic Hungarians, most of them welcomed the return of parts of Slovakia to Hungary -- but that alone should not have branded them as Nazis. The uncompromising severity of the Nazis' Nuremberg laws on race had an impact on those who administered justice after the war. In Eastern Europe, the routine brutality of German collective punishments of large groups of the conquered populations set the norm for the victors. The Benes decrees punished people because of their ethnicity and awarded their possessions on the same basis.

To root out the Nazi evil, indiscriminate measures were applied. Numerous intellectuals in the West have condemned Josef Stalin for the wholesale slaughter and deportation of entire ethnic minority groups such as the Crimean Tatars, supposedly as a punishment for some of their people welcoming the German invaders as liberators and even joining their military. On a more modest scale, Josip Broz-Tito too perpetrated what has recently come to be known as "ethnic cleansing." But by and large, Europeans shrugged off stern postwar justice as inevitable and urged survivors to build new lives. Nor was there much sympathy for the 160,000 ethnic Germans and 400,000 ethnic Hungarians who could prove their opposition to Nazism and were allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia, though for a long time they could not run for office or vote in an election.

On February 27, Arnaud Leparmantier of "Le Monde" quoted an unnamed and unflappable EU functionary in Brussels complaining that some disputes brought up recently predate the first steps toward the Union. The disputes are "painful," the functionary added. "There are the problems of yesterday, and there are the problems of today," the reporter philosophized in the manner of the biblical book of "Ecclesiastes." "But the Union does not wish to reenter old quarrels." Nor does the Czech government, which has reiterated its insistence on retaining the Benes decrees.

However, historic wrongs do not simply go away. No matter how painful -- and worse, inconvenient -- they may be, they need to be discussed by the victims and the beneficiaries, or their heirs. On the same day that Leparmantier filed his dismissive dispatch from Brussels, the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee decided to ask an independent legal institution to undertake a study of the Benes decrees to determine whether or not they violate current European notions of human rights.

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