Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 3, Number 10

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 3, Number 10

(March 7, 2003)

Volume 3, Number 10
Friday, March 7, 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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U.S. DIPLOMAT PLEDGES THE END OF JACKSON-VANIK IN 2003. The U.S. government is "determined to see 2003 as the year that we deliver on Russia's graduation from Jackson-Vanik," said John Beyrle, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, on February 26. He was addressing a conference, arranged by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia and the Russians' Expert Institute, with Russia's economy and investment climate as the subject. He acknowledged that "the ground is littered with the promises of U.S. officials who have, at one time or another, predicted the end of Jackson-Vanik." But, the veteran Russia specialist emphasized, there is now in Washington "a real determination to get out from under Jackson-Vanik." He pointed to "the demise of official antisemitism" and "the open emigration" as the reasons for dropping the amendment, "a relic of the Cold War."

KRASNOYARSK SYNAGOGUE DEFACED. Unidentified individuals defaced a synagogue in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Jewish leaders said on March 3, according to the Associated Press. The vandals painted swastikas and antisemitic graffiti on an outside wall, along with the acronym of the ultranationalist group, Russian National Unity. State-run Rossiya Television showed footage of the synagogue with swastikas painted on both sides of a gate and words including "death" scrawled on the wall.

The Moscow television station characterized vandalism at Jewish sites in the city 2,100 miles east of Moscow as "fairly common," but, it added, the incident marked the first time that such actions have been associated with a particular organization. It noted that Russian National Unity, which is banned in some Russian regions, is not registered in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Yuri Lifshits, chairman of the Council of the Krasnoyarsk Jewish Religious Union, expressed concern about extremist groups. "These are neo-Nazis and fascists who incite interracial hate. Today they defaced a synagogue, tomorrow they'll deface a church, and the day after tomorrow they'll grab axes and knives, and there will be pogroms," he said on Rossiya Television. According to Rossiya, the police said that if the vandals are found, they could be charged only with vandalism because the graffiti did not include threats specific enough to warrant more serious charges.

Meanwhile, Chicago Action for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, an affiliate of UCSJ, has announced that it will give grants toward the purchase of video security systems for a synagogue in Nikolaev, Ukraine that has been attacked by vandals six times over the past two years, and for a synagogue in Pinsk, Belarus. Over the last two years, Chicago Action has helped fund security systems for Russian synagogues in Tyumen, Saratov, and Kostroma to protect them from regular attacks by vandals.

ANTISEMITIC POLICEMEN BEAT MOSCOW JOURNALIST. "Ekho-TV" reporter Yuri Gusakov was beaten in southwestern Moscow by policemen who called him a "kike" and "kike-face," according to reports by the news web site "Newsru.com" and the "Ekho Moskvy" radio station, summarized by the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. According to the Center's summary, on the night of February 25, Gusakov was in the entranceway of his apartment building when a squad of policemen approached him, accused him of being drunk, then attacked him with clubs and kicked him several times before taking him to the Kotlovo police station. He was kept there for several hours. He was released after his parents paid 2,000 rubles and Gusakov signed a document stating that he had no complaints about the way he had been handled. An investigation of the incident is under way.

RUSSIAN COLONEL TO BE RETRIED FOR MURDERING CHECHEN WOMAN. Russian army Colonel Yuri Budanov will be retried for strangling Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen woman, Reuters reported on February 28. Citing "multiple procedural violations," Russia's Supreme Court found that the military court’s ruling declaring him temporarily insane was flawed. In December, Budanov, a tank unit commander, was ordered to submit himself to psychiatric treatment. "The decision of the court has been reversed," Supreme Court press secretary Pavel Odintsov told Reuters. "The Budanov case will go for a new hearing." Budanov is the only senior officer who has been tried for crimes against civilians since Russian forces re-entered Chechnya in 1999.

Relatives of the murdered woman denounced last December's ruling as tantamount to an acquittal. Russian human rights groups condemned that decision, arguing that it would allow abuses by Russian troops to go unpunished.

On March 3, Russia's military announced the first reduction of forces in Chechnya since militants from the breakaway republic stormed a Moscow theater and took the audience hostage last October. More than 1,000 troops and 200 pieces of military equipment will be withdrawn, said Col. Nikolai Deryabin, head of the Defense Ministry's press service, according to the Associated Press. As reasons for the pullout, he cited the "steady tendency toward normalization'' in the republic's northern plains and the successful transfer of power to Chechen police. But on March 5, Reuters reported renewed fighting, including an incident leaving six marines dead. Russia has 80,000 troops in Chechnya, a military spokesman said.

KIEV COURT CONVICTS GROUP FOR VIOLATING LAW AGAINST ETHNIC HATRED. For the first time, the prosecution of a group of suspects under a Ukrainian law that prohibits the incitement of ethnic hatred has resulted in a conviction, according to a March 4 report by "Evreyskie Novosti" (Jewish News). While Article 161 of the Criminal Code has been used in criminal cases against publishers of antisemitic newspapers and magazines, none of the cases has resulted in a criminal conviction.

The precedent-setting conviction follows a trial of a group of youths who attacked Kiev's Central Synagogue on April 13, 2002. The defendants, who were not named in the report, acknowledged that they had gathered stones on their way to the synagogue and used them in breaking windows and beating three Jews, including the rabbi's son. In language unusual in countries of the former Soviet Union, where hate crimes are usually classified under the nebulous term "hooliganism," the verdict found the defendants guilty of "pre-planned acts aimed at inciting ethnic animosity and hatred, as well as degrading the ethnic dignity and honor of citizens of Jewish ethnicity."

SHEVARDNADZE CALLS FOR PROTECTING RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN GEORGIA. "Religious discrimination has increased considerably since Georgia gained independence," President Eduard Shevardnadze said on February 26, following the government's approval of his draft of a decree on the protection of the rights of religious minorities. "Religious discrimination should be done away with as this phenomenon is incompatible with Georgia's independent status." According to Interfax, Shevardnadze suggested that the Georgian Orthodox Church pay more attention to issues relating to religious tolerance.

Over the past two years, the Council of Europe and representatives of numerous governments have criticized Georgia for violating the rights of religious minorities. According to Interfax, citing Georgian human rights organizations, more than one hundred attacks on representatives of religious minorities have been recorded in Georgia in the past three years. However, human rights organizations say, Georgian law enforcement agencies have not taken any measures to punish the perpetrators.

MARCH HONORING LATVIAN SS LEGION BANNED. This year, Riga's City Council will not approve a march on March 16 commemorating Latvian legionaries who fought the Red Army under Waffen-SS flags during World War II, Latvian Radio announced on February 27. The security police fear provocations, the broadcast said, as well as negative international repercussions. The police added that they have no objections to "private activities" at the Freedom Monument in central Riga on that day. Last year the council canceled the permits it had initially issued to hold such a march.

JEWISH CEMETERIES VANDALIZED IN HUNGARY AND MOLDOVA. On March 2, a caretaker discovered that vaults were broken into in a Jewish cemetery that has not been used for burials since 1960 in Szigetvar, in southwestern Hungary. Budapest communal leaders suspect that the perpetrators looked for valuables but noted that they also burned a wooden cross. Last month, eight tombstones were smashed in the Jewish cemetery of Beltsy (Balti) in Moldova, according to the newspaper "Nezavisimaya Moldova" of February 14. The paper recalled that in August 2000, three youths were arrested for stripping valuable metal from tombstones in the same cemetery, but police did not press charges, claiming "an absence of any kind of crime."

FRENCH SCHOOLS TO BLOCK ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS. France's conservative government is taking an activist approach to counteract a disturbing new trend in the country's public schools. In a press conference on February 27, Minister of Education Luc Ferry said that antisemitism has become a "true danger"' in the school system, and he announced new measures to block hostile acts toward Jewish students, according to the Associated Press. The government was setting up committees to monitor and cope with racist activity among students, Ferry said, and teachers will not be allowed to turn their heads when Jewish students are harassed. "There is a trivialization of antisemitism that worries us, a new wave of antisemitism that is being tolerated by certain adults,'' Ferry said at a news conference. Ferry traced the growth of antisemitism to France's large Muslim population.

According to news agency accounts, Ferry's remarks angered two education unions, which promptly denied that teachers were tolerating racism. While one union said that scapegoating teachers would not ease tensions in the classroom, the other asked for "the facts" on which Ferry based his judgment. The ministry has offered statistics: 455 racist and antisemitic incidents recorded in the school year's first trimester. Most of them were non-violent, involving verbal insults and offensive graffiti. Education leaders will meet later this month to toughen sanctions against students who engage in such behavior, Ferry said.

Last September, a group of teachers published a book titled "The Lost Territories of the Republic,'' in which they argued that in some classrooms the teaching of the Holocaust has become impossible because of hostility to the subject displayed by students of Arab origin. During World War II, 75,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi concentration camps.

FRENCH-GERMAN LINKUP IN CHARTERING PLANES TO EXPEL MIGRANTS. Marking yet another milestone in the increasingly multilateral, European Union-wide efforts to block illegal migration from Africa, on March 3, France and Germany flew 54 illegal immigrants back home from Paris to Ivory Coast and Senegal, France's Interior Ministry said in a statement. About 90 police accompanied the 30 Ivory Coast and 24 Senegalese immigrants during the flight from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, French police said, but, Reuters noted, without specifying how many immigrants had come from Germany. Television news programs featured the spectacle of muscular policemen forcing the vigorously protesting Africans into police vans and then into chartered planes.

Upon arriving in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, one of the repatriated migrants charged that police tied their feet with adhesive tape and handcuffed them. The French Ministry of the Interior claimed that the travel conditions of the illegal migrants were identical to those of any commercial flight. The statement added that the illegal immigrants had been held at a special center at Charles de Gaulle airport, where they were asked to return home voluntarily or face expulsion. The anti-racism group MRAP condemned the action as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. "The use of specially chartered flights turns these deportations into clandestine operations without any means of outside control or observation," a statement said.

The expulsion coincided with French President Jacques Chirac's unexpectedly warm reception in Algeria. But according to news agency accounts, the first French head of state to visit the former French colony since independence was greeted by large crowds of youths chanting "Chirac, visas!" The news accounts add that the French government is likely to turn a deaf ear to demands by Algerians to improve their economic prospects in France.

French police said that since the beginning of the year, border police have noticed a sharp increase in the number of attempts at illegal immigration from African countries and China. It added that EU countries had agreed to return illegal immigrants to their home countries in groups like the one sent back on March 3.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "Large-scale violations of all the principles of due process of law like arbitrary detentions and show trials took place" in Turkmenistan, says the draft report for the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), according to a Reuters dispatch on March 3. "Not only has torture been used to obtain confessions, but the forced use of drugs as a means to criminalize the detainees." Reuters characterized the report, prepared by Paris law professor Emmanuel Decaux, as "the highest-level condemnation of abuses in the Central Asian state yet."

REFLECTIONS ON A GHOST THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY

1. Stalin Died Fifty Years Ago.
"Comrade I.V. Stalin died on March 5, 1953 at 9:50 pm," the entry says. It is the conclusion of a medical report on Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin's last four days, now on exhibit at Russia's federal archives where, the Associated Press (AP) reported, "officials hope it will help dispel decades of speculation that the Soviet dictator was done in by a Kremlin intrigue."

2. Outdoing Goebbels.
Even in his death, Stalin continues to inspire deception and prompts the authorities to dismiss new investigations of archival records. Josef Goebbels' strategy of hammering home day after day the same Big Lie was primitive compared to Stalin's shape-shifting and shadow-boxing, which owed a debt to the thousand and one tales of the inventive East, indifferent to logic and contemptuous of the plain truth. Stalin inspired (or coined, as some Russians believe) slogans expanded into doctrines that bombarded the minds of his subjects with bizarre inconsistencies, his own versions of Zen koans. For instance, the Communist Revolution was all-powerful and its global victory was within sight, yet his subjects were warned daily that "The Enemy lurks everywhere." More than 99 percent of the people, and not just "the Broad Masses," voted for the Party - a stupendous election victory each time -- yet every citizen had to be watched for any sign of deviation from the Party Line. The Party was the infallible, invincible "Vanguard of the Proletariat," yet its leaders had to be purged again and again because some of them secretly served as "the Paid Agents of Imperialism." Soviet society eliminated all differences of class, yet every day the class struggle was getting sharper.

3. His Spirit Lives On.
Stalin ordered his ideologists to keep rewriting recent history, twisting and turning their accounts of events in the hope that in the end people would be so confused that they will not want to believe anyone or anything. He was determined to eliminate truth as a principle of intellectual inquiry and to root out an individual's interest in establishing the truth. "How apparently decent people can justify the crimes of the Stalinist past remains one of the most vexing questions in modern Russia," "The London Times" wrote on March 3. It cited a recent poll that showed that 70 per cent of Russians think that Stalin did more good than bad or they have no fixed opinion. The latest poll of 1,600 adults by the All-Russian Public Opinion Center, released on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, shows that more than half of all respondents believe that Stalin's role in Russian history was positive, while only a third disagree with that assessment. The poll suggests that 27 percent of Russians judge Stalin a cruel and inhumane tyrant. But 20 percent call him wise and humane - among them the head of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, who has compared Stalin to "the most grandiose figures of the Renaissance."

AP quoted Oleg Orlov, head of the human rights organization Memorial, to the effect that "frustration" helped the rise of President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel who has restored some Soviet-era symbols and has been careful in muting his criticism of Stalin. "Putin arrived on this wave - on promises of stability and pride for one's country as a great power, and of a restoration of order - and a major part of this ideology was pride in the past,'' Orlov said.

4. Living in Denial.
"The London Times" noted that for "some German and Russian veterans, pride at having served under their country's respective leaders is so great that they refuse to hear evidence of their guilt." On the other hand, the newspaper continued, Holocaust denial in Germany is limited to "small numbers of elderly veterans and discredited historians" and "Germans have come to terms with their past" while those who have not languish "on the margins of society." Russia, the argument concludes, has conducted no examination of its totalitarian past. There have been no trials and no educational programs about the Great Terror. Politicians avoid the subject. "For most people it is simply an irrelevance."

5. Documents Under Tight Wraps.
Historian Albert L. Weeks, author of a new study, "Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy 1939-1941" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), wrote a brief message for the widely read list serve "Johnson's List" (davidjohnson@erols.com) mentioning that he too has grievances against Putin's policy of "selective de-Stalinization." His prime example is that Putin "continues to keep the Kremlin's Presidential Archive under tight wraps," even though "Russian historians claim that the archive contains crucial information that documents Stalin's offensive war plans against Germany and, in fact, all of Europe in World War II. Much else about Stalin's foreign policy and aggressive plans and actions is still kept secret. Moscow's rationale apparently is that glasnost in this regard somehow sullies, by implication, latter-day Russia's prestige and reputation."

Others have different complaints against locked-up documents and inaccessible witnesses. The obdurate refusal of Russian officials to tell the truth about Raoul Wallenberg's fate is unconscionable, suggesting that the Soviet "special services" are still above the law and that their network still shields those who once interrogated and "handled" the Swedish rescuer of Hungarian Jews. The Cheka slogan, "No information, no problem," is still operative. Nevertheless, those who see Wallenberg as a hero of the century will not give up demanding a full account of his time in the USSR -- and if he is dead, the location of his grave. Unless that demand is met, the Russian Federation is still a Soviet union.

6. On the Killer's Trail.
Agence France Presse quotes the figure 800,000 for officially recorded executions during the Stalin era and cites Western historians as estimating that between 1918 and 1956 up to 30 million people died in the civil war, Stalinist repression, famine, and collectivization. On March 5 in "The Washington Post," Anne Applebaum, author of a soon to be published encyclopedic study titled "Gulag: A History" (Doubleday), estimated that 18 million people passed through the camp system, 6 or 7 million died in Stalin's artificial famine, and millions more were shot in forests, perished in exile, and died in orphanages after their parents' arrests. Alexander Solzhenitsyn has put the number of dead at 20 million-plus.

We will never know the precise death toll of the Stalin era, which is just as Stalin intended it.
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