Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 7, Number 11

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 7, Number 11

(March 16, 2007)

Volume 7, Number 11
Friday, March 16, 2007

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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A rash of extremist violence, the kind that over the past few years characterized the days before and after Adolf Hitler’s birthday, April 20, erupted across Russia in mid-March.

1. SURGE OF ATTACKS ON FOREIGNERS THROUGHOUT RUSSIA. On a Moscow suburban commuter train, a group of soccer hooligans attacked three Turkish citizens, according to a March 12 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Twelve youths have been detained.

In Nizhny Novgorod on March 9, two students from Morocco were attacked according to a March 12 report by the Regnum news agency. The students who study at the regional university were beaten by six assailants. Local police sources told Regnum that one of the attackers screamed racist abuses during the incident. The case is being investigated as a hate crime under Article 282 of the Criminal Code.

In the southern city of Voronezh, three foreign students were beaten in separate incidents within 48 hours. A senior aide to the regional prosecutor told RIA Novosti on March 11 that earlier that day nine as yet unidentified people armed with wooden clubs attacked a Yemeni student at the history department of the Voronezh State University, in an apparently racially motivated assault. He is hospitalized. The day before, Saturday night, three young men beat a Nigerian medical student. Friday night, three local teenagers beat an Iraqi student, the police said in a news release.

Over the past six years, at least seven foreigners were killed in hate attacks in Voronezh.

According to RIA Novosti, the Interior Ministry has said that about 80% of extremist groups' members are under 30, and most of them are based in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Samara and Voronezh Regions.

2. AZERI KNIFES RUSSIAN WHO BLEEDS TO DEATH. A bar fight apparently sparked by inter-ethnic animosity almost led to a riot in Krasnoarmeysk, Russia (Saratov Region), according to a March 12 report by the national daily “Novaya Gazeta.” On the night of March 8, a Russian citizen of Azeri descent was celebrating his birthday in a local bar. About 3 in the morning, an ethnic Russian named Aleksandr Filinov entered the bar and got angry at the ethnic Azeri who was spending time with Russian women. This led to a knife fight, during which Filinov was cut on his leg. The Azeri left the bar. Hospital emergency services took 40 minutes to respond, and Filinov bled to death in the meantime.

According to “Novaya Gazeta,” the Azeri was arrested and charged with manslaughter. Prosecutors are so far refusing to see the fight as motivated by ethnic hatred. However the day after the fight, local police reacted quickly to a gathering in a downtown area and persuaded participants to go home after they threatened to resort to lynch law. Filinov's funeral attracted some 500 people, reportedly including Cossacks and neo-Nazis from Saratov who loudly demanded that officials “defend the Russian-speaking population.” Police showed up in force and detained 13 members of the extremist nationalist party People's Will. According to locals, inter-ethnic violence may flare up at any time.

3. RUSSIAN POLICE CAPTAIN CHARGED WITH STOKING ETHNIC HATRED. A Russian police captain has been charged with inciting ethnic hatred through the Internet and with extreme nationalist leaflets, according to a March 9 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Aleksandr Smirnov of Pikalyovo, (Leningrad Region), a veteran of the Chechen wars, allegedly posted antisemitic and racist comments on his blog and other web sites. On March 2, police searched his apartment and found extremist literature, a swastika T-shirt, and extremist DVDs.

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OMBUDSMAN TO PUTIN: HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS UP. The number of human rights violations is up sharply, Russia’s human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin stated in a 400-page report to be presented to President Vladimir Putin this month and to the Duma in April. Excerpts of the report, published in the newspaper “Gazeta” of March 13, listed civil liberties violations as having risen by nearly 47% from 2005 to 2006. The violations included reports of unfair court proceedings and suppression of “social rights” that according to the Constitution include the right to open a business and to get an education. Other reported civil liberties violations involved judicial issues. These complaints rose by nearly 24%. Broadly defined “economic rights” and “political rights” violations rose 15.5% and 3.2%, respectively.

Lukin concluded that Russians do not trust their government. “They don't believe that authorities work hard to secure their social, economic, and political rights,” he was quoted as saying in the report that also noted a rise in “ultranationalism and xenophobia.”

DUMA AIDES EXPELLED FOR WEARING SWASTIKAS. An unspecified number of aides to a notorious member of the State Duma were expelled by the Duma's security staff because they wore swastika armbands, according to a March 7 report by the Regnum news agency. Their boss Nikolai Kuryanovich, a parliamentarian with a long history of antisemitic rhetoric and vociferous support for neo-Nazi movements, was presenting a compilation of his speeches when his aides were thrown out. He reacted by declaring that the incident was part of a larger “struggle against all that is Russian.”

KREMLIN SEEKS CONTROL OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. “The historic autonomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which has pioneered fundamental research in Russia since its founding by Peter the Great three centuries ago, is under threat from government proposals to bring the institution under much tighter state control and end its academic freedom, according to academy members,” “The Washington Post” of March 13 reported. “The plan is part of a broader trend of increased official control over key parts of Russian society,” correspondent Peter Finn summed up his interviews with members of the academy that in 1980 famously defied Kremlin demands to expel dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov.

“In this scheme, academic work becomes subservient to government,” the article quoted Sergey Rogov, director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, a wing of the academy, as saying. “The entire infrastructure of research will be destroyed.” Rogov predicts that his organization and other foreign policy think tanks may come under the control of the Foreign Ministry. According to data gathered by “The Post,” the academy's senior members oversee a $1.2 billion budget, 400 research institutes, and 200,000 researchers and staff members across Russia. Traditionally, the institution is self-governing and secret ballot determines the funding of research as well as the staff.

ARCHBISHOP BACKS JEWS IN DEMANDING RETURN OF TORAH SCROLLS. A leading Ukrainian Orthodox cleric in Ukraine has demanded that the state return confiscated Torah scrolls to the Jewish community, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) has reported. On March 13, Archbishop Yuriy of Donetzk and Mariupol called on President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, and authorities in the city of Zhitomir to facilitate the return of the scrolls to their original owners.

Last month, the Zhitomir Jewish community was forced to return 10 Torah scrolls confiscated by Bolsheviks decades ago and lent to the community two years ago by the local state archives.

In a statement JTA called “a rare public show of solidarity with Jews by a leading Orthodox Christian cleric,” the archbishop said that the situation was sensitive to every believer. He wrote: “Brothers, do know, you are not alone, we are together with you.”

RACIST CANDIDATE FOR FRENCH PRESIDENCY ADDS UNCERTAINTY. Europe’s best-known racist and antisemitic politician, Jean-Marie Le Pen, will run in France’s presidential election on April 22. “He is hoping to shock,” the Associated Press (AP) headlined its story on March 15, while much of the French press focused on his adding more unpredictability to a volatile race contested by three mainstream candidates. The former paratrooper in the Algerian war is now 78 but as feisty as ever, and he says he expects to come in second and repeat his stunning performance in 2002 when he garnered 20% of the vote in the runoff.

His base is “an old France that is afraid of change, afraid of Europe, afraid of multiculturalism,” Nonna Mayer, an expert at Paris' prestigious Institute of Political Science told the AP. “What holds them all together is their fear of immigration, foreigners, ‘people who are not like us’ and their demand for more repression, law and order and a return to the death penalty. That hasn't changed over the past 20 years.”

Polls suggest that the personable but little-known middle-of-the-road Francois Bayrou is taking support away from both Nicolas Sarkozy, the ruling right-of-center party’s candidate who has been courting the right, and Segolene Royal of the Socialists whose principal appeal is that she is the country’s first major female candidate. In a survey published on March 11 by the weekly “Journal du Dimanche,” 28% of the respondents favored Sarkozy, with Royal and Bayrou each getting 23%. Though Le Pen trailed behind by 13%, in previous elections he was always able to surge during the last weeks of the campaign.

Arriving on March 14 to submit his documents required for entering the presidential race, hundreds of Le Pen’s supporters greeted him with the shout, “Vive Le Pen!” while a smaller number of opponents booed and screamed, “Le Pen Nazi!”

Le Pen has been convicted of minimizing the Holocaust and inciting racial hatred by warning that Muslims will overrun France. But embarking on his fifth attempt to capture the presidency, “he wants to keep discussion of his infamous remarks to a minimum,” the AP reported. “Monsieur, if we are here only to talk about that, then I consider that this interview is over,” Le Pen snapped when the AP pressed him about such comments that have repeatedly landed him in court.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, A CALL TO REPEAL AN UNFAIR LAW * * * “Key elements of the law [on nongovernmental organizations in Russia] are vague and open to arbitrary and discretionary interpretation and enforcement, in many areas resulting in a dramatic expansion in government powers,” wrote Felice D. Gaer, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, in the organization’s newly released in-depth report titled “Challenge to Civil Society.” “Repeal of the law would alleviate most of the concerns raised by this report. At a minimum, the Russian government should amend or clarify problematic provisions and regulations … in a manner that ensures the law’s respect for international norms related to freedom of association, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief, and related human rights.”

IS THERE ‘A JEWISH CARD’ TO BE PLAYED?
Decline of Jewish Oligarchs in Moscow, ‘Discovery’ of a Jewish Ancestor in Budapest

1. ABRAMOVICH NO MORE NUMBER ONE. “If until four years ago roughly half of Russia's billionaires were of Jewish origin, then by the beginning of 2007 that portion shrank to roughly 10%,” according to Alex Tantzer, identified as “aliyah activist,” as quoted last week by “Ha’aretz,” Israel’s leading daily. “There is a clear process of Russification of capital. The new wealthy are ‘our guys’ who are close to those in power. The Jewish oligarchs who were associated with Boris Yeltsin's rule have been forced to leave the country after [President Vladimir] Putin's rise to power, and have remained out of the picture.”

Last month, aluminum and weapons tycoon Oleg Deripaska moved ahead of oil baron Roman Abramovich, who has a Jewish father, as Russia's wealthiest person. According to the Russian magazine “Finance,” Deripaska's fortune, $21.2 billion, is roughly $200 million greater than Abramovich's. Thus for the first time since the mid-1990s, the title “Russia's richest man” belongs to a person who is not of Jewish origin. Toward the end of the 1990s, Boris Berezovsky was rated as Russia's richest “oligarch” – as well as the man with the greatest influence on Yeltsin. But shortly after Putin's rise, the man known as “the Kremlin's godfather” was forced to flee to Britain. According to “Finance,” Berezovsky’s fortune, estimated at $3 billion in 1997, shrank to roughly $1 billion by 2006.

Even more of a comedown was that of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owner of the Yukos oil corporation, who was considered Russia’s wealthiest person in 2003. Khodorkovsky, an outspoken critic of Putin's policies and a supporter of opposition parties, is now serving a long term in a Siberian prison and the fate of his personal fortune remains unclear. Though in the West his trial is considered a sham, Putin seems to take pride in sending his opponent to Siberia.

Following the departure of the oligarchs who quarreled with Putin, the list of wealthy Russians continued to be led by individuals of Jewish origin, “Ha’aretz” noted. In 2004, the three richest Russians were Abramovich, Mikhail Friedman, and Viktor Vekselberg. Even though they maintain good relations with the Kremlin, they were surpassed in recent years by a new group of oligarchs considered to be closer to Putin and his associates. This year, Abramovich is the only man of Jewish origin among the top five wealthiest Russians, “Ha’aretz” concluded.

According to “Ha’aretz” quoting Israeli sources described as “in close contact with the Russian business elite,” this elite group now includes fewer and fewer Jews. The sources say that this is not due to antisemitism but to a changing of the country's elite. “Jews acquired wealth because they were the first to recognize the vacuum created and they had advantages over the locals like foreign ties,” the sources told the Tel Aviv daily. “Today the key to wealth is personal ties to the Kremlin and its head.”

The figures of a rich man’s wealth may or may not be right, especially since some of them prefer less limelight and claim to have fewer assets, as several articles point out. What is more, one cannot escape the conclusion that the very perception of the decline of Jewish oligarchic power will help Putin’s party in the upcoming elections. And a lot of people are working on making those elections extra-safe for Putin.

2. MRS. GYURCSANY’S ANCESTRY. Antisemitism in Hungary is reaching alarming proportions, Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary’s controversial prime minister, told the London “Times” in an interview earlier this month, surprising his country with the revelation of his concern. His main evidence seems to be a leaflet with unprintably vile content that his wife Klara, a university lecturer, happened to get hold of on a Budapest street. Mr. and Mrs. Gyurcsany somehow also managed to imply that the leaflet is linked to his opposition that had nearly removed him from power last year. (The main opposition party Fidesz has condemned antisemitism but the Socialist Party in power has time and again smeared “the Right” with the charge of antisemitism while declaring itself generically immune to any such bias.)

Gyurcsany now seems to align himself with “the Jews” by voicing alarm over antisemitism and by revealing that his wife has Jewish ancestors. Up until the “The Times” interview, his wife was always presented as half-Bulgarian – her father was born in Bulgaria -- and her home celebrations of Bulgarian Orthodox Christmas were played up in the press friendly to their Socialist Party. The sudden assertion of her Jewish origins represents a bit of a shock in a country where ethnic origins no matter how distant play a major role in public (and especially private) discourse and people keep track of every public person’s genealogy.

Gyurcsany is in deep political trouble since he disgraced himself last summer by admitting that he had lied during, before, and after the election campaign he won with a narrow margin. His playing “the Jewish card” in the increasingly nasty political struggle of his party to stay in power recalls an earlier event. When a predecessor, Janos Kadar, the “reform communist” also remembered as Moscow’s stooge following the revolution in 1956, tried to arrange a state visit in Washington in the 1970s and his acolytes sought to improve his reputation in the United States, they planted the rumor that a Jewish lawyer named Krausz had sired him out of wedlock. Up to that point, Kadar’s father had been unknown, only the mother’s identity seemed certain.

The American journalists who received the hot tip did not rush to print it. Probably no one had confidence that the information was true. Nor is it likely that many Jews would feel friendlier toward a presumably half-Jewish Kadar -- which must have been the purpose of the project. This kind of “Jewish card” is not an ace up the sleeve.

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