Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 2, Number 16

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 2, Number 16

(April 26, 2002)

Volume 2, Number 16
Friday, April 26, 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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HITLER'S BIRTHDAY PASSES MOSTLY UNEVENTFULLY IN RUSSIA. Despite emailed threats to many embassies, Adolf Hitler's birthday, April 20, passed uneventfully in Moscow. The Ministry of Interior announced that it had activated 15,000 police to prevent any violence and that they registered no incidents. In Ulyanovsk, however, in the early hours of April 20, the central office of the Jewish community in Ulyanovsk was vandalized, according to Aleksandr Akselrod of the Anti-Defamation League in Moscow. Head of the Ulyanovsk Jewish community, Igor Dabakarov, added that in the early hours of April 18, his deputy, Aleksandr Golynsky, "was cruelly beaten up by unidentified young men." On April 21 in Moscow, three men attacked a British diplomat, David Arkley, then fled in a silver Mercedes, Interfax reported. According to the Associated Press, Moscow police said that the attack was not related to skinhead threats of violence on Hitler's birthday. On April 21, a mob of skinheads attempted to enter Moscow's Tushino market where the majority of traders are Caucasians, RIA-Novosti reported. Police arrested several skinheads and closed the market temporarily. Early in the morning on April 22, unidentified persons daubed a swastika and the words "Death to the Jews!" on the wall of a synagogue in Perm. The leader of the Jewish community, Yefim Burstein, told Interfax that "young men with an extremist appearance" approached the synagogue a week ago, but were chased away by security.

Between April 19 and 23, Russia’s Interior Ministry arrested 392 members of extremist youth organizations, “including the so-called skinheads,” in the course of the large-scale preventive operation “Anti-Extremist,” announced on April 25 in Moscow Lt.Gen. Nikolay Pershutkin, head of the Interior Ministry's Main Directorate for the Protection of Public Order. He emphasized that 198 of them "deserve close attention" and denied reports that "thousands of young people are members of extremist organizations." He disclosed that in the course of the operation, only two criminal cases were opened, but the “offences were not committed in public places and did not have the form of large-scale street rallies. The two offences were committed at night against specific people."

In Kostroma, the Jewish community requested extra police security following media reports that about 300 skinheads were planning to converge on the city to mark Hitler's birthday, according to local Jewish leader Andrey Osherov, UCSJ's regional monitor. Jewish youth promised to guard the synagogue that was nearly burned to the ground by unidentified arsonists last summer and has been repeatedly vandalized in recent months. Police assured the community that they would be protected, and both the police and the local FSB watched several points in the city where skinheads were likely to congregate. On the night of April 19, local police managed to stop the arrival of a large group of skinheads from nearby Yaroslavl. As Jews worshipped in the synagogue on Saturday, April 20, police prevented three young strangers from entering. The youths walked away some distance before suddenly turning around and throwing bottles at the synagogue. The police arrested them and confiscated three metal pipes, a favorite weapon of skinheads.

SKINHEADS PUT OFF PLANS AND RECEIVE POLICE TRAINING, SAYS MOSCOW DAILY. A decision by the skinheads to postpone action rather than police measures explains the calm in Moscow on Hitler's birthday, according to the popular newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" of April 23. Its reporter, who infiltrated a skinhead group, also learned that skinheads are being trained at a special-assignment police (OMON) martial arts center outside Moscow. Having spent two weeks with the skinheads, the reporter picked up talk that actions are going to be staged on April 30, the day of Hitler's suicide, and on July 26, People's National Party leader Aleksandr Ivanov-Sukharevsky's birthday. The spokesman for Moscow City police department, Sergey Shevtsov, called the article "a highly dangerous publicity stunt," that gave "a voice to guerrillas and terrorists." In an Interfax interview, a spokesman for Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs has categorically denied the report that extremist youths are being trained at an OMON base. An editor of "Moskovsky Komsomolets," Ayter Muzhdabaev, insists that the information about skinheads being trained at a police center is true. Instead of taking measures and coping with the situation, the police say "that some reporters have told lies once again," Muzhdabaev said in a live interview with "Ekho Moskvy" radio. "I can confirm that all what we said is absolutely true… Police say that they were just training young people at their base. We have explained what kind of young people they were training."

FOUR APPROACHES TO THE SKINHEAD THREAT
1. POLITICIAN TAKES CREDIT AND PREDICTS SAFE FUTURE. "Nationalist waves in Europe have been recently reaching Russia," Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told Interfax on April 22, referring to Jean-Marie Le Pen's second-place finish in the first round of France's presidential elections. But after mentioning the outside world, Luzhkov quickly separated Russia as different from it. "We should not put a sign of equality between our extremists and Le Pen," he said, and focused on his favorite theory, identifying the Russian troublemakers as "soccer fans who are not capable of containing their emotions." Next, he expressed satisfaction that order was maintained during the April 21 match between the Spartak and CSKA soccer teams. The Moscow government not only ordered security to be stepped up there, he said proudly, but also sent 67 police dogs.

Luzhkov expressed confidence "the so-called skinheads and other extremist elements will not dare to venture out any more." He seemed to take credit for the skinhead no-show on April 20 when he said that he had "issued a strong, a very strong warning to them, that all their attempts to stage any action will be punished."

2. INTERIOR MINISTRY SUSPECTS FOREIGNERS FUNDING RUSSIAN NEO-NAZIS. On April 18, Deputy Interior Minister Col. Gen. Aleksandr Chekalin said that his agency is checking out information that Russian neo-Nazis might be bankrolled from abroad, polit.ru reported. He added that the ministry is also closely watching the "antiglobalist movement," as it has discovered that that movement also receives foreign financial backing.

3. COMMUNIST CHIEF INDULGES IN STALIN-ERA PARANOIA. In a paranoid mode harking back to Stalin's times, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov has raised his voice against anti-skinhead "hysteria" and charged that the government is trying to exploit the issue against its opposition. In a statement released by the Communist Party on April 19, he criticized the Russian news media for paying too much attention to possible violence by skinheads. He contended that "the intensity of this propaganda campaign and the level of its coordination directly point to the fact that" the government ordered it all. "In Russia, which has suffered from fascism more than any country in the world, there is no place for Nazism," Zyuganov said, as if speaking from an old textbook. Then he added a curious new twist: "The neo-Nazi ideology is actually being imposed on young people through the current hysteria." He charged that the goal of the propaganda campaign is to create conditions to force the State Duma to adopt the bill on the prevention of extremism, which in fact is aimed "first of all against organized opposition forces," such as the Communists.

4. SCHOLAR SEES YOUNG ‘ULTRA-RIGHTISTS’ GAINING STRENGTH. "Young, ultra-right organizations" in Russia represent a world "rapidly evolving ideologically and organizationally," Aleksandr Tarasov wrote in the Moscow periodical "Vek" dated April 19-26. Described as the leading expert at the Phoenix Center of New Sociology and the Study of Practical Politics, Tarasov pronounced the "old" ultra-rightists as having been "reduced to nothing." He predicted that since young people do not flock to them, their groups “will slowly die out." As for the ultra-right organizations of the "middle-aged generation," such as the Russian National Unity (RNE), they also find themselves in "a blind alley," as President Vladimir Putin "pulled the rug out from under them, by taking away the monopoly on anti-Western and patriotic rhetoric, having shown his toughness on the Chechen matter and in the sphere of state construction."

Tarasov argued that "deprived of their usual aureole of natural 'hero-activists,' with the 'Jewish-Masonic beast' and the 'government which sold itself to it' attacking on all sides, the ultra-rightists of the 'middle-aged' generation were in a quandary: Given all their desire to remain hero-oppositionists, they realized that they could not -- to spite Putin -- come out against the Chechen war, in support of NATO or tell tales about the Jewish origin of the new president, which of course no one would believe. As a result, the RNE, for example, broke up into three separate opposition groups (not counting a few small-scale organizations, which didn't attach themselves to anyone), which mutually established that each one was guilty of 'Zionism' and 'betraying Orthodoxy' and mutually anathematized each other." The result, Tarasov wrote, is a mass flight from these groups, and all three ex-RNE groups put together now number at best one-third of what they were before.

Tarasov pointed out the numerical increase in "purely youth, ultra-rightist organizations" such as the People's National Party (NNP), the Clan Navi, and the Russian National Socialist Party (RNSP). Young ultra-rightists are growing in number because of "the intensified campaigning at the skinhead get-togethers and the attachment to them of the Nazi skinheads." While the old and middle-aged ultra-rightists are either confirmed Orthodox or confirmed Slavic pagans, "the young ones demonstrate a surprising ability to synthesize Orthodoxy and paganism -- moreover, Germanic pagan mythology attracts them more than Slavic pagan mythology." The young ultra-rightists are gaining members because they believe that they are "young wolves" in a "stupefied world" which will be easy to change. Activists of the ultra-right National Liberation Movement of Russia (NODR) identify themselves as "a warrior caste that will slaughter the merchant caste" and "cleanse the country of the muck, with blood and bullets."

Tarasov contrasted the former waves of ultra-rightists, "whose organizations were literally crammed with Federal Security Service agents," with the young ultra-rightists who are "practically opaque" for the special services simply because they are juveniles. "Every time, therefore, their actions have been unexpected by the authorities," Tarasov noted. His study found the authorities "strangely tolerant" toward the young right-wingers. "The young ones have to kill someone in order for those called on to combat extremism to pay attention to them," he wrote. He cited as significant the mass attack by the skinheads, led by NNP activists, on a police patrol in Moscow, at Likhobory. "The police in Russia today are virtually inviolable," he explained. "Any attack on the police is regarded by it as the most serious of all conceivable criminal acts and is severely punished, even before reaching the court. The members of the NNP and the skinheads, however, who smashed up a patrol car and beat up the policemen, escaped with a 'slight scare,'" as the charges filed against them were for "petty hooliganism." The proceedings began, only to be promptly closed, Tarasov concluded, with "the question of 'why?' still up in the air."

SYNAGOGUES VANDALIZED. Earlier in April, a wave of synagogue vandalization hit Russia. On April 6, a Star of David and a swastika were scratched onto the door of a synagogue in Orenburg, according to UCSJ's monitor Igor Savelzon. Police refused to record the incident as a crime. A few days later, vandals painted the words "Throw Israel into the sea" on the walls of a local Jewish center along with a swastika and Star of David. In another part of the city, somebody painted on the walls of an apartment building a man throwing a Star of David into a trash can, accompanied by the words "Let us cleanse our native city!" On April 12, the words "Jews go home!" were daubed on the walls of a building in Yoshkar-Ola (Republic of Mari-El) shared by local Jewish organizations, according to an April 18 report posted on the Russian Jewish web site Sem40.ru. Police promised to investigate, but at the time the report was filed, no officers had yet visited the scene. On April 14, the windows of the Rostov synagogue were broken, the first such incident in four years, according to Sem40.ru. Law enforcement agencies were alerted, but police officers have not taken measures to arrest the vandals.

ANTI-ARMENIAN VIOLENCE SPREADING IN RUSSIA, ARMENIANS SAY. The April 17 desecration of Armenian graves in Krasnodar and the local government's attempts to deport Armenians have led to tension between the Russian and Armenian governments, Moscow's "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" reported on April 23. In a press conference, Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan said that in response to Armenian protests, the Russians are taking steps to "prevent similar incidents." The Moscow newspaper pointed out that up until now, Armenia, considered "a strategic ally" by Russia, has excluded "the delicate problem" of ethnic Armenians living in Russia from its dealings with the Russian government. Ara Abramyan, president of the Union of Armenians of Russia, demanded legal action against Krasnodar Kray Governor Aleksandr Tkachev and his "accomplices to these criminal actions." Abramyan said that they "bear direct responsibility for fomenting discord that is undermining the foundations of interethnic harmony and creating a direct threat to the unity and even very existence of Russia as a multiethnic state." On April 24, Yerevan's Russian language newspaper "Novoe Vremya" reported "Armenophobia" spreading from Krasnodar Kray to other parts of Russia. As examples, reporter Leonid Nersisyan cited three incidents: the destruction on April 22 of a St. Petersburg trading kiosk belonging to an Armenian, an April 21 skinhead attack on a Moscow store owned by an Armenian, and clashes between Russian and Armenian youths in Pyatigorsk.

A TALE OF TWO REPORTS. Russia has received an unusually warm endorsement from an important European institution. "Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Russia has moved along the extremely long road to political stability which has started off in 1991," Britain's David Atkinson said on April 23 in Strasbourg, presenting a report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Russia meeting its obligations undertaken on joining the Council of Europe in 1996. "The standard of living is rising, and a new law on political parties is creating the basis for a multiparty system. Having set up seven federal districts under presidential representatives [Putin] is promoting an improvement in legislative and administrative standards." According to Itar-Tass news agency. Atkinson cautioned that though Russia has ratified many European conventions, it has not yet abolished the death penalty, which is a requirement for continuing membership in the Council of Europe, and it has not ratified Protocol No. 6 of the European convention on human rights. Russia still has to reform the prosecutor's office and security services. He concluded that "if progress continues and the situation in Chechnya is resolved," PACE may discontinue the procedure of monitoring Russia's compliance with its obligations.

A very different kind of assessment comes from a key human rights organization. "A vigorous response from the Russian authorities to racism is needed to stem the growing tide of attacks against ethnic minorities," Amnesty International (AI) said in a statement released on April 19. "The victims of racist attacks are often persons from Africa, Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, including ethnic Chechens, and refugees and asylum-seekers." The human rights organization also called attention that fear of racist attacks among Russia's minorities is not confined to fear of skinheads, as minorities "have almost as much to fear from officials." AI charged that "police and other law enforcement officials routinely subject racial and ethnic minorities to harassment and intimidation and often respond with indifference to racist attacks. Victims of racist attacks frequently complain that law enforcement officials are reluctant to register attacks as racist or fail to understand the serious implications of racially-motivated violence. Police often advise the victims to report the attack as 'hooliganism.' Until the authorities address racist attitudes within law enforcement agencies, they will continue to be part of the problem, rather than the solution." As an example, the statement mentioned a series of seven attacks on a synagogue in the Siberian city of Tiumen last year that officials called “young people's hooliganism.” AI cited President Putin's recent condemnation of racist attacks by skinheads in Moscow and said: "If he is serious about condemning racism, he must now condemn and vigorously address manifestations of racism in the day to day actions and policies of the police and other authorities."

BELARUSIAN JEWISH CEMETERY VANDALIZED. Unknown persons stole one gravestone and damaged seven others during the night of April 12-13 at the Staro-Ulanovicheskoe Jewish cemetery in Vitebsk, Belarus, according to UCSJ's Minsk bureau. Such incidents take place at this cemetery nearly every year, often during Russian Orthodox Easter. Last year 38 gravestones were damaged as a result of two actions. The police have found no one responsible. Locals believe that the perpetrators are not only certain of their impunity but are convinced that the authorities pay no attention to the incidents.

GERMAN JEWS FEAR ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE. Many thoughtful Germans say "thank God" that the new wave of antisemitic violence has not spread to their country, that pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been relatively small and restrained, and that German politics has no one with the popular appeal of the openly racist Jean-Marie Le Pen. However, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" is far from serene in assessing the state of the Fatherland. In a sensitive report on April 23, Hans Riebsamen put the synagogue burnings in France and the fires set at two Jewish businesses in Brussels in the same sentence with two attacks on Jews on the street in Berlin. The sentence began: "The first strikes here in Europe have been made." He shored up his dark assessment with a quote from Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany: "The threat is getting closer."

"Imaginary danger?" Riebsamen asked himself and answered: "The heavily guarded Jewish schools, community offices, and synagogues across Germany indicate otherwise." He cited an order of "maximum security alert" and reported that Spiegel is receiving threats, many more than usual. Spiegel says that previously, 90 percent of his letters and e-mails from non-Jews were positive, but now, it's the other way around.

According to Riebsamen, these days "the nearly 100,000 German Jews are afraid, even the courageous ones." He visited Shlomo Raskin, whom he described as "a proud rabbinical student who leads prayers in a Frankfurt home for the elderly." Raskin has not shaved his full beard nor removed the black hat he always wears, as he "is still determined to be recognized as a Jew at first glance." But he is careful in other ways, he told the reporter. "I no longer look people in the eye on the subway, so that nobody can feel provoked," he said. He has told his sons to wear baseball caps instead of yarmulkes on the street. He explains: "I have to protect them."

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "I used to have illusions that the Moscow authorities were waging an "uncompromising fight' against the Nazis," writes on April 23 the "Moskovsky Komsomolets" reporter who infiltrated a skinhead group. "Now, that I spent some time in the guise of a skinhead, I can hardly tell the difference between a bald-headed fascist and a short-haired policeman."

FRANCE'S FAR-RIGHT LE PEN WINS SECOND PLACE AND SPOTLIGHT Once the Shock Is Over, the Consequences Could Be Far-Reaching

By unexpectedly capturing second place in the first round of France's presidential election on April 21, Jean-Marie Le Pen has emerged as Europe's most successful far-right politician. Besides his slogan "France is for the French" and his routine denunciation of Arab immigrants, he is best known for his contemptuous dismissal of the Nazi gas chambers as "a detail" of history. For some time, there has been a debate whether to characterize him as an antisemite or a xenophobe. Demonstrators who took to the street in protest - more than 100,000 in the first two days after the vote -- called the 73-year-old former paratrooper a "fascist." His knocking Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin out of the race alarmed many Europeans, already nervous about the gains of the far-right in Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, and Austria, and possibly soon in the Netherlands and Portugal.

Commentators agree that Le Pen won 17 percent of the vote - as opposed to incumbent Jacques Chirac's 20 percent and Jospin's 16 percent - because of the fear of rising crime wave which he has for years blamed on unchecked immigration, mostly from North Africa. Another far-right candidate, Bruno Maigret, who split off from Le Pen's National Front, won 2.4 percent of the vote. Together, the extremes of the right and the left received nearly one third of the votes, signaling turmoil ahead. Fears that violence by young anarchists, radical anti-racists, and anti-globalization activists taking to the streets could boost Le Pen's chances worry the political establishment. Both Chirac and Jospin have called on their supporters not to take part in the anti-Le Pen demonstrations that have become a daily feature.

Writing in the Paris-based "International Herald Tribune" on April 23, John Vinocur argued that Chirac, assured of a landslide victory, should now grasp "a unique political windfall: a chance to talk truthfully" and reject "the timorous and evasive language of the mainstream parties on the basic issues that got a man with a squalid record of racial provocation into the final round." Vinocur urged Chirac to pay attention to those in "the democratic middle who have argued that a discussion of racial integration is now a prerequisite to resolving the electorate's fears about its vulnerability to violence. Or that a long-term pro-Arab French foreign policy voice could be seen as twice-failed: a factor in the rise of antisemitism here, and in what some Arabs regard as a cynical government attempt to buy out the rage Arab immigrants feel as a result of discrimination against them inside France."

According to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) dispatch from Paris, Le Pen shelved his anti-Jewish message in the first round but, as recently as last December, official National Front literature included antisemitic material. Among a list of Le Pen´s views in a pamphlet titled "Le Pen Was, Is, And Will Be Right" was a warning about Jewish power in France. "We would be wrong to forget the role of the Jewish Masonic International of B´nai B´rith," Le Pen wrote. "This powerful and hidden minority has chosen to erect invisible barriers inside the French people." JTA adds that many Jews are now hoping that Le Pen´s mission to build walls within French society will help break down those existing between Jews and Muslims. "Given Le Pen´s xenophobic stance," the dispatch concludes, "the two communities now have a shared goal -- to keep him from office."

In Strasbourg for a parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, head of the Russian Duma's foreign affairs committee Dmitry Rogozin told Interfax on April 22 that Le Pen's success is a reaction by French society to "a huge flow of immigrants." He suggested that "if the current pace of immigration in Europe remains, then the Europeans as a nation by our definition will disappear in 15-20 years." He noted that Russia is home to up to 10 million immigrants, "many of them in the country illegally…. It is very important for us not to repeat mistakes made by the Europeans. Otherwise, it may happen that the right and far-right forces will come to power in Russia in a few years." * * * *

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