Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 22

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 22

(May 30, 2008)

Volume 8, Number 22
Friday, May 30, 2008

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
___________________________________________________________

AMERICAN LAWYER DETAINED IN BELARUS NOW FACES DRUG CHARGES. American lawyer Emmanuel Zeltser, detained in Belarus on charges of carrying false documents, now faces drug smuggling charges, according to a report by the Interfax news agency. Zeltser and his secretary Vladlena Funk were detained upon their arrival in Minsk on March 12. In a letter to Belarus' prosecutor general earlier this month, UCSJ expressed "extreme concern" with reports to the effect that Zeltser was placed in involuntary confinement in a psychiatric institution and physically abused by police. The letter requested Zeltser's release from detention, an investigation of allegations of abuse, and a determination of the extent of his injuries. The letter emphasized that Zeltser's diabetes makes it crucial that he and Ms. Funk be released on humanitarian grounds, a request echoed by the U.S. State Department which cited a sharp deterioration of Zeltser’s health, as reported by the U.S. consul who visited him.

It is not clear why the latest charges coming from the KGB took so long to be filed. So far, there has been no response from the Belarusian government to the State Department or UCSJ.

UKRAINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS LEADER ATTACKED AND BEATEN. Late on May 23, Dmytro Groisman was attacked in his apartment building in Vinnitsia, according to Leonard Terlitzky, director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in Kiev, as reported on May 28 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Groisman, an attorney who is Jewish, said he believes that the attack was linked to his human rights work. He is the program coordinator of the Vinnitsia Human Rights Group, a grass-roots nongovernmental organization that is a partner with the U.N. Human Rights Commission and HIAS, providing legal assistance to asylum seekers and refugees in Vinnitsia.

"HIAS deplores the attack on Dmytro Groisman," said Gideon Aronoff, president and CEO of HIAS. "As the head of a small local human rights organization that works directly with HIAS, his work puts him at the forefront of the effort to make Ukraine a secure and free country for all Ukrainians, including particularly its Jews and other minorities. Groisman and the community of human rights workers in Ukraine deserve justice to the fullest extent of the law as they struggle to improve the lives of others in Ukraine." A report by the Prima news agency added that the attacker asked Groisman his name before assaulting him and made no effort to rob him. Vinnitsia police are investigating the attack as an act of hooliganism.

NEO-NAZIS ATTACK ANTI-FASCISTS. Neo-Nazis attacked anti-fascist activists in Omsk, Russia, according to a May 29 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The attackers hit one of the anti-fascists with a brick in the head and kicked him several times as he lay unconscious on the ground. He was hospitalized. The report offered no information about arrests or the number of participants in the violence.

ST. PETERSBURG COURT SENTENCES ANTI-FASCISTS. A St. Petersburg court handed down suspended sentences to six anti-fascists after finding them guilty of attacking a far-right rally two years ago, according to a May 27 report by the web site Jewish.ru. According to the verdict, on September 2006, anti-fascist activist Oleg Smirnov gathered a group of about 29 youths to attack a rally by the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI), which has in recent years emerged as Russia's leading far-right movement. The anti-fascists attacked the rally but without causing any serious injuries to their opponents and fled as police approached. They were detained soon afterwards.

While no one denies that the anti-fascists acted illegally, during the investigation evidence emerged suggesting official favoritism toward the DPNI. Despite the fact that Russian law prohibits hate speech, the DPNI was given permission to hold the rally, which was to memorialize a widely publicized race riot in Kondopoga that had targeted Central Asians earlier that month, a particularly dangerous time to allow a far-right rally in the middle of a city with a large migrant population and notoriously violent neo-Nazi gangs. One anti-fascist who participated in the attack was seriously wounded. His assailant was never found. A DPNI activist was detained in possession of an ax, but was released without any charges.

THREE NEO-NAZIS CONVICTED FOR MURDERING TWO HOMELESS MEN. An appeals court in Chelyabinsk, Russia sentenced three neo-Nazis to prison for killing two homeless men in 2004, according to a May 29 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Prosecutors had filed an appeal in 2006 after a lower court handed down shockingly light sentences. The original trial ended with convictions for "causing injuries motivated by hooliganism" ignoring the original manslaughter charges. Strangely, the court threw out charges of membership in an extremist group, despite the nicknames of two the defendants--"Himmler" and "Gunter." As a result, the three defendants got sentences ranging from one to three years, and were released immediately since they had already served that amount of time in pre-trial detention.

On May 19, 2008 the appeals court again threw out the extremism charges but convicted the defendants of manslaughter. As a result, the sentences were increased to between five and seven years. Prosecutors intend to appeal this verdict too, in the hope of getting a conviction under extremism charges.

MURDERERS OF UZBEK COUPLE IN MOSCOW WERE NEO-NAZIS. A May 7 murder of an Uzbek couple in Moscow was the work of neo-Nazis, according to the national daily "Moskovsky Komsomolets" dated May 22. Matlyuba Axkhemtova, 42, and her husband Ukhtam Rofeev, 47, were found dead on Konstantinov Street. Both were manual laborers who met after work to walk home together. Their killers--ages 17 and 19--stabbed them to death. Police detained them shortly afterwards and have been investigating their links to other murders of migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. This newsletter reported the double murder on May 9 but as a matter of policy does not publish every reported attack on minorities unless there is reasonable certainty that the attack is a hate crime.

PROSECUTORS CALL FOR PUNISHING SCHOOL PRINCIPALS FOR PROTECTING NEO-NAZIS. St. Petersburg prosecutors demand that local education officials punish two school principals who allegedly hid information about some of their students' ties to neo-Nazi groups, according to a May 28 report by the web site Regions.ru. As part of preventative measures aimed at identifying neo-Nazi youths in the city, school officials are required to tell police about neo-Nazis among their pupils. In the two schools in question, students went to school with shaved heads and wore the clothes associated with neo-Nazis. One student brought to school Nazi artifacts that he had dug up in the battlefields around St. Petersburg, along with neo-Nazi literature. He was later charged with a murder, leading investigators to question why school officials had not informed them about his links to extremist groups.

HATE CRIME CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST ATTACKERS OF JEWISH SCHOOL. Prosecutors in Bryansk, Russia have dropped hate crimes charges against a gang of youths who attacked a Jewish school on multiple occasions, according to a May 21 report by the local news web site Gorod 24. The four youths, only one of whom is legally an adult, attacked the Or Avner Jewish school five times. Armed with wooden clubs, the accused allegedly shattered the school's windows while screaming antisemitic threats at the students within, earlier media reports said. Although investigators established that the attacks were motivated by ethnic hatred, the youths only face charges of vandalism and "hooliganism" rather than the more serious charges of hate crimes or extremism. Their case has been forwarded to a local court.

NEO-NAZIS SENTENCED FOR HATE CRIMES. Found guilty of a November 19, 2006 attack on a Kyrgyz man, eight neo-Nazis were sentenced by a Moscow Region court, according to a May 23 report by the Jewish.ru web site. Three of the defendants face 5-to-6 year sentences, while the rest received suspended sentences after being found guilty of assault motivated by ethnic hatred. The defendants attacked their victim on a commuter train while yelling the far-right slogan, "Russia for Russians!"

EXTREMISTS THREATEN RUSSIAN WOMEN WHO MARRY NON-SLAVS. Leaflets threatening Russian women who enter into ethnically mixed marriages were distributed in Vladimir, Russia, according to a May 28 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The leaflets call for "cleansing the country of occupiers... Occupiers are anyone who is of non-Slavic descent." As for any Russian woman who marries an "occupier," punishment for “the mixing of blood will be swift."

DAGESTANI EDITOR FOUND GUILTY OF INCITING AGAINST JEWS. The editor of an independent newspaper in the predominately Muslim republic of Dagestan was found guilty of inciting ethnic hatred, according to a May 26 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Nabigula Dzhavatkhanov, editor of "Mnenie Naroda," received a suspended sentence of 18 months for his article, "An Answer to the Zionists." An expert commission found that the article incites "hatred towards the Jewish ethnos" and "humiliates the dignity... of citizens of Jewish nationality." The court also found in the article "elements of extremism."

TAMBOV GOVERNOR CALLS FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST GAYS. In the wake of a scandal that led to the arrest of the mayor of Tambov, Russia, the region's governor made a series of homophobic statements, including one that seemed to call for violence against gays, according to a May 16 interview by the daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda."

Mayor Maxim Kosenkov was arrested and removed from office after he allegedly kidnapped his former lover. The fact that the report exposed him as a homosexual appears to trouble Governor Oleg Betin more than the kidnapping. In his interview with the national newspaper, Betin was quoted as saying: "Tolerance? To hell with that! Gomiki [a pejorative for gays] need to be torn apart! Then scatter their pieces to the wind! … I am against perversion. The principles of Orthodoxy should be inviolate."

Betin also opined that the local and national media need to be "cleansed" of homosexuals and accused Kosenkov of surrounding himself with gays at city hall. Most of the people that the newspaper's correspondent interviewed on the street about the mayor and the scandal stated that Kosenkov had done a good job and that they didn't care about his sexual orientation.

MORE NEO-NAZI ATTACKS ON BELARUS OPPOSITIONISTS. Boris Khamayda, editor of a Belarusian opposition newspaper in Vitebsk, has received written threats from members of the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU), according to a May 22 report on the opposition web site Khartiya 97. The threats mentioned Khamayda’s opposition activities. Shortly afterwards, his brother Vyacheslav was attacked by a man who came up to him and started beating him without saying a word. Last fall, the son of Vitebsk opposition member Yana Detzhavetseva was also attacked, shortly after receiving a threatening letter from the RNU. After filing complaints about the threats to the police and the KGB, all they got in response was a letter stating that because the RNU is an unregistered organization, its members cannot be found.

For years, Belarusian opposition members have accused the government of tolerating or even collaborating with neo-Nazis who regularly attack them.

UZBEK STATE MEDIA KEEPS UP INCITEMENT OF INTOLERANCE. Uzbekistan continues to use state-run mass media to incite against religious minorities and freedom of thought, conscience, and belief, Forum 18 News Service reported on May 23. In the latest national TV attack, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Presbyterians, and Methodists were described as conducting "illegal missionary activities" in the course of a one-hour film shown on May 17. This was described as part of "a global problem along with religious dogmatism, fundamentalism, terrorism, and drug addiction." A Protestant shown in the film told Forum 18 that the program used police film taken during raids on worshipers.

BRITAIN AND HOLLAND THREATEN TO PULL OUT OF DURBAN II. The British government told parliament last week that it is considering pulling out from a UN conference on racism if it replays the acrimonious antisemitism of the 2001 precursor held in Durban, South Africa, the European Jewish Congress web site “U.N. Watch” reported. Speaking in parliament, U.K. Minister for Europe Jim Murphy said “there should be no repeat of the disgraceful antisemitism that blighted events surrounding the 2001 world conference against racism.” A few days later, Netherlands Interior Minister Maxime Verhagen said his country will not accept any attempt to call Israel a racist state at next year’s "Durban II" conference. According to Radio Netherlands, Verhagen said that the Netherlands was involved in the organization of Durban II and would not hesitate to withdraw if there is a similar negative spiral of events.

The UN plans to hold a conference on racism next April in Geneva, seven years after a controversial summit in Durban, South Africa, an unidentified diplomat told Agence France-Presse on May 26. The five-day conference will take place from April 20-24 at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva. "There is a consensus for holding the conference in Geneva," the diplomat told AFP.

The 2001 Durban conference on racism, held a few days before the September 11 attacks on the United States and against the backdrop of the second Palestinian intifada, ended in acrimony amid accusations of antisemitism. The United States, Israel, and Canada have already decided to not to attend next year’s conference. "Unfortunately, some bad ideas don’t ever seem to die," U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said last month.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, WINNING EUROVISION CONTEST GIVES RUSSIA A BREAK * * * “The exercise of ‘soft power,’ as opposed to the bullying, gas-denying, kind, has been one of post-Soviet Russia's greatest failings,” wrote in the London newspaper “The Independent” dated May 26 Mary Dejevsky, usually a defender of Vladimir Putin’s policies. “Its clumsy public relations have been at least as responsible as anything its leaders have actually done to foster an uncooperative and generally negative image around the world. [But] thanks to its pop megastar [and winner of this year’s Eurovision’s song contest], Dima Bilan … Russia suddenly has a second chance. It is a chance the President, Dmitry Medvedev, and Vladimir Putin, in his new incarnation as prime minister, could never have dreamt of--and one they must do their utmost not to squander.”

PROMISES, PROMISES
Searching for Signs of Positive Change in Russia Calls for Patience

1. MEDVEDEV EVADES QUESTIONS BY JOURNALIST UNION BOSS. On May 26, Vsvevolod Bogdanov, president of Russia’s largest journalist union with more than 100,000 members, got together with head of state Dmitry Medvedev. According to the transcript released by the Kremlin, Bogdanov said he had prepared for the meeting “very thoroughly” and had “a pile of questions” he intended to discuss. If the excerpts of the transcript are correct, most of the questions dealt with “the social status of journalists.” Bogdanov pointed out: “We have many problems in this area, including murders of journalists, sometimes difficult relations with the authorities, and the declining prestige of our profession and of journalists in general in our country.”

Bogdanov noted that “we journalists are participating poorly in building our country’s social and political life. Take the national projects, for example, or the fight against corruption. What you said about the need for a systemic approach was good. But if we got journalists involved in this work too, this systemic approach would produce better results.”

Medvedev replied: “I agree with you here. This is indeed so. There are a number of cases where the authorities and the public in general could achieve the desired results more quickly if journalists reacted faster and with more substantial publications.”

Bogdanov offered assistance. He said: “I think the authorities can count on journalists in this respect, and journalists will start taking a new view of their place in society. One very good formula has it that good media is when the nation talks to itself. If we can reach that level we would perhaps be able to achieve more together.”

But the last sentence in the official transcript suggests that Bogdanov’s questions were left unanswered. Medvedev was quoted as saying: “Let’s discuss the concrete steps we can take then to achieve this.”

The world is waiting.

2. HIGH COURT FINDS SMUGGLING CHARGE AGAINST NGO HEAD UNCONSTITUTIONAL. On the day following President Medvedev’s meeting with the journalist union’s leader, something more concrete took place: an event that seems to be in sync with Medvedev’s passionate declarations of intending to improve Russia’s legal system. On May 27, the former head of a U.S.-funded nongovernmental organization (NGO) who had fled Russia to avoid what supporters characterized as trumped-up smuggling charges won an appeal in the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Manana Aslamazyan, former president of the Moscow-based Educated Media Foundation, had been charged with smuggling after she carried into Russia a sum of money modestly exceeding the legal limit without declaring it. According to her lawyer, Viktor Parshutkin, the ruling means that the law under which she was charged was unconstitutional, and it is a sign of the potential for positive change in Russia under Medvedev. Parshutkin said the ruling means that the government must now drop the charge.

The charge of smuggling currency, punishable by up to five years in prison, has been widely regarded as part of the then President Vladimir Putin’s campaign against NGOs. The AP report cited human rights activists and Western governments as considering the affair an example of Kremlin pressure on foreign-funded NGOs, which Putin accused of seeking to undermine his government, as well as a curtailment of media freedom in Russia. Government pressures against the Educated Media Foundation included a raid and the confiscation of computers and documents. The foundation had to shut down.

The AP described “Aslamazyan's widely respected foundation” as conducting “programs to train journalists and media executives. It was the legal successor of Internews Russia, which received much of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and from European sources.”

Parshutkin was quoted as saying that the Constitutional Court’s judges “have sent a signal to society, to the authorities: let's build life in this country a little differently. Enough persecuting people, enough repression, enough imprisoning people for no reason.” “All these cases against the foundation and Manana Aslamazyan were opened under the former president, Putin,” said Parshutkin who contended that Putin's Kremlin and the Federal Security Service, the KGB's successor, were behind the cases.

According to the AP, “Medvedev, a former law professor with no known KGB background, is being watched closely for signs that his inauguration-speech promise to hold civil rights sacred will lead to a less heavy-handed state and fewer politically motivated prosecutions.”

But the AP also cited another opinion, quoting Alexei Simonov, a media freedom advocate who heads the Glasnost Defense Fund and has led the Educated Media Foundation through its liquidation process. Simonov praised the Constitutional Court’s ruling but said he did not see it as a sign of liberalization. He said that the ruling was unlikely to affect the defunct NGO, which he believes the Russian authorities feared might be used to support oppositionists and saw as a threat because it advocated open media practices. He concluded: “The Educated Media Foundation essentially no longer exists--they achieved what they wanted.”

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