Volume 2, Number 21
Friday, May 31, 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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During his three-day visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg last week, President George Bush's public statements soft-pedaled disagreements with his host on human rights subjects such as the war in Chechnya and freedom of the press. But he emphasized what he termed the gains of religious freedom in the new Russia.

1. AT A RECEPTION, BUSH SINGLES OUT CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP. On May 24 at an hour-long reception for Russia's religious leaders at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, President Bush singled out Russia's top Roman Catholic cleric for a one-on-one meeting behind closed doors, according to the Religion News Service (RNS). "The President was very worried about the situation of the Catholic Church in particular, and in general with the situation of religious freedom in Russia," Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz said after the 10-minute meeting. Bush assured him that he would raise the question with Putin. According to RNS, "Russia's estimated 600,000 citizens of Catholic heritage are currently weathering their worst government discrimination since the breakup of the staunchly atheist Soviet Union in 1991."

2. PROTESTANT LEADERS ARE HEARTENED. Four Protestant religious leaders attended the reception, and one of them gave his enthusiastic reaction to RNS. "I am convinced that there will be some kind of positive result from this," said Sergei Ryakhovsky, the leader of one of Russia's largest associations of Pentecostals, which RNS described as "perhaps the country's fastest growing faith" and others have called one of its most persecuted. He said he was heartened by President Bush's short speech and its emphasis on the importance of religious liberty and diversity in a democracy.

3. BUSH ATTENDS RUSSIAN ORTHODOX SERVICE. On May 26, Sunday, President and Mrs. Bush attended services at Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral, a large Russian Orthodox church built in 1811 strongly recalling St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Soviets turned the church into a museum of atheism, and it was recently restored to its original splendor.

4. FREEDOM OF RELIGION NONNEGOTIABLE, BUSH SAYS. Later in the day, America's First Couple visited St. Petersburg's only synagogue, once under close KGB surveillance, and recently renovated. The synagogue's head rabbi, Brooklyn-born Menahem-Mendel Pevzner, called Bush's visit an endorsement of the post-Soviet revival of the Jewish faith in Russia. "The present freedom of the Russian Jews is due to the efforts of U.S. Jewry and the United States as a whole," Beryl Lazar, one of Russia's two chief rabbis, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "Moreover, acting on behalf of the Jews, America helped the Russians to understand that it's possible to change Russia and make it a free country." "The Washington Post" noted that "his hosts said Bush was struck that he was the first president to see a Russian synagogue. 'Don't worry,' they recalled him telling them. 'If it's the first, there will be many more to follow.'"

Bush, who spent nearly an hour in the synagogue instead of his scheduled 20 minutes, discussed with reporters his visits to the two houses of worship. According to "The Washington Post," he said: "One of the non-negotiable demands of individual dignity is freedom of religion. I'm impressed by what I've heard from religious leaders, Christian and Jewish, here about the state of affairs in Russia." "The New York Times" also quoted him as saying: "It's important for this country that religious freedom flourishes and there be tolerance for all faiths."

BOOBY-TRAPPED ANTISEMITIC SIGN INJURES WOMAN TRYING TO REMOVE IT. However, not only progress but peril, too, was dramatized during President Bush's visit to Russia. The day after he attended a Russian Orthodox service and spent time in a synagogue, a booby-trapped poster with an antisemitic slogan exploded and seriously injured a Russian doctoral student, Tatyana Sapunova, 28, who lost sight in one eye and needs a series of surgical procedures. According to local media reports, upon noticing the message "Death to the Kikes" daubed in large black paint on a sign, she pulled to the side of the highway 20 miles southwest of Moscow, near a turnoff to Vnukovo Airport. She got out of the car and tried to yank the sign out of the ground. The blast triggered by her touch had the force of 100 to 200 grams of TNT, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said he would take the case under his personal control. "All incidents of extremism or racial intolerance will be handled with the maximum strictness allowed by law," he told Interfax.

Sapunova told “Izvestiya” that police were harassing her and her husband as investigators explored the possibility that she herself set the bomb. Her mother Elena told the daily that she was afraid that the culprits will be found and “then they will take revenge on us. I am afraid of the antisemites. Especially after getting too much help from the Jewish Diaspora.” When asked by “Izvestiya” why police failed to remove the sign visible for more than a day and only 100 meters from a police watch post, Col. Nikolai Vagin said that no one had complained about it, the police were not aware of it, and, besides, “Is the posting of such a sign a crime?” He argued that “from a formal point of view, the slogan “Death to the kikes” is not incitement of ethnic hatred. You can call anybody you want 'kikes.’”

The Russian Jewish Congress characterized Vagin’s statement as “an attempt to justify or, at minimum, play down the danger posed by the activity of neo-Nazi antisemitic organizations… For fascist organizations, such statements are a form of hidden approval, a sign that their actions will remain unpunished.” The Russian Jewish Congress also called for Vagin to be fired.

SKINHEADS ATTACK RABBI’S SON. The day after the blast, on May 28, skinheads attacked Yakov Vershubsky -- the American-born son of the chief rabbi of Voronezh -- near Moscow's Choral Synagogue. On May 29, "Izvestiya" quoted him as saying that the skinheads came up to him, said “kike,” and hit him in the face. “They tried to hit me again,” Vershubsky continued. “But I reached into my pocket, where I had a knife, and they ran off." Vershubsky's nose was broken and needs plastic surgery. He revealed that this was the third time he had been attacked in Russia.

DUMA IS TO DEBATE NEW LAW CURBING EXTREMISM. The blast on the highway and the attack in Moscow came at a time of heightening fears of racist violence in Russia, following skinhead violence throughout the country on Adolf Hitler's birthday, April 20. The government and especially the presidential administration are pinning their hopes on a new law. On May 27 Pavel Krashenninikov, chairman of the legislative committee of the State Duma, said that the Duma should pass a bill cracking down on extremism before the current session ends in early July. He told the press that the bill is scheduled to be presented for a first reading on June 6. "We are behind Europe on this by 50 years," Krashenninikov said, pointing out that West European governments enacted laws to stop Nazi movements after World War II. "You can't buy 'Mein Kampf' on the streets of Berlin or Paris, but you can on the streets of Moscow," Krashenninikov said. He explained that the bill provides for shutting down extremist organizations and targets extremists as well as those who disseminate extremist material, including in the media. Asked if he had a list of extremist organizations, he said, "This law will be able to deal with organizations that are not on any list." A former justice minister, Krashenninikov said he was encouraged that the bill puts the responsibility for deciding whether a group qualifies as extremist on judges rather than bureaucrats. However, he cautioned, the bill does not apply to skinheads.

Some human rights advocates have expressed concern that in its current form, the law could be used against legitimate opposition parties.

CEMETERY DESECRATION IS PART OF ANTI-JEWISH WAVE IN DAGESTAN. Twenty tombstones were defaced, either with paint or by having the eyes of the deceased's portrait scratched out, and several others were stolen in the May 23 desecration of the centuries-old Jewish cemetery in Makhachkala, in the Muslim-majority Republic of Dagestan in the Russian Federation, according to a local UCSJ monitor. Local authorities have started a criminal investigation. The desecration, reported in this newsletter last week, was not an isolated incident. In late May, leaflets calling for Jews to "go to Israel" were put in mailboxes of Jewish families and antisemitic leaflets were circulating in local universities. In April, three unidentified men entered a synagogue during prayers and threatened a local Jewish leader. Though the police were given the license plate number of the men's car, there have been no arrests so far.

Since 1994, sixteen Jews in the process of preparing for emigration to Israel have been kidnapped in Dagestan, and the fate of five of them is still unknown. Some of the captors have demanded huge ransoms, though the community is known to be very poor. About 4,500 Jews remain in the republic, and 40 to 50 leave for Israel every month.

PRESSURE ON IMMIGRANTS LINKED TO SALE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND. Up to 40 Meskhetian Turks were detained and deprived of their passports last week, as law enforcement officials in Krasnodar Krai conducted special operations in the Anapa District, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Moscow bureau reported on May 27. Sarvar Tidorov, head of the Meskhetian Turk community in the krai, said that the Meskhetians were harvesting a field at the time and were told by police to leave the region. According to the bureau, analysts believe that the measures against the Meskhetians are linked to the State Duma's current consideration of legislation to regulate the buying and selling of agricultural land. According to the analysts, the Meskhetians could be a serious obstacle to a quick seizure of agricultural lands, as the Meskhetian community survives mainly by doing agricultural labor.

DEAL IS STRUCK TO AVERT THREAT TO ARMENIANS. Addressing a session of the Armenian Academy of Sciences in Yerevan on May 26, Ara Abrahamian, the wealthy businessman who heads the Union of Armenians of Russia, said he reached an agreement with the administration of Russia's Krasnodar Krai, which earlier this year launched a drive to expel illegal immigrants, including many Armenians, according to a report by RFE/RL. Under the agreement, Abrahamian will sponsor a ten-year program of investment in the krai, while krai governor Aleksandr Tkachyov will allow Krasnodar's Armenians to remain. At a press conference in Moscow on May 19, Tkachyov denied that he supports plans, revealed earlier by his deputy, Leonid Baklitskii, to "re-emigrate" Armenians back to Armenia.

UZBEKISTAN: MINORITY FAITHS BARRED FROM PREACHING IN UZBEK. "Actions have recently been resumed in Uzbekistan which could soon lead to a significant restriction on religious freedom in our country," says an open letter from the press officer of the Evangelical Christians/Baptists of Uzbekistan, Dmitri Pitirimov, received by Keston News Service on May 22. The letter cites a number of recent events, including a senior religious affairs official's demand that churches stop preaching in Uzbek, the country's state language, and the detention of 18 Christians following an investigation into the sources of Christian literature printed in Central Asian languages. The chairman of the Bible Society of Uzbekistan told Keston that it was "impossible to rule out the possibility that the authorities are beginning a campaign against Protestant communities in the republic." On May 8, "Pravda Vostoka," an official state newspaper, published an article based on an interview with Metropolitan Vladimir (Ikim), head of the Orthodox Church in Central Asia, who spoke out strongly against the spread of Protestantism in Uzbekistan. "The substance of this article demonstrates clearly that a course of action has been taken to toughen religious policy on the rapidly growing Evangelical Christian movements," the Baptist press officer's letter declared.

Shoazim Minovarov, deputy chairman of the Committee for Religious Affairs, confirmed to Keston that his committee told the Tashkent-based head of the Full Gospel church, Bishop Sergei Nechitailo, to stop preaching in Uzbek and to stop distributing Uzbek-language religious literature. Minovarov cited "a large number of complaints" about members of the church "trying to persuade Uzbeks to turn away from Islam and convert to their religion." Minovarov volunteered that a similar request was made to the Jehovah's Witnesses who "have been going to people's homes, trying to preach their beliefs. You must understand that such behavior is unthinkable according to Uzbek tradition." He claimed that the law on religion forbids "actions intended to convert believers of one confession to another."

SYNAGOGUE VANDALIZED IN ROMANIA. A synagogue in Falticeni in northern Romania was desecrated and some religious items were stolen, according to the Romanian news agency Divers. Local police officials said that unidentified individuals entered the unguarded sanctuary by breaking a window. They scrawled on the walls slogans such as "Death and Gassing for the Jews" and "Heil Hitler." The Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania asked the authorities to find the vandals and to stop such actions. The synagogue is on a list of ten Jewish monuments to be restored by the government in the near future. When the synagogue was built in 1862, Jews made up more than half of the population of Falticeni. According to Divers, now only about 50 Jews, mostly elderly, live there. The news agency added that the government has recently passed legislation imposing stiff prison sentences on those found guilty of antisemitic acts and the propagation of Nazi ideas.

SUPPORT FOR FAR RIGHT IDEAS REACHES HISTORIC HIGH IN FRANCE. After the presidential elections, more than one French citizen out of four holds to the ideas of the far right, according to a public opinion survey funded by the Paris daily "Le Monde" and published on May 28. The poll found that approval for the ideas propagated by far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reached its lowest point, 11%, in the spring of 1999, following a split in his National Front. Three years later, support for Le Pen's ideas rose to 28%, which "Le Monde" characterizes as one of the highest levels historically. In May 2000, 63% of the French respondents declared themselves in "absolute disagreement" with Le Pen's ideas; now that figure has dropped to 49%.

FRANCE AND GERMANY URGE TIGHTER IMMIGRATION CONTROLS. President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany are "most eager to draw the right conclusions" from Europe's "right-wing, populist political success stories," the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" reported on May 28. In the French-German summit meeting in Paris on May 27, immigration and crime topped the agenda. Both leaders called for "tighter checks at the European Union's exterior borders." Chirac noted: "We have to effectively fight the Mafia-like systems that organize immigration into our countries in a totally inhumane way." Schroeder agreed, saying the immigration issue must not be left to the "extreme right," and called on the European Commission to face up to the challenge presented by the number of immigrants streaming into the EU. He said he hoped that "a certain measure of reality awareness" would assert itself in Brussels. According to the German daily, at the EU summit on June 21-22 in Seville, Spain, the French and German leaders will propose that Europe "harmonize national immigration and asylum regulations." Earlier this month, the interior ministers, Otto Schily of Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy of France, announced an agreement that allows their police forces to make arrests in each other's country. Until now, EU rules allowed only the pursuit of lawbreakers across national borders, and arrests were left to the local police.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "The experience in Afghanistan has taught us all that there's lessons to be learned about how to protect one's homeland and, at the same time, be respectful on the battlefield, and that lesson applies to Chechnya," President George Bush said on May 24. "The war on terror can be won and, at the same time, we have proven it's possible to respect the rights of the people in the territories, to respect the rights o

f the minorities."

HISTORY UNFOLDS AT SUMMITS

The Pre

ss Offers a Shifting Focus and a Succession of Rough Drafts

1. Bush's Passive Listing of Human Rights Issues Fails to Impress Russian Activists.

"We'll be judged by history on how we defend our freedoms," President Bush declared on May 24 to Russian political, religious, media, and human rights leaders gathered at Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador's residence, on May 24, the first day of his visit in Moscow. "And we'll be judged by history as to whether or not we defend the universal values that are right and just and true." He also mentioned Chechnya (see our "Quote of the Week" above) as well as the need for fair enforcement of the law, an "independent media that is respected by the government," freedom of speech and of association for opposition parties, and freedom of religion.

However, "The Washington Post" found human rights activists unimpressed. One was Valentina Melnikova of the Soldiers' Mothers Committee, a group that protests abuses by the Russian military in Chechnya. She told "The Washington Post" that she feared that Bush's approach "would only encourage Russia to persist in its actions in Chechnya without fear of international condemnation." Melnikova spoke to Bush after his speech and asked him to have American officers teach their Russian counterparts to respect human rights. Tatiana Kasatkina, executive director of the Russian human rights group Memorial, expressed her dissatisfaction that Bush "spoke about Chechnya and human rights only in passing. There was nothing in the speech like what he said during his election campaign."

2. Integration Is the Magic Doctrine but It Does Not Resolve All Disagreements.

Even though Russia is still fighting a war in Chechnya, sells nuclear technology to states such as Iran, and every one of its democratic institutions is weaker than it used to be, last week's summit produced "one of the warmest meetings between U.S. and Russian leaders in recent memory," argue two professors, James Goldgeier of George Washington University and Michael McFaul of Stanford, in the "Christian Science Monitor" of May 29.

"So why the big reversal in Bush's thinking?" the two Russian specialists ask.

September 11 and the war on terrorism, George Bush's "personal fondness" for Vladimir Putin, and Putin's personality are only partial answers, the professors contend. "The bigger force for cooperation originates in Moscow," they assert, as for nearly two decades, Kremlin leaders have pursued the same basic strategy toward the West: "integration." Mikhail Gorbachev started "this new trajectory," Boris Yeltsin "deepened it," and "Putin has continued it."

The professors applaud Bush's embrace of integration as the basic U.S. strategy toward Russia. But they conclude with a clever caveat: Bush may soon discover, as Bill Clinton did, "that the doctrine of integration does not resolve all issues in Russian-American relations."

3. Integration Has a High Price Russia May Not Want to Pay.

As if responding to the Goldgeier-McFaul thesis, Nikolai Zlobin, director of the Asian and Russian programs of Russia's Center for Defense Information, argued in "Izvestia" on May 28 that: "Russians and Americans treat each other normally because they do not know each other. The more we get to know each other, the more difficulties and misunderstandings we will encounter. En route to integration with the West, Russia is in for a colossal psychological divide. Nobody in the world can understand the price Russia will have to pay for its integration into the West from the point of view of its culture and mentality -- not military toys, economics, or politics."

4. The Quest Is on for the Right Metaphor.

On May 27 Reuters offered the following title to a dispatch: "Russia-NATO: From Loveless Marriage to Love-In." On May 28 in an Italian naval base, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced that the new pact between NATO and Russia represents a "marriage between Eastern and Western Europe." On May 29, a headline in the "The International Herald Tribune" switched the metaphors from love to law: "Russia, Oldest NATO Foe, Becomes Limited Partner."

However, much of the Russian press sees defeat, deception, and death. "Russia Capitulates to NATO" read a headline on the web site "Gazeta.ru." "Russia's engagement to the 'aggressor bloc' is happening today in Italy," the daily "Moskovsky Komsomolets" wrote as Putin headed for Italy. Next day, on May 28, "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" commented: "Russia's relations with the alliance, even in the format of the '20,' look like a sham," under a headline proclaiming "A Virtual Friendship."

Some commentators went as far as describing the agreement in Rome on the NATO-Russia Council as an indication of NATO's identity crisis after the 1991 Soviet collapse. "The alliance is in a crisis," analyst Sergei Strokan wrote in "Kommersant," a Moscow daily. "Despite all of NATO's activity, the need for its existence prompts more and more doubt." He predicted that the Rome accord means that "NATO will die slowly."

5. The Enemy Is Still There -- But Fewer in Number.

The Communists were "virtually alone" in the Russian political arena criticizing President Putin's performance in the course of the summit and in condemning the nuclear arms treaty as "a sellout of Russian interests," Reuters reported on May 27. However, only about 500 demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Moscow to protest Bush's visit, according to the Russian Jewish web site "sem40.ru." The slogans shouted by the demonstrators yielded what has become a standard extremist mix: "Yankee, go home!" "Beat the kikes - save Russia!" "Smash the Zionists!" and "We don't need Vova Putin, we need Stalin!"

* * * *

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