Volume 2, Number 22
Friday, June 7, 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
_____________________________________________________________

DUMA PASSES ANTI-EXTREMISM BILL DESPITE CRITICISMS. On June 6, by a vote of 271 and 141 against, Russia’s State Duma passed a government-sponsored anti-extremism bill in the first reading, according to news agency reports. While President Vladimir Putin and law enforcement officials urged the Duma to pass the bill quickly, human rights advocates spoke out against it. The main criticism is that the bill’s definition of extremism is so broad that it would enable law enforcement agencies to abuse their powers while failing to curb nationalist and racist violence. "The presidential bill on extremism does not mention xenophobia or antisemitism per se," human rights activist Sergei Smirnov charged in a statement. "But the bill does give extremely broad and vague definitions of extremist activity."

At a news conference on June 4, Lev Levinson, an aide to Duma Deputy Sergei Kovalyov, protested the definition of extremism in Article 1 as any "illegal activity" aimed at "hindering the legal activities" of federal, regional, or local government bodies. He argued that such a definition could render groups such as Greenpeace, anti-globalists, and demonstrators holding unsanctioned protests vulnerable to punishment. Valentin Gefter, head of the Moscow-based Human Rights Institute, voiced doubt that the European Court of Justice or other international legal organizations would approve the bill.

Other human rights advocates criticize the bill for allowing the authorities to disband or cancel the registration of organizations suspected of extremism. Although such a move requires court approval, the official body in charge of registering the organization in question can suspend its activities pending a court hearing, which can be put off for months, the rights advocates said.

According to the web site regions.ru, Deputy Pavel Krasheninnikov who chairs the Duma’s committee on legislation, said that complaints will be addressed before the bill is presented for its second reading. Last week, Krasheninnikov said that he hoped the bill could pass through all three readings by the end of the spring session this month.

His deputy, Valery Plotnikov, told the press that the bill is needed to make up for the lack of legislation explicitly dealing with extremism or extremist organizations. "The laws that do deal with extremism are spread throughout a lot of different legislative documents," Plotnikov said. "The purpose of this bill is to formalize what is meant by extremism, which organizations are extremist, and how to deal with those responsible for founding those organizations."

Levinson, Kovalyov, and Gefter disagreed. "Existing laws are absolutely capable of dealing with such 'antisocial actions,'" Gefter said. He pointed out that many of the activities bracketed as extremism in the new bill are considered criminal offenses under existing legislation, for instance the act of inciting ethnic hatred, a crime that he called difficult to prove and which seldom leads to prosecution. Kovalyov said that part of the problem is laxness by police, prosecutors, and the Federal Security Service, who tend to view racially or ethnically motivated violence as the work of "hooligans" rather than extremists.

SAKHAROV MEMORIAL DEFACED. Unidentified individuals spray-painted antisemitic and obscene slogans over a mural dedicated to the memory of Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov at a square outside the Moscow human rights museum named after him, museum director Yuri Samodurov told the press on May 31. He said it was "very alarming to discover" that the 16-foot wide, 10-foot high mural was vandalized overnight. He suggested two possible culprits: teenagers or the authorities who have protested the politics of the museum as exemplified by its large banner demanding an end to the Russian war in Chechnya. "It is a position that irritates the authorities," he said. Sakharov's widow, former dissident Yelena Bonner, said on "Echo of Moscow" radio: "It is very dangerous that many such things can come back in Russia." If the mural cannot be repaired, it may have to be taken down.

MUSLIM TOMBSTONES SMASHED IN NOVOSIBIRSK. By the police's count, 47 tombstones were smashed in the Muslim section of Novosibirsk's city cemetery last weekend, according to an NTV report on June 3. The television station quoted a top police official, Aleksey Kirillov, as categorically denying "any nationalist feelings behind the crime." He said that a task force set up to investigate the incident concluded that the vandalism was by "ordinary hooligans" who left behind "traces which tell us that, most probably, it was done by teenagers." Nearly all the tombstones have been restored, the television station reported.

MORE ANTISEMITIC SIGNS IN VORONEZH. Three antisemitic signs, one calling for "Death to the kikes!" and the other two reading “Beat the kikes!” appeared in the Russian city of Voronezh, a week after a similar sign posted outside Moscow exploded in the face of a woman who tried to remove it, according to an article in “Izvestiya.” As the Voronezh signs had packages attached to them, the police suspected explosives. Security officials shot water cannons at the packages, but they turned out to contain only bricks. Meanwhile, news agencies reported that Tatyana Sapunova, the biophysicist injured last week trying to remove a similar sign on a highway outside Moscow, was flown to Israel for treatment of her injuries. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia will cover the costs.

NEW RUSSIAN LAW TIGHTENS CITIZENSHIP REQUIREMENTS. While governments of the European Union are studying ways of limiting immigration and tighten the rules on granting citizenship, on June 3 President Vladimir Putin signed a bill that will make the acquisition of Russian citizenship more difficult. The new requirements demand five years of residence instead of the three years in the previous law and the passing of a Russian language examination that did not exist before. In addition, the applicant must have a job and give up any other citizenship he or she may have. Putin praised the law, sponsored by his government, for seeking to "regulate immigration in the interests of the Russian citizen but, at the same time, not shut the door on our ethnic kin."

In Germany, conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber said on June 5 that if he wins the election in September, he would push for a far stricter immigration law than the one that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's center-left alliance with the Greens is trying to enact. "We must limit immigration," Stoiber said. Germany has about 7.3 million foreigners out of a population of 82 million.

PAMYAT ACTIVISTS RELEASED IN MOSCOW. After spending eight months in custody, two members of Pamyat, often characterized as the "grandfather" party of the Russian neo-fascist movement, were released from pre-trial detention in Moscow, according to a May 30 report by the Panorama think tank. No details were given as to why Aleksey Zagrebenyuk and Georgi Borovikov were originally imprisoned. A statement by Pamyat called the case fabricated by the security services.

UN'S ANNAN PAYS TRIBUTE TO VICTIMS AT BABI YAR. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited the memorial at Babi Yar during a trip to Ukraine. "I wanted to visit Babi Yar to express my solidarity with the victims of antisemitism and intolerance, and as a sign of my resolve to do everything in my power to fight the hatred and evil that so disfigure our world," Annan said on June 3, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He also said attacks on synagogues in Europe in recent months "should trouble people everywhere who are concerned about human rights and human dignity." On September 29 and 30, 1941, German forces and their local collaborators killed more than 33,000 Jews and threw their bodies into the ravine at Babi Yar.

ETHNIC RUSSIAN EXTREMISTS IN LATVIA JOIN LATVIAN NATIONALISTS. A neo-Nazi Russian nationalist group that the Latvian government has repeatedly refused to register seems to have found a way to acquire legal status, the Riga daily "Diena" reported on May 30. Some 80 followers in Latvia of Aleksandr Barkashov, leader of Russia's unregistered National Unity party (RNU), have joined the extreme nationalist Latvian National Democratic Party (LNDP), formerly led by Armands Malins, and Latvian Barkashovite leader Yevgeniy Osipov was elected chairman of the LNDP at its congress on May 25.

Moscow’s TVS television station called the union of the two extreme nationalist movements “unique” and pointed out that they agree on the use of physical force. It quoted Osipov as saying that “the rapprochement of nationalists is a natural process. It's a response to the expansion of racially alien elements.”

"Diena" quotes commentator Nils Muiznieks, who described the merger as a marriage of convenience and predicted that on the ethnic question, the views of the two groups cannot be reconciled. In the past, the Latvian government refused to grant legal status to the Barkashovites because of their allegiance to the RNU in Russia, which is widely recognized as one of the most active neo-Nazi organizations there and branded as an "extremist" group by Russia's Ministry of Justice. The new LNDP is facing a decision whether to take part in the parliamentary elections in October. While acknowledging that any expansion of the Barkashovites' activities is alarming, Muiznieks dismisses the chances of LNDP gains in the parliament. The monitoring of LNDP activities has been the responsibility of the security organs. "The risk factors have increased," noted Janis Reiniks, chief of the security police.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNS WORLDWIDE HUMAN RIGHT VIOLATIONS. In its annual report released on May 28, Amnesty International (AI) condemned torture, disappearances, and arbitrary arrests in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The human rights organization also found that the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania continued to tolerate racist attacks and discrimination, especially against Roma. But the thrust of the report dealt with what AI called opportunistic violations of human rights throughout the world in the guise of fighting terrorism. Since the September 11 attacks, AI said, "governments were so keen to build a 'global coalition against terrorism,' as they called it, that they were ready to condone grave abuses of human rights committed by their allies, so countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Russia escaped international scrutiny, undermining the universality of human rights," AI Secretary-General Irene Khan said at a press conference in London. She said that the situation has gone from bad to worse in Chechnya, as Russia has felt emboldened by praise for its cooperation in the international coalition and has launched numerous sweeps of Chechen villages, leaving many traumatized and wounded, detaining hundreds arbitrarily, and killing many. AI "recognizes the right, indeed the duty, of states to protect their citizens, but we believe that governments can and must take effective action within the framework of human rights, not at the expense of it," Khan said. "Security and human rights are not incompatible."

SCANDALS OVER ANTISEMITISM ROIL GERMANY. Literary and political circles are embroiled in nasty debates over charges of antisemitism in Germany, a country that has shown extra sensitivity on Jewish subjects since World War II. On June 5, Surhrkamp Verlag, one of the country's most prestigious publishing houses, announced that a book denounced by leading critics as antisemitic but defended by its author as a "comedy" will go on sale on June 26 as scheduled, so the public will have a chance to decide for itself. Last week, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung," one of Germany's finest newspapers, made front page news with its statement that it would not serialize the book, titled "Death of a Critic," by Martin Walser, one of the country's best-known authors, and condemned it as a "document of hate" that propagates Jewish stereotypes. Reviewers agree that Walser modeled his book's main character after Marcel Reich-Ranicki, a Polish-born Jew and Holocaust survivor who is a German literary critic and TV personality. In the book, the narrator, a writer, comes under suspicion of killing a critic but it turns out in the end that the critic faked his death.

Reich-Ranicki, 82, told a leading daily, "Die Welt," that he found the novel "deeply shocking, offensive, and hurtful" and characterized it as a work by "an author who has lost control of himself." But unlike other critics, he said that the book should be published. In his column in the newsweekly "Der Spiegel," Henryk Broder wrote: "I'm not concerned; I am appalled." A Jewish journalist who writes often about antisemitism, Broder told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Walser is "a gangster. He is a crook." Broder charged that Walser cynically exploits the country's current anti-Jewish mood.

The political equivalent of the Walser scandal concerns the vice president of the small, liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), Juergen Moellemann, who charged that Michael Friedman, a sharp-tongued TV talk show host and a vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, is partly responsible for growing German antisemitism by labeling all criticism of Israel as antisemitic. (See Bigotry Monitor of May 24, Vol. 2, Number 20.) According to a poll released on May 31, 40 percent of FDP members -- and 28 percent of the public -- agree with Moellemann that Friedman's personality increases antisemitism. The same day, the Free Democrats unanimously condemned Moellemann's statements in a declaration that Moellemann himself signed. On June 3, Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned that Moellemann's anti-Israel commentary "must be stopped because it damages Germany in an international context." On June 6, under intense pressure, Moellemann publicly apologized for the first time. "I want to apologize if I have injured the sensitivities of Jewish people," he said according to the German news agency DPA. "But Moellemann otherwise remained defiant," DPA noted, and quoted him as saying: "I am being attacked in a manner which I consider unacceptable." Moellemann said he had received 35,000 letters and emails in the past ten days backing his position.

Schroeder's Social Democratic Party declared that the FDP would not be a coalition partner (which it was in the past) following September's national elections as long as the party follows an anti-Israel line. On June 5, conservative chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber pledged to stick with the Free Democrats as his coalition partner of choice despite the party's crisis amid charges of antisemitism. But, he added, the FDP must swiftly clear up those problems first. Stoiber is leading Schroeder in the polls.

Paul Spiegel, who heads the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has charged that the FDP is courting the far-right electorate. The Council called Moellemann's remarks on Friedman the worst insult against German Jews since World War II. While that condemnation may say more about the heat of the debate than about postwar German antisemitism, the end of an era may be approaching: Public personalities in Germany may no longer feel bound by the unwritten postwar rule of avoiding any appearance of being harsh on Jews.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "Today's Russia is an active combination of megalomania and an inferiority complex," said Rostislav Rybakov, director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in an interview with "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" published in June. "We have lost our former strength (we were feared and, therefore, respected), but Russia has retained its traditional prestige in the East. In a state of strange euphoria from our fraternization with the West, we forgot that friendship with the East is also important. Russia must realize its worldwide role, but not as a raw materials supplier or a militarist. We must become a symbol of justice for our close and distant neighbors."

THE MOMENT OF PLAIN TRUTH IN RUSSIA
Frank Words on the War in Chechnya and the Spread of New Religions

Brutal candor is dangerous for a writer, especially when dealing with subjects as sensitive and multi-faceted as war and religion. In two articles this week, commentators give stark factual assessments of two controversies in Russia often twisted by ideologues committed to one of the many sides.

1.Vengeance and Profit Drive the Chechen War.
Writing in the "Moscow Times" of June 5, Yulia Latynina's ostensible topic is the trial of Yury Budanov, charged with the murder of Elza Kungayeva, a young Chechen woman. "Not long ago another juicy tidbit was revealed about this heroic warrior who did so much to protect us from female Chechen snipers," Latynina writes. "He was declared mentally unstable, and therefore legally irresponsible. At last, as one of Budanov's lawyers put it, the 'smears' of rapist and murderer would be removed." Latynina recalls the case of Andrei Chikatilo, "a rapist-murderer who was convicted of torturing, mutilating, and cannibalizing 52 victims." Had he been declared insane instead of being executed, she states, "he would nevertheless have remained a rapist and a murderer."

When it comes to Budanov, she finds that "the top brass doesn't consider what Budanov did to be a crime for the simple reason that everyone does it." Then she approaches the heart of darkness other journalists shy away from: "Everyone does it because this is war. Not the powdered-wig war of the 19th century with its turning and flanking maneuvers executed by orderly columns of soldiers. Not the air war in Afghanistan, where Americans gun down the Taliban from a safe distance without soiling their uniforms... This is a dismal, medieval war, in which the concepts of good and evil, law and lawlessness are lost. A war in which everything comes down to a few ancient and very human maxims. They killed my friend; I will avenge him. They killed my mother, my sister, my daughter; I will avenge them."

She calls the war "an enormous aggregate of many petty acts of vengeance raised to the nth power by the incompetence of Russia's generals, the egoism of its politicians, and the greed of Chechen field commanders... The war raised them up, gave them the power of life and death. They are now naturally interested in seeing the war continue at any cost, even at the cost of their own lives."

Latynina puts on no airs. "In his heart every Russian soldier sees the people of Chechnya in the same way the people of Chechnya see him -- as a rabid dog who deserves to be shot, but shot in such a way that the free press doesn't find out. This doesn't prevent either side from trading in arms, vodka, and prisoners, however. Vengeance is vengeance, but business is business." She says, straight from her Russian heart: "The Chechens are our enemies. I understand perfectly what I would think about Russia if I were a Chechen woman. But I am a Russian woman, and I have the right to experience those same feelings with regard to Chechnya. An enemy is an enemy, and in a war he will always be on the other end of the rifle barrel, of the law and of compassion."

2. Russians Experiment Rather Than Commit Themselves to Cult Leaders.
Freedom of religion is "nonnegotiable," President George Bush declared last month in Russia. But Russians, especially those who are seriously Orthodox or secular to the point of fearing the devoutly religious, are worried about cults, especially mysterious new cults that seem to mushroom everywhere. Now two scholars who have been studying religion in Russia for years offer a different assessment, published in the same June 5 issue of the "Moscow Times."

One of the few pleasant surprises in post-Soviet Russia is the failure of fringe religions, according to two scholars of religious life in Russia: Lawrence Uzzell, who heads the Oxford-based Keston Institute and Sergei Filatov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and editor of Keston's forthcoming encyclopedia on religion in post-Soviet Russia. In an article published in "The Moscow Times" on June 5, they dismiss warnings by the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox about Russia's "slave mentality" and the new "spiritual vacuum" that offer supposedly opportunities for religious demagogues to turn millions of gullible Russians into spiritual zombies.

The two scholars argue that "the perestroika years created a more hospitable climate in Russia than anywhere else in the West for movements such as the Moonies and the Scientologists" but that was only temporary. They say that even at their peak in 1994, the Moonies had only about 5,000 full-fledged members in Russia, and in 2000, their dwindling flock suffered a severe blow when one of their most visible leaders, historian Lev Semyonov, converted to the Orthodox Church.

"Russians soon learned how to use the new conditions to sell homegrown cults such as the White Brotherhood with its crude appeal to Slavic nationalism," the scholars wrote, recalling that its leader, Marina Tsvigun, claimed to be the reincarnation of both Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. She predicted that the world would end in 1993 and only 144,000 people would be saved -- all of them Slavs. In October 1993, however, the White Brotherhood stormed the Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kiev, and Tsvigun ended up spending several years in prison. In Russia, unlike Ukraine, her followers refrained from such assaults but they never numbered more than 4,000, even when their posters seemed omnipresent in Moscow. "Now there are perhaps 1,000 of them," the scholars noted.

According to Filatov and Uzzell, "eclecticism and experimentation" characterize Russian religious life these days. "Rather than becoming highly disciplined followers of sects strictly controlled by their leaders, today Russians dabble in readings and discussion groups from a wide variety of movements - often mutually contradictory. The current situation of religious entropy is now becoming a stable system rather than a transitional stage to a new religion. The Russian Orthodox Church itself is now infected with this nontraditional religiosity."
* * * *

[HOME] [ACT] [CONNECT] [JOIN] [ABOUT] [SEARCH]