Volume 2, Number 23
Friday, June 14, 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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WORST RIOT IN MOSCOW FOLLOWS RUSSIAN SOCCER TEAM'S DEFEAT. Drunken soccer fans rioted in downtown Moscow Sunday evening, June 9, leaving a teenager and a policeman dead from knife wounds. According to the police, 73 people were injured (including 18 policemen), and 113 suspects detained. The "Moscow Times" called the event the worst street violence in the capital since the bombing of the parliament building in 1993. "The boisterous crowd, made up predominantly of young men, set fire to cars, broke windows, and beat up anyone from fellow fans to police officers as the Russian national team lost to Japan" in the World Cup tournament in South Korea, the web site reported.

Up to 8,000 fans gathered at Manezh Square, a stone's throw from the Kremlin, to watch the afternoon game on several huge screens set up by the city government. Only 120 police officers had been dispatched to maintain order. The riot began during the second half, after the Japanese scored the one and only goal in the match. "The crowd was full of drunken fans, who sent beer and vodka bottles sailing into the air as it became clearer that Russia would not make a comeback," according to the "Moscow Times." As the bottles rained down on the crowd, there were injuries, followed by a fistfight that spread through the crowd, the report continued. It took the police at least 15 minutes before they interfered.

By early evening, several hundred rioters moved up Tverskaya Ulitsa, breaking store windows and glass advertising stands. They shattered most windows on the first two floors of the Moskva Hotel, and several windows at the State Duma and the Yeliseevsky food store. They vandalized half a dozen restaurants on Kamergersky Pereulok, and torched at least seven cars near the Duma and overturned or smashed dozens of cars throughout the area. Firefighters arrived, but the rioters attacked the trucks, the Associated Press reported. Interfax added that an ambulance was set on fire, and its driver and a doctor were beaten. When police did arrive, some fans tried to help detain rioters. By 10:30 p.m., some 60 people were arrested and about 50 hospitalized, according to Interfax.

RACISTS AMONG THE RIOTERS. Witnesses and news reports said that some rioters were screaming racist and neo-Nazi slogans. The crowd included supporters of Alexey Podberyozkin's nationalist Spiritual Heritage movement and others waving the ultra-right's yellow, white, and black flag. "Izvestiya's" web site described a racist attack after the riot: Twenty young men with Russian flags savagely beat a person from the Caucasus on a train near the Kitay Gorod station. The man crawled out of the train and then started to run, at which point the attackers yelled out: "Let's catch him and kill him!" and ran after him. There is no report about what happened to him afterwards.

Even before the match, one Japanese student was beaten. After the match, a U.S. citizen of Indian descent was assaulted at the Tverskaya metro station, a Chinese citizen was beaten, and five Japanese music students were attacked. Rioters hurled beer bottles at a dormitory for Vietnamese workers. (Prosecutors have opened criminal investigations into the beatings of the foreigners.)

Late into the night, "nationalist-minded teenagers" attacked a Korean church in Moscow, sources in the city police department told Interfax. According to police sources, "about 25 skinheads" threw bottles at the church building and at the Christian Pentecostal cultural center in the Kapotnya neighborhood. They shattered church windows and tried to break through its metal door, but failed. About 40 people were attending a service inside the church when it was attacked. Police detained six skinheads.

Many Muscovites, including politicians such as Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, blamed the disaster on the city government and police. However, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov blamed skinheads, and city officials denied that they were at fault. "The fans' actions were barbaric," Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev told the press. "We put up these screens for them, like in civilized places, but it turned out they were not ready for this." Police chief Vladimir Pronin said his men's response was "positive," adding that the rioters were not fans but "a drunken throng."

Yabloko lawmaker Sergei Mitrokhin said in an interview with state-run RTR television that the investigation should focus on the "inaction" by police. "A common motto of the police is to be prepared for and to prevent terrorist attacks. Now, all of a sudden, [we have] such behavior when not terrorists but ordinary hoodlums, drunk with their own impunity, have gone this far," Mitrokhin said. "At a certain stage, the main cause behind these actions was precisely the impunity of these thugs."

Mitrokhin, who witnessed the riot, said that the hooligans dispersed immediately when the special riot police arrived. "If they had come half an hour earlier, there would have been no riot at all," he said, adding that when he called on the police patrols- who, he said, “were hiding from the fans on the side streets"- to intervene, they said it was not their job or that they had no order from their superiors.

Stephen Dalziel, BBC's Russia specialist, offered two reasons behind the riot: one, "the deep division between rich and poor," and he pointed out the "particular delight" people took in smashing windows of elite commercial establishments, and, two, the rise in "nationalist, xenophobic sentiment." He called the authorities "irresponsible" for installing the large screens that attracted thousands but without putting in place "proper safety measures."

In a call-in survey of 2,242 people on TVS television, 745 callers said law enforcement officials were responsible for the riot, while 1,113 singled out the "politicians" who organized the public broadcasts. Strangely enough, only 384 callers blamed the fans. Russia's Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov ordered an internal investigation into why police did not control the violence.

THE RIOT WAS PLANNED, MANY CHARGE. The question is whether the riot was organized, and if yes, was it the work of an extremist organization? Writing for the pro-Communist web site "pravda.ru," Vasily Bubnov offered his "impression" that the "events were planned by someone in advance" and singled out a footage, aired on television, showing "men fighting in several parts of the Manezhnaya Square at once" which in turn encouraged "the crowd of young guys between 14-17 years of age to go mad very quickly," as "they were drunk on beer and vodka."

State-run RTR television, which often shows a pro-government stance in its news programs, seemed eager to gain political capital from the riot. Anchorman Yevgeny Revenko pointed out that the violence broke out a few steps from the Duma, where just last week deputies gave initial approval to a controversial bill on extremism, which human rights activists have condemned as a potential Kremlin tool to suppress public protest. "Today's events prove how necessary this bill really is," Revenko said. He added that "it was clear" why the Communists and Agrarians voted against the bill, but wondered rhetorically why it had been opposed by the liberal Yabloko party, "whose constituency is usually so sensitive to any manifestations of extremism."

On June 10, Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told the press that he believes that the riot was an action aimed at pushing the bill on political extremism through the State Duma. "This was a well-planned provocation in a series of events beginning with skinheads who were expected to commit disturbances during the demonstrations on May 1 and 9," Zyuganov said, referring to International Labor Day and the commemoration of victory in World War II. Riots were prevented at that time with help of special services, he noted, but on June 9 "all this expressed itself in acts of vandalism in places which were to be protected by the presidential guard."

Mitrokhin, a lawmaker from the Yabloko faction, said he believes the riot will be used to curb civil liberties. "The restoration of order will be done the traditional Russian way - by suppressing citizens' rights -- and not by revising the work of the law enforcers," he said Monday. "Everywhere in the world, the police monitor extremist groups through informers, while our policemen feebly ask people to share their video footage of the riot to help them identify the hooligans."

Although many, including Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, said they believed the violence was planned, the Ministry of Interior and a spokeswoman for the city prosecutor's office said they had no information that the riot was organized or that extremist groups were involved. "We will check the identities of the detained individuals and their membership in extremist organizations," prosecutor's office spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said on June 10. "As of now, we can't say that the riot was organized."

TIMING OF THE RIOT RAISES SUSPICIONS. Many observers were struck by the coincidence between the riot and the State Duma's consideration of the government-sponsored bill on extremism. As commentator Boris Kagarlitsky wrote in the "Moscow Times" on June 11, ''it all happened at just the right time," as Communist deputies found a common cause with the Union of Right Forces in their misgivings that the bill is "a panacea" which would "make it possible to prohibit any political activity that the authorities do not see fit to sanction." He recalled that when the bill surfaced, "rumors did the rounds that serious disturbances were now unavoidable." Indeed, Kagarlitsky continued, "on May 28 on Pushkin Square, OMON beat up about 150 anti-globalists who weren't even putting up any resistance, just lying on the ground trying to cover their heads. This, however, clearly did not qualify as a major disturbance - something larger was needed and indeed happened."

Kagarlitsky argued: "It requires either extraordinary carelessness or malicious intent to first gather a drunken crowd in the center of Moscow and then send the police home to watch the soccer [game]. In fact, most likely it was a mixture of the two, as is usually the case in this country." He dismissed Russia's defeat as the cause of the riot, first because it was "pretty obvious" before the match that Russia would lose," and, second, "the outcome would have been little different even if Russia, by some miracle, had won: The drunken crowd buoyed by victory would have undertaken to smash everything in their path."

Sociologist Kagarlitsky offers a theory: "Anger in society builds up. In England, soccer hooligans did not just appear out of thin air." He noted that politicians and the mass media had called sports a source of national pride. "However, the desire to unite the nation using soccer slogans clashed with the desire to use 'soccer-related disturbances' as a pretext for the passage of legislation limiting political freedoms," he suggested, and attributed "the police's confused and feeble response" to "the ideological ambiguity of the situation… The soccer fans on Manezh Square looked like patriots. Thus, they were together, so to speak, with the authorities (unlike the anti-globalization demonstrators). And why concentrate serious police strength against one's own, after all?"

When asked on June 10 by "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" if recent incidents, such as the booby-trapped antisemitic sign on the highway and the soccer riot in the heart of Moscow, were staged to coincide with the bill on extremism being debated by the Duma, Presidential Representative to the State Duma Aleksandr Kotenkov replied: "It is difficult to imagine greater cynicism. It is tantamount to saying that in order to increase punishment for murder authorities staged mass murders. Those who invent such things can hardly be called humans."

AZERI STREET VENDOR IN MOSCOW BEATEN TO DEATH. On June 7, an Azeri street vendor in Moscow was beaten to death in a conflict with men whom witnesses described as off-duty police officers, according to the “Moscow Times.” Fuad Mamedov, 61, had an argument with drunken men who urinated on his kiosk, which led to a fight, the daily "Izvestiya" reported, citing an official in the Azerbaijan embassy. Police officers called by a witness checked the documents of the men but let them to go. The men then dragged Mamedov into the yard of a nearby office of the Moscow police guard service and killed him by hitting him on the head with a hammer, the report said.

Interfax reported that about 50 of Mamedov's compatriots staged a rally near his body, calling for a stop to racially motivated attacks, and police had to use force to take Mamedov's body from the crowd. "Incidents with this kind of outcome have occurred before, but the fact that it came from the police evokes even greater concern," Zeinal Nagdaliyev, the head of the All-Russia Azerbaijani Congress, told TVS television. Moscow police said two of Mamedov's attackers were detained and their affiliations with the police were being checked, "Izvestiya" reported. Andrei Atarshchikov, the prosecutor of the Tagansky district where Mamedov was killed, told Interfax on June 8 that a criminal investigation was opened. However, he promptly dismissed a racial motive behind the murder.

TOMSK ASKS COURT TO DISBAND LOCAL EXTREMIST GROUP. After receiving a country-wide directive from the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow calling for a crackdown on extremist groups, the Tomsk Oblast Department of Justice requested a court to disband the local branch of the violent neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU), according to a June 10 report by the "regions.ru" news agency. The RNU is currently legally registered in Tomsk and some other regions. According to the report, over the past few years the Tomsk RNU received numerous warnings for a variety of technical violations as well as for its distribution of extremist literature. On three occasions, a court ordered the Tomsk RNU to cease its activity for a period of six months due to violations.

ONE ANTISEMITIC PUBLISHER WARNED, ANOTHER OFF THE HOOK. According to UCSJ's Volgograd monitor Yael Ioffe, the Volgograd Jewish Religious Community under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Zalman Ioffe has once again persuaded the regional administration to take action against antisemitic publishing for violating Article 282 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits the incitement of ethnic and religious hatred. A May 20 letter from the regional prosecutor's office informed Rabbi Ioffe that based on his complaint about the antisemitic content of the newspaper "Kazachi Krug" ("Cossack Circle"), its chief editor V. V. Zdorovtsev, had been issued an official warning.

On the other hand, a May 4 letter from the same office informed Rabbi Ioffe that the prosecutor's office would not start a case against Stanislav Terentev based on Article 282. Terentev, publisher of one of Russia's most vociferously antisemitic newspapers, "Kolokol," had hosted a show called "Russian Hour" on local television until the Jewish community persuaded the regional administration, which controls the channel, to have the show cancelled.

SECOND BOOBY-TRAPPED ANTISEMITIC SIGN REMOVED. On June 12, another antisemitic sign was found on a highway near Moscow, Itar-Tass reported. Motorists told traffic police that they saw a suspicious sign on the shoulder of the road. Federal Security Service specialists were called in to find out if the sign was booby-trapped, as was the one that blew up last month, injuring a woman who tried to remove the sign. The specialists discovered a plastic bag not far from the sign, and inside the bag were wires and a timing device. They destroyed it with the help of a robot.

GEORGIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH CONDEMNS JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES. On June 11, the Patriarchate of the Georgian Orthodox Church characterized the congress of Jehovah's Witnesses scheduled to take place at the Tbilisi sports center this week as an act of provocation. According to Tbilisi's "Prime-News," a statement by the Patriarchate charged that "aggressive proselytism by Jehovah's Witnesses has given rise to extreme antagonism in society" and their congress in Tbilisi "may lead to a more serious conflict and, as a result, the religious problem, which has been artificially created in Georgia, may receive inappropriate coverage." The Patriarchate believes that the authorities should ban aggressive proselytism, defined as "gaining converts through deceit, force, and financial incentives as well as by causing offence to the religious beliefs of others."

U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION PRAISES SLOVAK ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW. In a meeting with a delegation of Slovak leaders visiting Washington, United States Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) praised their country's democratic reform over the past four years. In a statement released on June 11, Smith commended the Slovak government for preparing draft anti-discrimination legislation that, if adopted and implemented, would provide remedies for Roma, also known as Gypsies, who experience racial discrimination. Smith suggested that the legislation is "an extremely important step forward that illustrates Slovakia's potential leadership on anti-discrimination issues" and "it will be a concrete sign of the government's commitment to ensure equality of opportunity for Roma."

GERMAN PARTY AND JEWISH LEADERS FAIL TO RESOLVE CONFLICT. On June 11, German Jewish leaders met with Free Democratic Party (FDP) Chairman Guido Westerwelle and repeated calls that he dismiss his deputy, Juergen Moellemann, for statements they condemned as antisemitic, according to news agency accounts. (For details of the controversy, see Bigotry Monitor of May 24, Vol. 2. No. 20.) But the talks failed to bring about an agreement, as did an earlier apology by Moellemann. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told reporters that because of the Moellemann affair, he still does not consider the FDP a potential coalition partner in the event that his party, the Social Democrats, wins the elections in September. "The FDP needs a period in opposition to find itself," Schroeder added. While the German press printed numerous charges that Moellemann was trying to attract right-wingers to vote for the liberal FDP, opinion polls indicate that the FDP has slumped since the scandal began, and its support is now at 9-10 percent, down from 12-13 percent only a few weeks ago.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * In his book just published by Random House, "The Russia Hand," Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration, quotes President Bill Clinton as having said, "The thing about [then President Boris] Yeltsin I really like is that he's not a Russian bureaucrat. He's an Irish poet. He sees politics as a novel he's writing or a symphony he's composing. That's one of the things that draws me to him."

FOUR TAKES ON MIGRATION POLICY

In both Western and Eastern Europe, mass immigration from poor countries is turning into a central political problem, raising thorny issues of human rights, xenophobia, and racism. New governmental regulations are being developed at a fast pace. As for refugees, their rights, though theoretically protected by international conventions, may be ignored, and the governments in control will manipulate them with greater ease than before.

1. EU Is to Get Tough with Third World to Reabsorb Its Migrants.
On June 10, Spanish Prime Minister and current European Union Council President Jose Maria Aznar said that a new European Union plan envisages "intensive cooperation" both "technically and financially" with Third World countries to re-absorb illegal immigrants streaming to Western Europe, according to the German news agency DPA. EU is working on new "action plans" to stop illegal immigration, and migration policy is now recognized as "a central problem," said Aznar after talks with Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel in Vienna, during a tour of EU capitals preparing for the EU summit in Seville on June 21-22. The goal is to set up unified standards for the re-acceptance of the immigrants by their home countries, Aznar said. If those governments do not cooperate with the EU in the new framework, Aznar warned, EU would reserve the right to "reduce contacts and cooperation" with them. Schuessel, a fellow-conservative, expressed Austria's agreement. "The EU is committed to orderly immigration," he said, and stressed the need for a determined struggle against gangs smuggling migrants.

On June 12, the Austrian section of Amnesty International (AI) urged the EU summit to stop its "war against illegal immigration" and charged that such a war is also aimed at keeping out bona fide refugees, DPA reported. AI General Secretary in Austria Heinz Patzelt said even though EU is giving assurances that "genuine" refugees will receive protection, in fact "numerous obstacles" are being placed in their way and their rights "will be sacrificed." Patzelt's criticism coincided with a report from AI headquarters in London condemning "fears and myths" surrounding asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants. The report said these fears were being stirred up by "populists in all countries" who represent the mentality of "Fortress Europe."

2. Zhirinovsky Tells Third World Migrants to Go Home.
On June 12, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and deputy chairman of the State Duma, called on foreigners coming from developing countries in the south to leave Russia, according to Interfax. "We must not keep uninvited guests," he told a rally attended by some 200 in Moscow. "The Russian people have a right to be the master of their own country. If you, Asians and Africans, die of hunger, Russia will take you in, but we have a right to ask you to behave properly in the city of Moscow. You have seen how people live in a civilized country. Now go home, build schools and hospitals and have one or two children, but no more."

3. Russian Officials Say They Must Prevent Krasnodar from Becoming Another Kosovo.
On June 12, "The Washington Post" published a dispatch from Susan Glasser titled "Immigrants Feeling Russians' Wrath," focused on paramilitary groups helping the crackdown by Krasnodar Governor Aleksandr Tkachyov, who won election in December 2000 on an openly anti-migrant platform. Glasser contrasted other Russian nationalists "inveighing against migrants" with Tkachyov who "has brought the full arsenal of the state's powers to bear against them." Tkachyov believes that Krasnodar has been "overwhelmed" by an influx of as many as one million newcomers in a region of 5 million residents. (The numbers are disputed, but all agree that hundreds of thousands have arrived here since the Soviet Union's breakup. Armenians are the largest single group.)

In March, Tkachyov authorized police and paramilitary groups of Cossacks to conduct Operation Foreigner, aimed at identifying and fining thousands of allegedly illegal migrants. In April, Krasnodar's new anti-immigration law took effect, featuring huge fines, immediate deportation of illegal migrants, and the creation of deportation centers. Tkachyov even proposed to charter planes to fly migrants back to Central Asia and the Caucasus. He was reported to have suggested that authorities should crack down on all those living in Krasnodar with non-Russian last names, but he now denies having made such a statement.

"There is a blatant violation of human rights here," Glasser quoted Vladimir Kozlov, local representative for the Russian human rights group Memorial. "While the previous governor only talked, now they've started trying to translate these words into action. They're trying to legalize their attacks on migrants with this new law, and meantime the federal center is silent."

Glasser found that the federal government has done little to stop Tkachyov from pursuing a policy that activists denounce as "ethnic cleansing." Moscow officials say that Tkachyov's new law is illegal, because it usurps the power of the central government to regulate immigration. "But they have not stepped in to stop any of the alleged human rights abuses in the territory," Glasser noted, and President Putin has been silent on the subject.

"Federal laws are supreme over laws in provinces, and we will act accordingly," Glasser quoted Vladimir Zorin, Putin's minister for nationalities. But in an interview, Zorin also professed sympathy for Tkachyov. "Don't assume he's a chauvinist," Zorin admonished. He recalled the ethnic violence of the 1990s in Kosovo and warned that something similar could happen if Russia does not move quickly to regulate immigration. "This migration over the last ten years has disturbed the ethnic balance of the country," he was quoted as saying. "Let's remember the disturbance of ethnic balance in Kosovo, and what was the outcome there."

4. Putin May Force Chechen Refugees in Ingushetia to Return Home.
Also on June 12, the "Christian Science Monitor" published an article by its Moscow correspondent Fred Weir who sounded an alarm: "In what appears to be part of a Kremlin effort to convince the Russian public - and the world - that the war in Chechnya is over, President Putin has decreed that some 150,000 Chechen refugees must go home." Weir quoted experts saying that "most refugees" are unwilling to leave their tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia, where they spent the past three winters, because their homes in Chechnya are in ruins, the Chechen government's infrastructure is devastated, and they fear for their lives. Weir wrote that "despite government assurances that only peaceful persuasion will be applied, there is a growing fear that the mass resettlement - which Putin ordered carried out by the end of September - could become a humanitarian disaster."

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