Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 26

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 26

(June 27, 2008)

Volume 8, Number 26
Friday, June 27, 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
___________________________________________________________

TAJIKISTAN RAZES ITS ONLY SYNAGOGUE BUT PHILANTHROPIST MAY BUILD ANOTHER. The Tajik government’s bulldozing of the country's only synagogue has forced the Jewish community to halt worship and stop its food aid program, Forum 18 news service reported on June 25. "We do not have a place to hold our worship," Chief Rabbi Mikhail Abdurakhmov told Forum 18. "We also have no place to feed the elderly and the poor."

However, on June 26 Jewish.ru reported that Lev Leviev--the main benefactor of the Federation of Jewish Communities--has promised to fund the construction of a new synagogue on land allocated by the city administration. There is no reliable information about the Tajik government financially compensating the community for the destruction of their synagogue that was built more than a hundred years ago. Leviev, an Uzbek-born businessman held talks on June 24 with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon. (In May 2004, Leviev had written to Rahmon asking him to spare the synagogue.)

Faced with the authorities' decision to raze the synagogue as part of a urban renewal project, the community requested that they be allowed to dismantle the building themselves. “The Chief Engineer went to the site and showed his dissatisfaction with the speed of our work and had the remaining wall bulldozed,” Abdurakhmov said. Yusuf Salimov of the Tajik Presidential Administration claimed to Forum 18 that he is not aware of any problem. "They should complain to the higher courts," he said. When Forum 18 told him that Jewish community leaders were already discouraged from doing so, thinking that the authorities were indifferent to their plight, he responded: "Let them write to us about it."

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that there are now about 1,000 Jews living in Tajikistan and that their last remaining synagogue held great historic significance for them. Central Asia's chief rabbi, Abe Davit Gurevich, told RFE/RL that before the collapse of the Soviet Union some 15,000 Jews lived in Tajikistan, most of them Bukhari Jews whose language was Tajik. But Jewish communities decreased across Central Asia after the break-up of the Soviet Union, when most Jews immigrated to Israel or Western countries.

Tajikistan’s next demolition target, also part of a controversial city reconstruction plan, is the Nani-Hayat (Bread of Life) Protestant Church. Church members told Forum 18 they have been given until early July to vacate the building.

FOUR YOUTHS FOUND GUILTY OF BURNING A MAN TO DEATH. Four youths have been found guilty of burning a man to death in January this year by holding him over the Eternal Flame of a World War II memorial, reported on June 23 by “Russia Today,” the government’s 24/7 English-language news channel to present “the Russian point of view.”

According to the report, a group of teenagers were drinking near the monument in the town of Kolchugino, Vladimir Region in January. A local resident, Aleksey Denisov, 25, told them to stop, but was beaten up. When he passed out they held him over the naked flame. Denisov died of injuries and burns. The Eternal Flame honors soldiers who died in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

A 14-year-old member of the group was sentenced to 9 years in jail, and the rest were given sentences of between 16 and 18 years.

NEO-NAZI KILLS HOMELESS MAN. Police in the village of Uva, Russia (Republic of Udmurtiya) detained a 20-year-old neo-Nazi in connection with the murder of a homeless person, according to a June 24 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The killing took place on May 28. The body of the 45 year old victim was found at a stadium; he had been beaten to death.

Neo-Nazis often kill homeless people, even those that are ethnic Russians, in what they call "cleansing operations."

MOSCOW PROSECUTORS END INVESTIGATION OF AN ATTACK ON A MUSLIM WOMAN. The investigation into a reported attack targeting a religiously observant Muslim woman in Moscow has been closed, according to a June 11 report by the web site Islam.ru. Yulduz Khaknazarova, a citizen of Uzbekistan and a student at the Moscow Islamic University whose case became a cause celebre for Russian Muslim activists, was attacked on May 11 at the Partizanskaya metro station while wearing a hijab. She said that three young people came up to her, made racist insults, and then hit her in the face with a metal object, breaking her nose. Her attackers then kicked and punched her multiple times in the stomach and face. She was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Khaknazarova said that police at first tried to persuade her to testify that she had been injured from a fall on the rails. A month later, police announced that no attack had taken place.

Russian Muslim activists continue their efforts to have the case re-opened.

RACIST BOMB SCARE DISRUPTS TATAR CULTURAL FESTIVAL. An unidentified person attached a fake explosive device to a racist scarecrow during a Tatar cultural festival in Ukhta, Russia’s Komi Republic, according to a June 23 report by the Regnum news agency. The fake bomb was discovered on June 21 attached to a scarecrow with the word "churka" (a racist pejorative) painted on it. Police are questioning a suspect.

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES CHARGED WITH INCITEMENT OF RELIGIOUS HATRED. Prosecutors in Asbest in Russia’s Sverdlovsk Region have charged local Jehovah's Witnesses with inciting religious hatred and have asked a court to brand their publications “extremist,” according to a June 24 report by the Interfax news agency. Investigators asserted that the publications present a negative image of the country’s dominant Russian Orthodox Church.

Legal cases against Jehovah's Witnesses have become more frequent in Russia after a Moscow court outlawed them on spurious charges. But by using the anti-incitement and anti-extremism laws, the Asbest Prosecutor’s Office is breaking new ground.

ARSON DESTROYS PROTESTANT CHURCH NEAR ST. PETERSBURG. A Protestant church in Shlisselburg, Leningrad Region was destroyed in an arson attack on May 15, according to a June 19 report by the Slavic Law Center. The non-denominational Autonomous Protestant Community has waged a long-standing battle with local authorities over what the Protestants characterized as an attempt to steal their land for the development of a shopping center.

The 100-plus-person congregation nearly lost their church in a 2003 arson attack which coincided with pressure from local authorities to give up their land. However, after the church won its case in court, the pressure lessened, only to be ratcheted up again this year. Police are investigating the fire.

CEMETERY VANDALS SENTENCED FOR ETHNIC HATTED. Four teenagers were convicted of vandalizing a Jewish cemetery in Krasnoyarsk, according to a June 25 article posted on the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda’s” web site. While most cemetery vandals are charged simply with "hooliganism," the defendants in Krasnoyarsk faced the rarely applied charge of "damaging tombstones motivated by ethnic hatred."

The gang vandalized the cemetery on the night of October 7, 2007 after getting drunk. One teenager was confined to a psychiatric institution; the others got sentences of between two and two and a half years and were fined as well. The vandals damaged 61 gravestones. The sentence was unusually harsh in comparison to previous rulings in similar cases, where the vast majority of defendants got off with warnings or suspended sentences for "hooliganism."

PROSECUTORS WARN SCHOOL PRINCIPALS TO INFORM ON NEO-NAZI STUDENTS. Prosecutors in the Levoberezhny district of Voronezh issued official warnings to school principals for violating anti-extremism legislation by failing to inform police that some of their students are neo-Nazis, according to a June 25 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Twenty school principals were cited after four students from the district committed hate crimes murders in recent months. Voronezh officials may have been inspired by their colleagues in St. Petersburg, another city known for high levels of neo-Nazi violence, who issued similar warnings to principals last month.

FREEDOM HOUSE CALLS RUSSIA REGIONAL LEADER OF ANTIDEMOCRATIC FORCES. Powered by a surge of oil and natural gas wealth, Russia has become the leading antidemocratic force in the post-Soviet area, Freedom House, a New York-based independent democracy watchdog organization, said in its annual report released on June 23. Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the vision of a continent "whole and free" remains unrealized, the report declared.

The years of Vladimir Putin's presidency bred "authoritarian capitalism's new elite": an Iron Triangle formed by the state power, industrialists, and secret services, the report stated. Appearance of the Iron Triangle in its turn fomented "decline of the voting process and stiffer control over political opponents and media outlets." The report pointed out that "Independent voices of consequence have been muzzled and are unable to challenge or moderate the leadership's whims and excesses."

The growing authoritarianism is also shaping foreign policy, producing "a more assertive and often belligerent posture by Russia toward its neighbors," the report said. For instance, Russia keeps trying to undercut reform in neighboring Georgia and is applying pressure on Estonia.

FIFTH MURDER OF FOREIGN STUDENT IN KIEV THIS YEAR. For the fifth time this year, a foreign student was murdered in Kiev, according to a June 23 report posted on Jewish.ru: A Palestinian student was found dead on June 19 near his dormitory. Two drunken businessmen were detained in connection with the killing. The motive for the crime is unclear so far but attacks against minorities have risen sharply in recent years in Kiev and some other Ukrainian cities.

ANTISEMITIC VANDAL SENTENCED IN BERDICHEV, UKRAINE. A vandal who painted swastikas and neo-Nazi slogans on a small mausoleum over the grave of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, a famous Berdichev rabbi who died in 1810, was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, according to a June 26 report posted on Jewish.ru. The 20-year-old defendant was charged under Article 297 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (desecrating graves)--but not a hate crime.

WEB SITES OF CENTRAL ASIA UNITE AGAINST CENSORSHIP. Several web sites in Central Asia have launched what they call an "unlimited campaign" against Internet censorship to protest the increasingly restricted access in Uzbekistan to independent websites, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on June 24. The independent web sites fergana.ru and uznews.net as well as an online news bulletin, "Uzbekistan's Civil Society," have placed a special emblem on their homepages that carries the inscription "This Site Is Blocked in Uzbekistan,"

The websites, which have been blocked in Uzbekistan for years, are calling on other websites filtered and otherwise banned by Uzbek authorities to join the anticensorship campaign "to demonstrate how many news websites are inaccessible in the country."

Fergana.ru reports that since the popular uprising in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijon in May 2005, "all sources of independent information on the Internet have been blocked" by Uzbek authorities. "Web sites for opposition parties and movements, as well as independent media distributing alternative information about events in Uzbekistan, have all been banned," fergana.ru noted.

The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has placed Uzbekistan--along with notoriously media-unfriendly countries such as Myanmar, North Korea, and Turkmenistan--on the list of the world's greatest "Internet Enemies."

RACIST CRIME RISES IN EU. Racist crimes are rising across Europe, the head of the European Union's Agency for Fundamental Rights announced in its annual report on June 25, the Deutsche Presse Agentur reported. A worrying trend of an increase in racist crimes between 2000 and 2006 continued into 2007, Anastasia Crickley, the agency's chairperson, said. Until 2006, the number of reported cases of racist offenses rose in Austria, Britain, Finland, France, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and Slovakia. There was a slight decrease in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Sweden in the 2000 to 2006 period. The report covers 11 of the 27 EU member states that provide relevant data to the Vienna-based agency.

One explanation of the trend could be the increasing awareness of crimes motivated by racism, Crickley said. But at the same time, she called on the European Commission to pay greater attention to member states' implementation of the EU Racial Equality Directive. "It is obvious that the member states are applying the legislation quite unevenly," she said.

Crickley singled out the plight of the Roma as especially critical in Europe, not only in Italy. Positive examples cited in the report are France, which is said to have managed to raise public awareness of racism, and Britain, where a high number of punishments for racist discrimination were passed in 2006 and 2007.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, MEDVEDEV’S PROMISES * * * In an interview on June 25 with Reuters, billed as his first with a Western media since he became Russia’s head of state on May 7, Dmitry Medvedev characterized his program: “The defining values are freedom, democracy, and the protection of private property. And these are the values we will bring to our relations with our international partners. In this sense our foreign policy cannot be characterized as liberal or conservative or anything else. It must be a policy that supports and furthers our national interests. And that is its essence."

SNAPSHOTS OF LIFE IN RUSSIA
Expect the Unexpected

1. POLICE SEIZE VIDEO ARCHIVE ON YELTSIN ON A BUSY MOSCOW STREET. On June 18 in the center of Moscow, policemen and special service officers confiscated the entire video archive of Aleksandr Kuznetsov, the former chronicler for Russia's first President Boris Yeltsin, “Kommersant” reported the following day.

Reporting on the basis of Kuznetsov’s account, “Kommersant” wrote that at about 2 p.m. on Kosmodemyanskaya Embankment traffic police stopped his Opel minivan in which the Kuznetsov and his son Yevgeniy were transporting his personal video archive of some 600 video cassettes on Yeltsin that he had shot between 1998 and 2000. The officers checked the documents and stated that the vehicle had to be searched. The minivan was then surrounded by dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers. Uniformed policemen put up a 50-meter cordon around the vehicle and the plainclothesmen searched it. "Those were operations officers of the Central District Internal Affairs Administration Department for Combating Economic Crime and, I think, staffers of the Federal Protection Service,” Kuznetsov said. “They did not show their ID's, but that was how they introduced themselves." He was then told that the law enforcement organs had been informed that the minivan was carrying counterfeit video products and therefore, the video tapes would be seized and checked.

It took the policemen several hours to compile an inventory of confiscated items. "My son and I provided written explanations right there near the vehicle, stating that it was a personal video archive rather than counterfeit video materials,” Kuznetsov said. ”It would be ridiculous to have counterfeit video products on professional Betacam cassettes. However, I think they did not need our explanations. They knew what was on the video cassettes anyway."

Kuznetsov noted that "passersby probably thought they were arresting either a spy or a criminal don,” he told “Kommersant.” “I was going to use the material in my new documentary on the state of democracy in contemporary Russia." Kuznetsov expressed his suspicion that the authorities want to block his documentary.

“Kommersant” identified Kuznetsov as Yeltsin's personal cameraman and the only person who shot video footage in the White House during the 1991 putsch. In 2005, he published a book of memoirs titled "Camera for the President" which displeased the Yeltsin family.

"I will complain about all the actions by the law enforcement organs as illegal and groundless," Kuznetsov family lawyer Viktor Zaprudskiy told “Kommersant.” The lawyer added that the unique video archive had already been damaged as the police inventory went on for several hours in rainy weather and many tapes got soaking wet and, most likely, damaged.

To date, the law enforcement organs declined to comment on the incident.

2. RUSSIAN ORTHODOX FUNDAMENTALISTS CLASH WITH PRO-KREMLIN YOUTHS. On June 24 at about 1 p.m., followers of Russian Orthodox Bishop Diomid of Chukotka critical of the church's policies, clashed with members of the Orthodox Christian branch of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi at the Christ the Savior Cathedral, “The Moscow Times” reported. Later, a second altercation took place outside a nearby metro station between Nashi members and the followers of the bishop who has accused the church of being too ecumenicist and helping the government.

During the melee, protesters hit Nashi members with icons while screaming "yids," according to members of the Union of Orthodox Citizens whose members were also present. Police eventually moved in, and three of Bishop Diomid's followers were detained.

3. WILL THE OPPOSITION DIALOGUE AND COOPERATE WITH THE KREMLIN? The consensus is that Russia’s fragmented opposition is unable to unite and cannot find a way to deal with the government. But on June 23, Sergey Mitrokhin, the new leader of the social-democratic opposition party Yabloko, declared on the popular radio Ekho Moskvy that he is ready for a dialogue with the authorities. He also called for a unification of "democratic forces" in Russia, though he ruled out cooperation with some radical opponents of the Kremlin as well as the Communists.

Mitrokhin said: "We need a dialogue with the authorities, but this dialogue should not lead to us abandoning our cardinal principles and it should not lead us to refrain from criticism of the authorities, including public criticism. This formula will allow the party to have an influence on the authorities in order to achieve specific results for citizens."

Mitrokhin welcomed cooperation with other "democratic" parties--but on Yabloko's terms. "One must pose the question of the unification of the democratic forces. I support this idea. I just think that this unification should take place on a platform that is closer to the manifesto aims of the Yabloko party than the SPS [Union of Right Forces]. That is, this platform should include criticism of the extremely unsuccessful reforms of the 1990s, which led to democracy being discredited. In the wake of these reforms, the main part of the population now hates democrats.”

He spoke of a reassessment and a guarantee “that under democratic banners there will be no repetition of these reforms that were largely criminal, and that, on the contrary, we will be fighting against oligarchy and not bring oligarchs into power."

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