Volume 2, Number 25
Friday, June 28, 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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FOUR TAKES ON THE EXTREMIST THREAT IN RUSSIA.

1. PUTIN RULES OUT THE DANGER OF RADICALIZATION.
“I don't see any danger of radicalization of Russia,” President Vladimir Putin declared at a press conference in the Kremlin on June 24, only four days after the State Duma completed the second reading of a bill that carried his strong endorsement and aimed at cracking down on extremism. On June 27, by a vote of 275 to 145 the Duma adopted the final version of the bill, and it is expected to be passed by the upper house and signed by Putin. The bill defines extremism as any activity aimed at overthrowing the government, instigating social, national, or religious hatred, or distributing fascist literature. But on June 24, during his second full-fledged press conference in his two and a half years as president, Putin sounded evasive and at times confusing – if not confused, as he played down the seriousness of the extremist threat in three separate sentences.

First, a reporter from state-controlled ORT television posed a loaded question about the possibility of Russian voters not affiliated with any party “falling prey” to extremists offering “easy and simple solutions to complicated problems” – as it happened in France. Putin responded by reminding the reporter that “Russia is not France.” Then Putin acknowledged that he had discussed the matter with his foreign colleagues and “repeatedly drawn their attention to symptoms of a worrying nature” in France, the Netherlands, and Germany—but apparently not in Russia. Next, he referred to “individual people in individual countries” getting “forgotten” – and it is hard to tell from the transcript whether he meant that such developments occur because of attention to “universal human values” or because of lack of attention to them. In any event, the result he defined is “a particular distortion in domestic policy priorities.” Finally, Putin answered the reporter’s question and declared that in Russia, he does not see an extremist threat. He added that “this kind of a threat arises, or may arise, whenever or wherever the leaders of a country fail to attend to the basic needs of their people, fail to resolve these issues or disregard these problems.”

Putin continued with a statement on what he considers more important priorities, ahead of the crackdown on extremism: “I believe our most important task to be bringing the country out of poverty. It is most important that people should feel secure, that Russia's authority on the international scene becomes stronger.” He praised his administration’s achievements: “We have acted consistently, perhaps not as rapidly as we would have liked, to move in that direction. It is our task to explain to the population of the country what we are doing and to outline the goals we are setting for ourselves. I believe that if we go on doing this, the public will reap the corresponding benefit. There will be support for the country's main political forces on the right, in the center and on the left, but, in any event, we will not get any kind of extremism in Russia.”

In words that seemed to contradict the letter and the spirit of the anti-extremism bill that promises to ban extremist parties and movements, Putin said: “It is a mistake to drive any opponent into an illegal situation.” He pointed out that “in Russia the representatives of all the political tendencies have the opportunity to express their opinion legally, through parliament, to defend their point of view and to compete for voters.” He promised to strengthen the multi-party system, especially in regional parliaments. He suggested that if that will be done in “a diplomatic way, not in haste, without sudden jumps, and taking into account the opportunities and readiness of a region for the introduction of this multiparty system,” then, he concluded: “I don't see any danger of radicalization of Russia.”

Analyzing Putin's previous comments on extremism, Nickolai Butkevich, UCSJ’s research director, found the June 24 statements “back-pedaling.” In April, for instance, Putin said: "The growth of extremism is a serious threat to stability and public security in the country. We are referring first of all to those who under fascist and nationalist slogans and symbols organize pogroms and beat and kill people, while police and prosecutors lack effective instruments to punish the organizers and instigators." Normally, prepared official statements carry more weight than an answer on the fly to a reporter at a press conference, Butkevich noted. But, at the same time, he wondered if the exchange on June 24 might have been prearranged, and if it constituted “a change in direction or a slip of the tongue.”

Reporting for “The New York Times” from Moscow, Steven Lee Myers praised Putin’s June 24 performance, facing “some 700 journalists in the hall in the Kremlin where the Supreme Soviet once deliberated, and for more than two hours [Putin] fielded questions with the bookish command of detail that Bill Clinton once displayed and that George W. Bush rarely does.” Myers wrote that Putin “has unquestionably become a master of his own image and the most dominant political voice in Russia.”

Whether getting deeper or letting his ambivalence come to the surface, the once taciturn Putin is increasingly communicating his thoughts to the public. Perhaps what he tried to do was to reassure his nation and the outside world that Russia is in no danger of being taken over by extremists. Or perhaps the thrust of his message was the one toward the end of his press conference. In a paragraph that linked Russia’s flag and anthem, the presidency “as a state symbol though not in a personified manner” as well as his own “portrait” in the minds of his people, he concluded: “But there must always be a sense of measure." For a man once exclusively concerned with maintaining order, searching for a sense of measure in all things is progress.

2. RUSSIA’S PROSECUTOR-GENERAL MINIMIZES EXTREMIST VIOLENCE.
On June 20 Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov told the chiefs of foreign diplomatic missions in Russia that although the passage of the anti-extremism bill is "a good thing," there are nonetheless more important issues, the Kremlin-controlled web site “strana.ru” reported. "Members of extremist groups will read this law, and it might prevent them from committing extremist acts," Ustinov was quoted as saying. He also told the diplomats that the incidents of extremist violence in recent weeks in Russia were not directed "intentionally" against foreigners, according to the RosBalt News Agency reporting on the same meeting. Of about 3 million crimes committed in Russia last year, only 1,500 were directed against foreign citizens, Ustinov said. RosBalt also quoted Viktor Papsuev, head of the Interior Ministry department in charge of tracking down fugitives, as saying that there have been "hardly any" cases in Moscow of racial or religious crimes committed against African citizens – an absurd claim since attacks against Africans and Asians are frequently reported in the media.

On June 27, the same day the Duma adopted the anti-extremism law, unidentified assailants beat two foreigners, an Afghan man and a Chinese man, in separate attacks in Moscow's subway, according to the police.

3. GORBACHEV FOUNDATION ANALYST SHRUGS OFF FASCISM AS PUNY AND CHAOTIC.
A similar presentation from another ivory tower dismissed fascism as an organized political movement in Russia. On June 26 in the daily newspaper “Vremya MN, ” Valery Solovyov of the Gorbachev Foundation, stated: “Fascism as even a minimally influential, organized political movement does not actually exist in Russia.” A political analyst specializing in radicalism, Solovyov noted the existence of “a few dozen groups” that “declare themselves parties and unions,” and each numbers “a few dozen people at least, a few hundred at most.” They are “poorly organized,” meet “sporadically,” and publish newspapers read by a small number of readers. “It is easy to eliminate them, but is it necessary?” Solovyov asked. “When people say something -- even if they express the most radical views -- they let steam off.”

He found only two groups worth naming. First, the Russian National Unity (RNU) which missed “its historical opportunity” in the mid-1990s; it has since “collapsed” and is now split into three factions, with a hundred and fifty members each. (Other experts have suggested that RNU has several thousand members.) Second, Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party is “a more or less successful radical party,” the only extremist force that can be called “an organized force; that’s why its leader was jailed.” As for skinhead gangs, they form “disorganized groups” whose members “do not like discipline” and “therefore none of the political parties can include them.” Politicians have used skinheads and the RNU, but only “on a small scale.” Solovyov ruled out their use as they are not “task forces and cannot be used to resolve any more serious political tasks, only as an argument in the political struggle.”

4. ACADEMICIAN URGES PUBLIC AND STATE ACTION AGAINST RACISM.
A fourth and far less politically motivated take on extremism came from Valeriy Tishkov, director of Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, in an interview “Izvestiya” published on June 18. Asked what he thought of “the public's unhealthy attitude towards Moscow's changing ethnic composition” over the past ten years, Tishkov praised Moscow as having become “one of the world's thriving cities.” He blamed the politicians for failing to recognize that and called them responsible for the country being “dominated by a rhetoric of complaints inciting hatred. That hatred needs a focus, and one is found in ‘migrants,’ ‘Jews,’ ‘anti-patriots,’ and other ‘outsiders.’" He called for “public monitoring” and criticized teachers for “failing to react to offensive, ethnically motivated nicknames” in schools and not reacting “when a young man has shaved his head and begun to wear black clothes, and portraits of various fuehrers have appeared by his bed.”

Tishkov concluded: “The state bears chief responsibility for countering racism, but it is time for society too to stop its helpless howling. The strategy here is the state's legal prosecution of extremism. It is imperfect, but we do have a law. I suggest that we need to mete out punishment not for insults to the vaguely understood ‘national honor,’ but for intentionally or unintentionally inciting any form of inter-group hostility and for carrying out violent actions. It is because action taken on this matter is slack and dubious, that outbreaks of hatred and violence that take place are ending not in court sentences but in scandals and visits by foreign ambassadors to the Foreign Ministry that are shameful for the country.”

PUTIN HONORS WOMAN INJURED IN ANTISEMITIC ATTACK. President Putin awarded the Order of Courage to Tatyana Sapunova, the 28-year-old woman who was badly injured while trying to remove a booby-trapped antisemitic sign from the side of the highway near Moscow on May 27, the radio “Ekho Moskvy” reported on June 21. The presidential decree says that she was honored for “courage and selflessness” in fulfilling her civic duty.

NUMBERS, OPINIONS DIFFER OVER CHINESE MIGRANTS. While Russia’s Interior Ministry estimates that 2 million Chinese live in Russia, unnamed sources believe that there are now 5 million ethnic Chinese in Russia, compared with only 250,000 five years ago, according to the newspaper "Versiya" of June 10 cited by the Carnegie Moscow Center. On June 13 Federal Migration Service head Andrei Chernenko told reporters in Moscow that "migration to Russia from China does not constitute a big threat," Interfax reported. Chernenko said that over the past five years Chinese migration to Russia has not increased.

MESKHETIAN TURKS ON HUNGER STRIKE IN KRASNODAR. Fifty of the 68 families of Meskhetian Turks who live in the village of Kiyevskaya have gone on a hunger strike in Russia’s Krasnodar Territory, TVS reported on June 23. Most of them moved there from Uzbekistan before 1992 and were given temporary residence permits but denied Russian citizenship. Video shots showed posters held up by the hunger-strikers, reading "Give our children [internal] passports!" According to the television’s local correspondent, a commission of the Federation Council that studied the migrant problem in the territory earlier this month decided not to interfere in the anti-migrant policy pursued by Governor Aleksandr Tkachyov. This year, the authorities refused to lease land to Meskhetian Turks, which, the reporter pointed out, meant depriving the migrants of their last employment opportunity. In Kiyevskaya, some Meskhetian Turks have even been refused medical aid on the grounds that they have no proper registration papers.

RIGHTS CENTER TO DEFEND MUSLIMS FALSELY ACCUSED IN RUSSIA. A Muslim rights center is being organized and will begin operating in Russia in the near future, according to the web site “Islam.Ru,” linked to the Clerical Board of Dagestani Muslims. The Islamic Rights Center sees its main task as defending and upholding the rights of Muslims who are “groundlessly accused of extremism, terrorism, etc. by individuals and organizations lacking competence in Islamic issues.” The center plans to recruit experienced lawyers. "Russia has a large number of Christian, Jewish, and other types of rights centers,” the organizing committee said. “Yet hitherto, despite the existence of a multitude of Muslim organizations in the country, there has been no comparable Muslim structure."

MOLDOVA BORROWS RELIGION LAW FROM SOVIET CRIMINAL CODE. Religious leaders and human rights activists have criticized an article in the new Moldovan criminal code lifted almost word for word from an article introduced into the Soviet criminal codes at the time of the anti-religious persecution unleashed by Nikita Khrushchev in the early 1960s. The Pentecostals and the Jehovah's Witnesses, who were unaware of the new article until Keston News Service sought their comments, are particularly concerned. "I grew up with this. I know what it means," Bishop Pyotr Borshch, head of the Pentecostal Union, told Keston from the Moldovan capital Chisinau. "I don't trust them." His colleague, Bishop Viktor Pavlovsky, agreed. "This smells of the Khrushchev era." Their concerns were shared by Serghei Ostaf, chairman of the Moldovan Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, who said: "This is a backward step."

The new code adopted by Moldova’s parliament on April 18 comes into force on January 1, 2003. Article 186 of the new code punishes "an offence against the person or the rights of citizens under the guise of the fulfillment of religious rituals." The new article declares in full: "The organization, conducting or active participation in a group whose activity, carried out under the guise of the preaching of religious beliefs or the fulfillment of religious rituals, if it is accompanied by the causing of harm to the health of citizens or the instigation of citizens to refuse to participate in public life or the fulfillment of citizens' obligations, is to be punished by a fine of 300-700 units or imprisonment of up to 5 years."

According to Keston’s analysis, the only substantial difference from part 1 of Article 143 of the criminal code of the defunct Moldovan SSR is that the reference to "enticing minors into such a group" has been deleted and that the punishment of internal exile no longer exists. In the Soviet era this article was widely used against believers, including Pentecostals ("singing in tongues" or prophesying was deemed to harm health) and Hare Krishna devotees (chanting was also deemed to harm health). Jehovah's Witnesses suffered under this article because of their rejection of blood transfusions and their refusal to vote or perform military service. Many former Soviet republics abolished this article in the early 1990s as a relic of the totalitarian past.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told journalists in Moscow that peace talks proposed by Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov are out of the question unless they are conducted by a public prosecutor, the Voice of America reported from Moscow. Ivanov said: “Talks can take place when Aslan Maskhadov comes out with his hands up and faces the law.”

EU SUMMIT AGREES ON COMPROMISE CURBS FOR ILLEGAL MIGRANTS
The Majority Demands Stern Sanctions

Illegal migration from the Third World has become a burning controversy in the European Union (EU), as leaders are buffeted between considerations of gains by the powerful far right exploiting the issue and the requirements of the human rights agenda approved by the international community. At last week’s EU summit in Seville, determined opposition from France and Sweden supported by Luxembourg blocked stern new measures, proposed by Spain and endorsed by the majority of the 15-nation European Union, to curb illegal immigration. EU sources estimate that in 2001 the illegals numbered 500,000, in addition to 680,000 legals who join families or secure temporary jobs in high-tech sectors.

EU leaders welcomed “progress” in Seville, but the compromise they cobbled together is clearly temporary. (Since EU rules require unanimity, compromises are inevitable.) No sanctions -- such as trade barriers and the suspension of development aid -- will be imposed on African and Asian governments for failing to stop their citizens from escaping to lands that offer jobs. But EU members will improve their border defenses in Eastern Europe and the Balkans and along the Mediterranean shore, especially in Spain, Italy, and Greece. Their efforts will include beefed-up border patrols, joint training, and shared intelligence, as well as tightened visa regulations, common rules for handling asylum requests, faster deportation procedures, and stiff sentences for people smugglers who often exploit immigrants as cheap labor or as sex workers.

The debate over illegal immigration topped the summit’s agenda. Leaders from the mainstream right to the mainstream left alike pledged that they would not allow further gains by xenophobic, anti-immigrant far-right demagogues, such as France's Jean-Marie Le Pen and Austria's Joerg Haider who have been harping on the issue. “People know there is a serious problem in Europe,'' British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. “Moderate people of the center-left or center-right have to tackle this issue or the extremists will exploit it.'' Blair was angered by French President Jacques Chirac’s opposition to what he called “brandishing the sword of sanctions” which would not solve the problem but would make the EU look “uncaring by punishing the poorest.”

However, the newly re-elected conservative Chirac, who promised new countermeasures during his election campaign, also declared: “Europe must no longer be the victim of uncontrolled flows of migrants.'' His Social Democrat German colleague facing an uphill election this fall, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, promised that though a common border guard corps "remains a long way off," the first joint French-German border operations will start by the end of this year, and coordination will soon begin in training, equipping, and setting common standards for border guards. British Labor’s Blair, perhaps the most powerful EU leader, warned his colleagues that the EU may have to revive the sanctions option if Third World countries fail to shoulder responsibility. He said: “If countries refuse to cooperate, we'll consider any reasonable option.''

"We prefer the idea of positive partnership with developing countries to stop trafficking in people," European Commission spokesman Jonathan Faull said. He called illegal immigrants "victims of unscrupulous organizations rather than guilty parties." Human rights groups welcomed the Seville compromise. “The threat of sanctions highlighted how distorted the EU's policies were becoming'', said Dick Oosting, director of Amnesty International's EU office. “The war against 'illegal immigration' had clearly become overheated.''
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