Volume 2, Number 28
Friday, July 19, 2002

BIGOTRY MONITOR
A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, andReligious 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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RUSSIAN OMBUDSMAN AND UCSJ TO COOPERATE. At a meeting with UCSJ leaders in Moscow, Russia's Human Rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov agreed to cooperate with UCSJ in the monitoring of antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. UCSJ's National Director Micah H. Naftalin said that he and his colleagues were pleased with the agreement. Mironov expressed his concern about the rising number of hate crimes in Russia, including booby-trapped antisemitic signs, skinhead attacks, and numerous recent desecrations of cemeteries where members of ethnic and religious minorities are buried. In his opinion, the government needs to work out a strategy to address these problems in alliance with civil society. UCSJ’s Moscow Bureau on Human Rights and the office of the Human Rights Ombudsman will work together to monitor hate crimes, help the victims, and educate the Russian public about the evils of xenophobia.

SKINHEADS ON THE RAMPAGE. On June 22, skinheads attacked three female hunger strikers in the center of Tyumen in Russia’s Far East, according to UCSJ's local monitor Valery Shmidt. For the preceding three weeks, the three women had camped out on Central Square protesting poor living conditions. According to one of the victims, Lyudmila Rychkova, the skinheads gathered early in the evening on the square, within sight of the police posts set up in front of the regional administration's building and the regional parliament. However police were nowhere to be seen when the skinheads attacked at 4 a.m., screaming "Sieg Heil!" On July 3, the local newspaper "Yamskaya Sloboda" criticized police inaction, adding that police refused to investigate the incident because "the skinheads didn't kill anybody or rob anything."

Two nights later there was another skinhead attack, this time in the suburban village of Derbyshi, according to another report from Shmidt and local media accounts. Two teenage skinheads walked up to a trailer in which four Uzbeks were sleeping, wired the door to the trailer shut, poured gasoline all around, and set the trailer on fire. Fortunately, the Uzbeks had water inside the trailer and were able to extinguish enough of the fire to buy the time needed to break out. Police arrested the culprits who bragged to villagers about their crime.

Last year, skinheads attacked the local synagogue on seven separate occasions. To date, no one has been arrested.

RUSSIA’S PRESS MINISTRY WINS CASE ON SHUTDOWN OF ANTISEMITIC PAPER. On July 17, the Timiryazevo intermunicipal court in Moscow accepted the argument by Russia’s Press Ministry to close down the newspaper “Russkiye Vedomosti,” according to Itar-Tass. The grounds for the closure are instances of incitement to ethnic intolerance that the ministry presented. According to the ministry, the paper had received two warnings in May last year for publishing antisemitic material. Subsequently, a lawsuit seeking the closure of the paper was filed on November 12. On April 15 this year, the paper received a third warning for publishing materials targeting people from the Caucasus. The ministry's representative said that the conclusions reached by its experts were confirmed by the Prosecutor's Office and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology.

According to the paper's chief editor, Viktor Korchagin, the newspaper was first published in September 1990 and has appeared once every three months. He said that it was distributed primarily among officers in the Moscow Military District and students, and its objective was to "protect the interests of the Russian people."

MORE SIGNS WITH HATE MESSAGES. Two more signs carrying messages of hate were found in Russia last week. On July 15, residents in the Leningrad Oblast city of Gatchina discovered a sign with “Death to the Jews!” on one side and “Death to the Khachiki” – a pejorative for Armenians – on the other, according to a July 17 report by the Agency of Journalistic Investigations. A bomb squad was summoned but found no explosives. At about the same time a sign with antisemitic slogans appeared on a highway near the Siberian city of Kemerovo, according to a July 16 NTV report. But what looked like a bomb attached turned out to be a fake. In both localities, police have begun investigations under Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code that forbids incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.

COMMENTATORS DISAGREE ON THE MEANING OF THE BOOBY-TRAPPED SIGNS. The term "billboard terrorism" has been coined in Russia, the daily “Moskovskiy Komsomolets” reported on July 15. The term refers to the booby-trapped signs with antisemitic messages placed on the sides of highways. Except for the one fatal case near Kaliningrad on July 10—which police attribute to a dispute between rival criminal gangs—the incidents are of “a clearly-marked nationalist character,” the daily wrote, and it asked experts the following questions: ”Is this indeed a new form of terrorism? Is there a common organizer in all these incidents or is it simply that a ‘bad example is infectious?’ How justified is the rumor that the situation benefits the authorities because at the necessary moment it will be possible to build an election campaign based on the fight against the latest evil because it is no longer possible to intimidate people by means of [Communist leader Gennady] Zyuganov's name?”

Vladimir Pribylovskiy, president of the Panorama Information Center, rejected the notion that the phenomenon is new or that one organization is behind the incidents. “In every oblast in our country there are Nazi groupings, some of them consisting of three to five people, others consisting of hundreds of people, sometimes they are connected with one another, sometimes they are not,” he said. He called the objective “obvious” publicity. When a sign does not explode, he argued, it does not attract attention. “The whole of Moscow is bedecked with appeals of this kind and people simply do not notice them any longer,” he explained. “But when combined with an explosion, it becomes a ‘brilliant publicity stunt.’” Pribylovsky’s advice: “Catch the culprits and convict them.”

To Boris Makarenko, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies, the incidents offer “evidence that an extremist nationalist potential exists in society. One piece of trash dreamed it up; other pieces of trash are copying it.” He argued that the terrorist acts do not benefit the authorities that now emphasize “stability” as their main achievement.

Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, believes that we are facing “a new form of terrorism” and “a series of actions planned by one person because they are identical everywhere.” She cited the Moscow Oblast police chief who refused to recognize any incitement of ethnic hatred and perceived only hooliganism. As long as the authorities hold such a view, Alexeyeva said, “these actions will not cease.”

POLICE NAB NEO-NAZI PICKING UP PACKAGE WITH TNT. On July 5, a member of the violent neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU) was arrested at the train station of the resort town of Sochi in Krasnodar Kray, according to a July 9 report by the newspaper "Trud." The 25-year-old local resident, identified only as Orlov, had been under police observation as an RNU member. He was arrested shortly after he picked up a package left for him at the train station. Inside the package, police found 20 grams of TNT, a note saying "I'm sending you this, as we agreed, as a sample. Glory!" (The RNU's slogan is "Glory to Russia!") Also in the package were nearly 1,000 copies of the RNU newspaper "Russian Order."

THREE VARIATIONS ON THE THEME OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
1. Primakov Urges Russia to Prevent “a Migration Tsunami.” While Russia’s economic and social problems are on their way to being resolved, “extremely little, if anything at all, is done to improve the catastrophic demographic situation,” Yevgeny Primakov, former prime minister and now chairman of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told “Rossiiskaya Gazeta.” In the July 9 issue, Primakov characterized Russia’s Far East and Siberia as “nearly a demographic vacuum” and warned that a “vacuum does not stay as such for long.” He recommended “a preventive measure of allowing controlled and measured migration. The world is doing this, so why do we fear?” A former journalist in the Middle East and KGB officer, Primakov called for the prevention of “a migration tsunami that may sweep Russia in the future.” He urged consultations with neighboring countries, including China and North Korea, on defining “the rules of the migration game.”

2. Ireland Rounds Up Illegal Immigrants. For the first time, Ireland’s National Immigration Bureau swooped down on immigrants who have been told to leave yet go on living in Dublin. Though the purpose of the July 16 roundup was to “wrestle with a paper backlog of 2,610 outstanding deportation orders, some dating back three or four years,” according to the “Irish Times,” the operation “certainly has struck fear into the thousands of migrants who have outstayed their welcome in Ireland.” In addition to five “failed asylum-seekers,” the roundup has led to the detention of 36 people living in Ireland without permission “who were not asylum-seekers or undocumented workers.” That number, the daily wrote, “is a tiny percentage of the thousands of non-nationals working illegally in Ireland, without whose contribution some businesses would not survive. By definition, they live clandestine lives, paid less than Irish workers and daily facing the insecurity of being detected.” Irish authorities estimate that some 100,000 foreigners are legally registered to live in the country, and the number of asylum applicants has averaged an annual 9,000 for the past few years. The “Irish Times” concludes: “But the tone of the debate in Ireland and Europe, and the tendency to talk about illegal immigrants as one homogeneous group, means that ‘immigrant’ is fast becoming a dirty word.”

3. Spain Resorts to Force in Making a Point to Morocco. Just before dawn on July 17, Spanish troops overwhelmed 12 Moroccan soldiers installed six days earlier on a normally uninhabited Mediterranean island not much larger than a soccer field and took possession of the land without firing a shot, according to news agency reports. Morocco demands immediate Spanish withdrawal, calling the land “an integral part of Morocco.” Spain too claims the island. Diplomacy may resolve the dispute, but a much tougher issue that looms in the background is the illegal immigration from Morocco that Spain is trying to halt. “People traffickers” have been using the island’s caves as assembly points for immigrants to reach the Spanish mainland. Spain’s resort to force signals its African neighbor that it must rein in the traffickers who smuggle to Spain tens of thousands of Moroccans and other Africans. Last August, the arrest of 800 illegal Moroccan immigrants sparked an angry diplomatic exchange. Spanish authorities estimate that more than 200,000 Moroccans live in Spain, with a further 1.5 million passing through each year as temporary workers or en route to other parts of Europe. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar is proposing stern new measures and suggests that an illegal immigrant convicted of a crime that carries a sentence of less than six years should be deported. He said that such a policy would end "the nonsense that committing a crime is a way of impeding expulsion or making expulsion more difficult." A recent poll found that 60 percent of Spaniards link rising crime to immigrants.

HRW PROTESTS ‘VICIOUS’ ATTACK ON GEORGIAN HUMAN RIGHTS LEADERS. The Georgian government must investigate and prosecute those responsible for the July 10 attack on the Tbilisi headquarters of a leading Georgian human rights organization, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on July 12. According to eyewitness accounts, about a dozen well-organized men between the ages of 25 and 30 severely beat the director and other staff of Liberty Institute and smashed computers, furniture, and other equipment. "This is one of the most vicious assaults on human rights defenders we have ever seen in the former Soviet Union," said Elizabeth Andersen of HRW.

The attack left Liberty Institute director Levan Ramishvili hospitalized with multiple contusions and eye injuries. Five of his colleagues were also beaten; one remains bedridden. Other staff members and visitors escaped the violence by barricading themselves behind doors. The visitors included David Gladwell, a British official and member of a three-man fact-finding delegation representing the Council of Europe, an organization Georgia joined in 1999. The attackers walked in calmly through the institute’s door, open during business hours, and pounced on office workers while wielding rubber truncheons and brass knuckles. After about seven minutes, the attackers walked out.

Two days earlier, supporters of Guram Sharadze, an ultra-nationalist member of parliament, demonstrated outside Liberty Institute’s office, throwing eggs and shouting: “This is your final warning!” A few days before that, Ramishvili faced Sharadze in a television debate and accused him of instigating ethnic and religious intolerance and charged that he had KGB links during the Soviet era. Sharadze has been closely associated with an excommunicated Orthodox priest, Basili Mkalavishvili, known for his extremist views. Over the past three years, Liberty Institute opposed mob religious violence including attacks by Mkalavishvili supporters on Jehovah’s Witnesses and accused law enforcement agencies of complicity.

In February 2001, the Supreme Court de-registered the Jehovah's Witnesses in response to acivil lawsuit Sharadze had brought protesting their registration. During the case and since then, Sharadze has spread rumors trying to demonize Jehovah's Witnesses, such as charging them with attempting to poison the country’s bread supply and to vandalize Orthodox icons and churches. In recent months, the government has made moves that some view as hostile to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In a speech on April 24, President Eduard Shevardnadze seemed to imply that international terrorists finance Georgian NGOs.

BELARUS GOVERNMENT IMPOSES MASSIVE FINES FOR HINDU MEDITATION. In the Belarusian capital Minsk, a group of 18 Belarusian Hindus who on July 13 tried to hold a meditation ceremony in a park without a government permit have been sentenced to fines of up to fifty times the country’s minimum monthly wage, a court official told Keston News Service on July 16. The official said that while the largest fine was 500,000 rubles, most members of the group received fines of 200,000 to 250,000 rubles ($110-138). The average monthly wage is the equivalent of $70. Harri Pahonyailo, the deputy chair of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, condemned what he called “massive” fines. “Our committee believes these sentences and fines are a violation of human rights, the rights to religious freedom, freedom of movement, and freedom of expression,” he told Keston.

On July 14, twelve Hindus began a hunger strike to protest what they called state persecution, the Associated Press reported. The seven men and five women were among those arrested on July 13 while singing Hindu songs and hymns in a park, said Tatyana Akadanava, one of those arrested. Akadanava told Keston that her community has been refused official registration since 1999 and denied permission to rent premises for worship under the tight official controls on religious practice. She suggested that the police moved against the Hindus in the park on account of the new religion law passed by the lower house of parliament at the end of June. "The law has not even come into force yet, but we are already being persecuted," she said. She warned that if the new bill is approved by the upper house and signed into law by President Aleksandr Lukashenko, then many Hindus "will be forced to leave the country because of persecution by the authorities." “We don’t understand how we can function,” Akadanava’s husband Sergei, who was one of those fined 500,000 rubles, told Keston. “I’m afraid for my wife, our members, our children. I fear to go out into the street in case something happens. They have started listening in to our telephones. Where are we going to get the massive sums to pay the fines?”

JEWISH GRAVES IN ROME VANDALIZED. Visitors to the Jewish section of a historic cemetery in Rome found smashed headstones and toppled columns, “The New York Times” reported on July 19, calling it “a chilling scene that marked the arrival in Italy of a wave of antisemitic attacks across Europe.” There is no indication who might be responsible for vandalizing 34 graves in Verano Cemetery but the government has pledged to find the culprits. “The incident seemed at once to outrage, puzzle, and embarrass” Italians whose country had until now “been spared the kind of antisemitic outbursts that have occurred this year in France, Germany, and Belgium,” “The Times” noted. Reuters quoted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: "Italy has a deep-rooted tradition of civility, but, unfortunately not even Rome is immune from the barbarity of antisemitism." A spokesman for Milan's Jewish community, Yasha Reibman, told the Associated Press that “in Italy and in Europe, a new, political antisemitism is growing, which uses as an alibi all that's happening in Israel.''

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * On July 11, the seventh anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica of up to 8,000 Muslim males by Serbian forces commanded by Gen. Ratko Mladic, Bosnia’s ranking Islamic cleric Mustafa Ceric told several thousand people assembled to dedicate a monument to the victims: "We pray for sorrow to become hope, for revenge to become justice, and for mothers' tears to become a reminder so that Srebrenica and New York will never happen again to anyone, anywhere."

THE FAR RIGHT IN PSKOV HAS FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Skinhead Party Propagates Racism Openly

Less than 200 miles southwest of St. Petersburg is the Pskov Region where a skinhead group of some 200 members is properly registered, and their web site claims that they have six branches throughout Russia, state-owned TV RTR reported on July 14. They call themselves the Pskov section of the St. Petersburg Freedom Party. Among their accomplishments are hate messages and swastikas daubed on walls and on the monument built in memory of the 300,000 people killed in Nazi concentration camps in the region.

Their leader is Georgy Pavlov who defines as his main job the deportation of all non-Slavs. In 2000, he got a five-and-a-half-year suspended sentence for inciting ethnic hatred. But that did not stop him from taking part in his group’s recent attacks on Pskov Free University and a Baptist church. “Today they beat up someone from the Caucasus,” he said on TV RTR, referring to his followers who call him Gosha the Aryan. “Tomorrow it will be ten. The day after there will be a pogrom in the market. From my moral point of view, they are doing the right thing.” But the non-Slavs still won’t leave, Pavlov acknowledged. The only way to achieve that is to get “nationalist-patriots” into power, and for that reason his Freedom Party is taking part in the election process. At the moment, things are difficult, he conceded, as “the nation is at odds with itself.”

Pavlov is not afraid to speak out, and one reason is that he has friends in high places, TV RTR reports. One of them is Aleksandr Khristoforov, chairman of the committee for social policy in the Pskov Regional Assembly and a member of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia who also served as an aide to the current governor, Yevgeniy Mikhaylov, in two election campaigns. In December 2001, the local Prosecutor’s Office initiated a case against Khristoforov on charges of inciting ethnic hatred. The case is suspended because his colleagues in the Regional Assembly refused to strip him of his parliamentary immunity. In an interview with TV RTR, Khristoforov called Russia “a basically Aryan country,” and he included in the category “Aryan” Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and “Europeans” – but not “colored people.”

Deputy Governor Viktor Komissarov said on TV that Khristoforov plays “a big role in social affairs in the Pskov Region.” When asked by the reporter if that role was positive, Komissarov replied: “Yes, a positive role.”

The TV program then singled out what it called “one of the elements” of Khristoforov’s social policy: the distribution of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Appearing on television with a copy of “Mein Kampf” in his hand, skinhead Pavlov praised Khristoforov: “This is our man in the Regional Assembly. A man who gives us a book which is worthy of every Russian person.”

Pavlov boasted that in the police and the Prosecutor’s Office there are individuals “who give us excellent support.” For obvious reasons, he won’t “advertise their names,” but they are there, and they are “people in power.” Somehow, it came as no surprise when Deputy Governor Komissarov declared on TV RTR: “In general, there are no extremist organizations, or any such problem in Pskov Region.”
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