Volume One, Number 6
Friday, August 3, 2001

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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UN CONFERENCE ON RACISM MAY NOT TURN INTO A FORUM FOR RACISM. As we go to press, U.S. diplomats are making progress in persuading their colleagues to drop two "hot button" items from the agenda of the UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, scheduled to open on August 31 in Durban, South Africa. The first item, promoted by Iraq, Iran and Syria, condemns Zionism as racism; the second calls for reparations for slavery and colonization. But, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, attacks on Israel are laced throughout the 88 pages of the draft document, and the U.S. wants those removed as well. The outcome of the negotiations now conducted at a preparatory meeting in Geneva will also determine the level of U.S. participation, if any. "We want to go," a State Department official told the press on August 1. "But not at any cost."

In 1991, the UN repealed its General Assembly's 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism; a renewed debate now may regenerate friction between black and Jewish groups. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) told the House International Affairs Committee that the Bush administration's reluctance to attend the meeting smacks of racism. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Ca.) disagreed. He said that "a noble and worthwhile event" is being subverted "into yet another forum for Israel-bashing" and "for the most extreme form of antisemitism." On July 30, the House voted 408 to 3 - a whopping majority - in support of his resolution that unless the agenda changes, the U.S. should not attend the conference.

But on July 31, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the United States to throw its support, including financial, behind the conference. "The Bush administration needs to show that it really cares about the problem of racism, in the United States and around the world," said Reed Brody, advocacy director. "The way to do that is to use this conference to press for concrete solutions and programs to address the problem, not to sit on the sidelines." HRW said it is also troubled that "many countries were seeking to single out Israel for condemnation of racist practices." If the conference will name countries that practice severe forms of racism, HRW said, "its list should be much longer."

One Congressional insider finds most of the Black Caucus insistent on the slavery reparations but uninterested in the Zionism-is-racism item they perceive as giving the Bush administration an excuse to stay away from the conference. He shrugs: "The only leverage we have is to say that we won't attend." The likeliest outcome? The conference will find ways to attack Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, and U.S. participation may not be at the secretary of state level that the conference organizers and the Black Caucus would like to see.

ARSONISTS TARGET SYNAGOGUE IN KOSTROMA, RUSSIA. In the worst attack on a Russian Jewish community since last year's skinhead rampage in a Ryazan Jewish school, unidentified arsonists attempted to burn down a synagogue in the Russian city of Kostroma, 200 miles northeast of Moscow, on July 29, according to Andrey Osherov, head of the local Jewish community affiliated with the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia and regional monitor for UCSJ. He said that the arsonists placed planks used in repairing the building against the side of the synagogue, spread a flammable liquid and lit it. A librarian smelled the smoke, and synagogue employees brought the flames, leaping as high as 15 feet, under control in the 12 minutes it took for the firemen to arrive. The chief of the fire brigade suggested that arson caused the fire. Osherov told UCSJ: "Nobody can guarantee that the incident won't be repeated."

RUSSIAN VILLAGE PRIEST WELDS SWASTIKAS TO CROSSES. Wehrmacht troops never reached the village of Vedeniye, Yaroslavl Region, northeast of Moscow. But the cupola of Vedeniye's Russian Orthodox church is now topped with a metal cross with swastikas welded to each of its three ends, the magazine "Ogonyok" of July 26 reported. The unusual arrangement is the work of a priest called Father Sergy, and he has refused to obey his diocese leaders who asked about a year ago that the swastikas be "covered." A burly former submarine officer who wore a Nazi helmet when interviewed by "Ogonyok," Father Sergy displays in his house a collection of Nazi paraphernalia, including a portrait of Eva Braun. In the late 1980s he joined Pamyat, the now toothless grandfather of today's Russian neo-Nazi movement. He boasts of his friendship with Alexander Barkashov, the founder of the extremist paramilitary group Russian National Unity. Father Sergy claims that his swastikas, with arms set in a counterclockwise direction, represent an ancient Orthodox symbol that has nothing to do with the Nazi emblem that had arms turning clockwise. "We never had such an energetic, work-loving priest," the head of the neighboring village of Krasnie Tkachi, Alexander Selyaev, told "Ogonyok." Selyaev said Father Sergy fixed up the Vedeniye church, which had been in ruins, and he goes to the villages around it to pick up his parishioners in his van. The van has a large swastika painted on it.

RUSSIANS PLAN TO SPEND $13 MILLION TO PROMOTE TOLERANCE. The Russian cabinet is considering a federal program to develop tolerance toward different ways of life, religions, ethnic groups and languages, reports the Russian newspaper "Trud" on August 1. The program is also aimed at preventing extremism in Russian society, and it includes special curricula for schools, monitoring of social tension and "psychological assistance" to refugees. According to "Trud," the government plans to give the program a budget of $13 million.

BELARUS OFFICIAL SEES NO NEED FOR UKRAINIAN PASTOR. A Ukrainian pastor who has long worked in the Belarusian capital Minsk "does not have the right to conduct any public religious activity," a senior official of the State Committee for Religious and Ethnic Affairs told Keston News Service on July 30. Pastor Veniamin Brukh of the Church of Jesus Christ has been accused under Article 185 of the administrative code of "carrying out religious activity without permission," despite the fact that his 1,000-strong church wants him to continue as its pastor. The official, Alexander Kalinov, said that his committee would not grant Brukh the special permission required by law. Bible colleges in Belarus are producing enough graduates, Kalinov explained, so Protestant churches do not need foreign pastors. Therefore, he concluded, "There's no need for him."

LUKASHENKO SAYS HE IS NO MILOSEVIC President Alexander Lukashenko, an avowed admirer of Hitler, has accused the leader of the consultative and observer group in Minsk of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Hans-Georg Wick, of sponsoring the Belarusian opposition, Interfax-West reported on July 31. "During the elections, 15,000 to 17,000 so-called observers intend to question voters about whom they intend to vote for," the Russian news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying. He said that the preparations for the presidential contest, scheduled for September 9, reminded him of last year's elections in Yugoslavia. But, he pledged, no Vojislav Kostunica will appear in Belarus, where the elections will be "normal." He declared: "I will defend myself, I will not be hiding in a bunker, like [Slobodan] Milosevic was… The armed forces will not interfere… But the interior troops have a special rapid reaction force under Dmitri Pavlyuchenko's command, as well as the Alfa and Almaz special forces, which will defend the president."

ESTONIAN SOLDIERS BEAT UP RUSSIANS; ARMY APOLOGIZES. The Estonian army has apologized for drunken soldiers in the town of Paldiski beating up several Russians and one African during the night of July 23-24, according to the Baltic News Service. The victims were apparently singled out for their inability to speak Estonian. The Union of Associations of Russian Compatriots in Estonia protested to the authorities and charged that the local police had failed "to take measures." The union of ethnic Russian groups also suggested that the incident proves the need for actively integrating the two communities in ways that ought to go beyond Estonian language training. In its protest, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the soldiers "fascistic youth."

HELSINKI COMMISSION CO-CHAIR SMITH PRAISES AND CRITICIZES ROMANIA. Speaking on the floor of the House on July 27, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) balanced praise for Romania's leaders with sharp criticism. Co-chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, Smith first commended Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana for his chairmanship of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) but then reminded him of manifestations of antisemitism in Romania, as expressed by the exoneration and commemoration of the country's World War II leadership. Smith said he was encouraged by President Ion Iliescu's statement reaffirming wartime dictator Ion Antonescu's status as a war criminal but suggested as "the next step" the removal of Antonescu 's statues from public lands. Smith welcomed Prime Minister Adrian Nastase's suggestion that journalists should not be sent to jail for their writings, but he also urged as a follow-up the repeal of criminal laws on defamation that have been found inconsistent with OSCE standards. Finally, Smith commended Romany (Gypsy) groups for documenting social and economic discrimination against them, and he then called on the government to "intensify its efforts to prevent abusive practices on the part of the police and to hold individual police officers accountable when they violate the law."

FAR-RIGHT HUNGARIAN PARTY LEADER TO FACE COURT FOR ANTISEMITIC COMMENTS. Hungary's public prosecutor has launched criminal proceedings against Laszlo Bognar, deputy chairman of the far-right Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIEP), state-supported central radio reported on July 27. Two days earlier Bognar, called the sale of the majority shares of the popular FTC soccer club to Fotex Ltd. "an act against the nation" by "a greedy and unscrupulous business group that has nothing in common with the FTC or Hungarians." He described the buyer as coming from "the high bourgeoisie that has a mercantile spirit and foreign roots," and he attacked Fotex for its support of another soccer club, the MTK, which was formed by Jews more than a hundred years ago. These references are well-known code words for Jews. In a joint statement, eight Hungarian Jewish organizations condemned Bognar's remarks as antisemitic and inflammatory, and a number of politicians have joined their protest.

GERMAN RIGHTWING EXTREMISTS LIKELY TO GAIN MORE FOLLOWERS IN 2001. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) predicts continuing growth in the number of Germany's violent rightwing extremists, according to the independent news agency DDP. As in previous years, there will be an increase in 2001 too, BfV President Heinz Fromm told Berlin's "Tagesspiegel." While last year BfV counted 9,700 militant neo-Nazis and skinheads, Fromm said, this year their number will rise over 10,000. He disclosed that so far, 600 people have contacted the hotline that BfV established last spring for those who want to leave the rightwing extremist scene. "Of them, 120 can be considered potential defectors," Fromm said.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * *
"In July 1995, General Krstic, you agreed to evil," said Judge Almiro Rodrigues of Portugal on August 2, reading the unanimous decision of the Hague international tribunal and sentencing former Bosnian Serb general, Radislav Krstic, 53, to 46 years in prison for his role in the murder of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica. "What was ethnic cleansing became genocide."

HUMAN RIGHTS ARE INDIVISIBLE
commentary

The first subject that news reports listed on Secretary of State Colin Powell's agenda in China was human rights, including religious persecution. Following his one-day visit - and he was the highest-ranking U.S. official in the Bush administration to visit China so far - Powell told the press that he discussed human rights in every meeting he held with Chinese officials.

On the same day, July 28, in Lima, Peru, Alejandro Toledo was sworn in as the first president of Indian descent in a country regarded as more fractured along racial lines than any other in Latin America. Toledo pledged to introduce laws that would declare Peru a multiracial society. In his inaugural address, he spoke of a "a new dawn of irrevocable democracy." He said that reforming the justice system is essential in restoring public confidence in the economy and the political system, calling "human rights violations and corruption...two sides of the same coin - impunity."

The two news items show national leaders giving human rights - and especially religious and ethnic persecution and racism - a kind of top priority that is new and has come about almost imperceptibly, little by little, the way a tree grows. As recently as 15 years ago, human rights was a pious slogan enshrined in the UN Declaration and observed only in the breach in many parts of the globe - the larger part. By freeing alleged spies on the occasion of an important American's visit and expelling a few high-visibility dissidents, China is moving toward the kind of flexibility that the Soviet Union achieved 15 to 20 years ago. But progress is uneven. By editing out Powell's remarks on human rights and Taiwan in a taped interview by Chinese state television, thus violating a previous agreement, China provoked a rare burst of on-the-record anger from the State Department.

Russia too has made some improvements - despite its dirty war in Chechnya, the persistence of racism and antisemitism (which show no sign of significant abatement in Russian society), Soviet-style bureaucratic restrictions hamstringing religious groups, and the government's achievement of near-monopoly in the news media. It is a good sign that President Vladimir Putin feels constrained to pay lip service to the importance of human rights. But he needs to be reminded to live up to his words.

An even better sign is that by acknowledging that Serbs and Croatians committed war crimes and transferring suspected murderers to the international tribunal, two key successor governments of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia and Croatia, are making progress unthinkable only a year ago.

On the other hand, Belarus is trapped in a Soviet-era dictatorship where some of those in opposition to Alexander Lukashenko are sent to jail on trumped-up charges, get beaten up or mysteriously disappear, and religious minorities are persecuted. The same may be said to varying degrees about the now independent states of Central Asia. Clearly, the world has not paid enough attention.

Neo-fascist or nearly fascist parties still wield influence in countries such as Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, and the smartest of them have gained parliamentary clout in Italy, Austria and France. The undisguised extreme right wreaks havoc on the streets and immigrant neighborhoods of Germany. The optimist in us likes to believe that the march to democracy is irrevocable, as Peru's President Toledo declared in his eloquent inaugural speech. As the cause of human rights is indivisible, individuals living in lands fortunate enough to enjoy the freedoms they confer must keep pressing each government that refuses to grant them.
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_____________________________________________________________ Copyright (c) 2001. UCSJ. All rights reserved.

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