Volume 2, Number 34
Friday, August 30, 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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U.S. IS URGED TO CONDEMN UZBEKISTAN AND TURKMENISTAN. The Bush administration must not repeat its mistake of failing to designate Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as "countries of particular concern" for religious freedom, Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote in an August 21 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, the president can designate countries whose governments engage in serious violations of religious freedom as "countries of particular concern." The law offers the president options ranging from private demarches to limiting assistance and applying full sanctions. Last year, the Bush administration did not designate either Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan as countries of particular concern, despite the recommendation of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that the administration do so in the case of Turkmenistan. This year's decision is expected in the next few weeks.

For nearly five years, the Uzbek government has persecuted individuals whose peaceful practice of Islam falls beyond state controls, HRW noted in a briefing paper which details "the arbitrary arrest, unfair trials, and torture of hundreds of independent Muslims" since October 2001, the last time the administration scrutinized that country's record on religious freedom. In 1997, the paper pointed out, Turkmenistan, one of the world's most repressive countries, outlawed all religions except Sunni Islam and Russian Orthodoxy. Among the groups especially affected by the Turkmen government's restrictions are Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostals, Baptists, Adventists, and Hare Krishnas. Some Islamic groups also suffer state harassment.

Elizabeth Andersen, who heads HRW's Europe and Central Asia division, said that failing to designate Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as countries of particular concern would call into question the Bush administration's commitment to religious freedom. "If Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are not trampling on religious freedoms, then who is?" she asked. "This whole process of evaluating religious freedom will be seen as a completely cynical exercise unless the U.S. administration does the right thing on these two countries."

HRW's paper on Uzbekistan documents 116 convictions of religious prisoners on charges based on their membership in unregistered religious organizations, possession or distribution of "extremist" literature, and meeting for private prayer or Islamic study. Police beat and torture prisoners to coerce testimony, according to the paper, and after conviction, prison officials frequently torture religious inmates and compel them daily to renounce their faith and ask the state's forgiveness. Earlier this month, two religious prisoners, Muzafar Avazov and Husnidin Alimov, died in custody under circumstances that strongly indicated torture. A third, Husnidin Hikmatov, died at home in May two days after he was released because of injuries apparently sustained from torture. He had been serving a 17-year sentence on "extremism" charges. "This year the Uzbek government has been utterly unrelenting in its arrest campaign," Andersen said. "And it is trying to persuade others that it's all part of the global campaign against terrorism. But in fact, it is undermining the Bush administration's principle that the war against terrorism not be a war against Islam."

TWO MOSCOW POLICE OFFICERS FACE DOWN 40 SKINHEADS. Decisive action by two Moscow police officers prevented a full-scale skinhead rampage, "Moskovskaya Pravda" reported on August 22. At midnight on August 19, about 40 skinheads suddenly appeared at the Kropotkinskaya metro station and boarded a commuter train. They destroyed seats as they went from car to car, looking for non-Russians. Among the Monday midnight commuters were a few old women, a young Russian couple, and several Chinese, and they managed to escape. According to the report, two police officers fired shots at the skinheads, causing them to run out to the street where cars driven by their friends were waiting. The officers followed them and apprehended three skinheads. One officer was quoted as saying that the neo-Nazis would be charged with resisting arrest, inciting ethnic hatred, and participating in a riot. "This time," the article concluded, "an action was prevented in time. But what about the next time?"

VORONEZH TO BE CLEANSED OF ANTISEMITIC PROPAGANDA. Antisemitic and nationalistic fliers will be destroyed during an action called Clean City in Voronezh, according to an Interfax report on August 24, citing the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC). At least 22 public organizations will participate in the month-long action. In addition, the local Jewish community launched a program called “Lessons of the Holocaust,” comprised of historic materials on World War II and the life of Jews in the former USSR. The RJC told Interfax that the problem of antisemitism is "quite acute" in Voronezh, where nationalistic organizations have traditionally been strong. In June, for instance, posters with the words "Death to Jews" and dummy bombs were found in the city.

THE WAR EVERYONE LOST. The war in Chechnya is "a war everyone lost," said Akhmed Zakaev, the deputy premier in Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov's government and occasional negotiator with Russian politicians, in the course of a conversation with "Novaya Gazeta's" deputy editor-in-chief, Yuri Shchekochikhin. According to Zakaev, young Chechens now identify Russians as the enemy, and for many Russians, a Chechen is a criminal and a terrorist. He singled out as the main problem the Russian unwillingness to accept the truth: Russians "are encouraged to speak, hear, and think as one."

UKRAINIAN POLICE NAB SUSPECTED ORGANIZER OF ATTACK ON SYNAGOGUE. The Poltava police detained the organizer of the April 13 attack on the central Kyiv synagogue in the early hours of August 23, Itar-Tass reports. The detainee had been hiding abroad, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's Kyiv Department said, adding that six teenagers had also been detained as suspects. Three of them have been released on their own recognizance, and three remain in custody. According to eyewitness testimony, after a soccer game on April 13, several dozen youths between 16 and 20 years of age threw stones at the synagogue and beat three Jews, including the rabbi’s son.

NIKOPOL VANDALS ARE CAUGHT BUT GO HOME UNPUNISHED. The Dnepropetrovsk Oblast SBU (former KGB) announced that it has tracked down the vandals who daubed a swastika and antisemitic slogans on a Holocaust memorial in Nikopol, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast in June, according to UCSJ's local monitor. Identified as the "M" brothers, they told the SBU that their motive was to "attract the attention of the public to the need to establish a monument to citizens of other ethnicities who died during the war." In fact, Ukraine already has many such monuments commemorating the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens during the war, but relatively few commemorate the Holocaust, though Ukraine was major killing ground of Jews. It was the second time the monument was vandalized since its dedication in the fall of 2001.

According to UCSJ's monitor, the "M" brothers got off with a "warning conversation" from SBU officers who informed them that they could have been charged with violating an article in the Criminal Code that prohibits the violation of the rights of citizens based on their race, ethnicity or religion. The law is rarely enforced.

SKINHEADS ATTACK JEWS IN MINSK. On August 14 in Minsk, a group of skinheads attacked five young Chabad-Lubavitch Jews from the United States and France, according to a report from UCSJ's Minsk Bureau. The attack took place in the center of the city on Prospekt Skoriny, at the entrance to a McDonald's restaurant. The skinheads knocked off the hats of some of the Jews and yanked at their beards. Eventually, a policeman appeared and put a stop to the attack, but he did not arrest any of the skinheads, who went back to harass the Jews again once the policeman was out of sight. The five youths were in Belarus to work at a Chabad-Lubavitch summer camp.

"Fortunately, it all ended without bloodshed," UCSJ's Minsk Bureau reported, "but the fact that in the center of the capital of Belarus, groups of radical youth gather looking for a fight with other ethnic groups and mocking the religious customs of another people says a lot, especially about the total indifference of the authorities towards preserving inter-ethnic harmony in the country."

LITHUANIAN SOCCER FANS YELL 'JUDEN RAUS' AT ISRAELI TEAM. In Kaunas, Lithuania, antisemitic spectators disrupted an August 22 soccer match between Israel and Lithuania, according to a report posted on "Jewish.ru," a web site of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. When it became clear that the Israeli team was going to win, some fans started yelling the Nazi slogan "Juden raus!" - "Jews out!" in German - while waving Palestinian flags and holding up pro-Hamas signs. Lithuanian Jewish leader Simonas Alperavicius issued a statement warning that such incidents damage Lithuania's international reputation at a time when it is striving to become a member of NATO and the European Union. He called for "a tough reaction" from the Lithuanian Soccer Federation.

The Baltic News Service reported that Liutauras Varanavicius, president of the soccer federation, responded by attacking Alperavicius: "This is a problem of just one person who calls himself a representative of the entire Jewish community." After a similar incident last year, the soccer federation apologized to the Jewish community.

DENMARK OFFERS CASH TO AFGHANS TO GO HOME. Denmark's center-right government has launched a novel experiment. It is offering cash to some 1,300 Afghan asylum seekers if they agree to return home, the Ministry for Integration and Immigration told Agence France Presse. The program, which runs until November 1, will pay $2,345 to each adult and $780 per child, as well as transportation and shipping costs. Minister for Integration and Immigration Bertel Haarder said the offer was extended only to the country's 1,300 Afghan asylum seekers, who, he said, have a slim chance of being granted asylum because the war in Afghanistan is over.

FRANCE CURBS LEGALIZATION OF ILLEGALS; FAR-RIGHT FIGHTS ON. In yet another measure to discourage immigration, on August 27, the French government rejected appeals for blanket legalization of long-term illegal residents and said it would review applications for residency on a case-by-case basis, according to a Reuters report. Over the past week, protesters have taken to the streets to demand that the government legalize 1,150 immigrants without residency permits, many of whom have lived in France for years. Interior Ministry officials met with representatives of the immigrants and promised that "each individual situation" will be examined.

Outside observers see the move as a government effort to avoid being seen as soft on immigrants. It is widely recognized that harsh anti-immigrant statements earned a surprise second place for far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the presidential elections in April. Speaking to reporters on August 28, Le Pen, now 74, said that he might make his fifth bid for the presidency in 2007, despite his age, the resounding defeat by conservative President Jacques Chirac in May, and the failure of his party, the National Front, to win a single seat in the subsequent elections for the National Assembly.

A few days earlier, in the town of Mutzig in Alsace, some 20 miles from the German border, French police seized what it described as a "secret arms factory" in the house of a couple in their early 30s who also possessed neo-Nazi magazines. Police said they seized 16,000 cartridges, including some 2,000 suitable for banned war-grade weapons, and some 20 guns, in addition to gunpowder and other equipment needed for manufacturing arms.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * According to London's "Financial Times" of August 28, Oleg Mironov, Russia's human rights ombudsman, returned from a trip to Chechnya last week, saying it was hard to tell Russian soldiers from Chechen bandits. He concluded: "The most appalling thing is that, by their actions, the soldiers swell the ranks of the militants."

PROSPECTS FOR THE ROMA: MORE DARKNESS AHEAD
Fears of Xenophobia Mount as the EU Expands its Territory and Jurisdiction

For the vast majority of the Roma -- the people who used to be called Gypsies and who make up Europe's largest minority present in every country on the continent -- life has not improved. They are still denied the kind of living standard and basic dignity taken for granted by the non-Roma. However, there have been some small victories.

Writing in the current issue of the quarterly "Roma Rights" published by the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center, Claude Cahn points to a few important "firsts"-- precedents that may signal positive changes in the near future. He cites the recent case of a Roma from Slovakia expelled from Belgium: The European Court of Human Rights found a violation for the first time ever of the ban on collectively expelling aliens. Secondly, Cahn continues, "restrictive policies toward migrants in the West have also brought attention to the situation of Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. The recent government policies adopted in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the rising sums of money spent on Romani issues are due in large part to concerns raised by Romani flight from Central and Eastern Europe - and pressure arising from the unwillingness of Western European states to accept these new arrivals."

But Cahn does not believe that such "sparks" banish the darkness. The inescapable fact is that the destruction of the World Trade Center has served as "a dramatic catalyst for both notching up popular anti-foreigner sentiment all over Europe, as well as for setting in motion very restrictive policies and practices in a number of European states." He is afraid that the new anti-immigrant measures now being imposed are only the beginning. He cites pessimists who say that the multi-cultural era in Europe might have ended. He characterizes that era as "the brief twenty years during which, in Western European cities at least, a space opened for persons from all over the world to settle and to prosper without undergoing the traditional humiliations of the pariah."

Historically, Cahn notes, "one area in which states have wide discretionary powers is in the field of decisions on whom to admit onto the territory of the state and whom to refuse." However, he cautions, “central concepts of international human rights law -- the right of persecuted persons to asylum and arguably also the ban on discrimination -- significantly limit that discretion." Moreover, "a number of European states have in recent years voluntarily agreed to renounce discretion in this area, as immigration and asylum issues have passed into the competence of the European Union (EU)."

As of now, EU officials dealing with immigration issues are signaling "policy unclarity and confusion of administrative competencies." Cahn describes authorities within the EU "working overtime to bring about conditions for giving the countries of the EU the appearance of one state." He cites one example: the effort to use "all diplomatic channels possible to ensure that, in practice, no persons from one EU member state receive asylum in another EU member state." He describes "the threat to justice and individuals" as "large."

Cahn finds the formerly communist Central and Eastern Europe "ill-prepared" to receive immigrants and "frequently very intolerant" toward them but now facing the obligation to integrate EU rules and standards. Cahn points out that Western Europe "has increasingly treated the states of Central and Eastern Europe as a borderland zone into which unwanted migrants and refugees can be expelled without explicit, egregious violations of international law taking place." So, now there is "a new harsh regime ordered in place by cynical Western Eurocrats, displacing the harsh old regime, in countries in which governments have done little to nothing to roll back the rising tide of xenophobia and racism."

Looking ahead, Cahn sees more darkness than light. He seems overwhelmed by "the huge impact on the lives of the numerous persons - Romani and non-Romani - denied a life with dignity as a result of the failure to take migration seriously as a human rights policy domain." He condemns the xenophobic, anti-immigrant, racist concept of Fortress Europe as "the most visible, systemic evil in Europe today."
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