Friday, September 14, 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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WAR OF WORDS IN DURBAN; CARNAGE AND DEVASTATION IN AMERICA. Two days after the sound and fury of the Durban conference summoned to combat racism petered out, on September 11 the United States found itself at war with an enemy as yet insufficiently specified.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on September 9, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, censured the Durban conference for its fixation on the past and said that a debate about reparations for slavery should be avoided. "There is plenty of blame to go around for slavery, plenty of blame to go around among African and Arab states, and plenty of blame to go around among Western states," she said. "We'd better look forward and not point fingers backward." She defended the administration's decision to walk out of Durban and criticized conference participants for spending "far too much time in trying to condemn Israel and single it out." Among those who disagreed on the slavery reparations issue was Brazil's secretary of state for human rights, Gilberto Saboia, who said that the international community has an obligation to grapple with past injustices.

From the human rights vantage point, the question after September 11 terrorist attack on America is whether the eventual response, however justified, will overshadow the progress in recent years toward racial and religious tolerance and respect for individual rights. The U.S. government took comfort in President Vladimir Putin decreeing a minute of silence throughout Russia to honor the victims of terrorism in America. He also sent a message to President George W. Bush that "We are with you." U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow told the press that the U.S. was "very, very pleased and moved by" the Russian reaction, and he called for "better cooperation" between the two countries in fighting terrorism. On September 13 in an article headlined "Terror May Be Tie That Binds," the Moscow Times quoted unnamed "analysts" to the effect that the two intelligence services "will now be more willing to share information on various radical groups." The analysts predicted that the two governments will soften their criticisms of each other on subjects such as Chechnya and the ABM treaty. The same day in Brussels, NATO and Russia issued a rare joint statement calling for international efforts to combat global terrorism and pledging to "intensify" their cooperation "to defeat this scourge."

Russian officials seldom miss an opportunity to tell American colleagues that Osama bin Laden, the millionaire "holy warrior" widely believed to be behind the attacks on America, has been helping, along with his Taliban hosts, Chechen guerrillas, thus the Chechens are America's enemies as well. On September 12, "Komsomolskaya Pravda" asked whether "the West's complaints about Russia's 'unwarranted use of force' in the fight against Chechen terrorists will be replaced by calls to wipe them out." The paper, which has a long history as a propaganda outlet for the Russian secret services, declared: "The war against terrorism will henceforth be aimed at complete annihilation." In a statement issued in New York on September 12, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it "profoundly condemns" the terrorist attacks on the United States, calling it "an assault not merely on one nation or one people, but on principles of respect for civilian life cherished by all people." But the statement warned against the belief that in the struggle against terrorism, ends justify means. "That is also the logic of terrorism," HRW said, calling upon the world to "uphold the principles that came under attack" on September 11.

From Henry Kissinger to Boris Berezovsky, from syndicated columnists to participants in call-in shows, the conviction is growing that after the terrorist attack on America, a new era will begin promptly. "Izvestiya" promptly stated after the explosions: "There is no superpower left. A war between civilizations began. A war of Allah against Jesus, the poor against the rich, barbarians versus the civilized world."

In a live interview on the TV channel Russia devoted entirely to the terrorist attack on America, Dmitry Rogozin, chairman of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, said on September 11: "The most important thing today is to realize that, unfortunately, there is no effective cooperation between the USA and Russia and other European countries, cooperation in seeking real answers to these threats. This is something that the Russian side has repeatedly drawn attention to, in every way it can. What more proof does there have to be to make people realize that threats are being sought in the wrong place, not where they really exist?"

SHARANSKY CALLS FOR TAKING BACK "THE BANNER OF HUMAN RIGHTS." The anti-Israel speeches and resolutions in the Durban conference revealed "the new face of modern antisemitism," Israel's Construction and Housing Minister Natan Sharansky said on September 11, a few hours before the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center. Under the banner of fighting racism, he added, there is an attempt to "undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel as a Jewish, independent, democratic state in the Middle East." But Sharansky, a one-time dissident and political prisoner in the Soviet Union, cautioned that Jews should not abandon the human rights cause just because it has been taken over by the "darkest and most dictatorial regimes who completely ignore human rights. We need to take back the banner of human rights, and show that Zionism is the natural champion of liberalism and human rights." He distanced himself from his foreign ministry's claims of an Israeli success in Durban, arguing that though Israel was successful in removing vicious hate language from the resolutions, "it was no coincidence that one of the two resolutions passed had to do with the Palestinian right of return, which undermines our legitimacy."

RUSSIAN NGO LEADER SPEAKS OUT AGAINST STATE RACISM. Speaking on behalf of NGO delegates from 21 countries of Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, Yuri Dzhibladze charged on September 6 in Durban that the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance ignored "the problem of racism and xenophobia" affecting the inhabitants of his region, which he described as numbering "almost half a billion people living on 20 percent of the world's territory." As president of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, Dzhibladze urged the conference to recognize that "racism has many ugly faces, not always easily recognized and confronted." He called attention to "the alarming growth of aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, which are expressions of racism and xenophobia not rooted in the slave-trade but deeply embedded historical prejudices and hatred towards ethnic and religious minorities. They often lead to large-scale human rights violations, discrimination and persecution targeting specific groups such as Jews, Roma, peoples from the Caucasus and Central Asia, Meskhetian Turks, and frequently even to 'ethnic cleansing' and crimes against humanity with elements of genocide, particularly in the Balkans and Chechnya." He singled out the problem of "state racism" which he characterized as "typical for many countries in our region and often manifested by political and intellectual elites who exploit the nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments of the general public for political mobilization and legitimization of their authority and political power. It is done not only in the traditional blatant ways but also in relatively new, more covert institutionalized forms." He cited as examples the criminal justice system that relies on "stereotypes about alleged criminality of different minorities" and the internal passport and residence permit regime that facilitates wholesale discrimination and the expulsion of minorities.

AFRICAN VICTIM OF RACIST ATTACK IN MOSCOW DIES. Angolan asylum seeker Massa Mayoni, victim of a savage racist attack, died of injuries in a Moscow hospital on September 4, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The 34-year-old father of two suffered severe head injuries on August 23 when set upon by a group of teenagers armed with baseball bats, just outside a refugee center in northeast Moscow supported by UNHCR. Mayoni had been in a group of six Africans, UNHCR representative John McCallin noted, and the only reason for the attack was that they were Africans. McCallin said Africans number about 1,000 among the 10,000 asylum seekers under UNHCR care in Russia. The Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, which began to collect figures on racist attacks this spring, estimated in a letter to The Moscow Times that there are several such attacks every week. In a recent letter to refugee relief organizations worldwide, that chaplaincy characterized "the skinhead problem" as "serious" and pleaded that the refugees be allowed to settle in third countries, especially in the United States. "The authorities do not have the will to stop the violence," the letter stated. The police say they do not keep statistics on racist attacks and do not consider the attacks a widespread problem.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT NOW PROTECTS OMSK SYNAGOGUE. After vandals smashed the windows of the Omsk, Russia synagogue several times earlier this year, the Jewish community has persuaded the regional administration to provide around-the-clock police protection to the building, according to Aleksandr Sakov, UCSJ's Omsk monitor. No incidents have occurred since a police post was set up, and the regional government's budget covers the expenses.

PUTIN DISTRUSTS ORTHODOX CHURCH AND HAS HIS OWN IDEAS ON RELIGION. Contrary to common belief, the Russian government's relations with the Moscow Patriarchate are "strained" and the Kremlin does not trust the Orthodox Church, a senior advisor to President Vladimir Putin told Keston News Service, the Oxford-based institution specializing in religion in communist and post-communist lands. In an exclusive interview on August 30 and published on September 7, Keston cited Maksim Meyer, an aide responsible for domestic policy including religious affairs, as stating that the disagreement stems from the "monarchist slant" of the social doctrine published by the Orthodox Church last summer. "The Russian Orthodox Church is so close to the state that they ought to consult us," Meyer said. "We are constantly supporting them." He revealed that the Russian political leadership finds Church leaders "dishonest and doesn't trust them."

Islam was a theme to which Meyer kept returning in the interview. He stressed the need for Russia's own institute for training Islamic clergy "to stop them going to Saudi Arabia." While asserting that the Orthodox Church requested government protection from Islam, Meyer claimed that both confessions would rank as equals should a status of traditional confession be introduced in Russia. Meyer envisaged such a scheme as extending to Catholics and Protestants. When Keston asked whether Baptists, Pentecostals and Adventists would all be included as traditional Protestants, Meyer replied that "a line would have to be drawn somewhere." Then he swiftly changed tack, stating firmly: "But I am against the whole idea - it is all the intrigues of the Moscow Patriarchate - we don't need such a status. If the Russian Orthodox Church has problems they need to sort them out themselves. It is their problem if people leave parishes and go to the Pentecostals, if they can't attract people."

During his August 20 visit to Solovetsky Monastery, Putin praised what he called Orthodoxy's historical emphasis on the equality of all peoples that, he said, "must be made the backbone of Russia's domestic and foreign policies." (See Bigotry Monitor #9, August 24.) Keston asked if that statement indicated a preference for an even-handed religious policy originating lower down the presidential administration. "No," Meyer answered, Putin "thought it up himself. He thinks up a lot himself."

COURT SHUTS DOWN SALVATION ARMY IN MOSCOW. On September 12, a Moscow district court ruled that the city's Salvation Army branch be liquidated. But the Salvation Army is mounting a challenge in Russia's Constitutional Court, contending that the ruling would not go into effect until the Constitutional Court has heard the appeal. The Salvation Army has also filed its case with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Having reported on a Salvation Army soup kitchen feeding 50-60 persons a day at the Paveletsky Station, the government paper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" asked why Moscow authorities refuse registration for "an organization engaged in good deeds." Kenneth Baillie of the Salvation Army believes that the government considers "the Army" a "militarized organization" and therefore illegal. But according to Vladimir Zhbankov, deputy head of the Chief Department of the Ministry of Justice for Moscow, the reason for the liquidation of the capital chapter of the Salvation Army is that it did not submit its documents in proper order and thereby demonstrated disrespect for Russian laws. "They were not even able to decide whether they are a religious or a charitable organization, and it is unclear what religious confession they have," Zhbankov told "Rossiyskaya Gazeta." "If they had taken account of our comments and corrected their charter, which is full of contradictions, and had not gone to court, there would not have been any problem."

TURKMEN PROTESTANTS ARE RAIDED THE SECOND TIME THIS YEAR. On August 15 in the Turkmen capital Ashgabad, ten officials from the police, the district administration and the KNB (the former KGB) burst into an apartment where about 20 members of the Greater Grace Protestant Church gathered for prayer, Keston News Service learned. All worshipers were taken to the Second Police Department of Kopetdag District, where KNB officers interrogated each, recording where they worked and warning them that they were forbidden to meet, as their church was unregistered. After five hours everyone was released. The incident marked the second time this year that Turkmen authorities detained church members during prayers. Though Turkmen laws do not ban unregistered religious activity, officials insist that such activity is illegal. The state has extended recognition only to communities belonging to the Sunni Muslim Board and the Russian Orthodox Church.

CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST FAR RIGHT HUNGARIAN LEADER. Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIEP) Deputy Chairman Laszlo Bognar will not have to stand trial for his antisemitic comment on the sale of the Ferencvaros soccer club (FTC), according to Hungarian press reports. (See Bigotry Monitor #6, August 3.) On September 3, the Prosecutor-General's Office in Budapest approved the earlier decision of the Central Prosecution Investigative Office not to indict Bognar. A spokesman explained that the prosecutor-general is unable to file charges against Bognar as he did not "incite people to commit hostile actions or passions" against an ethnic community. On July 3, Bognar said that the sale of Ferencvaros to a group of local Jewish businessmen was "against the interests of the Hungarian nation." Oszkar Egri, a lawyer representing the Federation of Jewish Religious Communities in Hungary, charged that current Hungarian legislation does not provide for taking effective action against racism.

SOCCER HOOLIGANS AND 'THE JEWISH CARD'
a letter from Budapest

Many Hungarians say that they recognize on the television screen the faces of a few dozen men who have been turning soccer games - the country's favorite sport - into antisemitic guerrilla theater. "For years we have been looking at the same ugly faces," explained one Jewish soccer fan born during World War II who says he stopped going to the games because he does not want to hear shouts of 'Sieg Heil' and see the Nazi salute. "These people play no part in conventional party politics. They get their kicks going to soccer games and screaming antisemitic epithets at the top of their voices. Usually, it's the same simple racial slur, but sometimes they compete by making up fancy versions. Most of the fans think it's disgusting but have learned to ignore what goes on. There is no way to shut up these hooligans. A counter-demonstration would only help them put on a bigger and louder spectacle. Besides, a brawl would follow any confrontation, and there is no sense to that."

"For those hooligans, it's all a joke, an obscene joke, and they play it up for all it's worth, game after game," says another Jew, in his 30s. "But it's not a joke. It's their politics, and they want to prove that they are a force to be reckoned with, and they try to recruit others to join them."

At stadium gates the police will confiscate banners and posters with antisemitic content. But they do not strip-search individuals who wrap under their sweaters or shirts banners with a slogan such as "The train is leaving…" which is unfurled during the game and paired with a friend's banner that completes the sentence: "… for Auschwitz." Jewish leaders have asked for the prosecution of such people for making racist statements. The government has been reluctant to do that, and it does little or nothing to bring back normalcy in the stadiums. Jews are outraged, and many of them charge that the government's inaction has to do with its courtship of the right, including the far right.

At a really big game, such as the one that pits "the Jewish club" MTK against "the Aryan club" FTC - both monikers refer to history rather than current reality - the screamers may number in the hundreds, and the show they put on has helped reduce the ranks of spectators from tens of thousands to a few thousand, which in turn has forced owners of the clubs to raise admission prices. Nevertheless, owning a popular soccer club is good business, say the experts, because of the sales of such items as T-shirts and the clubs' substantial real estate holdings that can be developed. Insiders in the Jewish community are convinced that the opportunity to earn good money is what prompted millionaire Gabor Varszegi to buy FTC, the club known for its antisemitic fans, and not some sense of mission owing to his Jewish origins, which do not matter to him the least bit. The likelihood that Varszegi, who has a reputation as a brilliant businessman, will profit from his investment has further enraged anti-Semitic soccer fans as well as others who see him as an unsavory representative of the post-communist entrepreneurial class and the equivalent of a Russian oligarch.

"We should not waste our energies on the soccer hooligans," says one communal leader who describes his politics as strictly neutral. "Some of my colleagues think that they get more public attention and more support from Jewish organizations outside the country if they emphasize that Hungarian Jews are in danger, that a neo-Nazi wave is just around the corner and those disrupting soccer games are its harbingers." He argues that the hooligans are out to get attention and that Jewish organizations should not help them by picturing them as important. "The government is right in ignoring the hooligans," he says, but he too would have preferred a high-level government condemnation of the antisemitic statements by rightwing politicians after Varszegi's purchase of FTC. The communal leader also finds it significant that since the end of the communist era in 1989, soccer hooligans as well as conventional antisemites have gotten more vocal before elections.

The elections scheduled for next April contribute to the tension on the subject of antisemitism. Some Hungarian Jews are convinced that the former communists who now call themselves Socialists and their allies, the Free Democrats, play "the Jewish card." They are out to prove that the current right-of-center government is far more to the right than it admits, and it does not wish to cope with racism in Hungarian society. These charges, whispered into the ears of diplomats and foreign correspondents, tarnish Hungary's image in the outside world, which in turn encourages some voters to cast their ballots for the left.

One Jewish intellectual in his 20s argues that former communists play leading roles in the Jewish communal structure and they continue to play left-wing politics. "They take their cues from the Socialist Party which leaves no stone unturned in getting back to power," he says. "The Socialists see next year's election as their last chance to recover their positions. They recognize that the government coalition is vulnerable on the subject of antisemitism, so they exaggerate every aspect of it. Some Jewish communal leaders and intellectuals help the Socialists and spread the word that the ruling Fidesz-Forum coalition is antisemitic. They also tell every visitor that the Socialists are sure to win in April."

The communal leader opposed to the priority given to fighting soccer hooliganism agrees. "Fidesz leaders may be nationalistic and defensive, even brittle in their youthful pride," he says. "But they are decent people, and we can work with them - as long as we don't threaten them or give orders. But they know very well where some of our communal leaders come from in the old communist apparatus, so relations are strained from the outset and unlikely to get better." He adds with a sigh: "We also need to educate Fidesz that not every Hungarian Jew was a communist or had communist parents."

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * Aleksandr Barkashov told a congress of the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity he founded ten years ago: "With or without elections, we will come to power. If we have to wage war, we will wage war."

end
Copyright (c) 2001. UCSJ. All rights reserved.

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