Volume 7, Number 35
Friday, September 14, 2007

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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ETHNIC RUSSIAN GUNNED DOWN IN INGUSHETIA. On September 7, an ethnic Russian woman was shot dead in Ingushetia, “amplifying fears that Russians are being targeted in an effort by insurgents to destabilize the republic,” the Associated Press (AP) reported. Natalya Mudarova, the director of a blood-transfusion center at a hospital, was shot near her home in the Caucasian republic's main city, Nazran, prosecutors said. Assailants opened fire with automatic rifles from a car that sped away from the scene of the crime. The next day, gunmen attacked troops at a base in Malgobek with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. One serviceman and two attackers were killed.

According to AP’s report, seven ethnic Russians have been killed in three separate attacks this summer in Ingushetia.

The same day in neighboring Chechnya, a prominent rebel, Musa Mutiyev, was killed in Grozny, authorities said.

According to “Izvestia” of September 9, in Ingushetia “almost every week military units, the homes of citizens, police departments and individual policemen, markets, and vodka shops are fired upon.”

ROMA FAMILY SHOT DEAD. On September 10, a group of masked men burst into the home of a Roma family named Lyalikov in the town of Ordzhonikidze, Ingushetia, demanded money, and then shot to death a middle-aged couple, their two adult sons, and an unspecified number of children, according to a report by the Russian news web site Gazeta.ru.

Police investigators told the press that ethnic hatred motivated the crime.

Other recent murders that have taken place in Ordzhonikidze include ethnic Russian and Korean families. Observers suggest that the killings are intended to discourage the return of ethnic Russians who fled the violence of the two Chechen wars.

PASTOR’S SON BEATEN FOR NOT PARTICIPATING IN ORTHODOX PRAYER. The son of a Protestant pastor was attacked in school by classmates following his non-participation in a Russian Orthodox prayer held on the first day of school, according to a September 6 report by the Slavic Law and Justice Center, which monitors religious freedom issues in Russia.

Pastor Aleksey Perov of the Reorganized Latter Day Saints Church (an offshoot of Mormonism) in the village of Gribanovsky told the Center that on the first day of school, a Russian Orthodox priest visited the first grade classroom that his son David attends and led the children in a prayer. Some of the other children noticed that David did not participate in the prayer, and they beat him up twice during recesses. Perov, who heads a small congregation of about 20 members, told the Center that many of his fellow village residents view his church with suspicion, calling him a "sect member" and a "traitor" because he is not Orthodox. He added that the public school will soon add Orthodox theology courses to its curriculum, a policy that has been implemented in five other regions of the country.

WINDOWS OF MOSCOW REGION MOSQUE SHATTERED. Unidentified persons threw concrete blocks through the windows of a mosque in Balashikha, Russia (Moscow Region) during last Friday’s prayer services, the imam of the prayer house, Rais Izmaylov, told RIA Novosti. According to the national daily "Novye Izvestiya," one block narrowly missed the head of a worshiper kneeling in prayer. "Following the end of Friday's reading, the sound of breaking glass rang out and we heard foul-mouthed insults addressed at the followers of Islam," Izmaylov said, adding that he ran out on the street and saw a group of young people running away. According to Izmaylov, this is the fourth such incident in the past three months. The previous attacks involved the breaking of windows, the daubing of racist slogans on the walls of the prayer house, and the shouting of slogans such as "Muslims should leave the country" and "there is no place for Islamists here." He added that police have increased patrols in the area. No arrests have been reported in connection with any of the incidents.

RACISTS ATTACK MIXED-RACE BOYS. A group of youths attacked two mixed-race boys in Ryazan while screaming "Sieg Heil!" according to a September 6 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The previously unreported attack took place on May 22. The older victim lost consciousness after one of the youths shattered a bottle on his head. The attack ended when a woman passing by screamed for help and the youths fled. The victims were not robbed, increasing the likelihood that the assault was a hate crime. The victims alleged that a local hospital refused to treat them. They later reported the incident to the police. There have been no arrests.

VIGILANTE GROUP STAGES ANTI-SECT SHOW. The pro-Kremlin youth group known as "Mestnye" (Russian for "The Locals") -- known for its racist anti-migrant "raids" and protest actions -- held an "anti-sect" demonstration in a Moscow suburb, according to a September 5 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. On August 29, "Mestnye" activists in Elektrostal put together a theatrical production titled "No to sects on Russian land!" featuring a stereotypical American missionary brainwashing a naive Russian boy. A Russian Orthodox priest from a nearby church made a speech after the performance.

In a bizarre turn of events, on the evening of the demonstration, three youths attacked a Russian Orthodox cultural center, apparently because of a misperception that it was somehow connected to Jehovah's Witnesses, Sova reported. The youths smashed windows with metal pipes and then turned on the center's employees, striking one man on the head with a pipe and beating and kicking another. One victim was hospitalized. The youths reportedly said that they had come to the center in order to "beat up Jehovists.”

EXTREMISM RISES IN FAR EAST BUT TERROR ATTACKS DECLINE, SAYS FSB. Efforts to prevent extremism must be stepped up in Russia's Far East region, Nikolai Patrushev, chairman of the National Counterterrorism Committee and the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), told the press in Khabarovsk on September 10, according to Interfax. He said that extremism has been on the rise in the region, “creating conditions in which terror attacks become possible.”

On the other hand, across Russia, the incidence of terror attacks has been declining, Patrushev disclosed. Twenty-one terror attacks were reported in Russia in the first half of 2007, compared to 66 a year earlier, Patrushev said, citing FSB figures. "We can see a downturn,” he said. “But we are worried by the overall number of manifestations of terrorism, especially in the Southern Federal District."

ONLY 36% OF RUSSIAN NGOS REPORTED TO GOVERNMENT. Only 36% of 216,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) registered in Russia have reported to the Federal Registration Service the results of their work, Sergei Vasilev, head of the Federal Registration Service, said at a briefing in “Rossiiskaya Gazeta” on September 11, according to Itar-Tass. “According to the law, which came into force in 2006, all the NGOs were to submit reports on their work by April 15, but less than 20% of them submitted reports by that date. After that the deadline was moved to June 1, 2007 (28 per cent of NCOs submitted reports by that date), and later to September 1, by which date the reports were submitted by 36% of NGOs,” Vasilev said. “Some 64% of the NGOs just ignore the Russian legislation, after which they tell journalists about oppression on the part of the state.”

According to Vasilev, NGOs fail to submit reports because many of them exist only on paper and do not work at all, and others are trying to conceal the results of their work, primarily the spending of money.

ANTISEMITIC MESSAGES SCRAWLED ON JEWISH SCHOOL. Vandals scrawled antisemitic messages on a Jewish school in Ukraine, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on September 10. Students at the ORT Aleph Jewish Gymnasium in Zaporozhe returned to school last week to find “Jews, get out” and “Death to Jews” spray-painted on the building. The incident was reported to the police. About 20,000 Jews live among Zaporozhe’s 800,000 residents. The ORT school has some 300 students.

RABBI OUT OF DANGER AFTER STABBING ATTACK IN FRANKFURT. After a rabbi was stabbed in Frankfurt, a German Jewish leader fueled debate by proposing to extend "no-go areas" beyond eastern Germany, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on September 9. "Given the increasing acts of violence against minorities here in Germany, you have to ask yourself if the discussion about 'no-go areas' shouldn't apply beyond the eastern parts of Germany to other areas," Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said. Knobloch was referring to the controversy whether certain areas in the former East Germany are dangerous for those who appear to be non-German. A spate of attacks on people of African and Indian background has prompted discussion on the issue, JTA reported.

After surgery, Rabbi Zalman Gurevitch, 42, was in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries. Gurevitch, director of the Chabad Center in Frankfurt, described his attacker as a "Mediterranean type" who spoke Arabic, according to JTA. He reportedly said something in Arabic, threatened to kill Gurevitch, and then stabbed him in the stomach.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, WHY RUSSIA MUSTN’T COMPETE IN IDEOLOGY * * * “Russian policy … has managed so far to avoid the inclination toward ideology,” wrote in “The Moscow Times” of September 11 Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of “Russia in Global Affairs.” “True, there have been some signs that something different is beginning to emerge from Russia's pragmatism. Moral overtones have slipped into more recent utterances, and something more messianic could always develop from the simple idea of multipolarity, with claims to be the defender of diversity in values. But this is the last thing Russia needs. There is no point in trying to compete with the missionaries on the other side of the Atlantic.”

FEAR AND FEAR-MONGERING
Hungary’s President Solyom Urges Society to Understand Those Who Fear Neo-Nazism

Opening the fall session of parliament on September 10, Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom defended those who fear, however unrealistically, a Nazi revival, and he called upon Hungarians not to choose symbols that remind the Jewish and Roma communities of their wartime persecutors, the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross. But he reserved his sharpest condemnation for those who keep making use of the fear of the Nazis as a political tool.

In a language more literary than political, Solyom did not name the Jewish and the Roma communities but made it clear where he stands in the debate over the relevance of their fear of Nazi revival, even though he does not believe that the fear is realistic. “I acknowledge and defend the fear of those who were targets and victims of racial discrimination and persecution, those who were slated to be killed, were cast out of the nation, and were deported from the country,” he said. “Facing the fear of Holocaust survivors, I find myself speechless. It would be senseless to bring up rational arguments to the effect that historic circumstances have changed and that there is no danger.”

Solyom told his nation that while the Holocaust has become “a universal parable of humanity” and “of timeless relevance,” for those who lived through it, “it is always part of the present. Remembrance of the victims is part of their identity as well as their children’s.” He urged Hungarian society to understand that. “Because of respect for the dead and the survivors’ sorrows,” he continued, those who want to express their opposition to the current government must not choose a flag that reminds the survivors of Arrow Cross symbols. He called for “humane feelings” that take into account the pain caused by the sight of such symbols.

In conclusion, Solyom seemed to condemn the government, though without naming it, for the offense of “mocking the fear [of Nazi revival] by making use of it.” He did not mention that it is the communist (and Nazi) practice to resort to fear mongering, in the hope of bringing over to their side those people whose fears prompt them to look for protection from the enemy, whether real or imagined.

No government official in the former Soviet bloc has analyzed the lingering fear of a lurch to the far right with as much sensitivity as legal scholar Solyom, 65, a former president of the Constitutional Court, a devout environmentalist, and an independent in a country of fiercely combative political parties. Clearly, as Solyom hinted early on in his speech, he had been listening to Holocaust survivors as well as the generation that followed. He did not fall into the trap of lecturing to people whose nightmares are deeply rooted in their youth or are inherited, surging with every swastika they see daubed on a wall and far-right demonstration they run into.

The leader of the opposition, Viktor Orban of Fidesz, thanked Solyom for his speech. He pledged that in the “struggle for democracy and human dignity,” Solyom could count on the Fidesz party, whose predecessors the Nazis and the Communists had once banned. Speaking for his party SzDSz that is in coalition with the ruling Socialists, Matyas Eorsi emphasized that Nazism today no longer poses a danger either in Hungary or elsewhere in the world. A churlish response came from Ildiko Lendvai of the Socialists (the former communists). She said she found herself in disagreement with the head of state because Solyom thinks he lives in a monarchy rather than a republic.

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