Volume One, Number 11
Friday, September 21, 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 _____________________________________________________________

U.S. AND RUSSIA FACE IMPLACABLE ENEMIES, UNRELIABLE ALLIES - AND EACH OTHER. The U.S. search for allies to combat terrorism gets more complex each day as the waves of shock and sympathy following the September 11attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon recede. Launching a diplomatic offensive to link the Chechen war to American strategy, the Russians suffered a double setback on September 17 as rebels temporarily seized Chechnya's second city Gudermes and shot down a helicopter over the capital Grozny, killing ten senior officers aboard, including two generals. The same day Itar-Tass news agency quoted a spokesman for the Federal Security Service (or FSB, as the former KGB is now known) who claimed that computer disks with Boeing 737 technical data had been seized in a Chechen arms dump, along with fundamentalist literature. FSB officials added that they have circumstantial evidence that one of the suicide bombers in America previously fought in the ranks of Chechen rebels. Anxious to play its Arab card, Russia is dispatching its Chechen administrator for the rebellious republic, Akhmad Kadyrov, to meet with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. According to commentator Sanobar Shermatova, who has reported on both Chechen wars for the weekly Moscow News, Kadyrov's assignment is to stop Arab money going to Chechen rebels and to convince Arab leaders to start paying their debts into a fund that Moscow says will rebuild Chechnya. All the muftis of the Northern Caucasus are accompanying Kadyrov.

According to Vitaly Ponomarev filing for the website "strana.ru," set up to present the Kremlin's thinking, each Central Asian state that borders Afghanistan has its own view of military cooperation with the United States. At one end of the spectrum is Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov - rated by many the worst violator of human rights in the region and known for close links with the Taliban - stressing his country's neutrality. On the other hand, Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said that U.S. forces may use Uzbek territory and airspace for strikes against the Taliban. (Uzbekistan's record of suppressing human rights is only slightly worse than Turkmenistan's.) His statement, which Ponomarev called "unambiguous," reflects in his opinion the Uzbek "desire to take advantage of the situation in order to wipe out the threat coming from Uzbekistan's Islamic movement whose leaders have the support of the Taliban." (Some time later, on September 18, President Islam Karimov announced: "We did not make such promises.") As for Tajikistan, heavily dependent on Russia, its position will be determined in Moscow, Ponomarev noted.

The Chechen rebels' website "Kavkaz-Tsentr" predicts that the "anti-terrorist cooperation" declared by the USA and Russia "will boil down to a basic exchange of intelligence information on Afghanistan, which Moscow has in abundance after ten years of war" and which could help in the event of a U.S. military action. The website concludes that the "West will repay such a service by promising total non-interference" in Russia's war in Chechnya.

Interviewed on Russia TV's "Details" program on September 18, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow stressed hopes rather than achievements in the dialogue between the two governments since the terrorist attack. He envisaged what he first called a "long-term program," then changed "program" to "campaign" and ended his remarks by expressing "keen interest" in developing "new relations with the Russian Federation." Asked if Pakistan could be relied upon after its years of support for the Taliban, he said he was "encouraged" by Pakistan's efforts to pressure the Taliban while waiting to see if the efforts would be "effective." He seemed to address himself to the Russian masses by describing the U.S. attitude toward the 1998 terrorist bombings of the apartment bombings in Russia as "serious" and downplaying the U.S. position on Russia's Chechnya policy as "concerned." The vigorous 48-year-old career diplomat voiced the hope that "our Russian partners will not rule out any form of cooperation as the campaign develops."

On September 19 in Moscow, senior U.S. and Russian officials, led by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov, met and issued a communiqué announcing an agreement "to further enhance joint and parallel efforts to counter threats coming from the Taliban in Afghanistan." A few hours earlier, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of Russia's General Staff, was more specific. During a visit to Tajikistan, he said that Russia "has not considered, and is not planning to consider, participation in a military operation against Afghanistan."

ROSTOV COMMUNISTS AND NEO-NAZIS FORM ALLIANCE. In articles published on September 6 and 11, "Nashe Vremya," a newspaper in the southern Russian city of Rostov na-Donu, accused the Communist candidate for governor, Leonid Ivanchenko, of allying himself with the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU). Ivanchenko's candidacy was recently ended by a local election commission's decision - which had nothing to do with RNU - to remove him from the ballot, causing a scandal. "Nashe Vremya" reported that swastika-wearing RNU members attended a pro-Ivanchenko rally and that Vladimir Dek, a local nationalist politician with RNU ties, appeared on the stage with Ivanchenko, who tenderly referred to Dek as "Volodya." In describing the rally, the paper characterized the "party of Internationalists-Leninists" as taking under its roof "Russian Nazis" whose "black shirts and swastika armbands looked striking against the background of red flags with the hammer-and-sickle and a snow white bust of Lenin."

RUSSIA FACES EX-PRISONER'S HUMAN RIGHTS CHARGES IN EUROPEAN COURT. Another first for Russia and for the human rights of prisoners: Valery Kalashnikov, head of the North-east Commercial Bank convicted of embezzlement in 1999, is the first private Russian citizen to plead against his government before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, charging breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. His case is the first to be tried against Russia since that government ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998 as a condition of its joining the Council of Europe. According to the Financial Times, Kalashnikov was held in a pre-trial detention center in the Far East city of Magadan from June 1995 until he was eventually sentenced in October 1999, and then returned to the detention center after his release from prison until new charges were dropped in June 2000. He charges that his cell was overcrowded and unsanitary, that prisoners slept in shifts and suffered from tuberculosis and syphilis, that he was beaten up and his family was not permitted to visit him. His case will be watched as the first to come to trial of the nearly 1,400 cases brought against Russia since 1998, including those involving human rights abuses in Chechnya. The Financial Times noted that the case "will prove a test for Russia's criminal justice system, which President Vladimir Putin has given top priority to reforming as part of his stated aim to introduce a 'dictatorship of the law.'"

POPE'S VISIT TO KAZAKHSTAN MAY HELP STATE OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. At 82 and ailing, Pope John Paul II continues to pursue an activist foreign policy in the former Soviet Union. Having visited Ukraine earlier this year, he is scheduled to arrive in Kazakhstan on September 22 and proceed to Armenia on September 25. While the Vatican describes both countries as "lands of Christian martyrdom" referring especially to the persecution under Stalin, those watching the state of religious freedom will judge the success of the papal visit by an improvement of conditions in Kazakhstan for those outside officially approved Islam and the Orthodox Church. Although Kazakhstan signed an accord with the Vatican three years ago regulating relations, Catholic leaders run into bureaucratic problems over visas for foreign priests and registration of parishes, reports Keston News Service. "The Kazakh law on freedom of conscience and religious associations conforms to international legal standards, and in principle we have no complaints against it," Birgit Kainz, human rights officer at the Almaty mission of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), told Keston. "But the problem is that it is far from being put into practice universally. State officials frequently ignore legal standards and infringe the rights of believers." Almaty-based lawyer Roman Podoprigora sees a pattern: the further officials are from the capital, the more frequently officials violate the law. "Even in Russia it's become commonplace for believers insisting on their rights to challenge the authorities in the courts and win," he said. "But in our country, each such case is regarded as a sensation." According to the head of the Almaty Helsinki Committee, Ninel Fokina, the authorities ignore the constitutional principle of non-interference by the secular state in religious affairs and publicly favor the two main religions, Islam and Orthodoxy. (Muslim Kazakhs make up 52% of the population of 8 million, and Russians account for 36%.) One missionary said that 8,000 Kazakhs have become Protestants which the government interprets as "a virtual threat to national security." Kainz acknowledges "harsh opposition to proselytism" but sees that not so much "a deliberate state policy" as a reflection of the majority view.

ARMENIAN CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR SENTENCED; OTHERS FREED. When a Yerevan court sentenced Jehovah's Witness Gevork Palyan to one year's imprisonment on September 12 for refusing military service on religious grounds, he was the latest in a long line of conscientious objectors to face imprisonment in Armenia for refusing to perform military service, Keston News Service reports. To date 37 Jehovah's Witnesses have been released, following a parliamentary decree of June 12. Declaring an amnesty for all prisoners serving sentences of up to three years, the decree honored the 1,700th anniversary of the proclamation of Christianity as Armenia's state religion. On January 25 this year Armenia became the forty-second member state of the Council of Europe on the understanding that it will comply with a number of conditions, one of which is "the adoption within three years of accession, of a law on alternative service in compliance with European standards and, in the meantime, to pardon all conscientious objectors sentenced to prison terms, … allowing them instead … to perform non-armed military service or alternative civilian service." Keston has learned that no alternative service law is in preparation. As of September 10, 13 Jehovah's Witnesses remain in prisons or penal colonies due to their refusal to perform military service. On September 18, Jehovah's Witness Levon Markaryan was found not guilty of the charge of "infringement of the person and rights of citizens under the guise of performing religious rituals" - a seldom used law dating back to Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religious drive in the 1960s. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe welcomed the verdict and expressed the hope that a new law on alternative military service will prevent similar prosecutions. The prosecutors have vowed to appeal. Three more cases await trial.

* * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "I will only believe that believers of all confessions have equal rights in Kazakhstan when at official events not just the mufti and the Orthodox archbishops, but also representatives of other religions stand alongside the president of the country," Protestant pastor Roman Dudnik told Keston News Service on September 6 in Almaty. Accusing Kazakh authorities of trying to limit the spread of Protestantism, Dudnik explained their logic: "If today people may freely choose a creed, then tomorrow they will be able to choose a president."

RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES FAIL TO APPLY CRIMINAL LAW AGAINST INCITING HATRED. reflections on a dismal record

Under Article 282 of the Russian criminal code, the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred is illegal, and the ban extends to incitement of hatred through published material. But a large number of recent cases in different parts of Russia suggest that the authorities fail to apply that law, which is likely to stem from failures of the local justice system rather than from a federal initiative. The center's sin is more of omission than commission.

Case number one is from Sverdlovsk Oblast. In late July, Dr. Mikhail Oshtrakh, president of a cultural association called the Jewish National Autonomy of Sverdlovsk Oblast, appealed to the regional prosecutor's office, asking that criminal charges be brought against the local diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been distributing a book that contains excerpts from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the infamous tsarist-era forgery which purports to be a record of a secret meeting of powerful Jews planning to control the world. The Nazis used "The Protocols" to justify their policy of exterminating Jews.

In early September, Dr. Oshtrakh, who is also UCSJ's monitor in the region, was informed by phone that the Sverdlovsk Oblast prosecutor decided against bringing criminal charges against the Sverdlovsk diocese for inciting ethnic and religious hatred.

According to the inside cover page, the book had the blessing of Archbishop Afanasy of Perm. However, after UCSJ's Perm monitor Eduard Kiselgof contacted the diocese, Archbishop Afanasy wrote a letter to Dr. Oshtrakh categorically denying that he had blessed the book He also expressed his "respectful attitude towards the Jewish community" and concluded his letter as follows: "One hopes that there will be no more incidents to chill our relations. Russia is our common home and let no one shatter the peace within it."

According to Nickolai Butkevich, research director of UCSJ, there is no reason to disbelieve the archbishop, as he does not belong to the minority of bishops distributing works like "The Protocols." Unfortunately, Butkevich adds, "the real problem is that this highly visible minority is rarely blocked by the Russian Orthodox leadership."

The second case comes from the Russian city of Ufa in the Republic of Bashkortostan where the Prosecutor's Office informed the Jewish community in late August that it gave up on finding the distributors of antisemitic leaflets that had surfaced in some of the city's Russian Orthodox churches. The leaflets began circulating in July, addressing Jews as "damned Kikes," proclaiming that "the blood and torture Russia is going through is on your shoulders" and "you will always be blamed for this sin." The text went on to call Jews "servants of Satan," saying: "Your father is the devil, and you want to make all of us worship him." The same message was printed in a calendar commemorating the anniversary of the murder of the last tsar and his family and put on sale at a local Orthodox church. The local bishop denied any connection with the leaflet or the calendar.

Case number three: In Samara, Aleksandr Brod, UCSJ's local monitor and editor of the Jewish newspaper "Tarbut," filed a criminal complaint against Oleg Kitter and his blatantly antisemitic newspaper "Aleks-Inform." A former deputy mayor of Samara with close ties to neo-Nazi organizations, Kitter declared at a press conference two years ago that it is necessary to "demolish all synagogues in Russia and expel the Jews." His paper has reprinted excerpts from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and published articles on the destructive role of Jews throughout history.

A court hearing has been postponed several times over the past year. Then, in early September, the legal department of the Ministry of the Press ruled that "Aleks-Inform" does not violate laws prohibiting the incitement of ethnic hatred. Brod first learned of the decision during an August 24 meeting with the head of the Volga Regional Department of the Ministry of the Press, Svetlana Zhdanova. Her office had already issued two warnings to Kitter and recommended that the ministry do the same. A warning from the central government could have been used to shut down the paper, Brod noted.

The ministry's indifference came as no surprise to Brod. "The Ministry of the Press was headed for a time by Boris Mironov, who was fired for his chauvinistic views," Brod said. "Later, he became an infamous antisemitic agitator. Obviously, people from his team still work in the ministry, and they don't see anything illegal in the publication 'Aleks-Inform.'"

According to political commentator Mark Deych writing in "Moskovsky Komsomolets" on April 4, in the last eleven years only three individuals were sentenced for what the Criminal Code defines as "actions, directed toward incitement of national, racial or religious hostility, debasement of dignity, and equally the propaganda of exclusion, superiority or inferiority on the basis of religion, national or racial membership." The first was Smirnov-Ostashvili, who, together with his gang, perpetrated what Deych called "a pogrom" in 1990 in the Central House of Writers. The Moscow City Court sentenced him to two years of "deprivation of freedom." However, Deych noted, the judge presiding over the case, Andrei Muratov, was quickly removed from his bench. "Two other Nazis shared a mild scare," Deych went on. "For an openly racist speech at Moscow State University, a certain Lazarenko was sentenced to a year and a half of conditional deprivation of freedom. The former member of the Central Committee of the Liberal Democratic Party, Kostromin received three years in Yekaterinburg, but also conditionally."

Recent trials have made use of a new device: expert witnesses. Deych cites a trial in St. Petersburg of a man who printed the following in a magazine: "Yids and gypsies are dark-white mongrels." However, Deych wrote, a Ph.D. named Kozlov, "demonstrated that the word 'Yid' is not offensive, and 'mongrel' is a completely scientific term." In another trial quoted by Deych, the publisher of the antisemitic St. Petersburg newspaper "Nashe Otechestvo" also relied on an expert witness, a certain Begunov, who explained to the court that "Yid" is "a totally academic term" and "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a legitimate historic document.

Both men were acquitted. The cases are closed.

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