Volume 2, Number 39
Friday, October 4, 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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BELARUS ADOPTS EUROPE'S MOST REPRESSIVE RELIGION LAW. Europe's last dictatorship is about to adopt what Keston News Service, an authoritative news agency specializing in religion, has called the continent's most repressive law on religion. On October 2, by a vote of 46 to 2, the upper house of the Belarusian parliament adopted the amendments to the country's religion law. If signed by President Aleksandr Lukashenko in the next ten days, which observers consider certain, the legislation will outlaw unregistered religious activity; require compulsory prior censorship for all religious literature; ban foreign citizens from leading religious organizations; restrict publishing and education to faiths that have ten registered communities, including at least one that had registration in 1982; and ban all but occasional, small religious meetings in private homes. One of the two senators to vote against the bill, Yadviga Grigorovich, told Reuters: "Religious peace in our country is very shaky. If this law is passed, interfaith conflicts await Belarus."

Among the protesters is Artur Livshits of the Civic Initiative For Freedom of Conscience. "The first people to suffer will be the Protestants and all the non-traditional faiths," he told Keston. "It is not good for the Jews either." He pointed out that small religious communities not able to muster the 20 adult citizens required for registration under the new law would be rendered illegal. "People won't be able to meet for religious purposes in private homes," he explained. "If someone wants to meet for Friday Shabbat prayers and light candles, it will be an offence. The police will take them from their apartment."

Only Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk, the leader of the Moscow Patriarchate's exarchate, issued a strong endorsement of the law. According to Keston, the Roman Catholic Church, the Muslim community, and some elements of the Jewish and Lutheran communities have supported the draft to differing extents, but with reservations. In an extensive survey by Keston, all other faiths expressed serious concern about provisions in the draft law that will ban all unregistered religious activity and forbid all but the oldest religious communities from importing or publishing religious literature, maintaining religious colleges, and inviting foreigners to serve in Belarus.

In his statement, Metropolitan Filaret contended that "there is nothing undemocratic about the preamble of the law which is causing the fight." He was referring to the preamble's recognition of the Orthodox Church's "determining role" in Belarusian history and lower-level recognition of the Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, and Muslim faiths.

SKINHEAD VIOLENCE IN CHELYABINSK AND SARATOV. Late at night on Saturday, September 21, a group of skinheads attacked a Hare Krishna temple in Chelyabinsk, according to the newspaper "Vecherny Chelyabinsk" of September 24. The attackers broke a lock, shattered several windows with rocks, and then entered the temple, where they threw rocks at the Hare Krishnas inside while shouting "We will cut your throats!" and accusations of pedophilia. Two Hare Krishnas chased down three of the attackers and got into a fight with them. The skinheads lost but managed to escape. Police arrived soon afterwards, but didn't record the incident as a crime. Later that night, the skinheads returned and once again threw rocks through the windows.

In Saratov, skinhead violence marred the City Day festival, the newspaper "Tribuna" reported on September 24. According to the prosecutor in charge of the case, 30 to 40 skinheads left a nightclub near Theater Square and walked toward a café called Tornado where three Armenians were at work serving shishkebab. The skinheads threw rocks and bottles at the Armenians. Wielding a kitchen knife, one of the Armenians killed a youth and later turned himself in to the police. He is charged with intentional murder.

"Tribuna" quoted the dead youth's friends blaming the incident on the Armenians who, they claimed, insulted a girl who tried to buy shishkebab. Ataman Andrey Fetisov, a local Cossack leader, was quoted as saying that the Armenian deserves full punishment. He also called for public hearings on the subject of ethnic hatred in Saratov.

RUSSIAN TEENAGERS CLASH WITH ETHNIC ARMENIAN YOUTHS. At about 10 pm on September 27 in Rostov Oblast, a group of ethnic Armenians clashed in a park with a "brigade of Russian National Unity," an ultranationalist party, Interfax-AVN reported the following day. Police subdued the fight and arrested 37 teenage boys.

On September 28 in Moscow, police detained two youths charged with beating a citizen of Tajikistan on the metro.

ST. PETERSBURG MONUMENT TO GULAG VICTIMS DEFILED. Unidentified individuals defaced the St Petersburg monument to victims of Stalin-era political repression, TVS television reported on September 29. Using black paint, the vandals daubed a swastika on the cube-shaped granite tombstone, along with antisemitic inscriptions such as "Jude" and "They shot too few of them."

KEMEROVO ACTIVISTS PAINT OVER SWASTIKAS AND GRAFFITI. Activists in the Siberian city of Kemerovo have begun a public campaign to cleanse the city of swastikas and extremist slogans, according to UCSJ's local monitor Olga Yudina. The "Say 'No' to Hate Speech" campaign, which began on September 24, was organized by two civic organizations, the League to Defend Culture and the Kuzbass Center for Independent Journalism. The Center's executive director, Evgeny Besedin, told UCSJ's monitor that while President Vladimir Putin signed a decree against extremism, "the local authorities are in no rush to get rid of nationalistic texts, aggressive slogans, and fascist swastikas painted on the walls of buildings, fences, and underground pedestrian passageways."

MINORITY LEADERS CONDEMN RACIST STATEMENT OF VIGILANTE LEADER. A vigilante organization charged by media reports with using violent methods to fight the drug problem in Sverdlovsk Oblast is now accused of racism as well, according to Mikhail Oshtrakh, head of the Jewish National-Cultural Autonomy of Sverdlovsk Oblast. In an interview on local television, Evgeny Royzman, director of the organization called City Without Narcotics, blamed various ethnic minority groups for the drug trade in Yekaterinburg. While acknowledging that "some Russians" are drug dealers, Royzman contended that "the main drug dealers are Gypsies and Tajiks" and then added: "Once again I want to emphasize that Gypsies, Tajiks, Azerbaijanis, and other representatives of ethnic minorities on our land are occupiers."

Writing to the Ural Inter-Regional Territorial Administration of the Ministry of the Press, which had asked for “expert evaluation” of Royzman's comments on television, the Sverdlovsk Oblast branch of the Congress of National Associations, which is made up of leaders from the Jewish, Tajik, Roma, Tatar, and other minority communities, characterized Royzman's statements as "blatant incitement of ethnic hatred" which "violate the rights of ethnic minorities, and further the incitement of ethnic hatred and nationalist extremism in society… The fight against one type of crime [drugs] should not be accompanied by the committing of other illegal acts."

VANDALS ATTACKING ROSTOV SYNAGOGUE SENTENCED TO PROBATION. Two 17 year olds found guilty of having broken windows of the Rostov synagogue on May 15 were sentenced to one and a half years of probation, according to a September 27 report posted on the "Vremya/MN" web site. Both were convicted of hooliganism and face possible expulsion from school.

SKINHEAD GETS A SLAP ON THE WRIST. In Voronezh, a court sentenced a 17-year-old skinhead, Aleksey Zhigunov, to two years of probation for inciting ethnic hatred, according to a September 25 report posted on the "PressCenter.ru" web site. The court found Zhigunov guilty of distributing on Hitler's birthday, April 20, a flyer titled "Holocaust News 2002." The flyer called for people to drive out all Jews, Arabs, and blacks living in Voronezh and included a gruesome picture of a foreign student beaten to death by skinheads. The court justified its lenient decision by arguing that the defendant admitted his guilt promptly and had no previous criminal conviction.

LATVIAN POLICE SEIZES EXTREMIST LEAFLETS AND EXPLOSIVES. In the course of checking an anonymous letter addressed to the Riga newspaper "Diena" calling for eliminating with terror tactics those politicians who attempt to assimilate Latvia's Russians, the Security Police found 1,000 leaflets similar to those sent to "Diena" as well as 5 kilograms of TNT in a hovel in Riga, according to the Latvian news agency LETA on September 30. The unidentified extremists called on their "Slavic brothers" to join the Russian Party of Russia, claiming that more than one thousand fighters were ready to invade Latvia. They also urged their compatriots to join the Latvian Russian Liberation Army.

MILOSEVIC'S TRIAL SETS NEW MILESTONES. Slobodan Milosevic, the first head of state charged with war crimes while in office and indicted by U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague in May 1999, now faces the first head of state at his trial. A witness in the second phase of the trial for war crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia, Croatian President Stjepan Mesic accused Milosevic of engineering the breakup of Yugoslavia and using the Yugoslav army, which he turned into a force beholden to Serbia, to seize Croatian land in pursuit of his design for "Greater Serbia." Mesic, who took over the rotating Yugoslav presidency in July 1991, charged that "Milosevic did not favor any kind of Yugoslavia that was federal or confederal. What he was interested in was a Greater Serbia built on the ruins of Yugoslavia." Mesic accused Milosevic of intentionally setting off ethnic violence in Croatia in order to create a nation for the Serbs that incorporated large portions of Bosnia. Milosevic, who acts as his own lawyer, countered that Mesic personally ordered the torching of Serbian villages in Croatia.

On October 2, Biljana Plavsic, a former president of the rump Serb republic in Bosnia, became the first high official to plead guilty of crimes against humanity and to express remorse publicly for the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. Her surprise move also opened the door for her potentially crucial testimony against Milosevic and other leaders involved in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. "It's critically important for someone at such a high level to say they did wrong," said Judith Armatta, a trial observer for the Coalition for International Justice, a tribunal support group. "There is the possibility of a snowball effect. And it will help the truth process in the region." Florence Hartmann, the prosecutor's spokeswoman, said that "expressing remorse is a big step in the process of reconciliation. To deny what people went through is like a second death for victims."

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "Fascism rises when there is a profound economic crisis," Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov told "Ekho Moskvy Radio" on September 27. "Fascism also arises when there is a huge flow of immigrants. For instance, the extremist organizations and ultra-right parties in many countries, even in France, which is faring quite well, have scored great successes at elections… It is because the uncontrolled immigration -- which is exactly what poses a threat to Russia, leading to a growth of nationalist attitudes."

CORRECTION: Last week, in an item dealing with the German elections, we mistakenly identified former Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin as a Christian Democrat. She is, of course, a Social Democrat who served in a Social Democratic cabinet. We regret the error.

RUSSIAN JUSTICE MINISTRY REGISTERS NEW NAZI PARTY OF 'REVENGE.'
A 'Battle Unit' of 'the Global Intifada' Formed in Moscow

Without a hint of the smallest bureaucratic problem, on September 16 Russia's Justice Ministry granted official registration to an extreme nationalist, blatantly antisemitic party, the National Power Party of Russia (NDPR), "Novye Izvestia" reported on September 26. "Had that ministry been so compliant with regard to all applicants without exception, the new party would have probably gone unnoticed in the pluralist flood," the small circulation, liberal newspaper controlled by Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky, pointed out. "History teaches us, however, that the Justice Ministry denies official registration to parties and organizations the Kremlin doesn't or cannot control (remember Liberal Russia?) -- but promptly approves tame or ideologically like-minded organizations."

The same ministry has refused to register Liberal Russia, the party created and supported by Berezovsky. Registration gives the party the right to participate in regional and national elections.

"Novye Izvestia" quoted excerpts from speeches of party leaders at the inaugural congress. Held behind closed doors on February 24, the speeches are no longer a secret, as video and audio tapes of them were recently distributed among party members. The NDPR's leader is Boris Mironov, once media minister under President Boris Yeltsin, who described his party as "formed to fight for places in government bodies" and predicted that "a party of nationalists will come to power -- not patriots, but nationalists... We will prove the futility of the parliamentary path... Implementation of the law on elections will lead Russia into a blind alley... Let us root out all that Yid democratic stuff. We have a common enemy -- the Yids; and a common objective -- replacing the regime."

Mironov's co-chairman, Alexander Sevastyanov, said that the NDPR has the backing of the Russian National Unity, a neo-Nazi group with which the NDPR worked out a joint platform. "We have achieved what our enemies fear, and what was so difficult to achieve," Sevastyanov said. "We formed a consolidated movement, a consolidated platform. Here we are, holding a variety of beliefs, but all of us Russians. The National Power Party of Russia is a party of revenge. This is the key word, this is what the people have been waiting for. That's in terms of Russia. In international terms, we are a detachment of the global intifada."

The third co-chairman, Stanislav Terekhov, leader of the radical Union of Officers and an organizer of the October 1993 attempt to oust then President Boris Yeltsin, declared: "We are the shock troops of political struggle.... We are not creating a party to formulate or pronounce principles. We are creating it as a battle unit."

The newspaper also quoted a delegate concerned with "ethnic purity" of the party: "In any gathering of ten or more people, not to mention a congress, there will inevitably be at least one Jew. Those Jews may have Russian or Ukrainian surnames, but they are Jews all the same." Some delegates even suggested a special party structure, a kind of "personnel monitoring inspectorate."

According to "Novye Izvestia," all the statements were made in the presence of Justice Ministry officials "whose presence at inaugural congresses of political organizations is mandatory when the organizations intend to apply for official registration." "We registered them on their first attempt," the "Moscow Times" quoted Vladimir Tomarovsky, head of the Justice Ministry's department on public and religious organizations. "The content of the party's documents that were presented for registration corresponded with the Russian Constitution."

"Moscow Times" reported that while none of the official party documents published on the NDPR's web site contains xenophobic content, other documents on the web site do. "The law of life in Russia must be: 'Not an ounce of power to Yids,'" Mironov said in a statement on the web site. "We must unite all indigenous peoples in the struggle against Yids."

But not everyone was so blunt. Viktor Korchagin, a senior party executive and the editor of the first Russian newspaper to be banned for racist content, in July, was quoted by the "Moscow Times" as saying that the personal beliefs of the party's leadership did not make the party antisemitic. "We are a regular bourgeois party that wants a better life for the country's poor," he told the newspaper, and he promptly explained his motive for saying so. "It would be unwise to play only on antisemitic sentiments to win public support. The number of antisemites in Russia is small, and the media would give us a vigorous thrashing."

Korchagin claimed that the NDPR has about 11,000 members and has opened offices in 70 of Russia's 89 regions since its founding congress in February. He said some regional authorities had tried to prevent the party from setting up local branches. He characterized the party as a grouping of several organizations and cited the example of Co-Chairman Terekhov, head of the Union of Officers, a public military organization, as having brought most of his membership with him.

"Novye Izvestia" quoted Justice Ministry officials as saying that the NDPR had done everything by the book and that the ministry had no complaints. However, since then, the ministry seemed to backpedal a bit. On October 2, Justice Minister Yury Chayka called a press conference and said that the ministry intends to check on the activities of NDPR. He said that the check is prompted by some articles accusing the party's leaders of xenophobic and antisemitic utterances. In a statement that may survive him as an example of bureaucratic disingenuousness, he declared: "At the moment of the registration, we did not establish any violations in the charter documents. Therefore, there were no grounds to refuse registration."

In its September 26 article, "Moscow Times" noted that the NDPR is the first radical nationalist party registered after the adoption of the law on political parties, which states only registered political parties can participate in elections. The day after the NDPR's registration, the Justice Ministry gave the go-ahead to a similar radical nationalist party with a similarly antisemitic platform, the People's Patriotic Party of Russia, headed by former Defense Minister Igor Rodionov. The newspaper cited Vladimir Pribylovsky - an expert on extremist groups at the Panorama think tank -- who argued that registering radical nationalist parties harmed no one. "The authorities make it easier to punish nationalists by getting them out in the open," he was quoted as saying.

Having pushed through earlier this year a tough new law against extremism that many liberals thought was too loosely defined, a smooth registration process for extremist parties may be part of President Putin's second phase in his campaign against radicals of the right and the left. One can almost hear him say: Trust me. But has anyone heard the sound of one hand clapping?
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