Volume 2, Number 41
Friday, October 18, 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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DESPITE COURT ORDER TO DISBAND, NEO-NAZI GROUP TO GO ON. On October 10, a court in Omsk ruled in favor of legal action recommended by the Prosecutor’s Office and ordered the dissolution of the local branch of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity (RNU), according to Russia TV. The station’s anchor noted that “this is the first decision by the Omsk court that is based on the new federal law on countering extremism.” However, the correspondent in Omsk noted, local RNU leaders pledged to continue their activities illegally.

The Omsk Region Prosecutor's Office demanded the ban because it found RNU activities in conflict with three federal laws, first and foremost with the law on counteracting extremist activity. The program showed a member of the prosecutorial team quoting details of the law and declaring that prosecution followed the letter of the law meticulously.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, the leaflets and newspapers circulated by RNU supporters contain calls to stir up inter-ethnic and religious hatred. The Prosecutor's Office also charged that the RNU’s use of a Nazi symbol in the seal of its organization is in violation of the law. RNU supporters called the swastika “a cultural tradition.”

It took the court two days of deliberations behind closed doors to reach its decision, the TV correspondent reported. She added: “The judge feared possible emotional attacks by members of RNU.” Wearing black shirts and camouflage uniforms with swastikas on their sleeves, RNU supporters appeared in the courtroom. “Most of them are young people aged 19-20 and unemployed,” the correspondent said.

PROSECUTOR URGES MEASURES TO COMBAT SKINHEAD EXTREMISM. Toward the end of September, the St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office filed a report sharply critical of the city administration for its failure to combat racially motivated and extremist crime that is on the rise, according to “The St. Petersburg Times” of October 7. The prosecutor’s report warns that city youth are becoming increasingly violent and blames “unsatisfactory youth policies on the part of government organs and administrative bodies, insufficient attention paid to the problem of youth crime by law enforcement organs, and the increasing shortage of education work and general preventative measures against youth and teenage crime.” The report charges that the authorities have done nothing to learn about informal youth groups and their leaders, and it proposes that the city authorities adopt measures to combat extremism.

Shortly before the report was filed, a group of St. Petersburg skinheads murdered an Azeri watermelon vendor and videotaped their crime. However, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's spokesman Aleksandr Afanasiev denied that there is a problem. “There has been a lot of talk about a few extremist slogans here and there,” he said. “For me, this doesn't indicate a rise in extremism. It is simple hooliganism.”

SKINHEADS SUSPECTED OF DEFACING MONUMENT TO AZERBAIJANI POET. In St. Petersburg, unidentified individuals splattered white paint on a new monument to the 12th century Azeri poet Nizami Gancavi. Azerbaijan’s consul in St. Petersburg, Qudsi Osmanov, told Baku’s ANS TV that the police suspect skinheads. The television program recalled that the 15-foot bronze monument by the sculptor Babayev was a gift of the Azerbaijani government for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary and that Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliev and Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the unveiling ceremony on June 10.

GEORGIA SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH ORTHODOX CHURCH. After years of deliberations behind closed doors, the constitutional agreement known as a “concordat” between the Georgian state and the Orthodox Church was ceremoniously signed on October 14 in the Svetitskhoveli cathedral near the capital Tbilisi by President Eduard Shevardnadze and Patriarch-Catholicos Ilya II, according to Keston News Service. In Keston’s survey of religious minority leaders, some welcomed the agreement as paving the way for other religious communities to sign similar agreements. But others expressed fear that minority communities' rights would be further eroded and that the agreement will do nothing to end the main problem: the widespread violence against religious minority communities, which has seen Baptist, Pentecostal, True Orthodox, and, most frequently, Jehovah's Witness believers beaten and their places of worship attacked or destroyed with impunity.

The text still has to be approved by both the Patriarchate's Holy Synod and by parliament, and laws need to be adopted or amended. But Levan Ramishvili of the Tbilisi-based Liberty Institute believes all that is a mere formality. “Parliament will be almost unanimous – there'll be only a handful of individuals against it,” he told Keston. The concordat guarantees that the Orthodox Church will recover all its property confiscated during the Soviet era; that it will be tax-exempt; and that it will control the syllabus and staff for religious education in state schools.

The discussion leading to the concordat has been shrouded in secrecy. The original text was published two years ago, said Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili, head of the Baptist Union, but no public discussion followed. Some human rights groups and religious leaders have received the latest text, as have the Tbilisi offices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe. Lutheran, Jehovah's Witness, and Pentecostal leaders say they have not had access to the text.

BELARUS IMPOSES MASSIVE FINE ON LOCAL HINDU. As part of a state campaign against the tiny community of Hindus in Belarus, on October 10 Minsk’s central district court fined a local Hindu, Mariya Vyatkina, the equivalent of $870 for taking part in a street protest on August 17 against harassment of her community, according to Keston News Service. Vyatkina did not get a prison term because her husband Aleksey is blind. “I don't know how I will pay the fine,” Vyatkina told Radio Liberty. “My husband is a first-category invalid and I do not work. We are living jointly on $50 a month.” However, she pledged that she would continue to “fight for her rights” as a member of the Hindu community.

Oleg Gulak, executive chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, condemned the fine. “This massive fine means that Mariya Vyatkina will have to pay over all the money she and her husband need to live off for the next year and a half,” he told Keston. He described the punishment as a violation of the constitution and of Belarus' international human rights commitments. He pointed out that the fine amounted to about ten times of what someone would receive for hooliganism or inflicting an injury. He noted: “The government believes it is worse for people to demonstrate peacefully for their constitutional rights to religious freedom than to wound someone."

“We can no longer meet as a community,” the leader of the Light of Kaylasa group, Tatyana Akadanova, told Keston. “We're very afraid now. She recounted that her Hindu community – which has been denied registration – used to meet for meditation in the woods, but that this is now impossible as the weather turns cold. She added: “We're afraid to meet in private homes as an instruction recently went out from the city authorities not to allow religious meetings in people's homes.” She said that so far none of those who have been fined – including herself, her husband Sergei, and Vyatkina – have paid as none of them have any way of paying. She said those fined appealed to the city court, but the appeal was rejected. She said she does not know how long it will be before the legal assessors arrive to enforce the fines.

ANTISEMITIC VANDALISM IN BUCHAREST PROTESTED. On October 14, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania criticized the police for not taking measures to prevent “antisemitic, xenophobic, and racist” incidents following the defacement of the Bucharest Jewish Theater with Nazi symbols and slogans, according to Mediafax. Minister of Culture Razvan Theodorescu called the incident “a serious provocation” and asked the police to “do their job.”

COURT REJECTS CHALLENGE TO AIRPORT CHECKS TO STEM REFUGEE TIDE. In yet another move to discourage refugees from going to Britain, on October 10 a British court turned down a lawsuit filed by the British Liberty civil rights organization on behalf of the European Roma Rights Center, the Associated Press reported. The court ruled that under the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees, Britain is under no obligation to refrain from “taking steps to prevent a would-be or a potential refugee from approaching its border in order to be in a position to claim asylum.” The lawsuit argued that checks introduced in July 2001 on passengers flying to the U.K. from Prague, designed to cut the flow of Roma refugees from the Czech Republic, violate international law.

PRO-NAZI MARCH HALTED IN MUNICH. Between 1,000 and 3,000 counter-demonstrators prevented some 600 to 800 far-rightists from marching through downtown Munich on October 12 to protest an exhibition of Nazi-era crimes by the German army, according to news agency reports. Police detained a total of 20 people, about equally divided between the two groups. Several of the detainees were charged with displaying outlawed symbols, such as the swastika, police said.

Initially, the city of Munich had forbidden the march on the grounds that it endangered the public. However, the day before the demonstration, a court ruled that the ban was unjustified. Thousands of police in riot gear were on hand to keep order.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * “The Holocaust is a condition that is not finished,” said Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature last week. “I feel it everywhere. There hasn't been a catharsis.” The Swedish Academy honored Kertesz, who spent two years in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, for writing about “the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.”

HATE CRIMES AND HATE SPEECH IN RUSSIA ON THW RISE
New Reports and Congressional Testimony Fault Russian Authorities

At a hearing on October 15, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, heard testimony about an increase in incidents of hate crimes and hate speech in Russia in 2001. The hearings marked the release of a 250-page annual report by the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ), titled “Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in Russia’s Regions: 2001” and the Moscow Helsinki Group’s (MHG) 418-page report, Nationalism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance in Contemporary Russia.” While UCSJ’S report contains nearly 1,000 citations, organized by region, MHG’S report is a compilation of essays by noted experts on hate groups, migration, and the war in Chechnya. Both reports point to a breakdown in the efficacy of Russia's criminal justice system. Those testifying included Ludmilla Alexeeva, MHG chair and president of the International Helsinki Federation, and Micah H. Naftalin, UCSJ’s national director.

In her testimony, Alexeeva noted an alarming intensification of “ethnic phobias” among youth and “an unprecedented number of attacks on racial grounds,” while the authorities refuse to acknowledge “the racial components of the crimes.” She called “Caucasophobia the most serious problem in Russia, substituting for antisemitism, though there are some political groups for whom antisemitism is of primary importance.” She noted that the government is doing “nothing to counter Caucasophobia.” She warned that governmental neglect of xenophobia and intolerance is “conducive to the reinforcement of such attitudes,” especially when that neglect is occasionally supplanted by overt and covert support. She criticized President Vladimir Putin’s silence following racist statements directed against people from the Caucasus by Aleksandr Tkachyov, governor of Krasnodar Kray. She found the situation of the Roma, also known as Gypsies, “dire,” and aggravated by the fact that they are less numerous in terms of percentage of the population.

Tatyana Lokshina of MHG told the commission that over the last several years “a menacing growth in xenophobia and nationalist moods took place in Russian society” and negative views such as “Chechenophobia, Caucasophobia, Romaphobia, and a general intolerance toward ethnic migrants and religious minorities intensified.” She pointed out that “the authorities persistently refer to a lack of violence on racial/ethnic grounds as an indicator of the harmony in inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations. However, the events in 2001-2002 completely refute these claims. Russia is experiencing an unprecedented amount of crime based on racial and ethnic hatred. Moreover, clashes between representatives of various ethnic groups and attacks on racial grounds by so-called skinheads are taking place. The latter phenomenon is becoming particularly dangerous.”

Lokshina charged that “despite the declaration about the unacceptability of nationalism in all forms and public gestures, the federal authorities are not taking effective measures to stop the discriminatory practices in the regions.” She called on members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) to recommend to Russian authorities that “high-ranking state officials must energetically come forward with condemnations of specific displays of nationalism and xenophobia”and stop “nationalist propaganda, especially propaganda coming from officials at all levels.”

Naftalin noted “the crucial nexus between human rights and national security.” He called for the recognition of “a new paradigm” which he defined as “xenophobia, of which antisemitism is a central component,” representing “the opposite side of the same coin as extremism and terrorism.” He suggested that monitoring human rights violations “must now rank with weapons inspections in our national security arsenal. The collective failure of the NGO and intelligence communities to adequately address these connections was one element of the colossal failure of imagination that has permitted the success of extremism and terrorism in the Middle East, in Russia, and at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Raging racism demonstrates a dangerous breakdown of rule of law that threatens Russia’s economic and political stability and vulnerability to extremism and terrorism. It calls out for American vigilance and assistance. The intelligence, diplomatic, foreign aid, and human rights communities must all take this insight as a mandate for action.”

Naftalin pointed out that UCSJ’s report also documents some improvements, including President Putin’s unprecedented support of the Jewish community and his calls to combat antisemitism. However, he stressed, the report documents the increase in xenophobia aimed primarily at citizens, mostly Muslim, from the Caucasus. He cited the report’s finding that “antisemitism and xenophobia have increased in the past year, and they have a strong correlation with anti-democratic and anti-market sentiments, as well as a level of ethnic Russian nationalism that may imperil the still fragile, multi-ethnic structure of the Russian Federation.”

In addition to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Naftalin recalled that “words and behavior also matter.” “Racists do not pursue their murderous goals by stealth,” he said. “They pursue conquest through intimidation. They announce their intentions in advance. They thus can be interdicted through effective monitoring and the holding of their host governments accountable for their actions.”

Naftalin said he was optimistic because “our government has never been as well positioned to make human rights an integral element of national security policy as it is today. The superb efforts of those in the Department of State who produce annual country reports on human rights and religious persecution, worldwide, have never been stronger. And their success owes much to their demonstrated ability to receive and utilize monitoring reports like ours from the entire human rights community.”

He called “new and quite remarkable” the document titled “National Security Strategy” issued by President George W. Bush in September. “I believe this document is unprecedented in the extent and priority it places on human rights and American values,” Naftalin said. “In the national debate today, one would gather that this document is all but a declaration of war. But the very first paragraph states, ‘In the twenty-first century, only nations that share a commitment to protecting basic human rights and guaranteeing political and economic freedom will be able to unleash the potential of their people and assure their future prosperity.’”

Naftalin noted that President Putin is well served by “the exemplary efforts of Russia’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Professor Oleg Mironov, who last Friday joined with our Moscow Bureau director, Alexander Brod, in publicly signing a formal agreement of cooperation in furtherance of human rights and combating antisemitism and xenophobia generally.” At the signing ceremony, Mironov stated: “One of the sharpest problems of Russian society is the increase in political extremism, and social, racial, ethnic and religious hostility. The spread of fascist ideas and terrorism present a threat to the constitutional system, human rights and freedoms… Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies very often qualify antisemitic and nationalistic incidents as hooliganism or ordinary quarrels.”

Naftalin recalled that the two NGOs, MHG and UCSJ, “have been partners for 25 years and are emblematic of the coalition of human rights dissidents and refuseniks that contributed to the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. We have been leading the broader human rights community toward a heightened appreciation that, in the aftermath of 9/11, xenophobia, including antisemitism, deserves equal standing in the galaxy of human rights concerns and that traditional campaigning for individual rights at the hands of governments must now also take into account the threat to society at large from such non-state actors as terrorists and racist extremists.”

UCSJ urged OSCE to hold a Supplemental Human Dimension Implementation meeting on antisemitism in 2003 to identify the best practices for monitoring and reporting. MHG called on Russia to develop “cooperative mechanisms with international bodies to struggle against racism, xenophobia, discrimination, and intolerance.”
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