Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume One, Number 16

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume One, Number 16

(October 26, 2001)

Volume One, Number 16
Friday, October 26, 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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BUSH-PUTIN ROMANCE IS ON, BUT NO AGREEMENT ON MINORITIES AND MEDIA. Though President George Bush met separately with leaders of eight governments during the Pacific Rim summit in Shanghai and thanked each of them for supporting America's anti-terrorist campaign, he honored only his Russian counterpart - or "partner" in the new parlance - with a joint statement. "We reject and resolutely condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, regardless of the motive," the communique said, suggesting that the two leaders agreed on the definition of terrorism as well. But in his opening statement to the press on October 21, Bush slipped in a hint of a dispute and praised the spirit behind it. "Our new relationship is one of candor," Bush explained. "I emphasize to Vladimir Putin that the war on terror is not and cannot be a war on minorities. It's important to distinguish between those who pursue legitimate political aspirations and terrorists. We're also looking at ways we can work together in the development of a free media in Russia." In his response President Vladimir Putin focused on the war on terrorism: "First of all, I fully agree with the position of President Bush, and I believe that his action [in Afghanistan] was measured and adequate to the threat that United States was confronted with. Second, and it is very important for everybody to know, if we started fighting terrorism it should be completed. Because otherwise terrorists might have an impression that they are not vulnerable. And in that case, their actions would be more dangerous, more insolent, and would result in worse consequences." As for the initially central subject of disagreement between the two leaders, the projected U.S. missile shield and the scrapping of the ABM treaty, they said they had "made some progress" in Shanghai but left the contentious details for discussion at their next get-together, in November, at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.

THE ROAD TO A U.S.-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE OPEN BUT UNMAPPED, 'THE TIMES' SAYS… Presidents Bush and Putin "may well rewrite history - eventually," Michael Wines of "The New York Times" wrote in a dispatch from Moscow on October 21 titled "Road to U.S.-Russia Alliance Is Still Unmapped." But, he cautioned, "the seemingly whirlwind rapprochement" has not yet "wiped away eight decades of rivalry." He suggested to wait and see how U.S.-Russian cooperation will fare "when the American anti-terror campaign turns to nations closer to Russia, like Iraq." Both leaders face opposition to an alliance within their governments, Wines noted: "Americans are wary of a Kremlin that, many say, has ignored basic human-rights standards in its war against Chechen rebels, and has more or less openly used its political muscle to crush critics in the press." He added that on the political right and in the military and intelligence establishments Bush must contend with "deep suspicions of Russian intentions." Putin has similar problems: "Cold war sentiments dominate the Russian military and intelligence bureaucracies, and anti-Americanism courses broadly, if not deeply, through the average Russian's political outlook."

PUTIN WEAKENED HIS POSITIONS IN RETURN FOR PROMISES, RUSSIANS FEAR. Deep suspicions surfaced in Sergei Guly's article on October 23, titled "Russia Trades Old Fears for New Illusions," in "Novye Izvestia." Not solving the dilemmas of Afghanistan's postwar coalition and not dealing with counter-terrorism possibly spreading to Iraq were "minor" when compared "against the background of total surrender of the positions upheld for decades," the argument began. "Moscow is giving up on what was inherited from the Soviet Union in the hope that the West will be so moved that it will cover all bills without so much as a glance. These expectations are naive." In Guly's opinion, Bush received from Putin Russia's wish list "centered around the same old measures of liberalization of access to the American market for Russian goods." Guly then cited Russian economist Alexander Livshits, who recently returned from Washington saying that the American bureaucracy displayed polite interest in Russian requests but asked for a postponement "until after Afghanistan."

PUTIN'S DISSOLVING MINISTRY FOR NATIONALITIES RAISES QUESTIONS. On October 22 Julie Corwin of "RFE/RL's Russian Political Weekly" suggested that "some observers" may find it "a little odd" that last week President Vladimir Putin abolished the Nationalities and Migration Ministry at a time when "Putin, unlike some other world leaders, has to take into account the likely reaction to his initiatives among Russia's sizeable Muslim population." The Russian news agency Interfax reported that another decree called for setting up an as-yet unnamed ministry to coordinate the "implementation of national policies." The Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty publication recalled a different instance of Russian foreign policy running afoul of sentiments among its traditionally Muslim ethnics. In 1999, during NATO air strikes against Serbia, a number of regional leaders, including Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov and Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiev, raised objections to "various aspects of Moscow's policy." This time, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report notes, "there is little talk of sending Russian - that is non-Muslim - volunteers to Afghanistan."

But a new problem has arisen, and it is getting attention in the Russian press. During the last decade many young Muslims from Russia underwent religious training in Arab countries that some observers have attributed to the lack of opportunities to do so in their own country. In an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax, Grand Mufti Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin said that a real threat of extremism exists among Russia's Muslim population because young people returning from training in Arab countries "seek the same conditions for our Muslims that exist in Muslim countries." Gainutdin called for state funds to aid Russia's Muslims and warned that "if the situation does not change, in several years we will face radical and extremist groups of people." In an October 17 survey of Islam in Russia, "Izvestiya" found Islam "under threat" from both "the processes of the post-Soviet rebirth" of that religion and the negative impact of foreign "well-wishers." The newspaper cited the 1989 Soviet census of Muslim ethnic groups listing 5,522,000 Tatars, 1,749,000 Daghestanis (of various ethnic affiliations), 1,345,000 Bashkirs, and 899,000 Chechens.

TYUMEN AUTHORITIES REFUSE TO ARREST RAMPAGING SKINHEADS. Authorities in the Siberian city of Tyumen have failed to arrest neo-Nazi skinheads terrifying the local Jewish community, according to a UCSJ press release. On as many as seven occasions, skinheads smashed the windows of a synagogue and have threatened to burn it down. Although the group calling itself Tyumen Aryan Skinheads bragged about the attacks on its web site and threatened more of them, the authorities have taken no action to protect the Jewish community, minimizing the attacks as "young people's hooliganism" rather than antisemitic violence. Until it was shut down last week, the web site offered photographs of skinheads giving the Nazi salute. Also on the web site were accounts of "raids on sub-humans," including the latest one on September 29. A participant reported how each of his comrades threw at least two rocks at the windows. "I have never heard a more pleasant sound of breaking glass in all my life," the participant noted and added that before going home, the group "reminded the kikes once again that there is no place for them here, and that next time instead of stones we will have Molotov cocktails."

KRASNODAR CITY AUTHORITIES 'DEPORT' ROMANIES. More than a hundred Romanies (also known as Gypsies) belonging to about a dozen families were forcibly removed from Krasnodar City to the Voronezh region, according to the Glasnost-Media Daily News Service on October 20. "This serious breach of the Constitution was justified by the fact that the Gypsies had their residence registration in Voronezh," the news service reported. The Romanies were also accused of drug trafficking in Krasnodar City, although the local police did not bring a single drug trafficking charge against any of them. The news service speculated that the forcible removal, which it called "deportation," might have reflected the local interpretation of a new migration policy by President Putin.

HATE PRESS GOES UNPUNISHED IN UKRAINE. In the October issue of the Ukrainian children's magazine "Dzherltse," Editor Anatoly Kindratenko asserted that the Talmud gives Jews the right to rape three-year-old girls, as long as they are not Jewish, according to UCSJ's Kiev monitor Maksim Baryshnikov. Kindratenko also blamed Israel for perpetrating the September 11 attack and claimed that the mass killings of Albanians in Kosovo under Serbian rule was just as much of a fabrication as the Holocaust. Though the magazine propagates crass antisemitism, its publisher, the "Prosvita" Foundation, receives government funds and distributes the magazine in schools for extra-curricular reading. Last year, the magazine was brought to court by Jewish activists who demanded that it be closed down under the law prohibiting the incitement of ethnic hatred. But the trial has dragged on without resolution. Nor has there been any action against the Lviv newspaper "The Idealist" (circulation 1,200) which ran an article in its October issue calling for violence against Jews. "We Christians want to serve God - not Satan and the kikes," the newspaper wrote, "so therefore we declare a Holy War against the kike-Zionists and demand the closest cooperation with the Muslim and Arab world."

GERMAN NEO-NAZIS SPLIT ON INTERPRETING THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACK. The majority of Germany's neo-fascist and violence-prone groups such as the National Democratic Party (NPD) speak in positive terms about the September 11 terror attack on America, reported Harald Neuber in the "Hannover Telepolis" on October 22. Horst Mahler of the NPD saw in the attack "a ray of hope" and predicted the end of the financial world dominated by "Jewish capital." A large part of the organized rightist scene has perceived the attack as an act of liberation by the oppressed peoples, and Mahler called for a "global intifada." But rightist radicals anchored in the lower middle class, such as the German People's Union (DVU), have used the terrorist attacks as an argument to stop admitting Muslim immigrants. Under the headline "Is Islam Devouring Us?" the DVU's mouthpiece, the "National-Zeitung," warned against any further migration to Germany. The chairman of the extreme far-right Republican Party, Rolf Schlierer, welcomed the destruction of "the multicultural illusion" along with the towers of the World Trade Center. He also demanded a ban on the political activities of Islamic groups.

TURKMENISTAN TO DEPORT 12 MORE BAPTISTS. The deportation of twelve family members of two Baptist men, themselves deported from Turkmenistan on June 26 because of their religious activities, appears imminent, according to Keston News Service. Local Baptists told Keston that on October 15, Ziyad Ishchanov of the National Security Committee - or the KNB as the former KGB is known - went to the homes of Nadezhda Potolova and Valentina Kalataevskaya and their families in the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi (formerly Krasnovodsk) and gave them a verbal instruction to leave the country within ten days. On July 16, the same KNB officer had given similar instructions to the two families, then setting August 15 as the deadline. Local Baptists did not explain why the deportation had not taken place. Yevgeny Potolov, originally from Russia and a father of four, and Vyacheslav Kalataevsky, from Ukraine and a father of seven, had been active in congregations of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists, which refuse to register in all the post-Soviet republics. Keston adds that Turkmenistan has the harshest religious policy in the former Soviet Union: Since early 1997, the only religious communities permitted have been mosques affiliated with the state-sponsored Muslim Board and congregations of the Russian Orthodox Church. Over the past few years, Turkmen authorities have deported hundreds of foreign citizens active in a variety of faiths including Protestant churches, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Hare Krishna.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "Mr. Putin himself insists that the Chechen war is a struggle against international terrorists," writes Robert Cottrell of Britain's "Financial Times" in an article titled "Russia's False Promise" on October 23. "Yet the men Russia identifies as terrorist leaders - including Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president, and the military commanders Shamil Basaev and Ibn-ul Khattab - have operated for years under the nose of the Russian army. This may be a failure of Russian intelligence, or of the army's capacity to make use of the intelligence it is given. But either way it casts doubt on Russia's ability to help the West catch terrorists elsewhere."

NATION-BUILDING AND AIR STRIKES BRING UNCERTAINTY TO UZBEKISTAN:
Two Refugees Interpret Seismic Changes in Their Homeland.

Off the world's main highways of modernization for centuries, the communities of Central Asia now face the tasks of building nation states and negotiating with global powers and their military might. Refugees, the first byproduct of revolutionary change, offer differing interpretations of their homeland's present and future.

A former leader of the Jewish community in Uzbekistan, sociology professor Mikhail Degtiar, fled the country of his birth and received refugee status at the U.S. embassy in Moscow a year ago. He told this newsletter that the authorities charged him with "promotion of cross-ethnic hatred" and "defamation of the government," both of which are "very serious crimes in Uzbekistan." They were especially angry with him because of an article, published in the Prague-based Internet magazine "Transitions Online," describing government corruption.

According to his communication to UCSJ, the authorities pressed charges against Degtiar after the publication of his article in the scholarly Swedish journal "Central Asia and the Caucasus" predicting the imminent end of Jewish communal life in Uzbekistan. Degtiar recently told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) that "the [Uzbek] state does not sponsor antisemitism, but on the everyday level there is a permanent pressure. All Russian speakers live in a state of a constant fear. Besides the Islamic terror, there is the terror of the authorities against everybody." (However, according to JTA's survey, Jewish communal leaders in Central Asia's former Soviet republics say that Muslim-Jewish relations have not deteriorated, though some leaders are concerned that tensions might rise as the war in Afghanistan intensifies.)

"The Uzbek government is genuinely desirous of good relations with the United States, Israel, and its own Jewish community, and it realizes that the three components are related," Abdumannob Polat, an influential Uzbek human rights activist now living in the United States, told this newsletter. "But mid- and lower-level government officials may and sometimes do practice social antisemitism and react to a critical article published abroad all out of proportion with its significance. Government officials are super-sensitive to any hint of criticism and might consider Degtiar's thesis a frontal attack on government policy and its relatively tolerant approach to an important minority." Polat does not deny that the charge of government discrimination against minorities has validity. But he disagrees with the contention that all Russian speakers live in fear. "That is an exaggeration," he argues. Uzbekistan is now engaged in the arduous enterprise of nation building, he said, and "the public is eager, perhaps too eager, to 'correct the sins of the Soviet past,' during which native Russian speakers held a disproportionately high percentage of the important jobs and Uzbeks were squeezed out. These days, even though the percentage of minorities who stayed in Uzbekistan is lower than it was before independence, their share of the important jobs is disproportionately small." According to Polat, a professor of mathematics before turning to writing and politics, "a part of the process of correcting Soviet practice is normal. However, when it comes to educational opportunities and jobs, there is some discrimination against Russian speakers who include Ashkenazi Jews and even some Bukharan Jews. A balance that was missing in the Soviet era is now being over-redressed."

Asked for an assessment of the mood among Muslims in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia, Polat said that all depends on whether the Allied attacks and international efforts to establish a legitimate government will bring stability and peace to Afghanistan, eliminate the use of Afghan territory for terrorist training and threat as a source of instability, and end the smuggling of narcotics and arms to other states in the region. Another decisive factor, he added, is "whether a relatively open and moderate regime in Pakistan survives the current crisis and the ones that may follow. If Central Asia and its southern neighbors get serious economic development aid and will be able to improve the material conditions of life for their people, most of the Muslims in the region will feel good about the war against terrorism. However, increased repression by a U.S.-backed government of potential or suspected Islamists and masses of people with little connections to the Islamic opposition, along with social and economic shortcomings may prompt the rise of anti-American feelings throughout Central Asia, particularly in Uzbekistan."

Polat noted that the main organized opposition to what he calls "the existing secular-authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan" is Hizb-ut-Tahrir (the Party of Liberation) which, according to its statements, calls for a pan-Islamic state to be established by peaceful means and uses radical anti-Western, anti-democratic, and anti-Jewish rhetoric. The militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - the main armed opposition group against President Islam Karimov's rule based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan - uses similar rhetoric. There are also less radical oppositionists, Polat continued, such as moderate Islamists and nationalists, and secular-democratic groups with some of their important leaders living abroad, and they are tolerant of Jews. "Many of them declare the principle of 'human rights for all,' including minorities," Polat said, "and some of them understand that in the civilized world antisemitism is considered an alarming indication of dangerous intolerance of other minorities as well."

Degtiar called Karimov's "national-communistic regime" "rotten from within" and expressed his sympathy for "the democratic movements" though not "the ultranationalists." Polat expects that in the current turmoil more Jews will emigrate from Central Asia. But he is confident that Jewish communities and communal life will remain, along with the historic local tradition of "fairly peaceful coexistence" with the majority community.

* * * POSTSCRIPT * * * On October 23, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported from Tashkent yet another viewpoint in a dispatch titled "Beneath the Surface, Uzbek Muslims Seethe at U.S. Troop Presence." Muslim activist Muhtabar Akhmedova was quoted as saying: "There is a Christian crusade going on against Muslims. There will be a war against this crusade, a Third World War in which all the Western world will be destroyed." AFP noted that "in an often ruthless campaign waged since the early 1990s, Uzbek President Islam Karimov has cracked down on Islamic fundamentalism, imprisoning hundreds of men and forcing thousands to seek refuge in neighboring Tajikistan, or in Taliban-held Afghanistan. However, their wives, mothers, and sisters remain." AFP explained that as women in a traditional Muslim society, "they can be harassed by police but are largely immune from imprisonment." The reporter found them "adamant" in their belief that the real enemy is President Bush, and not the Taliban. A group of about ten Muslim women recently staged an anti-American demonstration in Tashkent, Akhmedova said. They were immediately rounded up by police and released when they signed declarations that they would not protest again. She said: "Bush is the number one terrorist in the world." * * * *

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