Volume 2, Number 45
Friday, November 15, 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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RUSSIA LIVES UNDER 'JEWISH YOKE,' NEO-NAZI SAYS ON TV. Appearing on the pro-government Channel One television program "Vremena" on November 9, Boris Mironov, co-chairman of the neo-Nazi Russian National Great Power Party (NDPR), declared that Russia lives under a "Jewish yoke." A debate quickly developed over Mironov's use of the word "zhid," usually translated into English as “kike,” which he insisted was the correct, traditional term for Jews. The program's host, Vladimir Pozner, disagreed, and his evaluation was supported by linguist Prof. Leonid Krysin, who called the word "derogatory.'' The program ran some footage of the NDPR congress in which speakers used antisemitic language and argued that the NDPR should be "the party of revenge'' against those who have harmed Russia. Asked by Pozner how his remarks differed from Hitler's, Mironov declined to answer the question directly. Instead, he argued that there are similarities between Germany in the 1930s and modern-day Russia, and he charged that the Russian news media are trying to tar all nationalists as Nazis.

After Pozner mentioned that the NDPR has threatened him with libel action because of his characterization of the party as "Nazi'' on an earlier occasion, another panelist, Sergey Karaganov, said that the party is indeed Nazi, and he asked whether its appearance represents an attempt to “raise artificially the specter of extremism'' which he thinks is on the decline in Russia. He argued that the main reason Russians are susceptible to the NDPR's kind of politics is the lack of opportunity faced by many young people, who in turn blame the minorities.

After another clip of the same NDPR congress was shown offering still more antisemitic rhetoric, Pozner asked another NDPR co-chairman, Stanislav Terekhov, whether he considers being a Jew a crime. Terekhov replied that Jews have nothing to fear, but that the Russian people are facing genocide. Pozner asked the third NDPR co-chairman, Aleksandr Sevastyanov, whether he approved of the fact that his party is allied with several extremist groups, including right-wing skinheads. Sevastyanov replied that xenophobia is a natural human reaction, but denied that the party proclaimed the superiority of the Russian nation. After a video was shown on Nazi pogroms against Jews in 1930s in Germany, another panelist, the State Duma's foreign policy committee chairman, Vladimir Lukin, said that the Justice Ministry made a mistake in recently registering the NDPR and has confused nationalism with Nazism. Pozner concluded the program with an appeal to the Minister of Justice to reconsider the registration of the NDPR.

MOSCOW YOUTHS ATTACK GHANA'S ENVOY AND DRIVER. On November 9, Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned the assault two days earlier on Ambassador Francis Yahaya Mahamma of Ghana, 60, beaten up by a group of young people in Moscow, Interfax reported. The diplomat complained to the Moscow police that seven individuals had attacked him and his 48-year-old chauffeur in Victory Park where they jog in the afternoons. Both of them had their faces bruised and were treated by the embassy doctor. "Outrages of this kind cause resolute condemnation," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its web site. "They undermine the reputation of Russia as a country of traditional hospitality and respectful attitude to nationals of foreign states." The ministry said that the authorities are making "energetic efforts'' to arrest the attackers.

However, according to the Moscow daily "Nezavisimaya Gazeta'' of November 11, law enforcement agencies are "soft-pedaling" the incident. The Main Internal Affairs Administration says that a criminal case has been opened and the charge is hooliganism. But sotto voce the police say that they are unlikely to find the attackers, as their descriptions are vague and they might have been tourists. "The absence of investigative zeal on the part of the police" may have the same cause as "the tardy reaction by the Russian foreign policy department," the newspaper noted. The official statement about the attack on the Ghanaian ambassador appeared two days later, and it expressed the hope that "the incident will not affect relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Ghana which are of a long-standing friendly nature." "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" wrote that it was not given any intelligible explanation for the cause of the delay. It theorized that "possibly the Russian diplomats were pondering on how to correctly interpret the incident: It was, after all, the first time that such a high-ranking diplomatic personage has fallen victim to scoundrels.''

The newspaper pointed out that the attack did not lead to an international scandal and additional charges about Moscow's inability to rein in its homegrown Nazis. "Probably so as not to provide grounds for reproaches this time, the police are asserting that the crime was unplanned and was of a casual nature,'' the report said, acknowledging that this may be true. But over the last few months in Moscow about a dozen staffers of foreign diplomatic missions have been victims of similarly "casual" attacks, and in the majority of cases the assailants turned out to be skinheads. "Not once has it proved possible to bring them to court," the article concluded, "either they simply were not found or they turned out to be juveniles."

MOSCOW DISTRICT COURT SIDES WITH ANTISEMITIC PUBLISHER. On November 10, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court ruled in favor of the Moscow city Prosecutor's Office's decision to drop charges of inciting ethnic hatred against antisemitic publisher Viktor Korchagin, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency. In July, the Ministry of the Press had ordered that Korchagin's newspaper "Russkie Vedomosti" be shut down for inciting ethnic hatred. However, the Zamoskvoretsky court sided with the Moscow city Prosecutor's Office.

For several years, Jewish World War II veteran Boris Stambler has tried to have charges brought against Korchagin whose publishing house called Rusich has distributed volume after volume of antisemitic literature with titles such as "The Jewish Occupation of Russia." However, time and again prosecutors refused to bring charges against Korchagin, arguing that "experts" had determined that his writings did not incite hatred against Jews. Nevertheless, in the mid-1990s, Korchagin became one of the few people ever convicted under a law that prohibits the incitement of ethnic hatred. Ironically, Korchagin, who praises Adolf Hitler, was immediately released in an amnesty commemorating the 50th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.

YOUNG MEN SUSPECTED OF VANDALIZING CHURCH DETAINED. The police have detained four 16-year-old males suspected of defiling Trinity Church and a cemetery in Krasnoyarsk during the night of Halloween, Krasnoyarsk's Channel 6 television reported on November 4. The suspects were quoted as saying that their motives were "ideological." One of them, called Anton, with his face obscured, was shown on television saying that he was against burials according to what he called "Jewish rites'' and asserting that the Russian root religion was paganism.

The head of the Sovetsky district police precinct, Aleksandr Molyarov, denied reports about the Satanist character of the crime. One church guard said that a similar act of vandalism took place a fortnight earlier. Correspondent Nadezhda Bombakova’s report mentioned that police seized "pro-fascist'' publications belonging to the suspects. The television program quoted a doctor of philosophy, Lyudmila Grigoreva, described as a specialist in religious organizations, to the effect that there are at least 15 youth organizations with members inclined to commit such crimes.

BULGARIAN ROMA APPEAL TO THE EUROPEAN UNION. The Coalition of Citizen Organizations, a Roma group in Bulgaria, has called on the European Union to press East European governments applying for EU membership to implement significant changes to prevent the westward migration of their unemployed Roma: arrange "adequate representation" for the Roma in the local and national governmental bodies (for instance, at the moment there is not a single member in the Bulgarian Parliament representing the 600,000 Roma out of a total population of 8 million); decrease Roma unemployment by 15 percent each year (in some former Warsaw Pact countries, Roma unemployment reaches 90 percent); and fight corruption (which reduces the effectiveness of EU's development aid for the Roma) by publishing the budgets for each project and employing more Roma and fewer intermediaries. In a "Declaration of Stolipinovo'' -- named after the suburb of the city of Plovdiv that has a Roma population of 40,000 - the Coalition of Citizen Organization decried the lack of progress in the twelve years after the dawn of democracy in the region. According to the declaration, the 7 million Roma in Eastern Europe face unemployment, hunger, substandard housing in ghettos, absence of adequate health care, insufficient schooling, and lack of opportunity for social development.

BRITAIN RETURNS ASYLUM SEEKERS. On November 5, Britain returned another group of 53 unsuccessful applicants for asylum to the Czech Republic, the Prague news agency CTK reported. The group was sent back on a chartered plane. This was Britain's sixth recent deportation of asylum seekers, most of them Roma, to the Czech Republic, bringing the total number of returnees to 174.

FRANCE ENDS SIEGE PEACEFULLY; REFUGEES MAY APPLY FOR ASYLUM. On November 14 at about 5 a.m., police entered a church in northwestern France and evicted about 100 Iraqi and Afghan refugees who had barricaded themselves there for five days. Though some of them had previously threatened suicide if detained, none of them offered resistance as the police escorted the group from the Saint Pierre-Saint Paul church in Calais, police told news agencies. The refugees were offered the possibility of applying for political asylum in France, and 76 agreed to make the request and nine refused, according to local government officials. Those who choose not to apply "will be invited to leave" France. "The maximum was done to avoid a recourse to violence,'' the statement concluded. The refugees had hoped to sneak into Britain, which has looser regulations, via the nearby Channel Tunnel.

SPAIN MISTREATS MIGRANTS, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH CHARGES. The Spanish authorities' treatment of migrants raises serious concerns about the country's compliance with the United Nations Convention against Torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on November 12. "Coping with an immigration influx does not give Spain license to disregard migrants' basic human rights," said Elizabeth Andersen, head of HRW's Europe and Central Asia division. In a letter to the UN Committee against Torture, HRW urged international experts to question the Spanish government about its treatment of migrants. HRW expressed particular concern about conditions in immigration detention and residential centers for migrant children that amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and about the manner in which repatriation and expulsion proceedings are carried out. HRW's letter details "severely substandard conditions" of detention for migrants and asylum seekers in Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands as well as "serious procedural rights violations'' in the course of government efforts to return migrants to the countries from which they came.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "If you want to go all the way and become a Muslim radical and are ready to get circumcised, I invite you to Moscow," Russian President Vladimir Putin told a "Le Monde'' reporter at a press conference in Brussels on November 11. "We are a multi-confessional country, we have experts in this field, too. I will recommend that they carry out the operation in such a way that nothing grows back."

Putin extended this crude invitation to a partial emasculation to a French reporter who questioned him on Russia's use of anti-personnel land mines and fragmentation bombs in Chechnya. The meaning of Putin's threat was plain to those familiar with Russian slang current among former KGB officers as well as common criminals.

Putin's reply to the reporter began in a calm, normal manner. As translated by the "Moscow Times,'' Putin argued that in 1996 Russia gave de facto independence to Chechnya but in 1999 "wide-scale aggression against Russia, the Republic of Dagestan, took place under the slogan of creating a caliphate … by tearing apart territories of the Russian Federation." He called the people behind the Chechen fighters "religious extremists and international terrorists." Then he warned that the whole world is now a target for radical Muslims who "speak about the creation of a global caliphate."

It was at this point that Putin began losing his temper. "They are talking about the need to kill all kaffirs [infidels], all non-Muslims, or Crusaders, as they say. If you are a Christian, you are in danger! But if you decide to reject your faith and become an atheist, you are also subject to liquidation according to their way of thinking." He warned the French reporter that he too was in danger. "If you decide to become a Muslim, even that won't save you,'' he added. "Because they consider traditional Islam also to be hostile to the goals they put forward."

All of Russia's main television channels carried Putin's remarks up to this point, "Moscow Times'' reported. They also showed European Union foreign and security affairs chief Javier Solana and Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen who flanked Putin, "growing visibly uncomfortable. It was not clear whether their unease reflected what The Associated Press said was intermittent translation by Putin's interpreter or the blunt substance of Putin's remarks, which broke Western taboos of political correctness."

Next, Putin delivered his invitation to circumcision, reprinted in the first paragraph of this item, which was edited out of footage shown on state-controlled Channel One and Rossiya television as well as from the presidential press service report. However, non-state NTV and TVS television carried Putin's remarks in full, as did the newspaper "Kommersant" which commented: "That day which had seemed to begin so well ended in a big scandal." The Internet publication "Gazeta.ru'' said that Putin's aides explained his outburst by saying the president was tired and angry about being grilled on Chechnya.

On November 14, the government newspaper “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” offered an explanation for “a spontaneous outburst of purely human irritation and an attempt to denigrate a journalist who by his question was seeking to denigrate the honor of Russia.” Acknowledging that “the end of the answer” represented “a deviation from the norms of diplomatic etiquette and of presidential restraint,” the newspaper concluded: “But any Russian who conducts such discussions in the West on a more or less regular basis knows that sometimes you simply want to swear like a trooper. Vladimir Putin did not do this. But by all accounts he really wanted to. So by means of a minor diplomatic blunder Vladimir Putin avoided a major one.”

EU spokesman Jonathan Faull called Putin's comments "entirely inappropriate."

WILL THE EUROPEAN UNION REMAIN A CHRISTIAN CLUB?
French Statesman's Candid Thoughts Spark Protest

President Vladimir Putin's remarks in a Brussels news conference recalled the time when to make a point, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe and banged it on his table at the UN General Assembly. However, a few days before Putin spoke, a respected Western leader, a French patrician, also expressed an opinion that has been unacceptable in polite European society.

Turkey is not a European country, and if it will be allowed to join Europe, "it is the end of the European Union'' as other non-European Muslim nations, such as Morocco, would be next, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing told his country's authoritative newspaper "Le Monde." The publication of the interview on November 9 provoked protests throughout a stunned Europe, where it is not politically correct to use such blunt language. EU officials promptly moved to distance the 15-nation group from Giscard, as did the French government that is otherwise politically close to him.

Giscard's statement is all the more significant because he ranks as one of the continent's leading elder statesmen with a reputation as an intellectual, and he has been entrusted with the most delicate and historical task of drafting a constitution for the EU. Of the 13 countries applying for EU membership, most of them from the former Soviet bloc, Turkey is the leading candidate.

Turkey has "a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life," Giscard said, warning that its "demographic dynamism'' could make it the largest EU member state. Europeans - and Turks - know that the wily Frenchman, a disciple of Charles de Gaulle, was hinting at Turkey's Islamic culture and traditionally high birthrate.

Turkey's place under the European sun is all the more delicate because only a week before Giscard's statement, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative group with deep Islamic roots, won a landslide victory at the polls. AKP leaders are now trying hard to soft-pedal the party’s Islamic record, and Western governments are watching anxiously if the AKP will keep Turkey a secular democracy, and if the country will remain a model for "moderate'' Muslims such as Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan and Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry reacted with dignity. "The fact that Turkey belongs to Europe is an undeniable truth,'' the official communiqué said. "Turkey ... will continue to progress toward its full membership target despite all opposition.'' Nevertheless, many Turks were stung by the Giscard's words and charged him with Islamophobia. A Turkish parliamentary representative angrily condemned him as "a Christian fundamentalist. He thinks the EU is a Christian club."

"Europe is not a Christian club, it should not have hidden criteria," said Pierre Moscovici, former European affairs minister and a current French representative in the Convention on the Future of Europe that Giscard has been chairing. But Moscovici, identified in news agency dispatches as a Socialist and a Jew, did not condemn Giscard. "I think that Giscard said it in good faith, and it is his conviction,'' he said. "But my position is a little different, not because I find that this question does not arise, but because Europe pledged and must respect its word." He said the EU "must examine this candidature with objectivity, like the other candidatures," starting with the criteria set in the so-called Copenhagen standards, especially those relating to true democracy and a genuine market economy.

No doubt, Giscard spoke for many Europeans -- and not just those on the far right - who are privately concerned about illegal migration "flooding the continent'' and "the Islamic tide." French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin appeared unruffled and suggested that there was no cause for alarm. "The position of Valery Giscard d'Estaing against Turkey's entry into the European Union is an old conviction, with arguments [behind it], but personal,'' Raffarin was quoted as saying. News agency accounts did not mention if a Gallic shrug accompanied his words.

Next month's EU summit in Copenhagen is likely to vote in favor of opening negotiations on Turkey's accession. But the issues Giscard raised, as well as Putin's argument, will not simply disappear just because they seem so inappropriate at the moment.
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