Volume 2, Number 47
Wednesday, November 27, 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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PUTIN BRINGS BACK THE ‘SACRED’ STAR, THE STAR OF OPPRESSION. In a gesture that makes opponents of Soviet communism shudder, on November 26 President Vladimir Putin restored the five-pointed red star as the symbol of the Russian Army. The move follows the reinstatement of the Soviet anthem, freshened with new words. The yellow-bordered red star was dropped after the collapse of communism in 1991 but was left intact on aircraft, military flags, and even the nameplate of the ministry's “Red Star.” According to the announcement from the Kremlin, Putin granted the wish of his defense minister, Sergei Ivanov. “The star is sacred for all servicemen,” Ivanov said at a meeting of top generals broadcast on television, with “a frowning Putin” seated behind him, the Associated Press reported. Ivanov reminded the nation: “Our fathers and grandfathers went to battle with the star.” Parliament must still give its approval, but observers discount the chances of serious opposition. “Returning the star could boost morale,” commented Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst. “It may look like a trifle, but it gives an important signal to both the top brass and the civilian bureaucracy that the Soviet military machine will remain.”

For many in the former USSR and outside it, the red star was a star of repression. AP quoted Sergei Grigoryants, a Soviet-era dissident and critic of the Putin government, as characterizing Putin’s move as “very serious. Because it doesn't just feed old people's nostalgia, but also affects the youth who don't understand the fascist or communist ideologies but are eager to grasp their symbols.” Others note that Putin keeps building his power base. “No one is left out: Communists get their anthem, the conservatives have a double-headed eagle and democrats their tricolor flag,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a Soviet-era dissident who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group, a leading human rights organization. “It makes one wonder what kind of national ideology such a state has.”

Perhaps it is not accidental – to borrow a phrase from the Soviet era -- that Putin announced the reinstatement of the red star after the Prague NATO summit ended. In “The International Herald Tribune” of November 27, NATO expert Ronald Asmus struck a triumphant note: “Anyone who participated in last week’s NATO summit in Prague could not help but feel a sense of history in the air. The alliance moved boldly to erase the remaining dividing lines of the Cold War by inviting seven new democracies stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea to join its ranks.”

ELDERLY MULLAH BEATEN BY RUSSIAN TEENAGERS. On November 21, Iskhat Fatakhutdinov, a 75-year-old mullah was beaten by three drunken teenagers inside his mosque in the town of Roshal, just outside Moscow, according to Russian newspapers over the weekend. The teenagers are reported to have entered the mosque after the traditional evening prayer service Thursday attended mostly by elderly Tatar women, and they started yelling. The mullah tried to quiet them down, but they attacked him with iron pipes left in the mosque after some recent repairs. “Izvestiya” quoted Fatakhutdinov as saying that “The attackers were blatantly anti-Muslim. They shouted at us: 'This is not your place, this is a Christian place. Stop praying here.'" Fatakhutdinov was treated for cuts and bruises but not hospitalized, “Moskovsky Komsomolets” reported on November 23. According to RIA Novosti, police have opened an investigation. If charged and convicted of hooliganism, the teenagers could get up to five years in prison.

ROMA AND KOREANS ARE ATTACKED. Armed with metal pipes, 15 skinheads attacked seven North Korean construction workers on November 19 in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, according to a November 21 report by the local Afontovo television station. The skinhead gang began the assault by pelting the Koreans' trailers with rocks, and then waited for the Koreans to come out before they beat them. One Korean ended up in the hospital with serious head injuries. Police have detained four of the alleged attackers and found in their possession leaflets calling for cleansing Russia of all non-Russians. Under interrogation, the suspects revealed that they thought the Koreans were Kyrgyz.

A police source assured the television station that the regional authorities are monitoring the activities of about a hundred local skinheads and will not permit in Krasnoyarsk the kinds of mass violence that takes place in Moscow.

On November 20, a group of men attacked seven Roma-owned homes in the village of Yablonovsky, the AVS television network in Krasnodar Kray reported. Twelve Roma, also known as Gypsies, were beaten. Many of the victims are in serious need of medical attention, but are said to be afraid to go to a hospital. One person has been arrested and charged with hooliganism.

LATVIAN POLICE DETAIN SEVEN NATIONAL BOLSHEVIKS. Police raided five locations in Riga and Daugavpils and detained seven members of Pobeda (“victory” in Russian), for alleged illegal possession of explosives and weapons, according to the Baltic News Service (BNS) citing deputy security police chief Didzis Smitins. Pobeda is a Latvian civic group that has been reported to serve as a front for the Russian National Bolsheviks, a neo-Nazi group that also operates in Latvia. Moreover, an international arrest warrant is being prepared against Pobeda leader Vladimir Linderman, now in Russia. He plans to attend the trial of Russian National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov. Linderman told BNS in Moscow that the police claims of explosives and weapons found are absurd and that they were either “planted” by the police or the reports are false. It is rumored, BNS adds, that Linderman has become the leader of the National Bolsheviks following Limonov’s arrest.

UNLIKELY ALLY IN BRITAIN DEFENDS LUKASHENKO’S RECORD BY IGNORING IT. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko is not a dictator, and NATO is punishing him for resisting its attempts to exert control and extract cash, contends John Laughland, trustee of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group, in a November 22 commentary published by “The Guardian,” a center-left London daily. Members of the British Helsinki group are notorious for defending Lukashenko. This time Laughland went so far as saying that Roman Catholics and Jews are well treated in Belarus. He ignored Lukashenko’s statements that at various times blamed Jews in the Russian government, news media, and/or the economy for generating antisemitism. He also ignored statements by leaders of the Belarusian Jewish community – and representatives of other faiths outside the Russian Orthodox Church -- who fear that the new religion law signed by Lukashenko will create serious problems for minority faiths.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * “Ever since Washington’s position on Chechnya started softening, the Europeans have been challenging Russian handling of the war and its side effects,” wrote Christian Caryl in an article titled “The Dark Side of Russia” in “Newsweek International” dated December 2. “In the run-up to that summit, Amnesty International urged the European Union to take Russia to task for its human-rights record. Too bad it didn’t send a similar note to George W. Bush.”

VICTORY IN DEFEAT FOR SWISS RIGHT-WING; AUSTRIA’S HAIDER TROUNCED
In Two Neighboring States, Rightwingers Lost but Are Undaunted

On November 24, Swiss voters rejected by a most narrow margin a nationalist-populist plan that would have made their country the first in Europe to shut down its borders to virtually all refugees. The same day, in Switzerland’s eastern neighbor Austria, Joerg Haider, Europe’s most presentable far-right politician suffered a crushing defeat at the polls that might well have stopped his rise.

By a margin of only 3,422 votes or 50.1 percent to 49.9, the Swiss electorate turned down a proposal by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party “against abuse of the right to asylum.” Experts pointed out that it was the smallest margin ever to decide on a popular initiative. Had the referendum won, Switzerland would have expelled refugees coming from any persecution-free country, meaning all of Switzerland’s neighbors. But, as a headline in the Geneva-based “Le Temps” declared: “The People's Party is triumphant in defeat.”

In Austria, the conservative People’s Party (which is not connected with its Swiss namesake) won the national elections by a whopping 42 percent, which represents a surge of 16 percent since the most recent elections, in 1999, and the highest in the post-World War II era. Its former coalition partner, the far-right Freedom Party, captured only 10.2 percent, down from its all-time high of 27 percent in 1999.

In Switzerland, People's Party leader Christoph Blocher called the outcome of his immigration referendum “sensational.” A billionaire industrialist who hopes to gain a cabinet post after next year’s elections, Blocher sounded ecstatic: “We were on our own against the cabinet, all the other parties, against the media, and yet we finally only lost by a handful of votes.” He warned the government to take note of the public concern about asylum seekers and pledged that his party would press the issue at next year's national elections. At the last elections, in 1999, Blocher’s party won 15 parliamentary seats -- a 50 percent increase – and one cabinet seat in the coalition government, and it is now the second biggest party after the Social Democrats.

The Swiss government’s response was defensive. “As one of the richest nations in the world, it would have reflected very badly on us if we became the first one to deny the right to asylum,” Justice Minister Ruth Metzler said. Last year, a little more than 20,000 people applied for refugee status in Switzerland, only 17 percent more than in the year 2000 but still well below the peaks of the 1990s. Some 2,250 people were accepted as refugees, or a little less than 12 percent of all applicants. The countries of former Yugoslavia account for the largest number, followed by Kurds from Turkey.

Foreigners now account for 20 percent of Switzerland’s population. A renewed debate over immigration has been stirred by the arrival in German-speaking areas of many black Africans, described in some Swiss media as drug dealers. News agency dispatches from Switzerland add that while many German-speaking cantons, including densely populated Zurich, voted “yes” in the referendum, the nays came from the French-speaking west.

In Austria, Haider said the day after the election that he was responsible for his party’s defeat, and that he recognized “a great deal of distrust toward me.” Press accounts were unanimous in blaming his erratic quarrels with his colleagues, as well as his unpopular hobnobbing with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. His thinly veiled antisemitic statements did not help his campaign for respectability. In his first post-election statement, Haider also announced that he would resign as the governor of the southern province of Carinthia. But a few hours later, he changed his mind and said that he would stay on. According to the Austrian press, Haider has resigned or threatened resignation on five recent occasions. State television has called him “the professional resigner.”

As we go to press, Haider is still a leader in the Freedom Party and the governor of Carinthia. On November 27, he offered Schuessel, whom he had recently called “a madman,” his party’s return to the government coalition. But his party is consumed by infighting. Haider loyalists have moved to exclude five prominent figures. “An iron fist will be necessary,”' Leopold Schoeggl threatened. Alois Pumberger, one of those targeted, described those behind the move as “an execution squad, commanded by Joerg Haider.” Susanne Riess-Passer, ousted as the party’s top leader, declared: “This is no longer my party.”

However, it is too early to say goodbye to Haider. At 52, he is full of fire, is photogenic, and he has a following. He shows no sign of scaling down his sometimes coded pro-Nazi and antisemitic rhetoric. When it comes to immigration, which is his strongest card, he is as shrill as ever.

The twin issues of immigration and the right to political asylum loom large in both Switzerland and Austria. But the defeat in Switzerland of those urging draconian measures does not mean that the argument is over. To the contrary, the victors are likely to read the results as an inducement to clamp down on immigration. In both countries, centrists and conservatives will refine the traditional tactic of trying to take the wind out of the sails of those farther to the right on the political spectrum. At least some of the measures they are likely to apply will be small, gradual, and sotto voce, making use of the police and the formidable power of local administrations.
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