Volume 2, Number 48
Wednesday, December 6, 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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CHECHEN WOMAN MAYOR PROTESTING RUSSIAN ATROCITIES MURDERED. Late in the evening on November 29, masked intruders murdered Malika Umazheva, a Chechen woman leader and chief of administration or "mayor" of the village of Alkhan-Kala, according to Russian and foreign wire services. While Russian and Chechen law enforcement agencies as well as the pro-Kremlin media described her murder "as the latest act of intimidation by the [Chechen] bandits," Memorial, a Russian monitoring group, said that her exposure of Russian atrocities in her village made Russian soldiers the more likely culprits.

According to Catherine Fitzpatrick in RFE/RL's newsletter "(Un)Civil Societies" dated December 4, neighbors and other villagers interviewed by Memorial workers said that the Russian federal troops who had searched Umazheva's home the evening of her murder were responsible for executing her in her shed with three shots to the head. Memorial said relatives at first refused to talk to its monitors, criticizing both human rights activists and journalists as failing to protect Umazheva from retaliation, even as they reported on her harsh criticism of Russian mistreatment of villagers.

Award-winning Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya had profiled Umazheva for her courage in standing up to the Russian military. Earlier this year, Politkovskaya also reported that federal forces murdered Umazheva's brother: First, they tortured him with electric shock, then dumped him at home in a weakened state, and, finally, they returned to his home the following day to execute him. According to Fitzpatrick, Memorial workers and Russian journalists believe that Umazheva's protests over the Russian "sweeps" led to "heavy pressure on her and her family. Soldiers riding in carriers without license plates broke into her home a number of times, said Memorial, and failed to identify themselves, and even fired a shot into the house. Then a more formal search followed by an investigator with a warrant, but Umazheva said, he claimed nothing 'illegal' was discovered." Reviewing her case over the last year, Memorial concluded that "the murder of Umazheva was the latest act of terror unleashed by the power ministries of the Russian Federation against the civilians of the Chechen Republic."

FORCED REPATRIATION TO CHECHNYA CONDEMNED. The European Union and international human rights organizations have expressed concern over reports that Chechen and Ingush authorities plan to shut down displaced-persons camps in Ingushetia and send all Chechen refugees back to their home republic by early 2003, Interfax reported on November 28. In Grozny, a spokeswoman for Chechen Prime Minister Mikhail Babich told Interfax that no one will be forced to return but that those who do so will receive a daily allowance of 20 rubles ($0.66).

On December 2, Russian forces shut off all supplies, water, and electricity to the Aki Yurt camp in Ingushetia, "leaving more than 1,000 people -- mainly women and children - with little option but to trek back in 14-degree weather to what remains a war zone," Fred Weir reported for "The Christian Science Monitor." On December 4, Weir reported from Moscow that "Russian security troops are forcibly resettling thousands of Chechen refugees from relatively safe and warm border tent camps to their war-ravaged homes in Chechnya." He added that a spokesman for Ingushetia's Internal Affairs Department confirmed that the camp had been dismantled.

"Plans to expel the refugees have been rumored for some time, but now a real eviction is under way," Svetlana Ganushkina, a member of the Kremlin's Commission for Human Rights, told Weir. "Something very bad is happening down there."

Here is an instance of a Soviet-style coincidence, a category once ridiculed but worth recalling in these days of East-West rapprochement: The Russian shutdown of basic services in the refugee camp in Ingushetia occurred on the same day that the French and British governments announced the shutdown of the problematic refugee camp Sangatte on French soil. (See the details in the final item of this newsletter.) There is no collusion, of course. But what happens on the western rim of Europe on the super-sensitive issue of refugees can have an impact on decision-makers refining their plans for the continent’s eastern reaches.

ANTISEMITIC VANDALISM IN KARELIA. A swastika and the words "Hitler Wasn't Wrong When He Sent the Jews to Hell" were recently daubed on the wall of the Shalom Jewish Cultural Center in Petrozavodsk, Russia (Republic of Karelia), according to the local newspaper "Guberniya" of November 27. A week later, a Jewish cemetery in the city was vandalized by somebody who wrote that the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust was not enough. A criminal investigation has begun.

The article criticized local and national authorities for not cracking down on the incitement of ethnic and religious hatred, which is illegal in Russia. The article pointed out that in the opinion of law enforcement agencies, "kike" and similar derogatory words for other minorities "do not in any way insult anybody's national pride."

MORE THAN HALF OF RUSSIANS BELIEVE 'RUSSIA IS FOR RUSSIANS.' Skinheads lack any ideology, said Nikolay Kovalev-- former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and now member of the state Duma-- on December 1 in a live talk show on Russia's wholly state-owned RTR TV. Disagreeing with him was Sergey Troitsky, also known as "Spider" and the president of a hard-rock group, who praised the skinheads and called them true patriots. Yevgeny Loginov from the Duma's Liberal-Democratic faction reminded viewers throughout the country that police have never identified the people who beat up ethnic Russians in CIS states. Gennady Gudkov, a member of the Duma's security committee, suggested that there ought to be an investigation of the people who are behind the skinheads. But the most shocking statement came at the end of the program when the presenter, Vladimir Stefanov, cited a poll suggesting that more than 50 percent of the population of Russia agree with the slogan "Russia is for Russians." One imagines that the people the pollsters approached were ethnic Russians.

BELARUSIAN SKINHEADS TRIED FOR INCITING ETHNIC HATRED. On December 3, a regional court in Vitebsk, Belarus completed proceedings against four skinheads charged with inciting ethnic, racial, and religious hatred, as well as attacking citizens of Nepal, Lebanon, and India, according to Interfax. If convicted, they face 5 to 15 years of imprisonment. The court's hearings took place behind closed doors, and the decision will not be made public before December 12.

The youths "did not hide their dislike of foreigners, people from Africa and Asia, accusing them of drug trafficking, terrorism, and 'worsening the genetic fund of the Slavic nation,'" Interfax reported. The news agency also quoted Judge Tadeusz Voronovich as saying that "it is difficult" to prove the incitement of racial and ethnic discord, since they are "very close in essence." He added: "It is difficult to draw a clear line between beating a man as pure hooliganism and ethnic-based violence. We need to determine the motives behind the defendants' conduct aimed at insulting and humiliating people of certain nationalities."

SUSPENDED SENTENCE FOR PUBLISHER OF ANTISEMITIC LATVIAN MAGAZINE. The Kurzeme Regional Court in Latvia has handed Guntars Landmanis a one-year suspended sentence and imposed a fine of 600 lats, following a January 2001 judgment by a lower court that found Landmanis guilty of inciting ethnic hatred. Landmanis publishes the magazine "Patriots" which routinely prints antisemitic articles such as the one that compared Jews to ticks and called for their extermination. On November 13, the Latvian newspaper "Diena" quoted Nils Muiznieks, director of the Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies, as saying that the case marks the first time that Latvia's law against inciting ethnic hatred has led to a conviction.

ALIEN SECTS THREATEN KAZAKHSTAN MORE THAN TERRORISM, PAPER CHARGES. The more than 3,000 "religious sects and trends" that have set themselves up in Kazakhstan may damage the country's foundations and may be more dangerous than terrorism, the Kazakh newspaper "Zhas Alash" argued on November 30. The newspaper, which usually deals with youth activities, charged that the authorities allow religious sects and foreign missionaries to teach freely in the country and ignore the possible dangers they pose. It warned that "the hidden activities of the alien religions" and their "propaganda" will "cause disagreements among Kazakh people in the near future." The newspaper noted tension between Catholics and Protestants even in "civilized Europe" which it also found guilty of intensifying "propaganda" against Islam. The newspaper declared: "The time has come to understand that to spread alien religions means damaging the nation's foundations and causing a split among people."

TAJIK GOVERNMENT DEPLORES ITS CITIZENS' DEPORTATION FROM RUSSIA. Many of the Tajiks forcibly deported from Russia last week were law-abiding citizens in possession of the necessary work permits, which Russian police deliberately destroyed, Tajik Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Sattarov told journalists in Dushanbe on November 29, according to Interfax. Sattarov characterized the deportation as "an unfriendly act" that violated agreements between the two countries. He also expressed concern with the "tendentious and humiliating" coverage of the deportations in the Russian press.

GERMAN PARTY EXPELS LEADER WHO INCITED ANTISEMITISM. On December 2, a large majority of the leadership of Germany's Free Democrats (FDP) voted for the expulsion of one of their senior leaders accused of inciting antisemitism and accepting illegal donations for that campaign, according to wire service reports. Minister of economics under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and deputy leader of the FDP, Juergen Moellemann, 57, was told to quit the party or be thrown out. News agencies quoted FPD sources as saying that Moellemann caused the party severe damage by initiating a leaflet campaign against Israel. State prosecutors are investigating allegations that he received 1.8 million euros ($1.7 million) in illegal party donations to fund that campaign. Moellemann says he funded it with his own money. He has hinted that if expelled, he might set up his own party. An opinion poll suggests such a party has the potential to win 12 percent of the vote.

The FDP blamed Moellemann for the disappointing results of this fall's elections. Support for the small liberal party, usually the kingmaker between the two big parties, dipped to 7.4 percent, and it came in as fourth, behind the Greens. Commentators predict that the flamboyant, pro-Arab Moellemann's political career is over.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "We have the duty to recognize evil and immoral acts. We have the duty to refuse to take part in them. We are all volunteers on this earth," said U.S. Ambassador to Latvia Brian Carlson on November 29, commemorating the execution of 25,000 Jews by 1,700 executioners, up to 1,500 of them Latvians, between November 30 and December 8, 1941 in the Rumbula forest. "How sad that anyone in today's free and democratic Latvia would excuse this kind of crime by saying 'it was a complicated time' or the executioners were not 'volunteers.'"

DESPERATE AFRICAN AND ASIAN MIGRANTS UNFAZED BY TOUGH NEW LAWS
Is It a Tide that Cannot Be Stopped?

Libya's coast guard told Reuters on December 1 that it recovered the bodies of 12 illegal immigrants who drowned when their boat bound for Italy sank in bad weather. While 52 would-be immigrants were rescued, an estimated 56 others are still missing, the Libyan news agency Jana reported, quoting the Interior and Justice Ministry.

This is not the first time that a rickety, overcrowded vessel trying to unload African immigrants has sunk, resulting in a dozen or two bodies found somewhere on the Mediterranean coastline. Lately, Libya has become a staging ground for sub-Saharan Africans trying to find their way into Western Europe via Italy's long coastline, Reuters said from Tripoli, quoting "diplomats." On December 3, "The New York Times" noted that: "Almost every month, dozens or scores of them die when a boat goes down, or when they try to swim the final stretch to land."

Italy's tough new anti-immigration law, enacted earlier this year, was designed to deter illegal immigrants. But they continue to arrive, taking extraordinary risks."It can't be stopped," Maurizio Fistarol, a member of the Italian parliament told "The Times." "It's like stopping a thunderstorm or the tides." Other officials interviewed by "The Times" reflected the same frustration as they argued that to prevent a continuing loss of life, Italy must intensify its efforts to get more cooperation from law enforcement officials in the countries from which the immigrants were leaving. Undersecretary of the Interior Alfredo Mantovano pointed out that Italy had reached agreements with Turkey and Albania, and the result has been "dramatically curtailed" immigration from those countries trying to reach Italy's southeastern coast. Referring to that region, Mantovano said, "Illegal immigrants haven't disembarked in Puglia since the middle of August."

At the same time, the immigration route from northern Africa to Sicily and other southern and southwestern points in Italy has gotten busier, even though traffickers on that route are known to have little regard for safety. "In Libya, we're still in the first stages of talks," Mantovano told "The Times." "It's now the weak point in the Mediterranean."

Italy is now a main portal into other European countries, and Fistarol and Mantovano emphasized that those countries must give more help to Italy. "It would be more useful if, instead of Italy dealing with Libya, all of the European Union (EU) was," Mantovano told "The Times." Fistarol had a more philosophical approach: "This isn't a phenomenon that one nation can stop on its own. It's a phenomenon of this epoch, and it takes all of Europe to face it."

According to the Reuters correspondent filing from Tripoli, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has urged EU leaders to hold talks with their African counterparts on a joint strategy to stem the tide.

On December 2, France and Britain announced that Sangatte, the controversial camp for illegal immigrants near the French city of Calais, will be shut down later this month instead of next April as previously scheduled.

The camp, run by the French Cross, and the willingness of asylum seekers to risk death to cross the English Channel into Britain have created tension in French-British relations. France had charged Britain with encouraging illegal immigration with its relatively generous asylum laws. Britain had countercharged France with doing little to prevent asylum seekers from trying to cross the Channel. According to the new arrangement, Britain will receive about 1,000 Iraqi Kurds, as well as about 200 Afghans who have family in Britain, and France will take responsibility for the 2,200 refugees currently at the camp. What remains to be seen is whether the closure of the camp will stop asylum seekers from trying to use the area as a staging ground for a passage to Britain.

In a joint news conference with French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, British Home Secretary David Blunkett said he was "very pleased that the Sangatte center will close for good on December 30." He called Sangatte "a magnet for illegal immigrants over the past three years. Around 67,000 people have passed through it, and it has been a festering sore in Anglo-French relations."

The two cabinet members who struck the deal are tough negotiators and ambitious politicians. Both are outspoken and have made statements that human rights activists have criticized as anti-immigrant. Both are staking their reputations on devising measures designed to stop the tide of illegal immigration.
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