Volume One, Number 22
Friday, December 7, 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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RUSSIA'S FOREIGN MINISTER CHARGES OSCE WITH DOUBLE STANDARDS. Lashing out against "double standards" applied by those who "seem to derive pleasure from speaking about human rights in Chechnya but are unwilling to bring up the theme with regard to Latvia or Kosovo," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov went on the offensive in his address to the 9th session of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council in Bucharest on December 3. Some of his colleagues in the 55-nation body, most of them from Europe, might have wondered whether he would have given the same speech before the new Bush/Putin world order born out of the war against terrorism. In its report, the pro-Kremlin web site strana.ru described Ivanov's speech as telling the OSCE that it "must carry out organizational and structural reforms, step up its humanitarian component, and invigorate the activities of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights."

Ivanov reverted to a threatening style familiar from Soviet times. He emphasized Russia's "serious concern" over human rights in Latvia and Estonia, where Russians charge discrimination against ethnic Russians. He said Russians "feel strongly" that the OSCE must continue its presence in these countries and "provide for" the implementation of its human rights goals. He warned that such an implementation is important not only for Russia but the world, as well as the OSCE, "whose efficiency is now in doubt." He pointed to the OSCE's double standards as "the main stumbling block." He protested that "there is much talk about terrorists in Afghanistan, but practically not a word is spoken about organizations that have links with al-Qaeda and operate in Chechnya behind the smokescreen of the independence drive, or in Kosovo and Macedonia, where the West has openly supported separatists for a long time." Ivanov declared that "Russia's stance is that the attitude to such basic concepts of international relations as 'human rights' and 'terrorism' must be universal. Differing views on these and certain other problems that OSCE member states may have, in Russia's opinion, should not outweigh the identification and solution of common concerns and threats."

RUSSIA'S DUMA TO PROBE CHIEF MUFTI. Without a single dissenting vote, Russia's State Duma moved that Deputy Vladimir Semenov of the Union of Right Forces be commissioned to investigate financial relations between Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin, chairman of the Central Religious Administration of Muslims of Russia, and Tariq bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's brother. When asked by the popular Moscow daily "Moskovsky Komsomolets" why Tadzhuddin, a vocal opponent of Islamic radicalism, was singled out, Semenov called Tadzhuddin's speeches on the issue "a demagogic farce." He said that Tadzhuddin has received millions of dollars from non-governmental Islamic foundations in Saudi Arabia and did not spend the money on building mosques. If the money has been embezzled, this is a purely ethical matter, Semenov argued, and only the authority of the mufti would suffer. But, he added, if Tariq bin Laden arranged to fund Chechen terrorists with Tadzhuddin as a middleman, the matter belongs to the prosecutor's office.

DON COSSACKS WANT TO BE IN CHARGE OF POLICING MIGRANTS. Leaders of the Invincible Don Host, better known as the Don Cossacks, sent an appeal the Presidential Plenipotentiary for the Southern Federal District Viktor Kazantsev, asking that Cossacks be put in charge of policing migration, according to a November 28 report by strana.ru. The appeal states: "Migrants bring to the Don norms of living that incite conflict and are aggressive and are alien to the local and native population. Areas where they have settled have become constant centers of inter-ethnic conflict." The Cossacks demanded new laws that restrict the migration of foreigners and stateless persons to the Northern Caucasus and require knowledge of the Russian language and laws for permission to settle. But the Cossacks' most controversial proposal was to establish a special police force to deal with migrants, composed primarily of Cossacks. Cossacks already have police powers in several cities in the Rostov region, the primary base of the Invincible Don Host.

The Cossacks' approach to migrants, in this case their frequent target, Meskhetian Turks, was demonstrated on December 2 in nearby Krasnodar Kray, according to Prima News Agency, which focuses on human rights. About 60 Cossacks in the village of Shkolny, in Krymsky District, burst into a home, fired tear gas canisters, and severely beat five Meskhetian Turks, all of whom ended up in the hospital with serious injuries. A camera crew from NTV attempted to interview the victims, but they were not allowed to enter the hospital.

RUSSIAN PRESS PROBES SOURCES OF SKINHEAD VIOLENCE. The sharp rise in skinhead violence in Moscow this year has prompted provincial newspapers to feature their local skinheads. On October 26, "Samarskie Izvestiya" profiled skinheads in Samara, who are between 12 and 20 years of age and for the most part live in low-income "workers' districts" of the city. At the beginning of the interview with three skinheads, the extremists screamed in unison: "Death to blacks!" In response to the question "What have the Negroes done to you that is so bad?" a skinhead named Mikha answered: "You are so naïve! All of these churki [a pejorative term for dark-skinned persons], not just Negroes, but also Arabs, Chinese, and Jews, are insane morons. Who do you think blew up the buildings in America?" Another skinhead added: "Let them stay in their own countries. We don't go to you, so you shouldn't crawl over here to us."

While reports usually identify skinheads as lower class, the Nizhny Novgorod newspaper "Nizhegorodsky Rabochy" found that most of the local skinheads "come from good families and study in prestigious universities." The article criticized the local authorities for allowing inter-ethnic problems "to become more intense every year." It continued that "while the public and the officials sleep, the skinheads feel totally comfortable celebrating every year Hitler's birthday, to which this reporter has been a witness many times… Our skinheads are sure that the hour in which they will 'waste the blacks' is not far away. For now, according to what one of them told me, they do not have the necessary numbers or organization. However, they are confident that their occasional attacks on students from Asia and Africa, as well as on our guests from the Caucasus, will grow into something bigger. This mood is present not just among them but also among a significant part of Nizhny Novgorod's youth, who when the 'X' hour comes, won't fail to join up with the skinheads."

In an article earlier this year, an expert on skinheads estimated their numbers in Samara as between several hundred and a thousand, and up to 2,000 in Nizhny Novgorod.

CEMETERIES DESECRATED IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE. This week the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported the desecration of an historic cemetery in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad. Vandals scrawled swastikas and graffiti such as "Death to the Jews," defacing a Holocaust memorial and the gravestone of the noted nineteenth century scholar, Rabbi Israel Salanter, whose tombstone was restored last August. In Ukraine, a cemetery near Drohobych in the west of the country was repeatedly desecrated over the past few months, according to the newspaper "Vysoky Zamok" of December 1. Among the targets were a memorial plaque marking the mass grave of local Jews massacred by the Nazis in November 1942 and the gravestone of the writer Bruno Schultz.

MOLDOVA/TRANSDNIESTER: SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH TO BE DEMOLISHED. Just three weeks before a Baptist church in the town of Tiraspol, the capital of Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniester, is scheduled for enforced demolition, Keston News Service has learned that a second Baptist church affiliated with the Tiraspol church has also been threatened with demolition. The pastor of the Tiraspol church told Keston on December 3 that the head of the local administration in the village of Krasnoe issued a verbal threat "because the congregation is not registered as a religious organization." The two congregations, like all those belonging to the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians/Baptists in the former Soviet republics, refuse to register, arguing that registration would lay them open to state meddling. On November 8 the State Building Inspectorate informed members of the Tiraspol Baptist congregation that if they do not pull down their prayer house or transfer it to residential use by December 25, the authorities would demolish it, as the building had been put up illegally. Pastor Vasili Timoshchuk conceded that the church had been built without planning permission, but said it had stood for fourteen and a half years. "It was built on private land as a light, temporary structure during the perestroika era of the late 1980s when religious freedom began," he told Keston. "No one complained about it at the time, neither the authorities nor the neighbors."

UZBEK DISSIDENT DETAINED IN PRAGUE. Czech authorities arrested prominent Uzbek dissident Mohammed Solih upon his arrival at Prague's airport on November 28, and the Tashkent government demanded his extradition as a terrorist, according to news agency accounts. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Helsinki Federation dismissed Tashkent's action as politically motivated and called for his immediate release. In the 1991 presidential elections Solih was the only candidate allowed to challenge incumbent Islam Karimov. In 1993 he was forced to flee to Turkey, and in 1999 Norway granted him political asylum. In November 2000, Uzbekistan's Supreme Court sentenced him in absentia to 15 years in prison on charges of terrorism and anti-state activities arising from his alleged involvement in the February 1999 bombings in Tashkent in which 16 people were killed. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Peters asked his Czech counterpart Jan Kavan to return Solih to Norway, and Kavan said he supports the request. On November 30 a Prague court ordered Solih's detention pending the arrival of documentation in support of his extradition. On December 6 the court received the documents. Knowledgeable sources suggest that Solih may welcome a trial in Prague that he is confident would clear his name.

NEO-NAZI RALLY IN BERLIN PROTESTS EXHIBIT ON WEHRMACHT WAR CRIMES. Some 3,300 neo-Nazis marched in Berlin on Saturday, December 1, but the authorities complied with the Jewish community's request and blocked the marchers from passing in front of the city's largest synagogue, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). What the JTA called one of postwar Germany's largest neo-Nazi rallies was organized by the extreme-right National Democratic Party of Germany, known by its German initials NPD, as a protest against an exhibit on "Crimes of the Wehrmacht" that opened on November 27. The exhibit documents the participation of the regular German army in Nazi war crimes, a fact that many Germans have stubbornly refused to acknowledge. Paul Spiegel, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the NPD rally a "provocation of huge dimensions." According to JTA, Spiegel's view "was reflected by countless mainstream politicians, parties and activist groups." (Banning the NPD on the grounds of its anti-democratic character is now under consideration by the Supreme Court.) Though the NPD has a national membership of only about 6,000 and has failed to gain a foothold in electoral politics, it has often attracted attention by a smart exploitation of timely issues. On this occasion, spectators consisted mostly of police and some protesters. About 4,500 officers protected the marchers from angry protesters who had gathered near the Jewish community center and New Synagogue, a few blocks from the march route. Police blocked the street with armored vehicles and water cannons to prevent confrontations.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * In an article about antisemitism in Saratov Oblast in the November 29 issue of "Obshchaya Gazeta," Sergey Pochechuev, press secretary of the Saratov synagogue, was quoted as saying: "In Saratov nowadays it has become unsafe. Over the past year, the Jewish cemetery has been attacked five times. On the night of October 8, nine gravestones were destroyed. On the night of the 15th, there were over 60. The Kirovsky ROVD [police] are investigating. But the culprits have not once been found. In the spring, a Molotov cocktail shattered on the roof of the synagogue. A fire didn't break out due to good luck -- a congregant saw it in time. We cannot open a Sunday school in the synagogue since we cannot guarantee the total safety of the children."

UKRAINIAN AUTHORITIES TURN BANKER INTO POLITICAL PRISONER
Though Two Courts Dismissed the Case, Boris Feldman Has Been Imprisoned for Nearly Two Years

Boris Feldman, a major shareholder of Ukraine's Slavyansky Bank, has been held in jail since February 2000. He stands accused of serious violations of the law that no court has established as yet. But even if he is convicted one day, his imprisonment is illegal. There are also credible reports of torture having been used, and his persecution gives off the odor of antisemitism.

According to informed sources in the Ukrainian parliament, Feldman's legal problems originated with an attempt by the Ukrainian tax police to extort from him $16 million in taxes based on his alleged misconduct in the affairs of the bank. A civil court ruled that the charges were unfounded. But then the tax police opened a criminal case against him, based on the same accusations of misconduct, and in February 2000 put him in jail where he has been ever since. On September 27, 2001, the Pechersky city court in Kyiv ruled that his imprisonment was illegal and ordered his immediate release.

Feldman was not released. Instead, on the day of the city court's action, Ukraine's deputy prosecutor general issued an order keeping him in jail by declaring the court's decision illegal. According to Ukrainian law, a prosecutor cannot overrule a court decision; only a higher court can do that. In the course of the proceedings, the government also stripped Feldman, together with many small shareholders, of their shares in the bank and sold the bank at less than 10 percent of its value - an action that also violates the law.

The case against Feldman has more than just a whiff of antisemitism. In a speech in parliament on November 25, Communist deputy Pavlo Baulin attacked what he called the "Jewish-gay mafia." He fumed against Feldman as the man whose group "holds all of the state's finances in its hands" and condemned UCSJ for calling for his release.

A citizen's illegal pre-trial and post-acquittal imprisonment, accompanied by illegal judicial decisions by a prosecutor, constitute fundamental violations of internationally recognized human rights. The possibility that Feldman and his bank were singled out because the major shareholder is Jewish, and allegations that he was tortured in an effort to force a confession, are factors that compound the violations, as does the fact that the authorities refused to grant him bail. On occasion, his attorneys have been denied access to him. He has been confined in a facility that houses dangerous criminals. Even if Feldman turns out to be guilty of the shady banking practices so far unproven in court, his continuing detention makes him a political prisoner and a victim of vengeful enemies in high places.
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