Volume One, Number 23
Friday, December 14, 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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ANNAN HIGHLIGHTS HUMAN RIGHTS IN NOBEL PEACE PRIZE SPEECH. Referring to September 11 as "a gate of fire" through which the world entered the third millennium, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace on December 10 with a speech centered on human rights. "Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another," he said. Repeatedly, he stressed the primacy of the rights of the individual over the claims of sovereign states. In the twenty-first century, he said, the UN's mission "will be defined by a new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion. This will require us to look beyond the framework of states, and beneath the surface of nations or communities." Since he became secretary general in 1997, he said he has often recalled the opening words of the world organization's charter: "We the peoples." But, he continued, "What is not always recognized is that 'We the peoples' are made up of individuals whose claims to the most fundamental rights have too often been sacrificed in the supposed interests of the state or the nation…The sovereignty of states must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights."

"Washington Post" columnist Jim Hoagland called Anan's speech "subtly subversive" in endorsing humanitarian interventions by international coalitions when governments fail to protect their own citizens. Not all UN member governments would agree with Annan's definition of democracy as the global objective. "Only where individual rights are respected can differences be channeled politically and resolved peacefully," Annan said. "Only in a democratic environment, based on respect for diversity and dialogue, can individual self-expression and self-government be secured, and freedom of association upheld." Unlike his predecessors, Annan sharply condemned states that failed to respect human rights: "When states undermine the rule of law and violate the rights of their individual citizens, they become a menace not only to their own people, but also to their neighbors, and indeed the world. What we need today is better governance - legitimate, democratic governance that allows each individual to flourish, and each state to thrive."

OSIP MANDELSHTAM REMEMBERED. Do immortals die more than once? In December 1999, vandals destroyed a monument to one of the century's greatest poets in the Russian language, Osip Mandelshtam. The memorial graced a section of Vladivostok that once contained a gulag transit camp where the poet was held before his transfer to the infamous Kolyma camp where he died in 1938. Even before the Vladivostok structure was erected, some people objected to it, their views summed up by the cry, "No monuments to Jews!" But on December 11 the radio station "Ekho Moskvy" reported the unveiling of a new memorial to the poet, in the same spot as the old.

NEO-NAZIS FAIL TO DISRUPT POETRY READING IN ROSTOV. Members of the violent neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU) tried to disrupt a reading in a Rostov theater by the prominent Russian Jewish poet Igor Guberman, according to a report by the Russian Jewish web site sem40.ru. Thirty minutes before he was scheduled to arrive, RNU activists gathered in front of the building to distribute their local newspaper "Rostovsky Poryadok." They passed out recruitment fliers and called for Jews to be "treated like enemies." However, the police made a quick appearance and got most of the RNU out of sight before the arrival of the public and the poet.

UPPER HOUSE SPEAKER MIRONOV CHIDES SENATOR FOR RACIST STATEMENT. In an interview on Russia TV's weekly program "Zerkalo" of December 8, Sergey Mironov, the new Speaker of Russia's upper house known as the Federation Council, reprimanded Nikolay Kondratenko, the former governor of Krasnodar Territory and now its senator, for his recent speech saying that since only Armenians, Meskhetian Turks, and Jews can afford to buy land, the Federation Council should reject the new Land Code facilitating the purchase of land. According to Itar-Tass, "several senators" have asked Speaker Mironov to draft a resolution on interethnic relations and the inadmissibility of making such statements. The draft document has been prepared and is being considered by a Federation Council committee, Mironov said. "Many of my colleagues insisted that Kondratenko apologized immediately but, unfortunately, he did not do this," Mironov said, and added that Kondratenko's statements are "unacceptable" in general and in the Federation Council in particular.

SVERDLOVSK PROSECUTOR CLOSES A CASE OF ETHNIC HATRED. The Prosecutor General's Office of Sverdlovsk Oblast brought charges of inciting ethnic and religious hatred against two members of the Islamic organization Nurubadi, API news service reported on November 28. But on December 5 the office announced the case closed, according to a report to UCSJ by Dr. Mikhail Oshtrakh, head of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Jewish National-Cultural Autonomy. The two men, one Azeri and the other Uzbek, have been distributing antisemitic literature in the region since 1995. Last March, the Urals District Interregional Department on the Media asked Dr. Oshtrakh to review the publications, and he found several extremist condemnations of atheists as well as antisemitic statements, which prompted the Prosecutor's Office to start the case. The reason for the reversal is unclear. The same office has also refused a request by Dr. Oshtrakh and other local ethnic minority leaders to open a similar case, based on the fact that the local diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church distributed in local churches a book by Sergey Nilus containing the infamous antisemitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and published antisemitic articles in two of its newspapers.

OMSK SYNAGOGUE ATTACKED AGAIN. On December 8, bricks flew once again, breaking windows in the Omsk synagogue and narrowly missing the upper part of the Holy Ark, reported Aleksandr Sakov, a local Jewish activist and regional monitor for UCSJ. No arrest was made. Last Hanukah, a similar attack took place.

RUSSIAN SYNAGOGUE MADE SAFER FROM SKINHEAD ATTACKS. Chicago Action for Jews in the Former Soviet Union -- an affiliate of UCSJ - has offered $6,000 to provide around-the-clock security for a synagogue in the Russian city of Tyumen that has been severely vandalized by skinheads, as many as seven times this year. Police have refused to arrest the skinheads, even though their identities are known, claiming that the culprits have to be caught in the act before they can be arrested. Moreover, the skinheads had a web site, shut down by the server in October, where they boasted about their attacks (See Bigotry Monitor #16, October 26.) For instance, a first-person account of the September 29 attack on the synagogue spoke of the "pleasant sound of breaking glass" and threatened that next time instead of rocks, Molotov cocktails will be thrown.

SOVIET OMON TROOPER DETAINED IN 1998 RIGA SYNAGOGUE BOMBING. Latvia's security police detained a Russian national and a former Soviet elite OMON trooper on suspicions of bombing a synagogue in Riga on April 2, 1998, the Baltic News Service reported on December11. Security police chief Juris Smitins said that the suspect is 30 years old and a St. Petersburg resident who previously lived in Latvia. He is also charged in the criminal case against OMON troopers dispatched by Moscow to crush Latvia's struggle for independence in 1991. On December 13, the suspect was released, but, the Latvians say, will be kept under surveillance.

MOSCOW PENTECOSTALS BLOCKED FROM BUILDING CHURCH CENTER. After gaining the required approvals of all the agencies, the Emmanuel Church in Moscow is being forced to give up the land it was allocated five years ago for a new church center, according to the Keston News Service. The reason is the unwillingness of the "district community" to be home to a "neo-Pentecostal movement, brought from the U.S." A member of the church told Keston that if it loses the plot of land allocated by the prefecture of the Western Okrug (district) of Moscow, it faces losing the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been invested in the project. The church is now considering an appeal.

The 800-strong Emmanuel Church, a member of the Union of Evangelical Christians (Pentecostals) in Russia, was registered in Moscow in 1992. The church applied for permission to build a center to serve as a children's home, a charitable center, and a Sunday school. In 1996 the prefecture of the Western Okrug allocated the land next to a park described by the Moscow Planning office as "a neglected area, with an absence of green vegetation, … a wasteland that is used as a dump." The Pentecostals agreed to turn the site into a park with a pond and tree-lined paths. But then the church learned that on November 14, 2000, the local self-government agency called the district assembly rejected the plan, and the city government informed the church that it must find another site. An article in the district newspaper "Our Vernadsky Prospect" suggests the reason for the rejection. According to the article by Olga Motorina, unlike Orthodox churches, "built using national resources," in this case "an investment of foreign capital would take place, by "a neo-Pentecostal movement brought here from the U.S. via Sweden." The article seems to have taken its information from a letter to the Board of Vernadsky Prospect from the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Tikhon, which charged the Pentecostals with the use of hypnosis, "occult and mystical trances," and "a system to control the consciousness of their followers." The letter cited unnamed "Swedish psychiatrists" as declaring that "every fourth neo-Pentecostal has attempted suicide", while "many neo-Pentecostal pastors are known throughout the world as religious crooks who lead lives of luxury funded by the exploitation and extortion of their congregation."

A city official dealing with religious organizations, Konstantin Blazhenov, told Keston that the dispute is due to the excessive democratization in town planning. He said it is "impossible to influence a decision of the district assembly," as one section of the population will always oppose new construction. Blazhenov also believes that in the current situation only Orthodox churches will succeed in being built. He added that if Emmanuel's project is blocked, the Pentecostals ought to be compensated for their expenditures. Asked by Keston whether compensation was likely, he said that it was unlikely.

SALVATION ARMY VOWS TO GO ON DESPITE MOSCOW COURT ORDER. Colonel Kenneth Baillie, the commanding officer of the Salvation Army in Russia, has vowed that the group's Moscow branch will "keep on working" despite a December 6 court order that it must cease all its activities in the Russian capital. Baillie told Keston News Service that he had been hoping that the municipal court would delay a final decision in view of the pending Constitutional Court case, which will consider the constitutionality of Article 27, Part 4 of Russia's 1997 law on religion. The prosecutors claimed that the Salvation Army's Moscow branch had violated this article.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "A genocide begins with the killing of one man -- not for what he has done, but because of who he is," said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan when accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace. "A campaign of 'ethnic cleansing' begins with one neighbor turning on another… What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life, all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations."

HAVEL VETOES FLAWED CZECH LAW ON THE REGISTRATION OF RELIGIOUS GROUPS
The Fear of New Cults Blinds Lawmakers to the Need for Egalitarian Treatment

Czech President Vaclav Havel vetoed a new law that would have made it difficult for small and new religious groups to compete with the 21 denominations the state now recognizes. Paradoxically, the original legislative intent was to put minority faiths on equal footing with traditional religions. One wonders how and why that intent was subverted.

Under the now vetoed law, a religious group seeking state recognition would have had to submit an application with the signatures of 300 people to start the clock on a ten-year "preparatory period" prior to full registration. Proponents argued that requiring a religious group to submit an application with only 300 signatures would constitute a liberalization of the current system, inherited from Communist times, that requires 10,000 signatures.

However, during that ten-year waiting period no state recognition would have been possible - and thus no state subsidies for buildings, no salaries for the clergy, and no privileges such as the right to serve the faithful in prisons, schools, military installations, and health care facilities. Moreover, each religious group seeking state recognition would have been required to submit to the government an annual report on its activities. Then, after ten years, a religious group would have had to fill in an application for full recognition, accompanied by 20,000 signatures, double the number of signatures currently required. According to the 1991 census, only four of the 21 registered religions in the Czech Republic have 20,000 members.

United States Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) praised President Havel for using his veto. In a statement released on December 10, Smith argued that "religious groups desiring recognition would have to struggle with a new ten-year waiting period, intrusive reporting requirements, and overcoming the hurdle of obtaining 20,000 signatures."

The Czech cabinet approved the bill on April 25. In the lower house of parliament known as the Chamber of Deputies, the new law was supported by Prime Minister Milos Zeman's Social Democrats and their allies, the Civic Democrats, and 119 of the 189 deputies present voted in favor of the bill on November 27. Announcing his veto last week, President Havel's spokesman expressed concern that the law might have discouraged church engagement in health and social services. Others suggested that Havel was even more disturbed by the unequal treatment of religious groups: full recognition and no re-registration process for the 21 groups already registered, but a waiting period of ten years for everyone else. It came as a surprise to many Czechs that the Catholic Church, the country's oldest and largest faith, publicly welcomed Havel's veto.

But apparently, Roman Catholic objections were not forceful enough to influence those who drafted the bill. Nor were there interfaith communications that could have settled differences and presented the lawmakers with joint grievances concerning the bill. Representatives of both registered and unregistered faiths were "unwilling to speak on behalf of any but their own groups," Keston News Service reported, while the government was "adamant about dealing only with registered religious groups."

The retention of the Communist practice of providing subsidies and privileges for registered religious groups was yet another undercurrent, rankling their unregistered rivals but also attracting some of them. Muslims, who claim to have as many as 30,000 members, protested that they ought to be registered without delay. But perhaps the key factor for the legislative fiasco was one mentioned in public only rarely: Many if not most of the groups, whether registered or not, regarded the ten-year "preparatory period" for registration as a tactic to keep out "undesirable sects." Even unregistered groups point to the legal problems of the Unification Church as justifying a restrictive law and, according to Keston News Service, they "distance themselves from what they regard as undesirable companions who are also unregistered."

It is hard to disentangle the motives of the lawmakers who claim to have been inspired by the thought that the law on religion, which barely changed since Communist times, ought to be updated. (Since the Velvet Revolution, the state has registered only two religious groups: the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Lutheran Evangelical Church.) But the lawmakers were at least equally influenced by a popular concern with setting up some barriers to what many Czechs consider "an invasion threat" by non-traditional religions that "should not be allowed to root themselves in Czech soil." The fear of outsiders "stealing souls" is strong, even though the Czech Republic is often characterized as one of the world's most atheistic nations, with 39 percent of the population listing no religious affiliation.

"The Czechs share the pan-European paranoia, especially strong in Germany and France, about 'dangerous cults,' such as the Scientologists and the 'suicide cults,' and some people extend that paranoia to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and even to the Methodists," says one close American observer. "Strangely enough, some of those who drafted the law have said they were drawn to the American-style separation of church and state. But such an approach did not sit well with the established religious institutions that were loath to give up the government support that survived into the Communist era." The state gives registered religious groups a total of $88.2 million a year - distributed in proportion to their members. Another complicating factor is that the country's traditional faiths have not reached an agreement with the state on the question of restitution for property confiscated during the Communist era. In dealing with that sensitive subject, delay has been the government's tactic.

Some observers predict that the Chamber of Deputies may now alter some aspects of the bill and then pass it. As the law does not allow the president of the republic to use his veto again, the next step for at least some of the religious groups may be to challenge the bill in the Constitutional Court, which could happen if the new provisions will not differ significantly from the old. It is also possible that, as one Czech official suggests, people who up until recently have not paid much attention to the religion law now do, and they may call for a radical revision. It may matter that many Czechs have been embarrassed to discover that the legislation vetoed by Havel was crafted out of a mixture of misunderstanding, sloppiness, and a Kafka-like darkness of the mind, though it is hard to be precise about the percentage of each component.
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