Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 7, Number 47

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 7, Number 47

(December 14, 2007)

Volume 7, Number 47
Friday, December 14, 2007

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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PUTIN CHOSE A CIPHER FOR HEIR. There is no firm indication if President Vladimir Putin’s choice for a successor -- Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev -- will reverse the decline of Russia’s performance on human rights. The impression of his “moderate liberalism” and “relatively European” views, offered by people who have worked with him is but an impression and may be a propaganda gimmick. Western newspapers voiced satisfaction that Medvedev has no known ties to the KGB and does not come from the group of former security officers who surround Putin. He has acquired a reputation for disliking political labels, including the term "sovereign democracy," coined by another Putin adviser to describe Russia’s authoritarian political path. Currently also the director of the giant state-owned energy company Gazprom, Medvedev remains a cipher until his policies define his stance on critical issues. According to the conventional wisdom summed up by Reuters, “Medvedev is one of Putin's most loyal lieutenants who has no political powerbase of his own. Choosing him as the Kremlin's candidate seemed calculated to allow Putin to continue to mould policy after he steps down.”

Medvedev said that if elected to the top state post, he will pay maximum attention to “social problems” such as health and education. He has made no reference to human rights.

According to the BBC monitoring service, Russian newspapers are “largely supportive” of Medvedev's nomination as the likely winner of the presidential election scheduled for March 2, 2008. At the same time, many columnists predict as president, he will reassert himself even if Putin retains his grip on power as the head of United Russia.

In an editorial, “Vedomosti” described Medvedev as “the best compromise for Putin's diverse entourage” and as the man who leaves Putin maximum space for maneuver.” However, the business daily suggested that Medvedev was chosen not because of his record of success or popularity; instead; as the man who “at first sight [is] the weakest possible candidate.” The scenario under which Putin becomes prime minister has been agreed in advance and could be an "optimum option” after the end of Putin's second consecutive term, the independent Interfax news agency quoted political pundits as saying on December 11.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she “could work well with” Medvedev, her spokesman said. Merkel is now considered Europe’s strongest advocate of human rights, a position she shared with French President Nicolas Sarkozy until his highly controversial telephoned congratulations to Putin after the December 2 elections. President George Bush's spokeswoman Dana Perino referred to Medvedev’s nomination as strictly an internal matter, according to a transcript posted on the White House web site. Christiane Hohmann, a European Commission spokeswoman, also declined to comment for the same reason.

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a deputy for the German Free Democrats in the European Parliament, said he wished Medvedev would follow a bolder course on democracy. He said: "We must hope that he is not as afraid of the opposition and of civil liberties as Putin."

Putin’s choice of a successor could have been worse, said a “New York Times” editorial on December 12. But just as Putin “outgrew his patron, Boris Yeltsin,” Medvedev may “outgrow him and reverse the authoritarianism that has been the hallmark of Mr. Putin's eight years in the presidency. He can start proving that he will be his own man by insisting that the Kremlin lift restrictions on the press, nongovernmental organizations, and opposition political parties so that there can be a real presidential race.”

NATIONAL BOLSHEVIK BEATEN TO DEATH, POLICE ACTION SUSPECTED. An activist of the National Bolshevik Party in the Moscow suburb Serpukhov, Yuri Chervochkin, died after a month in a coma as a result of a beating that members of his party blame on the police, according to a December 10 report by the independent newspaper "Novaya Gazeta." On November 22, Chervochkin called a reporter and claimed that he was being followed by local police, whom he accused in the past of threatening him because of his participation in the opposition coalition "The Other Russia." An hour later, he was found with severe trauma as a result of a beating. He slipped into a coma and died on December 10. Police deny any role in the attack.

EU COURT ORDERS RUSSIA TO PAY $22,000 FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Russia to pay 15,000 euros ($22,000) to Vladimir Lind, an activist with the banned National Bolshevik Party who was convicted of seizing a presidential administration reception office, “The St. Petersburg Times” reported, citing the activist's attorney, Dmitry Agranovsky. The attorney said that on December 6 the court ruled that Russia violated the rights of Vladimir Lind, who holds dual Russian-Dutch citizenship, under three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to liberty and security, and the right to respect for private life. Lind was one of 39 members of the now-banned group arrested for briefly seizing the reception office in December 2004. Agranovsky filed a complaint with the Strasbourg-based court that Lind had been detained without sufficient cause and was held in inhumane conditions. "The court upheld all our complaints," Agranovsky said, according to Interfax. Russia is required to pay the compensation under the European Convention on Human Rights, which it ratified. The ruling concerning respect for Lind's private life was "linked to the fact that Lind was not released to say goodbye to his dying father," Agranovsky said.

MUSLIM PILGRIMS ATTACKED. On December 6, a group of Muslim pilgrims traveling from Chechnya to Mecca were attacked in the predominantly Christian region of North Ossetiya, Russia, the Sova Information-Analytical Center reported on December 10. According to a Muslim cleric accompanying the pilgrims, several cars approached a site where the Muslims were preparing for evening prayers and insulted them. The insults escalated into what was apparently a premeditated attack on the pilgrims with baseball bats, hammers, and stones. The attackers demanded that the pilgrims, several of whom were injured, leave the site.

ULTRANATIONALIST LEADER URGES VIOLENCE AGAINST ETHNIC MINORITIES. On December 9 in Moscow, a city where peaceful opposition protests are brutally suppressed, police stood by while extreme nationalists called for violence against ethnic minorities, according to the national daily "Kommersant" of December 10. The far-right rally was officially a commemoration of a newly inaugurated holiday, the Day of Heroes of Russia, one of two holidays that the Kremlin set up in recent years that extreme nationalists have taken over. Aleksandr Belov, head of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, a group indirectly linked to racist violence in Kondopoga and elsewhere, made his most bloodthirsty speech to date, calling for violence against ethnic minorities.

The newspaper pointed out that despite the police presence and the illegality of publicly inciting ethnic hatred, Belov called on Russians to arm themselves. He asked his audience: "What are you waiting for? Weapons to the people! Send the freaks to prison! It's time to talk about Russian nationalism. [Ethnic] Russians need to stop smashing each other's faces in, they need to unite and go and smash someone else's faces!" He promised that if nationalists come to power, anyone who ran afoul of the laws banning hate speech "will be rehabilitated and recognized as a national hero." According to the Sova Information-Analytical Center, 150 people attended the rally.

TWO RUSSIAN TV STATIONS LINK PENTECOSTALS TO SATANISTS. Two Russian television networks broadcast a program that lumped together Pentecostals and Hare Krishnas with Satanists, according to a December 11 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The Rossiya network and Channel 3 simultaneously broadcast the show, during which psychologists and the country's most prominent "battler against sects," Aleksandr Dvorkin, accused "sects" of turning their adherents into zombies, stealing their property, and committing other illegal acts.

Russian television is largely controlled by the government.

RUSSIA SHUTS DOWN BRITISH CULTURAL OFFICES. Russia ordered the British government to close its cultural offices outside Moscow, renewing tensions between the two countries that began with last year's murder in London of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, Bloomberg news agency reported. The British Council has no “legal basis” to operate regional offices in Russia and will have to close them by January 1, Russia’s foreign ministry declared on its web site on December 12. Britain said it will ignore the order, which it calls a violation of international law. “It is a cultural, not a political institution, and we strongly reject any attempt to link it to Russia's failure to cooperate with our efforts to bring the murder of Alexander Litvinenko to justice,'' Britain’s foreign office said.

”We are going back to the Iron Curtain,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group. “This is a return to a policy of isolation.”

In May, British prosecutors asked Russia to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the principal suspect in the poisoning of Litvinenko, to face trial. Russia refused, citing a constitutional ban on extradition. Last week he was elected to the Duma and thus he enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution which at least some of those who voted for him must have had in mind.

The British Council had already decided to close most of its offices outside Moscow by the end of the year, except for the cities where Britain has consulates: St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. Britain’s Foreign Office said the council's work "directly benefits hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians."

Last week, the BBC appealed to Russia’s foreign ministry to ensure the safety of its staff after three separate attacks on Moscow-based employees in one week, from November 24 to 30.

MENORAH VANDALIZED IN UKRAINE. Incitement by local politicians was a likely contributor to an act of antisemitic vandalism in Cherkassy, Ukraine, according to UCSJ's Lviv monitor. On the evening of December 8, a Hanukkah menorah on a downtown street was vandalized, its lamps broken and a banner reading "Happy Hanukkah" torn. UCSJ's monitor pointed to the December 5 publication of an article in the local newspaper "Fakty" that provoked a controversy about the location of the menorah. The article quoted several local politicians who decried the placement of the menorah near a monument to Bogdan Khmelnitsky, a Ukrainian national hero who led a revolt against Polish landlords in the mid-1600s that led to large-scale massacres of Jews.

One of the politicians is Aleksandr Tuz, a local Cossack leader and member of President Viktor Yushchenko's party, Our Ukraine, who was quoted in the article as saying: "Jews are uninvited guests both in our city and in Ukraine, and ought to act in a way so that they are not seen or heard." He then cut himself off in mid-sentence, expressing concern that if he expressed his next thought about Jews, he "would be called a terrorist."

Another politician, V. B. Prikhodko, a member of the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc -- whose leader is likely to become prime minister -- supported a more "moderate" position: Jews should behave themselves more modestly and not place one of their religious symbols near the monument of a national hero.

U.S. HELSINKI COMMISSION OUTRAGED BY BEATING IN BELARUS. Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (better known as Helsinki Commission) expressed its outrage in response to news reports that riot police beat one of the Young Front leaders, Zmitser Fedaruk, 19, during an otherwise peaceful demonstration in Belarus. Witnesses say that Fedaruk was beaten and knocked unconscious. He is hospitalized.

Hastings recalled that last week Fedaruk appeared before the Helsinki Commission and spoke of the dangers young human rights activists face in Belarus. “I condemn in the strongest possible terms these acts of violence against innocent individuals,” Hastings said. “Belarus’ dismal track record with respect for human rights and democracy is no secret. … My colleagues and I on the Helsinki Commission are determined to stand by young Mr. Fedaruk and all those in Belarus – young and old – struggling for freedom, democracy and respect for human rights.”

HELSINKI FEDERATION DECLARES BANKRUPTCY. In November, the Vienna-based headquarters of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) announced its likely closure over a massive fraud scandal in which the IHF's former finance manager confessed to having embezzled some 1.2 million euros ($1.76 million) from its budget, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on December 12. The case goes to trial in January. The executive committee and other supporters tried their best to allow the IHF to continue, said Holly Cartner of Human Rights Watch who also served on IHF's executive committee. But, she explained, the resources found could not pay for the debt and the IHF had to declare bankruptcy.

The group's treasurer, president, vice president, and executive committee have resigned, RFE/RL reported. The IHF has shut down, sealing the demise of one of the world's best-known human rights watchdogs, which in recent years has focused on documenting rights abuses in Belarus, Central Asia, and the North Caucasus. The closure deals a severe blow to civil society in some of the countries where the group has sister committees. Individual Helsinki committees operate in 46 countries, many from the former Soviet bloc. Since national Helsinki committees are independent legal entities, they are not directly threatened by the IHF collapse. The Vienna headquarters, however, were vital in lobbying for some of the smaller and more vulnerable national Helsinki committees.

Cartner called the affair “a devastating loss to the human rights movement in the region.” It will have a negative impact on the ability of these organizations to function as a network and to be something more than what they are in their individual capacities -- it being able to influence European foreign policy toward Central Asia or Russia, for example." There's also concern that authorities in Russia and Central Asia may take advantage of the scandal to intensify their crackdown on local Helsinki committees and other nongovernmental organizations.

The Moscow Helsinki Group is optimistic, RFE/RL reported. "This doesn't affect us at all, since we are not branches of this federation," says Moscow office head Lyudmila Alekseyeva. "We are all independent organizations. [The Vienna office] was not responsible for coordinating our work, it worked with us on joint projects and ensured that groups from various countries helped our organizations that ran in trouble like in Kosovo, and now in Belarus." Even in Belarus, where state pressure has been constant, the group is not alarmed. The local Helsinki Committee told a press conference that the IHF's closure will not affect its activities.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, RUSSIA AS A SUICIDE STATE * * “What we are currently seeing is not only the destruction of the last pillars of democracy, but also the destruction of the Putin system that has been created over the past eight years,” prominent Russian columnist Lilia Shevtsova told in an interview with the German newspaper “Die Welt” dated December 6. “[President Vladimir] Putin and his elite are following the principle of a suicide state. By laying claim to legitimacy as national leader, he is ultimately undermining the institutions of state. After the presidential election, we will have an utterly weak, destroyed parliament, a destroyed multi-party system, a wrecked constitution, and finally a weak presidency, which he requires for his self-proclaimed role as leader.”

PRESCRIPTIONS FOR A BETTER RUSSIA
Concerns and Warnings from a Society with Multiple Fissures

1. RUSSIA STILL FAR FROM MORALITY. From time to time, Russia’s preeminent writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn answers questions on the state of the Russian soul, his number one concern for decades. “Russia has re-asserted its influence in international relations and regained its role in the world,” Solzhenitsyn, 89, said on December 9 in an interview with Rossiya television. “But inside, morally, we are far from what we wish and what we need to be. Deep and difficult development is still needed, which no government or parliamentary practices can ensure.”

When asked if he still believes that "saving of the nation" is the sole acceptable national idea, the Nobel laureate said, "not the sole, but workable." Society is not mature enough to accept a long-term national idea, he said, and a national idea cannot boil down solely to "the saving of the nation. Besides saving [the nation], a great deal more is needed -- spiritual development in the first place. But saving might be the first step."

2. NEEDED: FAIR AND INDEPENDENT COURTS. Lyudmila Alekseyeva, director of the Moscow Helsinki Group and veteran of the dissident movement, is known for her independent judgment and clarity of thinking. She has issued a call to human rights workers not to be drawn into political conflicts. In an interview on December 10, International Human Rights Day, published the following day in “Rossiiskaya Gazeta,” she insisted that human rights activists must work with all parties, including opposition parties. “We must protect the rights of every citizen or group of citizens, regardless of their political affiliation, if their rights are being violated by the state or its bureaucrats. And since this is what we do, we need to cooperate with the authorities and engage in dialogue with them…. Our task is not to change the existing political regime, whether we like it or not. Our task is to protect the citizen, under any regime.”

Asked to name the most persistent human rights problem in Russia, Alexeyeva said it depends on whether the person is the mother of a conscripted soldier abused by the military or a refugee who is being discriminated against -- or a victim of some other human rights violation. “As a rights protection activist, however, I have to say that the most difficult and painful problem for us is the lack of fair and independent courts in our country,” she said. “If every case of human rights violations could be taken to court, with confidence that the court would sort everything out according to the law, we would find our work much easier.”

3. FROM MUSLIM POLYCLINIC TO KOSOVO? Ultranationalist rhetoric is escalating in Russia. On December 6, the first polyclinic whose operations comply with Muslim religious requirements opened in Moscow. According to the blog run by former U.S. government nationalities expert Paul Goble, the Russian capital's Islamic community had long sought to create such an institution. In his survey of media coverage, Goble found Muslims delighted while several non-Muslims objected. One visitor to the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” web site said that ethnic diasporas like the Muslims of Moscow should limit their activities to "dances, songs, and costumes" but that the opening of a separate hospital for them represented the appearance of "Kosovo in Moscow!" Most others cited by the paper were critical, as were 70% of those who responded to the paper's query, “Do we need Muslim institutions" like this polyclinic?

The comment Goble called “the most explosive” came from Dmitriy Rogozin, a former Duma deputy now on his way to represent Russia at NATO. Rogozin asserted that "the establishment of special religious or national arrangements or quarters will lead to the disintegration of the country." In a comment posted on Islam.ru the following day, Adalet Dzhabiyev, a Muslim businessman and community leader, said that he was not surprised by Rogozin's remarks, given his well-known nationalism. But, Dzhabiyev argued, those who hold such "half-mad" and "in essence fascist" views should not be allowed to represent Russia "in the international arena."

Rogozin told the "Russkaya liniya" portal that he had no idea who Dzhabiyev was "and did not want to know," Goble reported. But the far-right politician added, the Muslim's comments were "uneducated." Declaring that he will not change his principles in response to criticisms, Rogozin said that "we live in a civil state where questions like education and health care must be resolved for all citizens regardless of their faith or the national theory of this or that people." If the reverse happens and more Muslims-only institutions are created, the consequences will be “unpredictable." He expressed “serious concern” that Moscow may be “converted into a little Kosovo" which he called a possibility that Russians cannot imagine unless they recognize that the problems in that part of Yugoslavia began when Muslims insisted on having their own institutions.

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