Volume One, Number 9

Volume One, Number 9
Friday, August 24, 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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SKINHEADS KILL TWO ROMANIES IN VOLGOGRAD. Skinheads beat two Romanies (Gypsies) to death in Volgograd, according to "Vremya-Novostey" on August 13. The bodies were found on August 5 near the Tsaritsa river, but the victims were so savagely beaten that it took some time to identify them. Although nobody has acknowledged seeing the murders, witnesses have come forward telling the police that they noticed a group of skinheads near the river around the time the killings must have taken place. Police arrested six skinheads and determined that upon seeing the Romanies, they had decided to "have a little fun" and attacked them. Three of the skinheads have been charged with murder, but the remaining three have not because they are under age 14.

ARSON DAMAGES RYAZAN SYNAGOGUE. On August 16 unidentified arsonists attempted to burn down the only synagogue in the city of Ryazan, 90 miles southeast of Moscow, according to Leonid Reznikov, head of the local Jewish community and regional monitor for UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union. To set the fire, the arsonists used wooden construction material, stacked inside the synagogue for restoration work. No one was injured. Built in 1903 and confiscated by the Soviet government in 1930, the synagogue building was finally returned last year to the city's Jewish community numbering 2,000. The arson is the second violent antisemitic act in the city within a year. On September 17 last year, some 15 neo-Nazi thugs armed with metal chains burst into the Sunday school, smashing windows and furniture, and shouting threats at the teachers and the children. According to media accounts, the police knew the identities of the attackers yet made no arrest. "This latest outrage shows, once again, the price of the local authorities' inaction in the face of threats to the Jewish community," said Leonid Stonov, UCSJ's Director of International Bureaus and Activities. "If the police had made an example of the extremists who attacked the Jewish school last year, perhaps this terrible event would not have happened. Hate crimes are illegal in Russia. Is it really too much to ask that the authorities apply their own laws?" This incident is the third arson attack on Jewish communal property in Russia this summer.

YOUTH CRIME DROPS IN MOSCOW BUT YOUTH GROUP VIOLENCE IS UP. The number of crimes committed by youth in Moscow fell during the first six months, but violent acts by groups of young people, including skinheads, is up, "Moskovskaya Pravda" reported on August 11. From January to June, 1,931 youths were charged with crimes, representing a 5 percent drop from the previous year. The newspaper cited a criminal justice specialist pointing out a disturbing rise in group violence by youth.

BRYANSK PAPERS CLOSE TO GOVERNMENT PRINT ANTISEMITIC ARTICLES. Two newspapers close to the regional administration of the central Russian region of Bryansk regularly publish antisemitic articles, according to Lyudmila Komogortseva, regional monitor for UCSJ. For instance, "Bryanskaya Pravda" - the official paper of the Patriotic Bryansk political movement, whose membership includes the governor and other top officials - wrote on July 27 the following: "My fellow Bryansk residents are upset that today in Russia, Jews are running things everywhere. In the Duma, practically every second member is a representative of this nationality. In the government it's the same. They are also the owners of oil and gas companies and the biggest factories. 'And where are we?' the most brave among us ask me. Is Russia Israel?" The article went on to praise Governor Yuri Lodkin and an unidentified "comrade" who called for the return of tough rulers like Stalin. According to Ms. Komogortseva, "Bryansky Rabochy" - the regional administration's official newspaper - also prints antisemitic articles from time to time.

BANNED NEO-NAZI GROUP JOINS OTHER EXTREMISTS IN MOSCOW RALLY. Members of the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity, which is banned in Moscow, held a joint rally with anarchists, members of Pamyat (known as "the grandfather" of Russian neo-fascist parties) and a dozen other extremist groups on August 17, on Moscow's main street Tverskaya Ulitsa, according to "Kommersant" on August 18. A busload of police stood close by as the extremists denounced capitalism on the third anniversary of the August 1998 financial crisis. No violence or arrests were reported, nor did the article estimate the number of participants.

ARSON ATTACKS ON IRKUTSK PENTECOSTALS. A Pentecostal church in the town of Badaybo (Irkutsk region) was set on fire on Sunday July 22, according to the American-Russian Relief Center. Three church members were inside when the fire started, but they were able to escape. Other parishioners were at a nearby lake conducting baptisms. The fire brigade arrived too late to stop the fire before it caused extensive damage. Fire inspectors determined arson, probably caused by bottles of gasoline thrown from the street. Pastor Viktor Stupnitsy said that on May 3, a group of Cossacks had ordered him to stop his religious activities or face "unpleasant" consequences and that his home was burned down on June 22, 2000 in what fire inspectors also determined was an arson. He added that police refused to share information with him related to the arson of the church, saying that he would just use it as "propaganda."

RUSSIAN ACTIVIST IN KAZAKHSTAN LINKED TO NEO-NAZIS. A leading Russian activist in the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan has close ties to the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU), according to Kuat Rakhimberdin, director of the East Kazakhstan branch of the Kazakhstani International Bureau on Human Rights and the Rule of Law (UCSJ's Kzakhstan bureau). According to knowledgeable sources, Leonid Kartashov, the head of the Russian National-Cultural Center and a deputy in the city legislature, distributes RNU literature and once participated in an unsuccessful extortion racket aimed at raising money from local businessmen. On August 4, the newspaper "Megapolis-Kontinent" described Kartashov's organization as using the swastika as its symbol and requiring members to prove "pure" Russian ancestry. Rakhimberdin adds that Kartashov used his position as a legislator to arrange for the city legislature to hold hearings on the meaning of the swastika, which was intended to convince his fellow lawmakers that it is an ancient Russian symbol that should be respected.

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FILE SUIT IN STRASBOURG COURT. On August 16, Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia filed their second application in as many months with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, testing Georgia's adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights according to a press release from the Jehovah's Witnesses in Georgia. The latest application challenges a February 22, 2001 Georgia's Supreme Court of Georgia ruling, characterized by Georgian Minister of Justice Mikheil Saakashvili as "dubious." The court annulled the registration of two of their organizations, insisting that Jehovah's Witnesses could not be registered since the country has no "law on religion" as yet. The application argues that the European Convention on Human Rights, European Court precedent, and Georgia's commitments to international law support the right of association, which includes the right of religious communities to use legal entities. The Georgian court ruling attempts to remove that right, the application says, and its action has led to a de facto ban on the church, which is also inconsistent with Georgia's own constitution. Since the ruling, there have been numerous violent attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses, the latest last week, as people characterized by the victims as "Orthodox extremists" perceive the ruling as a signal from the government that it is open season on Jehovah's Witnesses. For instance, on August 12, 15 men broke into Jimsher Gogelashvili's apartment in Rustavi and seized church literature and personal belongings of the 70 Jehovah's Witnesses gathered there, most of them women and children. The assailants used clubs and metal pipes to beat those in attendance. Seven of the victims required medical treatment. The assailants trashed chairs and furniture, and burned church literature in a bonfire on the street. Some of the victims went to a nearby police station, where the police categorically refused to help. According to the Jehovah's Witnesses, this was the fourth such attack this year in the city of Rustavi. So far no one has been arrested or prosecuted, though the identities of the assailants are well known to the police, who routinely dismiss complaints.

HRW CALLS ON U.S. TO SPOTLIGHT RELIGIOUS REPRESSION IN UZBEKISTAN. On August 20, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Bush administration to name Uzbekistan a "country of particular concern" in its annual report on religious freedom in the world, due out in September. Citing more than 800 cases since 1999, HRW documented Uzbekistan's campaign against Muslims who "practice their faith outside state controls." HRW protested that last week the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom had failed to include Uzbekistan in its list of recommendations to the Bush administration. On the same day the commission published its list, HRW noted, a Tashkent court sentenced nine men to prison terms ranging from 8 to 16 years for membership in an unregistered Muslim group. At least 43 people are currently on trial in Tashkent for similar offenses, HRW added. "These people were singled out for nothing more than the peaceful expression of their religious beliefs," said Elizabeth Andersen of HRW. "If the Bush administration doesn't name Uzbekistan, it signals to the government and other countries in the region that the U.S. is willing to tolerate this kind of persecution." Under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, countries whose governments engage in serious violations of religious freedom can be named countries of "particular concern," and the president has a range of options for dealing with them, from limiting assistance to applying full sanctions. This year the commission's recommendations for countries of particular concern included Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Burma, China, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Laos and Saudi Arabia. In previous years, the U.S. administration for the most part designated as countries of particular concern those that already fell under U.S sanctions, leading many to regard the list as serving political purposes rather than the promotion of religious freedom.

14^TH CENTURY ORTHODOX CHURCH BLOWN UP IN MACEDONIA. At 3:10 in the morning on August 21, explosives tore apart the fourteenth century Church of St. Athanasius in the Macedonian Orthodox Church Monastery complex at Lesok (Leshok) village, eight kilometers from the city of Tetovo, according to news agency reports. The explosion took place one week after the government and the rebels signed a peace deal. While Macedonian officials blame Albanian extremists, rebel representatives deny any connection, and, as usual in the Balkans, Muslim Albanians charge a provocation by the other side, this time Orthodox Macedonian soldiers. OSCE and NATO, both engaged in mediating the six-months-old war, condemned the destruction of a religious monument, which Macedonian folk songs celebrate as a symbol of Christian resistance to the Ottoman Empire. There were no casualties, but the material damage is incalculable, the Macedonian Ministry of Culture declared.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK * * * "When the Soviet Union fell, many people predicted the United States would no longer defend unsavory dictators," The Washington Post editorialized on August 19, on the tenth anniversary of the abortive putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. "Cold War allegiances, the theory went, would no longer act as a shield against the truth. That theory proved naive. … In Central Asia, the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it, weighs concern for human rights against other factors: a desire to block Russian expansion, a fear of Islamic fundamentalism, a hunger for the vast oil and gas deposits of the region."

PUTIN REDEFINES THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA AND ITS CHURCH

commentary on the equality of nations, the holiness of Russia and Putin's piety

In his autobiography, Charles de Gaulle expounded on how all his life he had "a certain idea of France." In the nineteenth century, the poet Fyodor Tyutchev cautioned the world: "One cannot understand Russia, /Nor measure her by a common yardstick. /She has a special character - /In Russia one must simply believe."

On August 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin chose a location freighted with both ancient and recent history to elucidate his idea of the Russian state as multi-ethnic from its beginnings - and owing that uniqueness to the Orthodox Church. He held a press conference while visiting Solovki, renowned for its ancient Orthodox monastery that Stalin turned into the first prison camp of his gulag archipelago. According to the English language text by the nongovernmental Russian news agency Interfax, Putin identified "our spiritual teachers" - of the Orthodox Church - as "not only glorifying the Russian people, without any exclusiveness or chauvinism" but contended that "they have been teaching us throughout the centuries to respect other peoples." He quoted Metropolitan Illarion as having once said, "God has saved all nations," and then interpreted the statement to mean that "If so, all nations are equal in the eyes of God. This simple truth has been the nucleus of the Russian state system, making it possible to build a strong multi-ethnic state."

Then came the inevitable comparison between Russia and other nations. Putin said that "contrary to the teaching about the God-chosen nature of individual peoples that asserted itself in medieval Western Europe, the Russian Orthodox culture has been laying the main emphasis on the equality of all peoples, which is a matter of principle for Russia."

Nevertheless, as we all know Russia is different, and Putin's exegesis suggested that he has come a long way from his KGB education: "Since time immemorial, our country has been called 'holy Russia' and these words have carried a great spiritual meaning, as they emphasized the special role assumed by Russia voluntarily, as the keeper of Christianity. Without Christianity, Russia would have hardly become an accomplished state. It is therefore extremely important, useful and timely to get back to this source."

With Patriarch Alexiy II of Moscow and All Russia at his side, Putin visited the Solovetskiy Monastery. He also took a helicopter ride above the Solovki Archipelago, including the Island of Anzer. Interfax's report explained that on Solovki's Mount Calvary, "prisoners of Russia's northernmost Stalin-era concentration camp were shot. The Calvary-Crucifixion and Trinity monasteries, recently passed over to the Russian Orthodox Church, are located here." According to Interfax, Putin attended the night vigils, conducted by the Russian patriarch in the Solovetskiy Monastery's Church of the Transfiguration. Before the service, the patriarch presented the president with a wooden cross; embedded in it is a small fragment from the Calvary-Crucifixion Monastery building.

In summing up the lessons of state and church throughout Russian history, Putin has come up with an unusual interpretation suffused with piety – and probably not unmindful of the impact on his people and the outside world. In conventional accounts, the Russian Orthodox Church appears as an institution that has not looked kindly at other peoples and nations, let alone other faiths – and that subject Putin has avoided mentioning. If the Interfax report is accurate, he also failed to address himself to the tragic shadow in Solovki's past: the fate of the many thousands of people imprisoned there during Stalin's rule.

Projecting himself as a man of faith conversant with time and eternity did not damage Putin's domestic and foreign reputation. But how will he apply in Chechnya his recommendation that the equality of all people in the eyes of God "must be made the backbone of Russia's domestic and foreign policies"?

Did Putin really mean what he said – or at least part of it? And must we, as the poet Tyutchev said, "simply believe"? The Russian president might heed the nineteenth century Russian writer Nikolai Nekrasov: "You do not have to be a poet, but you are obliged to be a citizen."
* * * *

The editor is taking off for a vacation, and the next newsletter will be published on September 14.

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