Volume One, Number One

Friday, June 29, 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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WHY MONITOR BIGOTRY?

Many of us would like to think that what W.H. Auden called "hate’s shabby clientele" is in retreat and that the 1930s the poet condemned as "the low dishonest decade" is over, never to return. Putting us in a celebratory mood is that in the century behind us we survived two totalitarian systems, each claiming that the future belongs to it. However, the ideological descendants of those who invented the concentration camp are still around, and they are not stragglers on Pacific islands but have reinvented themselves, updated their rhetoric and gained prominence. Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party is in the coalition ruling Austria, and former KGB officers and Politburo members occupy top posts in the successor states of the former Soviet Union. From Marseilles to Vladivostok, from Rome to Stockholm, the voices of racism and xenophobia are loud and clear in bars and villas, as well as the workplace. While Jews are no longer the main target, hate lists have gotten longer, including Chechens and other dark-skinned Caucasians and Central Asians, Moroccans and Sri Lankans, Nigerians and Turks. Though the red and the brown still compete in wooing the disenchanted and the angry, those who flaunt the swastika often find themselves enveloped in bear hugs with worshippers of the five-pointed red star.

The demand on governments to comply with the Helsinki Final Act and the UN Charter's provisions on human rights is one of the most positive developments in the last years of the twentieth century. NATO went to war with Serbia contesting a central government’s right to massacre its minority citizens. Yet Chinese leaders are baffled when their American colleagues ruin the pleasant atmosphere of a visit by appealing for a dissident’s release or for cultural autonomy for Tibet. These are such small, insignificant matters, Chinese leaders counter, especially when compared to the billions of trade dollars at stake.

Addressing the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on April 7, 1999, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced a new principle: "No government has the right to hide behind national sovereignty in order to violate the human rights or fundamental freedoms of its peoples." With the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as the backdrop, Annan was the first UN chief to emphasize the importance of "an international norm against the violent repression of minorities that will and must take precedence over concerns of state sovereignty." His words were bold and unambiguous. Yet the New York Times buried the item, one of the decade’s historic statements on human rights, in the back pages, giving it a couple of paragraphs.

By and large, journalists of the free press support the cause of human rights, at least partly because a thoughtful dissenter makes for good copy and a rising popular movement claims front page and prime time attention. But no newspaper or television station I know of has set up a human rights beat, and editors spike items such as a Romany (Gypsy) teenager, a citizen of Bulgaria, charging police torture and taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. (He won, not on the merits of the case which were judged unverifiable, but because of the Bulgarian government’s obstruction of justice, which in turn set yet another precedent.) Nor does the international press follow the larger issue: the uphill Roma struggle for judicial equality and recognized nationhood. There are so many other issues to cover, right? In Moscow, Dusseldorf or Bratislava, skinhead attacks on nonwhites have to involve big crowds and hurt many people to merit a sentence or two in a newspaper such as the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor.

In the 1970s and 80s, the awakening of Soviet Jewry was a big story with colorful personalities and inspiring narratives. But nowadays the mistreatment of minorities throughout the former Soviet Union is taken for granted. Moscow’s war in Chechnya rages without the Russians suffering more than a modicum of international condemnation, and it takes a feisty news service focused on religion such as the Oxford-based Keston Institute to keep track of church-burnings and police raids routinely targeting non-Orthodox Christian congregations in Russia, the Caucasus and Moslem Central Asia.

This monitor intends to cover such items and their local and international contexts, and shed light on why they happen. The region under scrutiny is the former communist world and Western Europe, which form not just one contiguous geographic landmass but are linked by certain cultural standards and ambitions, or, at the very least, pretensions. We will also listen carefully whenever the Bush administration will depart from its practice, so far, of generic statements on human rights and comes out with its own policies.

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POPE PRAYS FOR VICTIMS OF NAZISM AND COMMUNISM. A boycott by the majority of Ukraine’s Orthodox churches and sharp protest from Moscow Patriarch Alexi II marred Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ukraine. Though the papal objective was to promote reconciliation between Christianity’s two branches, many Russian and Ukrainian newspapers say that the visit strained relations in a country where Catholicism has grown over the past decade and now claims six million believers, as opposed to an estimated 10 million practicing Orthodox, according to Agence France Presse. The pope praised Ukraine as "a natural bridge not only between East and West," but also between the peoples who "differ as regards historical origin, cultural tradition and religious belief." He paid tribute to "the significant presence of the Jews who form a community which is solidly rooted in Ukrainian society and culture," and whose members "suffered injustices and persecutions for having remained faithful to the religion of their ancestors." With Ukraine’s chief rabbi, U.S.-born Yaakov Dov Bleich, at his side, the 81-year-old pontiff recited "De Profundis," a Latin prayer for the dead, at Babi Yar, a ravine where the Nazis killed some 100,000 Jews. He also prayed at the Bykovnia memorial to the more than 100,000 people executed by the Soviets between 1929 and 1941.

REPORT SEES RISE OF RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN OSCE STATES. The trend is toward legislation that increasingly restricts the activities of minority religions to the advantage of the traditional, mainstream religions, according to the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights that just published a 35-page report on religious intolerance in selected states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. IHF executive director Aaron Rhodes added: "Some Western European countries do not provide good models for new democracies as they develop discriminatory legislation or practices governing religious associations. Anti-‘sect’ hysteria has been a source of violations of the Helsinki commitments." The report documents the persecution of Islamic believers in Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan, "where hundreds and perhaps thousands are imprisoned unjustly." Another group suffering persecution in numerous OSCE states is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. IHF notes that most OSCE states have failed to adopt adequate legislation on the right to conscientious objection on religious grounds.

HELSINKI COMMISSION URGES BAN ON INCOMMUNICADO DETENTION. On June 26, the UN's International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, U.S. Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) disclosed that at the July meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly he will present a resolution seeking to ban the use of incommunicado detention, which denies detainees contact with the outside world. The assembly consists of legislators from the 55 OSCE states. Calling torture "a serious problem" in several OSCE countries, Smith cited Turkmenistan where Baptist Minister Shagildy Atakov is being held prisoner and tortured because of his faith, and Uzbekistan where renowned writer Mamadali Makhmudov was tortured before and after his sentencing to 14 years in prison and opposition activist Elena Urlaeva has been incarcerated in a psychiatric institution, recalling Soviet-era practices.

RUSSIANS DEMAND RANSOM FOR CHECHEN CORPSES. The price Chechens pay for corpses of family members is $1,000, plus a $200 gold necklace, reports David Filipov of the Boston Globe. Ransom for bodies is a gruesome new twist in what Chechens say has become a profitable venture for Russian soldiers who occupy most of the republic. "For the troops, this is a gold rush," the Globe quotes Aslanbek Aslankhanov, Chechnya's representative to the Russian Parliament. "They have robbed the people into poverty." Every day, people go missing in security sweeps intended to catch rebel fighters, and the ones who come home are those who can bribe their way out or whose loved ones can pay ransom. "Every Chechen family has several people missing," said Khaipa Mezhiyeva at the office of the human rights group Memorial in Ingushetia, a Russian republic that borders Chechnya. "If they don't find them right away, it usually means they are dead. If you don't have the ransom, then it's farewell."

UIGHUR LEADER KILLED IN KAZAKHSTAN. The leader of the Uighur Women's Fund, Dilbrim Samsakova, was beaten to death near her home in Kazakhstan, according to the news agency Interfax-Kazakhstan. Local Uighur leaders who attended her funeral on June 11 say she was assassinated. She had prevented the extradition to China of the widow and young children of a leader of the Uighur Liberation Organization active in China, which Beijing considers a terrorist group, who himself was killed in Kazakhstan last year in a special police operation.

ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS RISE IN BELARUS. An increase in antisemitic incidents over the past two months dominated discussions on June 19 at the sixth meeting of the Union of Jewish Organizations and Communities in Belarus, according to UCSJ sources. In Brest, the monument commemorating victims of Hitler’s genocide was defiled for the third time over the past two years. Swastikas appeared on synagogues in Gomel and Borisov, and on gravestones in the Grodno cemetery. In Vitebsk, some 40 gravestones were destroyed this spring. According to one speaker at the meeting, "the authorities pretend that nothing special has happened," and the perpetrators, even in rare instances when they are caught, are not punished.

ATTACKS ON BELGRADE MOSLEMS, JEWS, BAPTISTS AND ROMA. Following recent attacks on vehicles and property of Belgrade's Moslem community and threats against its mufti, Serbia’s Ministry of Religion issued a statement condemning attacks by "unknown individuals acting against the Islamic community," according to a June 15 report by Keston News Service. Similar attacks targeted Belgrade’s Jewish community and Baptist church, and neo-Nazi symbols were painted on an art gallery exhibiting pictures of Roma life.

**QUOTE OF THE WEEK**
"There will only be order in Lithuania when Kalashnikovs start popping," said Vytautas Sustauskas, a member of Lithuania’s parliament and former mayor of Kaunas known for his antisemitic statements, according to a June 19 report by the Baltic News Service. "Who will decide to do this? Perhaps I will be one of them." (The Prosecutor General's Office announced that the Department of State Security will study whether Sustauskas' statement on a talk show amounted to criminal incitement of violent action against the constitutional order of the state.)

ANALYSIS

PUTIN AT BRDO SUMMIT SWINGS INTO OFFENSIVE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

After five months of distancing himself from Russia, President George W. Bush eased into a businesslike partnership with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Meeting in Brdo, Slovenia, the two leaders agreed to exchange visits and to discuss their differences. Bush said the two countries ought to approach each other as "friends." Putin even spoke of the possibility of Russia joining NATO and the two nations becoming "fully good allies." That could happen one day, Bush responded, thus undoing the rebuff once administered by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The press was told that in the 100-minute summit meeting Bush "mentioned briefly" American concerns with Putin’s crackdown on the news media and the war in Chechnya. Putin responded by adopting an aggressive stance immediately after the meeting. In a joint press conference Putin dodged a question dealing with Balkan instability by charging that the former Soviet republic of Latvia refuses to grant citizenship to "Russian speakers." (The European Union found Latvia’s citizenship procedure - which requires some knowledge of the Latvian language - up to European standards.) "We don't send weapons there," Putin continued. "We don't try to get people to rise up on the basis of national or ethnic origin or religious feelings."

Putin’s next stop, Belgrade, gave him another chance to swing into the offensive. He and his Yugoslav colleague Vojislav Kostunica called for a regional conference to reaffirm the inviolability of borders and the territorial integrity of the countries in the area, as well as to protect minority rights. They both blamed ethnic Albanian "terrorists" for the instability in Macedonia and Kosovo. Putin identified the problem as "national and religious intolerance and extremism," and pointed to Kosovo as the source. He said: "We must do all [we can] to disarm the terrorists."

Though Putin addressed himself to Balkan problems, Chechnya might well have been on his mind.

James Billington, the American historian of Russia respected by Russian intellectuals, sees Putin modeling himself as a de Gaulle-like hero who restores national pride by asserting strong central authority. But in a Washington Post op-ed commentary on the summit, he warned that "nationalism, fueled by the pessimistic depression of ordinary Russians, might turn him or a successor into a Milosevic - a tyrant who restores pride by reestablishing Russian hegemony in parts of the former USSR, much as the Serbian leader tried to reassert Serbian dominance in a disintegrating Yugoslavia."

Earlier in June, a senior State Department specialist on Russia, Ambassador John Beyrle, told a congressional panel that Chechnya is "the fundamental dilemma for human rights in Russia today and the most persistently troubling human rights issue in Russia." He asked: "What kind of long-term relationship can we pursue with a government that wages a brutal and seemingly endless war against its own people on its own territory?"

Now that Bush has had a chance, as he put it, to "get a sense of Putin’s soul," he will have to find an answer to this question.

*** POSTSCRIPT ***
U.S. and Russian reactions to former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic’s extradition to the Hague international war crimes court differed sharply. President Bush issued a statement welcoming the extradition as "an unequivocal message to those persons who brought such tragedy and brutality to the Balkans that they will be held accountable for their crimes." But Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov expressed his displeasure and warned that the extradition "will without doubt play into the hands of separatists in Kosovo and Montenegro wanting to leave the [Yugoslav] federation."

The Bush administration deserves credit for standing firm on its insistence that Yugoslavia hand over Milosevic, Jim Hooper, veteran Balkan-watcher and former State Department official said. "This time conditionality worked," Hooper said. "The administration worked together with Congress and the NGOs, and made it clear to the Yugoslav government that there won’t be funds for Yugoslavia unless several conditions are met, with Milosevic’s extradition as the centerpiece." On Belgrade’s side, Hooper added, it made a critical difference that the Serbian public has begun to acknowledge that Serbs committed war crimes. He suggested that the news of mass graves of Kosovar Albanians that the Serbian police, rather than foreigners, recently uncovered – one contains the remains of more than 800 people beaten to death with iron bars – is having an impact.****

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