Volume 10, Number 3
January 22, 2010
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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ALEXEYEVA: 2009 A DIFFICULT YEAR’ FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS. "Several murders of my colleagues, human rights champions, and not only of colleagues but friends was the most shocking development of 2009,” the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, told Interfax on January 15. “In this respect this was a difficult year." She expressed regret over her “personal losses”: lawyer Stanislav Markelov, Memorial activist Natalya Estemirova, Chechen human rights champion Zarema Sadulayeva, and Ingush civil activist Maksharip Aushev in the North Caucasus.
Alekseyeva singled out the law on commissions of independent observers in detention centers as a positive result in 2009. "In the end, in many regions we managed to set up commissions of independent observers,” she said. “They are comprised of human rights activists and journalists who deal with prisoners' problems. They received more rights, they received a chance to visit places of confinement, talk to prisoners and receive complaints." She added: "This is a considerable change in our work as problems prisoners are facing comprise the largest part of work of nearly all human rights activists. Almost one million people are held in places of confinement in Russia. Many of our compatriots pass through detention centers, and what is happening there is something terrible but it has become easier to fight this."
Alekseyeva voiced hope that the law on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) will be considerably improved in 2010. "Bureaucrats are rendering strong resistance once they hear of a minor proposal to soften the law on NGOs," she said. "What we managed to achieve in 2009 is still pitiful and of no consequence."
PLANNED RESTRICTIONS ON PROTEST OUTRAGE HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS. The Duma of the Moscow Region has submitted a bill to the State Duma which would make it obligatory to inform the authorities when holding a public demonstration, even if the event involves just one person, Russia’s privately owned Ren TV news reported on January 15. Under current legislation, an individual does not have to inform the authorities when staging a one-person demonstration.
"Of course, it's very brazen, and a very serious step towards building a police state--that's it, we'll repress everything," commented Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the movement For Human Rights. "This will be a serious step back into the past in which everything was banned. They want to act so that people don't move at all," Interfax news agency quoted Ponomaryov as saying. He suggested that “contradictory things” were happening in Russia. On the one hand, there were calls for modernization and steps were being taken to make the penitentiary system more humane; on the other, it has been proposed that approval from the authorities be introduced for single-person demonstrations.
"A single-person demonstration is the only possibility that an ordinary person who is not connected to a party has to express a protest,” Ponomaryov was quoted as saying. ”The cynicism [of the authorities] lies in the fact that they are not afraid to put forward initiatives that limit the rights of citizens."
Eduard Limonov, the National Bolshevik leader and head of the executive committee of the Other Russia opposition coalition, agreed with Ponomaryov. Limonov called the bill "repressive and anti-democratic." “The authorities trying to protect themselves from single-person demonstrations simply looks ridiculous," Limonov said.
DUMA TO TIGHTEN STREET PROTEST REGULATIONS. Moscow regional legislature appealed to the Duma to stiffen legislation on rallies and demonstrations, “Kommersant” reported on January 18 and suggested that a key demand of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party is to outlaw pickets by loners.
The idea was to amend the federal law on assemblies, rallies, demonstrations, marches, and pickets, the report’s authors said. "There are episodes when loners choose to burn themselves in public places or when they are attacked,” the unnamed author of the proposed law was quoted as saying. “Executive power structures in the meantime remain absolutely ignorant of protests." The “Kommersant” reporter asked: “Did the lawmaker really expect lone protesters, usually driven to despair, to start informing the authorities of the intention to torch themselves?”
The initiative came from the United Russia faction of the Moscow regional legislature. "Sure, we were told to suggest it by superiors," said Konstantin Cheremisov, United Russia faction assistant leader. "If the authorities expect a worsening of the economic situation in the near future, it explains their interest in the prevention of protests."
Boris Nadezhdin of Right Cause party, liberal on economic and social issues but broadly loyal to the Kremlin, said: "That's a height of stupidity. The authorities go out of their way to make protests impossible." The United Russia faction of the Duma said that it needed time to formulate its opinion. "Sure, people have the right to protest," commented Andrei Vorobiov, the head of the United Russia Executive Committee. "On the other hand, it is only logical for the authorities to want to prevent provocations and plain hooliganism."
NEO-NAZIS ACCUSED OF KILLING ALLEGED DRUG ADDICT. Two neo-Nazis killed a man in the village Kosmodemyanskoe, near Kaliningrad, according to the Kaliningrad edition of the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda" dated January 12. The suspects allegedly hit their victim with metal pipes and then kicked him in the head repeatedly with heavy boots. The suspects reportedly confessed to the killing, stating that their motivation was that the victim was a drug addict and that they had decided "to cleanse the Earth of that sub-human."
Russian neo-Nazis usually attack ethnic and religious minorities, but have also gone after ethnic Russian homeless people and drug addicts.
ANTI-FASCISTS ATTACKED IN BARNAUL. Three separate attacks on anti-fascists took place in Barnaul, Russia (Altay Kray) at the end of last year, according to a January 18 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. On November 8, six far-right activists followed a participant in the "Foods not Bombs" project, an anti-fascist event that includes the feeding of homeless people, and then attacked him. The victim ended up with head trauma and a fractured rib. On December 13, four far-right extremists chased after an anti-fascist, who managed to escape. Also that month, far-right extremists wearing masks stalked and then assaulted a local anti-fascist. The victim was hospitalized with head trauma. None of the victims reported the attacks to the police.
THREE AFRICANS ATTACKED IN MOSCOW IN SEPARATE INCIDENTS. Three attacks on Africans in Moscow have been recorded by the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, which serves many foreign residents of the capital. On January 1, an employee of the Ghanaian embassy fell victim to an attack at a bus stop and had to be hospitalized. On January 10, another citizen of Ghana was hospitalized after an attack on the metro. On January 12, near the Tretyakovskaya metro station, someone attacked a Nigerian man, breaking his arm and causing other injuries. There are no reports of any arrests in connection with the attacks.
NEO-NAZI GANG ON TRIAL IN NIZHNY NOVGOROD. A gang of seven neo-Nazi university and high school students face multiple murder and assault charges, according to a January 19 report by the news web site Newsru.com. The gang came to the police's attention after one of its members shot his professor dead in a dispute over his behavior in class. The gang allegedly killed four other people, mostly from the Caucasus, and also committed four assaults and several robberies, targeting either minorities or anti-fascist activists. According to police, the gang met in an extremist Internet forum.
NEW ATTACK ON JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES; GOVERNMENT CRACKDOWN SPREADS. A band of about half a dozen people threw stones and shouted death threats at a Jehovah's Witnesses congregation in Sochi, Russia, according to a January 15 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The assailants tried to break down a fence in order to attack the Jehovah's Witnesses inside, but were unsuccessful. Police detained two suspects.
Even though 34 Jehovah's Witness publications described as extremist have not yet been added to the Federal List of Extremist Materials, public prosecutors in different Russian regions have begun issuing extremism warnings to Jehovah's Witness communities, Forum 18 News Service has learned. In what is believed to be the first such instance in post-Soviet Russia of extended detention in connection with preaching, two Jehovah's Witnesses informally accused of distributing extremist literature in Bryansk Region were released on appeal on January 14, six days into a ten-day sentence for "petty hooliganism."
CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST RUSSIAN EDITOR CLOSED. A criminal case against the editor of an independent newspaper in the southwestern Russian city of Samara has been closed, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on January 19. Sergei Kurt-Adzhiev, editor of the "Samarskaya Gazeta," said that the local Prosecutor's Office stated that he is innocent of charges that he used pirated computer software.
The offices of "Novaya Gazeta v Samare"--where Kurt-Adzhiev had worked as chief editor before the state shut down the paper--were first searched in May 2007 after Kurt-Adzhiev's daughter, Anastasia, organized an opposition rally. Charges were brought against him one year later.
YUSHCHENKO PRAISES VERDICT FOR SOVIET LEADERS FOR 1930S FAMINE. On January 14, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko praised a Kiev court ruling that found Soviet leaders culpable in the mass famine in Ukraine in 1932-33, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. As all of the defendants are dead, the judge declared the case closed after pronouncing the verdict. Yushchenko described the ruling as a landmark "that restores historical justice and gives a chance to build Ukraine on fair and democratic principles." The Ukrainian Security Service initiated the case in May.
At least 3 million Ukrainians are thought to have perished in the famine, which many historians blame on Soviet policies. The list of leaders found guilty of organizing "genocide of a Ukrainian ethnic group" and murdering millions of people included Soviet leader Yosif Stalin, his associates Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, Soviet Ukrainian Communist Party officials Pavel Postyshev and Stanislav Kosior, and [LOCAL officials] Vlas Chubar and Mendel Hataevich.
Boris Gryzlov, speaker of Russia's State Duma and a leader of the ruling United Russia party, dismissed as “baseless” the charge and called the court’s ruling a politically motivated action that is "part of the plan to fall afoul of Russia." He said: "Ukrainian authorities once again are trying to prove that Russia treats Ukrainian people badly."
MEMORIAL DIRECTOR CALLS FAMINE ‘CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY’—NOT GENOCIDE. The decision by Ukraine to give a legal evaluation of the crimes committed by the Soviet administration is right, but the 1930s famine in Ukraine was not genocide, Arseniy Roginsky, head of the Russian historical and human rights center Memorial, told Interfax. "The fact that this crime has been legally classified is very important. There are many documents confirming the guilt in such crimes as organized famine and terror.” However, Roginsky questioned that the documents prove that the famine in Ukraine was genocide. “My opinion is that this famine was a crime against humanity, not genocide," he summed up.
Roginsky believes that the famine was organized in the 1930s not only in Ukraine, but also in southern Russia and Kazakhstan and that “it was founded on a criminal decision on total collectivization.” He blamed “the Stalin leadership and the perpetrators of the will of the Stalin leadership." He suggested that Russians, Ukrainians, and Kazakhs “study and understand this tragedy together. It would bring us closer-- not divide us."
PUNDIT RADZIKHOVSKIY CALLS STALIN A SYMBOL OF AN INHUMAN STATE. Stalin should be condemned as a symbol of the Soviet state's inhumanity, Russian writer Leonid Radzikhovskiy has written. A prominent contributor on the Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy, he authored an article for the radio's web site as a blog entry for January 16. Titled "Ten Leningrads", the article began with the Soviet famine of the early 1930s: "The famine in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan was 10 times worse than the [German Nazi] blockade of Leningrad. In the latter, 700,000 died; in the former, some seven million civilians. There was no escape route. It was blocked by the enemy forces [the Red Army] and SS [the Soviet secret police then called OGPU]." Whether genocide or not, it was at the very least a crime against humanity, Radzikhovskiy wrote.
"Disgracefully, criminally", he went on, that crime is being "hushed up" in Russia to the accompaniment of "idiotic statist and patriotic murmur and the crap about [Stalin as] an ‘effective manager.’" Radzikhovskiy implied that he backs calls for a tribunal--a "legal verdict"---on the crimes of Stalinism.
"It is necessary to break up this pattern of behavior, which treats human life as worthless, as prison-camp dust, little cogs, slaves,” Radzikhovskiy argued. “For as long as this pattern of behavior is alive and well in our country---from top to bottom--our country will continue to rot away. Even with our currently high level of consumption, it will be a nation without rights, of lies, with an inferiority complex and aggressive. The inhuman attitude of those in power--and, reciprocally, the inhuman attitude of society--is the main obstacle to the country's development."
He concluded that it is to "root out this inhumanity" that Stalin must be condemned, which he hoped would "set a precedent in the form of condemnation of a state's brutality" and could even "wake up society." However, he remained skeptical of the Russian state's ability to do so.
MOSCOW POLICE CHIEF BLAMES MIGRANTS FOR CRIME. The economic crisis contributed to a growth in crimes committed by migrants, but overall crime dropped sharply last year, Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev said on January 20, as reported by Interfax. The number of crimes by migrants rose over the previous year by 7% to 54,600 cases--or 48.6% of the total number of solved crimes, Kolokoltsev said. "Many people from other cities who had come to work in the capital at the moment when the crisis started found themselves without jobs." He disclosed that city police shut down more than 50 crime groups involving more than 160 people, including 63 Caucasus natives and 40 foreigners.
Kolokoltsev said that the number of police officers charged with criminal offenses rose by about 50%, while the number of senior police officials disciplined for not following work procedures rose 20%.
A total of 62 attacks on people of "non-Slavic" appearance were registered in the city last year, including 26 murders and 25 cases of intentionally causing severe injuries, five of which ended in deaths, Kolokoltsev said. He added that city police and the Federal Security Service disbanded 10 racist groups with a total of 33 members who carried out 34 of the 62 attacks on people of "non-Slavic" appearance, including 14 murders.
According to the Sova Center for Information and Analysis, 116 people were injured and 27 killed in racist attacks in Moscow and the Moscow Region in the first 11 months of 2009.
UZBEK REGIME’S SUMMONS TO 5 JOURNALISTS ALARM MEDIA WATCHDOG. The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF} says it is “very alarmed” that the Uzbek Prosecutor’s Office summoned five journalists on January 7 for a grilling about their media activities and their sources of income. The next day, two other journalists received similar summonses. “The international community, which has already made too many concessions to the Uzbek authorities, should make a concerted effort to protect the country’s few remaining independent journalists and prevent a new crackdown,” RSF said. “At least 10 journalists are already in prison in Uzbekistan just for doing their job and some of them are serving long sentences. Can one reasonably claim that the human rights situation under this dictatorship has improved? Must one sacrifice one’s principles for the sake of access to the country’s energy resources? Alternatives exist. Europe must not stop defending human rights.”
The five journalist “invited” to the office of assistant prosecutor Bakhrom Nurmatov were Marina Kozlova, Sid Yanishev (also known as Said Abdurahimov), Khusnutdin Kutbetdinov, Abdumalik Babayev, and Vasiliy Markov. Two of the five refused to go on the grounds that it was not a formal summons. Nurmatov told the other three to “clarify the circumstances of their professional activities.” He had a file on each of them which he said contained information gathered by the national security agency and the foreign ministry. Most of Nurmatov’s questions were about the financial support they receive from abroad, whether from foreign journalists or international organizations. He described some of their articles as “biased and tendentious” and as a “slight on the dignity of the Uzbek government.” The two journalists who received similar summonses next day were Alexey Volosevich and Andrey Kudryashov.
RSF pointed out that despite Uzbekistan’s disastrous human rights record, the European Union lifted the last of the sanctions--an embargo on arms sales--imposed on President Islam Karimov’s autocratic regime after the 2005 bloodshed in Andijan.
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, DESPITE TENSIONS POPE AND JEWS SHARE GOALS * * * "Despite a dramatic history, the unresolved problems, and the misunderstandings, it is our shared visions and common goals that should be given pride of place," said Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, welcoming Pope Benedict XVI on January 17 to Rome’s oldest synagogue, located in the old ghetto area where Roman Jews were forced to live until 1870. "The image of respect and friendship that emanates from this encounter must be an example for all those who are watching.” The two-hour visit was only the second time a pope visited the synagogue. The visit followed tensions reignited by Benedict’s decision last month to move Pius XII closer to sainthood. Critics accuse Pius of not having done enough to save Jews from the Nazis. To protest Benedict’s action on Pius, Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, president of the Italian Rabbinical Assembly, boycotted the ceremony.
FRANCE WILL SAY ‘NO’ TO BURQA AND WHAT IT IMPLIES
Sarkozy’s ‘National Debate’ Is Expected to Send a Message to Islam
France, which has for long considered itself Europe’s intellectual leader, is moving toward banning in public places Afghan-style burqas and other full-face veils. "Our objective is not to stigmatize these women, but to be clean, clear-cut and precise--the full-face veil has no place in France," declared Andre Gerin, a Communist member of parliament who recently completed six months of hearings on the burqa controversy. He charged that full-face veils are the visible tip of an Islamist underground that threatens the French way of life. He argued that though veiled women number no more than a few thousand among the close to six million Muslims who live in the country of 64 million people, behind them are "gurus" who are trying to impose Islamic law on French society.
The burqa ban still faces several hurdles before it can become the law. But its form and substance is likely to impact the thinking of other European countries where some Muslims demand the acceptance of Islamic law, parts of which are in conflict not only with Christianity but a long-recognized secular way of life. For instance, Gerin cited doctors at a hospital in his home town Lyon—where he is mayor--that they are threatened several times a week by angry Muslim men who refuse to permit their pregnant wives or daughters to be treated by male doctors, even in case of emergencies when no female doctor is available.
Gerin said that on January 26 his commission will present suggestions for legislation which will “probably” urge a nonpartisan parliamentary resolution condemning full-face veils “in principle.” Then there will be targeted decrees or laws banning veils in public facilities such as town halls and eventually a general law prohibiting full veils in as many places as possible. As Gerin described it, the law will bar fully veiled women from, for instance, walking down the Champs Elysees.
Women's advocacy groups, some of which include Muslim women and which constitute influential voices in French society, have strongly endorsed the proposed legislation on grounds that the full-face veil offends women's dignity and symbolizes oppression by men. Housing Minister Fadela Amara, a Muslim-born women's rights campaigner has called the garment "a kind of tomb for women." However, other Muslim women interviewed by French journalists have contended that they wear the veil of their own accord because they want to demonstrate their loyalty to Islamic customs—if not to a fundamentalist version of Islam. France's Muslim establishment, including the Muslim Religion Council friendly to the government, has stated that nothing in Islam requires women to wear full-face veils. Yet council leader Mohammed Moussaoui has been reluctant to criticize women who wear a full veil and expressed his fear that a legal ban would "stigmatize" Muslims in the same way they were stigmatized by a 2004 law banning headscarves in public schools.
Last week, the leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy's parliamentary majority, Jean-Francois Cope, proposed a law banning full-face veils in any public place, including the streets. He claimed to have the support of more than 200 members of parliament. Sarkozy himself has long been on the record for insisting that the burqa must be banned and that Muslims must learn to respect French traditions which include separation of church and state. “The burqa is not a religious sign,” he has declared. “It is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on our territory.” “It should not be welcome anywhere,” concurred Mona Eltahawy, a Muslim Egyptian woman in an op-ed article in “The New York Times” dated July 2, 2009. But Defense Minister Herve Morin, a centrist allied with Sarkozy, warned that a law with too broad a scope might be found unconstitutional. He cautioned that it could also cause embarrassing incidents with foreign visitors, for instance Persian Gulf billionaires who go to Paris with their fully veiled wives.
Sarkozy’s bold strategy calls for a resounding parliamentary endorsement of a resolution that declares the full-face unacceptable, to be followed by laws calibrated to ban the burqa avoiding the threat of contravention by the Constitutional Council. Critics, especially the opposition Socialist Party, have charged that much of Sarkozy's concern with the burqa, including his launch of a "national identity debate," is calculated to curry favor with right-wing voters.
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