Volume 9, Number 24
June 19, 2009
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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As the far-right boosted its strength in nine of the European Union’s (EU) 27 member states at the elections for the European Parliament, extremist violence hit near-record numbers in some areas of the Russian Federation. Some commentators blame the global economic crisis for both developments: soaring unemployment in the EU and cuts to Moscow’s subsidies for the restive Caucasus area. Common to both populations is dissatisfaction with the center’s leaders that do not inspire and with their policies that fail to counter the economic crisis.
1. CAUCASUS REBELS TARGET RUSSIAN MILITARY AND LOCAL OFFICIALS. In Russia’s Caucasus, violence has surged, and officials blame Islamic militants. In Ingushetia, a Russian army officer was killed and two soldiers wounded in a clash with rebels, Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL) reported on June 16. Ingushetia's Interior Ministry told journalists that the clash took place on a road between the villages of Sukhakhi and Alkhasty. There were reportedly casualties among the rebels, but Ingushetian officials have offered no details.
On June 15, unidentified attackers severely wounded two police officers in Nazran's Nasyr-Kort District, RFE/RL reported. Meanwhile, the body of well-known Ingushetian Muslim cleric Abdurakhman Kartoyev was found in Ingushetia with a gunshot wound to his head. Kartoyev, 85, had been missing since June 5. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing.
On June 13, unidentified gunmen killed Ingushetia’s former deputy prime minister and minister of the interior Bashir Aushev in a drive-by shooting outside his house, Reuters reported. He had been responsible for law enforcement and security. Ingushetian President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov charged Islamic militants with the killing.
On June 10, in Ingushetia's largest town and capital Nazran, unidentified attackers in two cars opened fire with machine guns and killed a top judge, Aza Gazgireyeva, the deputy chairwoman of Ingushetia's Supreme Court, traveling in her car, RFE/RL reported. Witnesses said that six people were also injured in the attack.
In the Caucasus republic of Dagestan, violence has also spiked over the past few weeks. The victims, including a senior judge and a local interior minister, were killed in separate attacks. President Dmitry Medvedev promptly flew to Dagestan seeking to rally the fight against Islamist insurgents. Within hours of his visit, two local policemen were killed.
2. INTER-ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN ADYGEYA. An inter-ethnic clash between residents of Maykop (Republic of Adygeya) resulted in several injuries and accusations by the victims that the police stood by passively, according to a June 17 report by the web site Kavkazsky Uzel which monitors developments in the Northern Caucasus. According to the report, which relied heavily on victims' accounts, on the night of June 10 a group of 30-40 ethnic Adygeys attacked a smaller, mixed group of friends made up of Chechens, Ingush, Ossetians, Azeris, and Adygeys. "Without saying a word, they attacked us," a victim recalled. "Four men beat me. I lost consciousness twice. Policemen woke me up and they took me to the hospital."
A police spokesman insisted that there is no record of such an attack in Maykop that night. But Kavkazsky Uzel quoted a low ranking officer, Rustam Napsaev, saying that, "Yes, there definitely was a massive brawl after which people with various injuries went to the hospital." According to one victim, Napsaev persuaded him not to report the incident, saying that the attackers would receive at most a fine. Napsaev denied the charge.
3. RACISTS STAB KYRGYZ IN MOSCOW. Police in Moscow detained two suspects identified as neo-Nazis in connection with a racist attack, according to a June 15 report by the web site Jewish.ru. The suspects allegedly stabbed an ethnic Kyrgyz man, 24, while screaming racist slogans. The alleged assailants, one of whom is a university student, reportedly confessed to having been driven by ethnic hatred. However, so far they only face charges of "hooliganism."
4. MORE THAN A DOZEN NEO-NAZIS DETAINED IN STAVROPOL REGION. Police in Georgievsk, Stavropol Region, detained over a dozen neo-Nazis in connection with a series of assaults, according to a June 15 report by the web site Kavkazsky Uzel. The detentions took place in the wake of a June 3 attack on an ethnic Armenian student who was walking with his girlfriend. Armed with metal pipes, the suspects allegedly beat and kicked their victim before moving on to two ethnic Russians whom they apparently mistook for ethnic minorities. One of the victims was quoted in the report as saying that the assailants yelled racist slogans and did not listen when he pleaded that he was Russian too.
Police say they found a Molotov cocktail with lettering on it referring to a "National Slavic Front for the Liberation of Russia" as well as leaflets by the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity. Police also linked one of the neo-Nazis to an organized crime group active in the region and reportedly found masks, gloves, and several weapons in one of the suspects' cars. Nevertheless, the suspects face only charges of "hooliganism" rather than hate crimes or extremism charges.
Stavropol police continue to investigate the May 2009 murders of two Dagestani students and are looking into the possibility that the killers acted out of ethnic hatred.
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CHECHNYA PRESIDENT BLAMES U.S. FOR NORTH CAUCASUS PROBLEMS. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov blames the United States for the unrest in the North Caucasus. "It is precisely from the side of America that work is being carried out aimed at the disintegration of the sovereign Russian state. It is not terrorists, not Islamists," he said, according to a transcript posted last week on his government's web site and picked up by the Associated Press whose item was printed in "The Moscow Times" dated June 17.
The Americans "are creating problems for Russia; they want to pull Russia down," Kadyrov said.
"They have such a system working--all sorts of social organizations created to spread rumors and gossip, to agitate people; they know that in the Caucasus, the only way to create problems for Russia is on a religious basis."
NEO-NAZI CHARGED WITH KILLING A STUDENT. Prosecutors in St. Petersburg charged a neo-Nazi with "murder motivated by hooliganism" after he allegedly killed a student that he thought was an anti-fascist activist, according to a June 10 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The killing took place on April 20 of this year—Adolf Hitler's birthday, a time of increased neo-Nazi violence in Russia. Vladimir Sosnikhin and three other neo-Nazis allegedly attacked the victim, Denis Edzauskin, and a friend of his as a form of revenge for a brawl the previous day with anti-fascists.
SIX NEO-NAZIS SENTENCED FOR MURDER. The Moscow City Court sentenced six neo-Nazis to between seven and 19 years in prison after finding them guilty of murder motivated by ethnic hatred, a rarely applied hate crimes statute, according to a June 18 report by the Itar-Tass news service. On June 10, 2007 the defendants attacked two men from Dagestan, killing one of them.
ANOTHER NEO-NAZI WOULD-BE BOMBER DETAINED. Moscow police have detained a neo-Nazi they accuse of plotting to set off a bomb as part of a wider "Day of Anger" campaign organized by extremist web sites, according to a June 11 report by the Newsru.com web site. The suspect, whose name was not released because he is 16, allegedly planned to set off eight kilograms of TNT in a crowded place somewhere in the city on May 5 of this year. Details in the report are sketchy, but police apparently prevented the explosion after identifying the suspect through his Internet postings before the planned bombing. Police reportedly found in the suspect's room "literature of an extremist character and a portrait of Hitler hanging on the center of his wall," along with six handmade explosive devices and instructions on how to build bombs, downloaded from the Internet. Psychiatrists are currently examining the suspect, who allegedly refuses to admit that what he was planning was wrong in any way, to determine if he is psychologically competent to stand trial.
NEO-NAZI SENT TO PRISON FOR ATTACKING ETHNIC RUSSIAN BOY. A court in Kostroma sent a neo-Nazi to prison for three years for beating an ethnic Russian boy, 16, according to a June 18 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The 21-year-old suspect assaulted his victim in January and has a previous robbery conviction, which Sova initially reported as an "attack on a non-Slavic person."
What makes this case different from the hundreds of attacks on ethnic and religious minorities that take place in Russia every year is that the suspect was convicted of hate crimes for attacking a "member of a social group"--in this case, a fan of punk rock music. Neo-Nazis regularly attack anti-fascist activists, many of whom listen to punk rock, and routinely face nothing more than "hooliganism" or ordinary assault and murder charges. This conviction could set an important precedent.
EDITOR OF ANTISEMITIC NEWSPAPER GETS SLAP ON THE WRIST. The editor of one of Russia's most viciously antisemitic newspapers received a suspended sentence on extremism charges, according to a June 18 report by Jewish.ru. Moscow’s Savelevsky Court gave Yuri Mukhin, editor of "Duel," a suspended sentence of two years imprisonment after finding him guilty of "publicly calling for extremist activity through the media." The charges stem from an article in which Mukhin called for "the total destruction of the kike state of Russia" and concluded with the slogan "Death to Russia!" After years of demonizing Jews with impunity, "Duel" was shut down under anti-extremism laws last month because of the article.
ANTISEMITIC VANDALISM IN UKRAINE. Four unidentified vandals threw cans of brown paint on a synagogue in Kremenchug, Ukraine, according to a June 11 report by the news web site proua.com. The June 11 incident took place during the early morning hours. The culprits were spotted by a security guard who saw them running off. That same night in a different part of the city, brown paint was splattered on the building of an advertising firm that had sparked controversy by using in an ad campaign a slang term for "Ukrainian" that many find offensive.
Police are investigating the incidents and the mayor has ordered street lights near the synagogue repaired to help prevent future vandalism.
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The influx of migrants and their lack of integration claim front-page attention and have become a key election issue in every European country. A breaking story from Northern Ireland belies an optimistic report from Germany.
1. IN BELFAST, MORE THAN A HUNDRED ROMA FORCED OUT OF THEIR HOMES. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, gangs smashed windows and broke down the doors of houses occupied by some 115 Roma migrants from Romania, forcing them to flee, Reuters reported on June 17. Police helped support groups in moving the families to a church hall overnight and then to a social center. Locals donated blankets, towels, food, and milk. A temporary accommodation is being sought as the families refuse to go back to their vandalized homes. It is unclear if they wish to stay in Belfast or to return to Romania.
When Northern Ireland police began recording race-driven crime in 1996 there were 41 incidents, the BBC noted, but last year the number rose to nearly 1,000. The jump is due to the increase in the ethnic minority population that followed the paramilitary ceasefires and the accession of central and eastern European countries to the European Union. The BBC cited a local expert suggesting that a legacy of Northern Ireland's sectarian conflict is a "culture of intolerance" that leads to violence against people not just of a different religion but also those of a different ethnic background.
"Just as sectarianism in the past has been responsible for violence and division, we cannot allow racism to become the new sectarianism," Jeffrey Donaldson, a junior minister, told reporters. "We want to leave that behind us." Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said the attacks were an affront to the vast majority of people in Belfast and called for the punishment of those who vandalized the Roma homes. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a sharp condemnation of the perpetrators.
2. MIGRANT NUMBERS IN EU MAY BE HIGHER THAN 30 MILLION. Residents with foreign passports are said to make up about 5% of the EU’s total population of nearly 500 million, according to the statistics compiled on June 15 by Deutsche Welle, Germany’s equivalent of the UK’s BBC. The highest percentage is in Luxembourg, with 38% of the population listed as foreigners. Germany is in mid-field at 8.9%--about seven million foreign residents.
However, the German Federal Statistics Office believes that the numbers are far higher. It counted those with "migratory backgrounds," including persons who have adopted German citizenship and children raised in families with origins abroad. The resulting figure was 15 million--more than 18% of Germany’s total population of 82 million.
The broadcast suggested that the number of migrants in the EU, usually estimated as 30 million, may be too low and the degree of their integration higher than generally believed in.
Since the 1980s, go-it-alone policies pursued by individual nations have been superseded by an EU commission’s drive to coordinate a patchwork of policies on asylum and integration under a so-called Global Approach to Migration, the German broadcast station pointed out. Adopted in 2007, the commission’s measures have ranged from promoting language learning and job skills to worker mobility within the EU’s visa-free internal borders, to Frontex, the EU agency which patrols waters off northern Africa. Frontex draws criticism from non-governmental organizations.
Mario Sepi, who heads the EU’s Social and Economic Committee, acknowledges that the demographics of an ageing EU population have also prompted EU member states to boost their efforts to integrate foreigners. By 2050 a third of the EU’s population will be 65 years or older, requiring many younger skilled workers including foreigners, and as taxpayers, to fill the gap. "The European model of integration is a very broad model," Sepi was quoted as saying. "And, if we’re unable to integrate new citizens into the EU, then we wouldn’t be true to what our message to the world is: integration at the national, social, and economic levels."
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble who comes from her conservative Christian Democratic Union has offered high praise for the integration of more than two million so-called Russian-Germans who settled in Germany since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He also made it clear that potential immigrants have to take the first steps: "If you know nothing about where you live or where you’re going to and if you don’t have a basic knowledge of the language, then you’ll have only a small chance of making it in the new country."
Experts, including staff at the SINUS social research institute in Heidelberg, say the migratory policies and trends across the EU are "very diverse" and even the terms "migrant" and "foreigner" are interpreted differently from country to country. In a recent study, SINUS researchers Carsten Wippermann and Berthold Bodo Flaig dismissed cliches of supposedly uneducated Gastarbeiter ("guest workers") recruited by Germany in the 1960s, mostly from Turkey. The researchers assert that instead, three decades of research have shown that many migrants in Germany are educationally and vocationally advanced, with a strong work ethic and contemporary attitudes. "Among a broad cross-section of the migrant population there is a high degree of cultural adaption and willingness to integrate," they said. "Many have a bicultural self-definition. That means, they don’t even regard themselves as 'migrants' but as an obvious part of German society."
A new study by Germany’s Allensbach Research Institute says that 69% of migrants feel comfortable in Germany and 58% consider themselves part of German society. But among Turkish migrants, a quarter said they felt "foreign" or "different."
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, WHY THE RUSSIAN NGO LAW IS FLAWED * * * Lyudmila Alekseyeva of the Moscow Helsinki Group welcomed the amendments, submitted by President Dmitry Medvedev on June 17 to simplify the registration of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as "a step towards liberalism." But, she told "Gazeta" dated June 18, she is for abolishing the 2006 law on NGOs. "However hard they try to improve this law, I'll keep insisting on its abolition because the law is based on a wholly wrong postulate. Civil society monitors bureaucracy in all democracies. This law on the other hand offers bureaucracy leverage against civil society."
UKRAINIAN JEWS PROTEST CASE AGAINST ORGANIZERS OF 1930S FAMINE Secret Police List Highlights Jewish Names
The Ukrainian Jewish Committee objects to a criminal case brought against officials said to be responsible for the "Great Famine" that Ukrainians call Holodomor, perpetrated on Yosif Stalin’s order, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported from Kiev on June 15. Ukraine’s security service SBU is pressing the case against a list of former Soviet officials accused of organizing the Holodomor, which caused the deaths of millions in Ukraine in 1932-33.
According to the JTA, "Last July, the Ukrainian Security Service [SBU] released a list of high-ranking Soviet state and Communist Party officials--as well as officers from the NKVD, the police force of Soviet Russia—that essentially blamed Jews and Latvians responsible for perpetrating and executing the famine because most of the names on the list were Jewish." The JTA dispatch did not specify if the SBU stated explicitly--or just implied--that Jews were responsible, or let people draw such an inference.
1. FELDMAN: ALL FAMINE ORGANIZERS ARE DEAD. Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandr Feldman, leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said last week that it was "a farce" to press the case. "All organizers of the Great Famine are dead," he said.
The JTA reported that "the Ukrainian Jewish Committee called on the secret service to revise the list, which incited interethnic hatred, in order to clear up the ‘inaccuracy.’ Feldman believes there is a danger that the ‘Holodomor Affair’ materials are being used for political purposes."
In late May, security service head Valentin Nalivaychenko told representatives of the World Congress of Ukrainians that "Ukraine has collected enough evidence to bring a criminal case regarding the famine, which was artificially created by the Bolshevik regime and caused mass death of citizens." According to the JTA, Nalivaychenko turned to leading foreign lawyers, through the World Congress of Ukrainians, with a request to find out the circumstances connected with preparing a case for genocide.
2. IF THE LIST IS CORRECT, CAN ANYTHING BE DONE? In another country—or on another continent—and at a time less infected by hatred, one might suggest that a carefully selected team of independent researchers should double-check the list and its sources. And if the list does indeed identify a large number of Jews as clearly responsible for carrying out what is now known as Stalin’s murderous order, groups of Ukrainian Jews may issue a statement expressing regret over that fact. Their statement may explain historical circumstances such as the strident antisemitism of the tsarist regime and point out that those who participated in Stalin’s criminal program abandoned traditional Jewish ethical standards and that Jews also died in the famine.But perhaps most Ukrainian citizens—Jews and non-Jews—carry too many wounds to accept such a course of action. There is an intense demand in Ukraine for establishing the true facts behind the Holodomor tragedy—as well as a thirst for retribution for the crimes committed. There has been too much violence, too much hatred, and too much political manipulation of data. Stalin’s evil scheme of setting one Soviet minority against another may trap yet another generation and inflame the minds of the grandchildren of the victims and the perpetrators—and even those who are innocent of any family links to either group.
It might help if people on both sides denounced the Stalinist principle of collective guilt. The toxic notion of holding an entire community responsible for the crimes of some individuals born into that community should not be allowed to poison the thought pool of any community. At the same time, those guilty should be identified and condemned even if Feldman is right that they are all dead and despite denials by Russian leaders who insist that no crime was committed and that Stalin was only a tough leader at a time that demanded toughness.
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