Volume 9, Number 33
September 4, 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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LEADING KAZAKH HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST SENTENCED TO FOUR YEARS. On September 3, Eugene Zhovtis, director of the UCSJ bureau in Kazakhstan, was arrested in court and sentenced to four years. Before his trial, which human rights activists called “unfair” and “the regime’s revenge for Zhovtis’ human rights activities of many years,” UCSJ appealed to the State Department to pay immediate attention to the political character of the criminal case. A letter signed by UCSJ national director Micah H. Naftalin pointed out that in the more than 15 years of working together, “Zhovtis expressed honesty, bravery, and high principles.”
According to the lawyers, during the night of July 27, Zhovtis was driving when he noticed a man walking ahead in the same direction as the car. Zhovtis applied the brakes, but the distance was too short, and the car hit the man who died immediately. According to one expert’s conclusion, Zhovtis did not violate traffic rules and was not drunk.
However, other experts received misleading and faulty information, and a criminal case was constructed. “Many articles of the Criminal-Procedure Code of Kazakhstan were violated by the officials during the investigation and their expedited submission of the case to the court,” Naftalin’s letter noted. For example, the family of the victim signed an affidavit stating that they did not believe Zhovtis was criminally responsible for the accident, but that crucially important document was not considered by the court.
"This court decision shows that Kazakhstan is not ready to be chair of the OSCE in 2010," Mr. Naftalin added. "It seems obvious to us that any country that jails human rights activists on such blatantly unfair charges has no place chairing such a prestigious body, especially one with an important human rights mandate. We call upon the U.S. and other governments to officially protest this sham conviction, and to state unambiguously that they will move to block Kazakhstan's candidacy for the OSCE chairmanship if the conviction and punishment are not abrogated or a transparent and fair trial is not held in the near future."
In 1993, UCSJ organized the Kazakhstan-American Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law, later renamed Kazakhstan International Bureau. It is the first and most prominent human rights organization to achieve registration in the country and Zhovtis has been its director since that time.
ONE CHINESE STABBED TO DEATH; HUGE THEFTS CHARGED IN CLOSED MARKET. On August 29, the body of a Chinese man with stab wounds was discovered in a stall of Moscow’s Cherkizovsky market, once Europe’s largest market, shut down in late June, “Novaya Gazeta” reported, citing former traders.
But the front page news in the Moscow press is that over the past few weeks, billions of rubles in goods have been stolen from more than 1,000 closed stalls owned by traders at the Cherkizovsky. A traders’ representative told “The Moscow Times” on August 31 that the traders have filed a complaint with the police precinct which oversees the territory once occupied by the market, said Leonid Razvozzhayev, a member of a council of the market’s former tenants.
City authorities shut down Cherkizovsky after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded to see convictions over Chinese goods purportedly smuggled to the market. Police confiscated an estimated $2-to-5 billion worth of merchandise and required traders to show work and ownership documents to claim their goods. The crackdown left tens of thousands of workers from China, Vietnam, and former Soviet republics without their goods and jobs, and some of them returned home. But, Razvozzhayev said, many Russian traders are suffering as well. City Hall has promised to protect the rights of Russian traders. “Russian traders need to be protected,” said Sergei Ryakhovsky, a member of the Pubic Chamber. “They are desperate. Some are thinking about committing suicide.”
On August 31, Chinese authorities said that they had settled the concerns of former Chinese traders from Cherkizovsky. About 95% of goods worth $5 billion that police had confiscated from Chinese traders has been returned, said Sun Yongfu, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce. “On the whole, the problem has been solved,” Yongfu told the Associated Press.
About 1,000 Chinese traders have moved to the Moskva Mall in southeastern Moscow, which prompted two street protests over the weekend by local residents and the extremist nationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration, “Gazeta” reported.
RUSSIAN POLITICAL PARTY INCITES ANTI-MIGRANT HATRED. Opening its campaign for municipal elections, the Moscow city branch of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) has published leaflets replete with xenophobia, according to an August 26 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The LDPR leaflets contrast good, honest "native residents" of Moscow with "children of the mountains" (meaning the Caucasus) whom the author of the leaflets condemns as arrogant and criminal. The pervasive problem of official corruption in Moscow is blamed on migrants who supposedly "register entire villages in exchange for bribes" thus depriving "native residents" of housing. "Illiterate guest workers" in the construction industry lower that sector's prestige, the leaflet claims, urging the "uninvited guests" to leave so that "the profession of a Moscow construction builder can become respectable" again.
The report does not mention if anybody has filed an official complaint against the LDPR for what appears to be a violation of the country's hate speech laws. Despite its reputation as an ultra-nationalist party, the LDPR has worked closely with the Kremlin in the State Duma and thus earned a measure of impunity.
DOZENS DETAINED AT ‘MARCH OF DISSENT’ IN MOSCOW. Dozens of activists were detained at an opposition gathering in downtown Moscow, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported. The activists were taking part in a March of Dissent on August 31 in Triumfalnaya Square. City authorities had not sanctioned the rally. Prominent activist Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the For Human Rights movement, was briefly detained, as was Eduard Limonov, one of the leaders of the Other Russia coalition group that organized the gathering.
The RFE/RL reporter noted that the square was surrounded by OMON special police who detained activists as soon as they exited the nearby metro station.
A member of Other Russia's executive committee, Aleksandr Averin, told RFE/RL that city authorities had recommended moving the rally to another site but that the coalition declined. The aim of the gathering was to remind authorities that Article 31 of the Constitution gives citizens the right to hold mass gatherings and assemblies, Limonov was quoted as saying.
AFRICANS UNDER SIEGE IN MOSCOW. Nearly 60% of black and African people living in Moscow have been physically assaulted in racially motivated attacks, says a new study cited by the BBC News on August 31. Africans working or studying in the city live in constant fear of attack, according to the report by the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy. A quarter of the 200 people surveyed said they had been assaulted more than once and some 80% had been verbally abused. However, the number of assaults was down from the most recent similar survey conducted in 2002.
The report's conclusion was that Africans living in Russia exist in a state of virtual siege, said the BBC's Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Moscow. Many of the African respondents said that they avoid using the Moscow metro, are careful to avoid crowded public places, and do not go out on national holidays or on days when there are soccer matches. Many of the attacks on Africans were pre-meditated and extremely violent, the report found. One Nigerian migrant interviewed by the BBC had been repeatedly stabbed in the back and then shot. Another man said his attacker had attempted to remove his scalp.
According to official records. about 10,000 Africans live in Moscow but far more are believed to live there illegally. Many are economic migrants.
The Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy is an English-speaking interdenominational Christian congregation that has ministered to Moscow's foreign community since 1962.
HATE CRIME CHARGES FILED IN VOLGOGRAD. Prosecutors in Volgograd brought hate crime charges against five youths after they allegedly attacked two natives of the Kabardino-Balkariya Republic, according to a September 2 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The suspects, aged from 15 to 24, face assault charges motivated by ethnic hatred. Police reportedly found extremist literature in the suspects' homes and submitted them to an expert for evaluation.
RYAZAN REGION OFFICIALS FORCE BREAKUP OF BAPTIST SUMMER CAMP. Officials in the Korablinsky District of the Ryazan Region disrupted a Baptist summer camp out of what appeared to be bigoted motives, according to an August 21 report by the Slavic Law Center that monitors religious liberty issues in Russia. According to pastor Andrey Krylov of the "Hope" Baptist Church in Ryazan, in early July about 70 parishioners (including several children) set up camp near a river about 90 kilometers from Ryazan. A few days later, an armada of officials showed up at the camp site: two police officers, the district's top prosecutor, an FSB officer, a youth affairs official, an ecologist, a district employed lawyer, and the deputy head of the district. They demanded that the Baptists disperse in five days.
But a promised written order to disperse was never sent to the church's home address in Ryazan, adding to the impression that the local officials were stretching the law in their haste to see the Baptists gone.
Krylov was summoned to the police station, where he presented all the necessary paperwork showing that his parishioners had the legal right to camp at that site. According to him, police officers asked to see the documents and demanded an explanation of the kind of camp the Baptists were running and pressed questions such as “were we training terrorists to bomb marketplaces in Moscow." They then took his mug shot and fingerprints, treating him like a criminal.
Next, police arrived at the camp to conduct a search, frightening the children and demanding permission letters from the parents allowing their kids to attend the camp. The camp organizers, perhaps aware of how overly strict officials can be when it comes to activities by religious minorities, had the necessary paperwork ready for inspection. The following day, another group of officials appeared at the camp and accused the Baptists of swimming in a forbidden area and of illegally bathing in the river despite the fact, Krylov said, that "hundreds of people were swimming there, before and after we were."
At that point, the pastor refused to break up the campsite, saying that the rights of his congregants were being violated. The officials threatened consequences, and left. The Baptists then went home, their summer camp ruined by what appeared to be bigoted, or at the very least, selectively litigious officials who made every imaginable effort to drive them from the district.
LIGHT SENTENCE FOR MAN GUILTY OF INCITING ETHNIC HATRED. A court in Vladimir sentenced a local resident to two years of community service after finding him guilty of inciting ethnic hatred, according to an August 31 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The Leninsky District Court found that on two occasions in 2005, Aleksey Panov and an under-aged defendant whose punishment has not been determined daubed swastikas and antisemitic graffiti on the fence of a Jewish community center Chesed Ozer.
‘SOUTH PARK’ CARTOON NOT EXTREMIST, MOSCOW COURT RULES. On August 28, the Moscow City Court rejected an appeal by prosecutors to recognize “South Park” as an extremist cartoon, Interfax reported.
In June, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ruled that the iconoclastic U.S. cartoon did not promote religious hatred and annulled a warning issued by prosecutors last September to 2x2 Television about the extremist content of its cartoons. Basmanny District prosecutors had said the “South Park” episode “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics” about singing excrement was extremist in nature because it promoted “hatred between religions.”
On July 24, the prosecutors appealed the court’s decision, but the Moscow City Court refused to intervene on August 28. “The Basmanny court’s ruling has been left with no changes,” Moscow City Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova told Interfax.
JEWISH CHARITY BUILDING IN UKRAINE VANDALIZED. Vandals painted swastikas and antisemitic slogans on the main entrance of a Jewish charity's building in the town of Melitopol in the Zaporozhsky Region in Ukraine, according to the local newspaper "Melitopolskie Vedomosti" dated August 28. It is not clear from the article if local prosecutors contemplate pressing hate crimes charges.
Similar graffiti appeared in other town districts the same night. According to Svetlana Marshak, a leader of the charitable organization, the Jewish community of Melitopol was shocked by the vandalism and appealed to law enforcement to investigate the crime. The local department of Ukraine's Security Service is investigating but no arrests have been reported. The incident received wide coverage in the local media.
DISPUTE OVER HISTORIC CEMETERY IN LITHUANIA SETTLED. A long-running dispute over construction on the site of a historic Jewish cemetery in the center of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius was settled, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on August 31. The agreement, signed on August 26, gives protected status to the Snipiskes cemetery, used from the 16th to 19th centuries. During the Nazi occupation, much of the cemetery was destroyed, and in the Soviet era, a sports center was built over parts of it. In 2005, the construction of an apartment and office complex on the site set off worldwide Jewish protest, and the U.S. House of Representatives condemned the government for allowing the construction, JTA added. According to the agreement, which set official boundaries for the cemetery, buildings on the site will not be demolished.
The Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and the Vilnius Cultural Heritage Protection Department agreed to the plan, according to the Tel Aviv daily “Ha'aretz.”
Before the Holocaust, about 220,000 Jews lived in Lithuania, JTA pointed out, but only about 5,000 Jews now live there.
UZBEKS SENTENCED FOR PRACTISING RELIGION OUTSIDE STATE-CONTROLLED ISLAM. Two mass trials which ended in July have brought to 36 the number of followers of the late Turkish Muslim theologian Said Nursi sentenced to long prison terms in Uzbekistan in 2009, Forum 18 News Service reported on August 31. A total of 21 men--in their 20s and 30s--received sentences of between eleven and five years' imprisonment at trials in Samarkand and Khorezm. Human rights activist Surat Ikramov told Forum 18 that the men in Samarkand were brutally beaten by the secret police in pre-trial detention. Uzbek officials refused to discuss with Forum 18 why they were sentenced.
"An analysis of the charge sheets and the verdicts on these cases shows that the guilt of the accused is not proven and that they are sentenced for religious extremism only for practicing religion outside the framework of the traditional stream of Islam propagated and controlled by the state," two human rights groups noted.
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, WHY RUSSIANS DEFEND STALIN * * * There are two reasons for “the popular apologia of Stalinism,” wrote Yevgeny Ikhlov in “Yezhednevny Zhurnal” dated September 2. On the one hand is “the dream” of seeing members of the bureaucracy, non-Russians and intellectuals get their comeuppance from a powerful tsar-like figure. On the other hand--and this view is found among younger people--there are “almost erotic dreams” about having someone in power who will show everyone who is boss both at home and abroad, forcing “everyone to go down on their knees” and willing “to throw a bomb at the rabble.”
WORLD WAR II REMEMBERED IN POLAND
Conflicts in Interpretation Deepen
Commemoration in Poland of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II rekindled disagreements over the causes and the interpretation of the war, with Russian leaders accusing Poland and the West of distortions of history and threatening the release of secret documents that will shed light on Poland’s responsibility for the war.
On September 1 at a Soviet-era monument to Polish soldiers, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk issued a sharp warning about the danger of forgetting history. He said: "We meet here to remember who started this war, who was the perpetrator of this war, who was the executioner in this war, and who was the victim of this war and this aggression." German Chancellor Angela Merkel solemnly apologized for Germany's role, saying there are "no words to describe the suffering of the victims of the war and the Holocaust."
1. POLISH RESISTANCE AND SOVIET ‘STAB IN THE BACK’ CITED. Poles stressed that Germans had expected the 182 Polish soldiers defending a small fort on the Westerplatte peninsula near Gdansk to surrender within hours after a German battleship fired the first shots of the war. Instead, the Poles held off more than 3,000 German troops for seven days in a battle that became a Polish symbol of resistance. German forces invaded Poland from every direction, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany two days later.
Most Poles and Western historians believe that the then secret Nazi-Soviet pact gave Germany the green light to attack Poland. Two weeks after the German onslaught, the Red Army struck, annexing eastern Poland under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. In a strong message to Moscow during the September 1 ceremonies, Polish President Lech Kaczynski called the Soviet actions a "stab in the back."
The public reiteration of the Polish view of the war “produced growing fury” in Moscow, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Gregory Feifer reported. In an interview ahead of his visit to Poland, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was "immoral." “But anyone expecting him to deliver an apology was disappointed,” Feifer added.
Putin said Moscow had no choice but to sign the agreement to delay war after Western powers concluded their own agreement with Germany. He said the 1938 Munich pact ended "all hope of creating a united front against fascism." He averred that the Soviet Union was just one country of many that had committed mistakes, and he blamed Poland, as well.
"I want bring to the attention of our respected colleagues the fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was the last document signed by a European power--the Soviet Union--with Hitler's Germany," Putin said. "It had been preceded by a 1934 agreement between Poland and Germany, bilateral nonaggression agreements between [Germany and] leading European powers, much like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the so-called Munich Agreement signed in 1938."
Feifer noted that “Russia's intelligence agency poured more fuel on the fire, saying it was declassifying documents that show Poland was partly to blame for its invasion by the Nazis.”
2. LAVROV PROTESTS EQUATIONS OF NAZISM AND COMMUNISM. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not miss the opportunity to lash out against a recent resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that equated Nazism and Stalinism. He condemned the resolution as "lies" and a "rewriting of history."
"Even during the Cold War no one ever tried to put the Nazi regime and Stalin's dictatorship on the same footing," Lavrov said, patently wrong in his recollection. "It never occurred to anyone to equate the Nazi threat, which meant the enslavement and annihilation of entire nations, and the policy of the Soviet Union, which was the only force capable of standing up against the war machine of Hitler's Germany and in the end ensuring its defeat." President Dmitry Medvedev added his own diversionary maneuver by emphasizing that the Soviet Union had "ultimately saved Europe" in the war, apparently unmindful of the fact that Soviet communism replaced Nazi oppression in Central and Eastern Europe.
At a news conference on September 1, Putin tried to be conciliatory by saying that the Soviet Union and Poland were "comrades in arms fighting a common front." He allowed for the possibility that his government may declassify documents relating to the Katyn massacre of 21,000 Polish officers and intellectuals, but then baffled his audience by saying that the declassification can only happen on the basis of "reciprocity." Belligerent as usual, Putin reverted to Soviet propaganda by lavishing praise on the Soviet Union's achievements and sacrifices, and claiming that half of those who died during the war were Soviet citizens. "Think about those frightening numbers," he hectored his audience.
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