Volume 9, Number 35
September 18, 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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MEDVEDEV URGES DECISIVE CHANGES IN RUSSIA’S ‘SEMI-SOVIET’ SYSTEM. On September 15, President Dmitry Medvedev surprised the annual Valdai discussion group--and his nation--by announcing that the time has come for Russia to take “decisive initiatives” to modernize the economic and social sectors, the official news agency RIA Novosty reported. "Today, we have a semi-Soviet social system, which has inherited all the flaws of the Soviet system and all difficulties of the present life," he said. His other statement, made a day earlier at another conference, contended that states were entitled to as extensive knowledge of one another as possible and to critical evaluation of one another's foreign and domestic policies. "Sovereign rights of the nations are not supposed to be used to [camouflage] development of isolated, non-transparent, and closed political regimes and all sorts of Iron Curtains that usually hide dislocations and abuses," he said according to the Moscow daily “Vedomosti.”
The newspaper pointed out that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is “of a different frame of mind.” "Domestic policy of Russia is our own affair, just as domestic policy of the United States is its own affair... Still, we are interested in our partners' opinion," Putin was cited as having told Israeli TV in April 2005.
Russian-American political scientist Nikolai Zlobin was awed by Medvedev’s first speech. On September 14, Medvedev advocated something that until quite recently "was called interference in internal affairs," Zlobin, director of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the Washington-based World Security Institute, told Interfax. "Medvedev said a very important thing, something that many didn't notice. . . He carried out a revolution in Russian political thinking by saying that we need to take a critical attitude to the domestic policies of other states and monitor them."
"Until recently this was called interference in internal affairs, including interference in the internal affairs of Russia,” Zlobin noted. “Today the Russia president says that this can and must be done. I believe this is a very serious change if it gets any political formalization."
Masha Lipman, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center and “Washington Post” columnist, said that the speeches showed that it was wrong to look at Medvedev as a puppet. “He can make his own statements and own decisions,” she said. But, she added, Medvedev’s capacity to implement decisions “is secondary only to Putin’s.”
KHABAROVSK NEO-NAZIS FIREBOMB SYNAGOGUE, POLICEMAN’S HOUSE. Neo-Nazis in Khabarovsk firebombed a synagogue and a policeman's house, according to a September 14 report posted on the Russian language version of Radio Liberty's web site. While attacks on Jewish targets in Russia are not unusual, the neo-Nazis' brazen attack on the home of a police official charged with investigating extremism in the region marks a further radicalization of the neo-Nazi movement, reminiscent of this summer's "Day of Anger" attacks on police and military targets in three cities.
Police arrested four young people aged between 15 and 21 in connection with the arsons, which were originally planned for the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah later this month. On Saturday night, the suspects allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at the synagogue. According to the federal district's Interior Ministry spokeswoman: "The young people deliberately targeted the window of a room that was specifically set up for the education of small children--even from the street you could see the toys that were inside." They then allegedly proceeded to attempt to burn down the police official's house. Nobody was injured in either attack.
The suspects include two college students and a former member of Russia's special forces. They may face up to five years in prison on arson charges, but also additional time if convicted of hate crimes charges, and potential life sentences if convicted of attempting to murder a state official. So far, no charges have been filed.
KHABAROVSK COURT SENTENCES TWO FAR-RIGHT ACTIVISTS. A Khabarovsk court sentenced two leaders of a far-right group in Khabarovsk after finding them guilty of extremism, according to a September 16 report posted on the Russian language web site of Radio Liberty. Pavel Onoprienko, leader of the local branch of the Union of the Russian People, and his aide Viktor Chulkin were found guilty of making statements at meetings last year aimed at inciting ethnic hatred. Their organization is the successor of a pre-Revolutionary group that played a key role in massive pogroms and other antisemitic violence in the early years of the 20th century. While Onoprienko was given a suspended sentence of three years, Chulkin got three years in prison because he was already under a suspended sentence for a different crime.
MOSCOW JURY FINDS 9 NEO-NAZIS GUILTY ON MULTIPLE COUNTS. A jury in Moscow found nine neo-Nazi gang members guilty on multiple counts, according to the national daily "Kommersant" dated September 12. The verdict found the defendants guilty of five attacks on citizens of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and China. The neo-Nazis allegedly coordinated a meeting place over email and far-right web forums, traveled to terminals on the Moscow metro line, and then attacked non-Russian passersby with the idea of "liberating" the capital of ethnic minorities. Seven of the defendants were under-aged youths at the time of the crimes, prompting the jury to recommend reduced sentences.
The alleged crimes range from murder, attempted murder, "hooliganism," and acts aimed at inciting ethnic hatred. Ilya Shutko, a.k.a. "Luftwaffe," 19, sentenced last year to seven years in prison for his part in the widely publicized murder of the ethnic Sakha chess master Sergey Nikolaev, was found guilty of the most serious charge: "murder and attempted murder of four people." According to the verdict, it was Shutko who stabbed a Kyrgyz victim eight times, killing him.
Evgeniya Zhikhareva, 17, has an extremist criminal record as well, having allegedly taken part in several racist murders, and the bombings of a MacDonalds and a railway. She and four other defendants were found guilty of attempted murder. The remaining four were found guilty of "hooliganism" and a hate crime.
TAGANROG COURT BANS JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES CONGREGATION. A court in Taganrog, Rostov Region ruled that a local Jehovah's Witnesses congregation is an extremist group and ordered it disbanded, according to a September 14 report by the RIA Novosty news service. The court classified 34 publications distributed by the congregation--including the world-wide Jehovah's Witnesses periodical "Watchtower"--extremist material, which in effect makes it illegal to possess and distribute Jehovah's Witnesses religious literature within the Rostov Regional Court’s jurisdiction. Setting up individual Jehovah's Witnesses for possible criminal prosecution, the court sided with the local Prosecutor's Office which argued that the Jehovah's Witnesses recruited youth into an extremist organization, destroyed families, and "incited religious hatred by enabling the formation of enmity towards other religions, especially Christianity."
Jehovah's Witnesses congregations in other Russian regions are facing similar prosecutions, along with media campaigns orchestrated to demonize them, and protests and even violence by both far-right and pro-Kremlin youth groups.
BOGORODSK CEMETERY VANDALIZED. Unidentified individuals vandalized gravestones in a Bogorodsk, Nizhny Novgorod Region cemetery, according to a September 15 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The vandals damaged 17 gravestones on the night of September 9 and left swastikas and a Star of David drawn with grass on several of the gravestones. This is the second time in two years that neo-Nazi graffiti has been left at the cemetery. It is not clear from Sova's report if anybody was arrested for the previous vandalism in July 2008.
IN UKRAINE, HIAS OFFICE DOOR VANDALIZED. At 4 p.m. on September 13, a group of unidentified individuals left Nazi symbols on the main entrance door to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) office in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. According to the guard who responded to a disturbance outside the door, the group consisted of three males, aged between 17 and 18, with closely cropped hair.
The perpetrators used a stencil to spray-paint a Nazi eagle on the door sign that specified HIAS-Kyiv’s hours of operations. They also laid on the door another swastika using white masking tape.
Gideon Aronoff, president of HIAS, noted that “HIAS, a Jewish organization doing humanitarian work in Kyiv to help refugees from around the world, was the vandals' only target.” He pledged that HIAS “will pursue all means of bringing these vandals to justice. We strongly believe that the world needs to stand vigilant against hate crimes when they occur against Jews and all others--and that the perpetrators of such crimes must be apprehended and prosecuted."
FAR-RIGHT GROUPS STEP UP ACTIVITIES IN CZECH REPUBLIC. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has released new reports examining racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and intolerance in the Czech Republic, Greece, and Switzerland. ECRI’s chair, Eva Smith Asmussen, said that the reports note positive developments in all three of these Council of Europe member states, but also point to continuing grounds for concern.
In the Czech Republic, a new criminal code was adopted in 2008, containing more extensive provisions against racism. In recent years, the Ombudsman has carried out detailed investigations into cases of possible discrimination against the Roma. “Steps have been taken to adjust the education system so as better to meet the needs of socially disadvantaged children,” the report noted. “At the same time, however, there has been a disturbing intensification in the activities of extreme right-wing groups. Most victims of racially motivated offences are reported to be Roma.” The report finds “little progress” made toward improving the situation of the Roma, who face segregation in schools and housing and discrimination in employment. The report noted that the issue of forced sterilizations of Roma women has not been adequately addressed.
ROMA PARENTS SENT TO JAIL IN HUNGARY BECAUSE THEIR KIDS SKIP SCHOOL. Two Roma parents in the village of Sajokaza have received 16-month prison sentences because two of their children stopped going to school, the Budapest daily “Nepszabadsag” reported on September 11. The paper cited a child-protection officer who said that it is unprecedented in Hungary that both parents, who have six children including an infant, have been given simultaneous prison sentences. While three of their other children regularly attend school, the two oldest children have dropped out.
The Association for Freedom has petitioned President Laszlo Solyom to intervene in the case, arguing that the blame does not lie with the parents because the reason the two children avoided school is that they felt very unhappy there. "No doubt because of their Roma origin, they were often put in a disadvantage and, what is more, they were subject to violence more than once," according to the petition.
POPE TO INSIST THAT REBEL GROUP RESPECT JUDAISM AND OTHER FAITHS. Respect for Judaism and other religions is mandatory for readmission to the mainstream Catholic fold, Pope Benedict XVI will tell a renegade Catholic group, Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn told a newspaper in Passau, Germany, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported from Rome on September 14.
In a weekend interview, Cardinal Schoenborn disclosed that “doctrinal talks” will soon begin between the Vatican and the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) that describes itself as “traditionalist.” "The SSPX will be told very clearly what is not negotiable for the Holy See," Schoenborn said. "This includes such fundamental conclusions of the Second Vatican Council as its positions on Judaism, other non-Christian religions, other Christian churches, and on religious freedom as a basic human right."
The SSPX, led by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, broke with the Vatican over the reforms of Vatican II that lifted anti-Jewish dogma and opened the way to Catholic-Jewish dialogue. Lefebvre and his followers were excommunicated in 1988.
The JTA dispatch recalled that Pope Benedict intends to bring SSPX back into the fold. In January, he sparked worldwide controversy by lifting the excommunication order against four SSPX bishops, including British-born Richard Williamson, known for his statements minimizing the extent of the Holocaust.
U.N. COMMISSIONER DECRIES ‘SCOURGE OF DISCRIMINATION.’ The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said that millions of people around the world are denied their human rights because of what she calls the "scourge of discrimination." Addressing on September 15 in Geneva the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, Pillay said that women and ethnic minorities are among those who are most victimized by human-rights abuses. She observed that human-rights abuses are increasing in many parts of the world.
She said that some of the armed conflicts going on in different parts of the world, “ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples bear the brunt of the hostilities. In virtually all of them, women and children suffer disproportionately.” She added that “sexual violence is almost invariably a foreseeable consequence in situations of armed conflict and in a climate that fosters mass atrocities."
Pillay identified another alarming global trend: attacks against peaceful opponents and critics of people in power. She says human rights advocates face arrest, abduction, torture, and even death. She said that governments have to do more to protect human rights defenders. She noted that the issues of political participation, and free and fair elections have a direct impact on the realization of human rights. She urged the U.N. Human Rights Council to be vigilant, and to scrutinize and condemn abuses wherever they are found.
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, RUSSIA AS THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE * * * "It is a sad irony: While the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia itself is relapsing to some of its Soviet ways. In fact, for journalists, Russia is a more dangerous place now than it was during the Cold War..." This is the beginning of a special report just released by the Committee to Protect Journalists, titled "Anatomy of Injustice: The Unsolved Killings of Journalists in Russia" and listing the cases of 17 journalists who have been murdered since 2000. In only one of the cases have the killers been punished. Only Iraq and Algeria are more dangerous for journalists to report from.
RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP FACES BOGUS CHARGES OF EXTREMISM
Krasnodar Prosecutors Cite as Evidence a Cold War Hoax
Vadim Karastelyov and his wife Tamara have long advocated inter-ethnic tolerance in Russia’s ethnically diverse, deeply conflicted Krasnodar Region. At one time the couple served as monitors for UCSJ and the Moscow Helsinki Group under a European Commission project. They have also worked with troubled youths in their town, and they have been characterized as exactly the kind of warm-hearted and wise mentors that any youth would benefit from having in his/her life. They earned the ire of local officials when they spoke up on behalf of the beleaguered Meskhetian Turk minority who faced such intense persecution at the hands of the regional government that they were eventually given mass refugee status in the United States.
In a statement protesting the Karastelyovs’ prosecution, UCSJ recalled that this is not the first time that the Karastelyovs faced official persecution: “Earlier this decade, prosecutors brought extremism charges against the organization that they then headed, which had the decidedly non-threatening name, ‘The School for Peace.’ The local government's action led to that organization being disbanded. We fear that if that is allowed to happen again, it will have negative consequences not just in Novorossiysk, but could also spread into a more widespread attack onthe NGO sector in Russia.”
This time Karastelyovs may be in serious trouble. “Novorossiysk prosecutors have embraced a fictitious CIA document to justify their case to close a small human rights group on extremism charges,” “The St. Petersburg Times” reported on September 15. Prosecutors have asked a Novorossiysk court to outlaw the Committee for Human Rights as “extremist” because one of its supporters held up a poster reading “Freedom isn’t granted, it’s taken” at an April 4 rally, Vadim Karastelyov told the newspaper.
The slogan was declared “extremist” by two linguistic experts, one a historian and the other a child psychologist, who are cited in the prosecutors’ lawsuit.
The historian, Vladimir Rybnikov, identified as an associate professor at the Gelendzhik branch of Kuban State University, wrote in his findings for the court that Vadim Karastelyov was “serving the interests of those who want to shatter the socio-political order of modern Russia.” Rybnikov contended that the slogan was in line with the Dulles Plan, the central document of a conspiracy theory under which CIA chief Allen Dulles in the 1950s wanted to destroy the Soviet Union by secretly corrupting its cultural heritage and moral values. According to research by “The St. Petersburg Times,” the text of the plan, which has been cited by Russian nationalists such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, is widely believed to have originated in the 1971 novel “The Eternal Call” by Anatoly Ivanov, and it was first attributed to Dulles in 1993 by a Russian Orthodox leader.
The other Novorossiysk court expert, Svetlana Guzeva--identified as the head of the Dialogue Center, “a municipal body providing psychological, educational, and medical support for children”--said in her findings that the slogan “can be understood” by teenagers to be “an invitation to actively oppose the activities of state bodies.”
The April 4 rally where the slogan was used sought to call attention to the illegality of a Krasnodar Region law introducing a curfew for minors, Vadim Karastelyov told “The St. Petersburg Times.” The local law was illegal for nine months, until a federal law was passed in May, he explained.
His group, which is comprised of just two members, Vadim and Tamara Karastelyov, was registered by local authorities in 2001.
A spokeswoman for the Novorossiysk Prosecutor’s Office referred requests for comment to the Regional Prosecutor’s Office, the newspaper noted, and the spokesman for that office refused to comment, saying the case was ongoing. An inquiry submitted by fax to the Oktyabrsky District Court, where the lawsuit was filed, went unanswered on September 11.
Filing the lawsuit, prosecutors sent three warnings to the group in May, accusing it of provoking minors to anti-social behavior, a phrase used by prosecutors to describe extremist activity, Karastelyov told “The Times.” The warnings have not come into force because the group is appealing them in court, he added.
Rybnikov’s findings were dated May 29. On September 11, a spokeswoman at the Gelendzhik branch of Kuban State University said Rybnikov no longer worked there, the newspaper noted. Rybnikov did not reply to an e-mailed request for comment. Nor did Guzeva respond to a request for comment left with a spokeswoman at her office.
“Court rulings on what constitute extremist materials came under fire after they were compiled into a vague and controversial list by the Justice Ministry last month,” “The St. Petersburg Times” pointed out.
Besides UCSJ, protesters on the Karastelyovs behalf have included the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, the International Youth Human Rights Movement, the Sova Center, and the Sakharov Center.
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