Volume 9, Number 36
September 25, 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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WAVE OF RACIST VIOLENCE LEAVES THREE DEAD; MIGRANT PROTEST DISPERSED. Migrant market traders held a protest in Dzherzhinsk (Nizhny Novgorod Region) calling for the police to protect them from neo-Nazi gangs that they say killed three victims over the past month, according to a September 16 article in the "Regions" supplement to the national daily "Nezavisimaya Gazeta." Two Azeris and an Uzbek died and several other migrants have been assaulted in recent weeks in that city, and some of the attacks have been accompanied by graffiti that explicitly threatens non-Russians with violence. On September 14, the migrants held a protest, but police dispersed it, claiming it was an "unsanctioned meeting."
The vice mayor of Dzherzhinsk, Sergey Kleymenov, reacted with a borderline racist comment: "An unsanctioned meeting is no way to address a complaint. We are not under the laws of the [Caucasus] mountains here, but under the laws of the Russian Federation, and those laws will be strictly followed."
"Nezavisimaya Gazeta" cited law enforcement statistics putting the Nizhny Novgorod Region as trailing only Moscow and St. Petersburg in the number of hate crimes committed this year. In the first half of 2009, prosecutors opened investigations of extremist actions 21 times in the region, twice the number of cases than during the first half of 2008.
Also in Dzherzhinsk, local neo-Nazis are on trial for beating a Tajik to death last year, and in the city of Balakhna, three members of the neo-Nazi group Russian National Unity (RNU) face charges of killing an ethnic Korean man. According to the law enforcement official quoted in "Nezavisimaya Gazeta," "police in Balakhna have not taken steps to stamp out incidents of neo-fascism and all the fences near the station [where the Korean victim was killed] are covered with swastikas." The article pointed out that two years ago in Balakhna, about 30 masked young men screaming racist slogans attacked market traders with baseball bats and heavy chains, sending two to the hospital in serious condition. In response, nine suspects were eventually tried, all of whom reportedly admitted ties to the RNU. A court let them off with short, suspended sentences.
Throughout the Nizhny Novgorod Region, prosecutors are investigating three neo-Nazi groups: The Whites-88 gang, accused of five assaults on migrants; the Militant Terrorist Organization, charged with three murders and 12 assaults; and an unnamed third gang, suspected of one murder and seven assaults. In the regional town of Zavolzhe, members of a group calling itself the National Socialist Workers Party of Russia is on trial for allegedly blowing up the car of an Azeri man and attacking a group of Vietnamese men. The defendants reportedly trained with guns and explosives and may have been involved in burning down a mosque under construction.
NEO-NAZIS SPARK DEADLY BRAWL IN ORYOL. In the Russian town of Oryol in the southwestern part of European Russia, a group of neo-Nazis provoked a brawl with Azeris, leaving one dead and sending another participant to the emergency room, according to a September 17 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. On September 12, the extremists spotted two Azeri men walking along with two Slavic women. They hurled insults and bottles at the couples, and then chased them. One of the Azeris reportedly used his cell phone to call friends for help, and the incident quickly escalated into a brawl.
One of the assailants--identified in the report as Kirill K.—was stabbed to death, and one Azeri--Rasim Sh.--was put into the emergency room with stab wounds to his lungs. Police detained people in both camps, but only charged two of the Azeris with murder and attempted murder. Police found extremist literature in the neo-Nazis' possession, and reported that one of them had "nationalist tattoos." Among the suspects are at least four whose Nazi pseudonyms had been known to police investigators.
HATE CRIMES AND FEAR OF MIGRANTS WAY UP IN SVERDLOVSK REGION. Located in the Ural Mountains, the Sverdlovsk Region has experienced a sharp rise in hate crimes and anti-migrant sentiment, according to the head of the anti-extremism unit of the regional FSB, Vasily Ilinykh. His September 18 press conference was reported on the same day by the web site Fergana.ru, which covers news impacting Central Asians. Ilinykh said that “crimes of an extremist character"—the closest equivalent of the term "hate crime" in Russian law—increased dramatically in the region, from 11 in 2006 to 14 in 2007, to 17 in 2008, and to a whopping 40 so far this year.
Two neo-Nazi gangs have been brought to justice, Ilinykh told the press. He linked the increase in hate crimes to growing anti-migrant sentiment, citing a poll of local university students that found 61% worried by the presence of migrants in their city; 42% stated that the migrants "don't want to respect our traditions"; 25% were worried about terrorism; and a hard core of 14% shared the views of neo-Nazi groups that "due to marriages with migrants, there will be fewer 'pure-blooded' Russians."
MOSCOW NEO-NAZI GANG MEMBERS GET LONG SENTENCES. A Moscow court sentenced nine neo-Nazi gang members after a jury found them guilty on multiple counts earlier this month, according to a September 22 item posted on the web site of the radio station Ekho Moskvy. As this newsletter reported last week, on September 10, a jury found the defendants guilty of five attacks on citizens of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and China, one of whom they stabbed to death. The charges included murder, attempted murder, "hooliganism," and acts aimed at inciting ethnic hatred. Ilya Shutko, 19, (a.k.a. "Luftwaffe"), who was sentenced last year to seven years in prison for murdering the ethnic Sakha chess master Sergey Nikolaev, was found guilty of the most serious charge--"murder and attempted murder of four people"—and received a ten year sentence, along with Aleksandr Efimov. Evgeniya Zhikhareva, 17, who also has an extremist criminal record involving murders and the bombing of a McDonalds, was given an eight year sentence. Three defendants went free with suspended sentences, and the remaining three got between five and eight years in prison, most likely because they were under-aged at the time of the crime.
NEO-NAZIS ON TRIAL FOR KILLING EIGHT PEOPLE. In St. Petersburg, 14 neo-Nazi youths are on trial for systematically killing eight people, most of them not ethnic Russians, Alexander Verkhovsky and Paul LeGendre reported in “The Huffington Post” news blog. The victims range from a Jewish shop clerk to an internationally known ethnographer who served as a court expert on extremism and race. The writers quote the human rights group Memorial to the effect that the trial is proving to be a showcase for neo-Nazi solidarity, as much as a venue for examining the case. Friends and relatives of the accused routinely arrive at court sessions wearing Nazi paraphernalia, from belt buckles to swastika tattoos. Yet, Memorial adds, lawyers representing victims say that repeated complaints to bailiffs about the intimidating atmosphere in the court fall on deaf ears.
ON RUSSIA’S SOUTHERNMOST PART, A BRUTAL WAR LITTLE NOTICED. Titled “Dirty War Rages on Russia's Doorstep,” London’s “Sunday Times” published on September 20 the story of an abduction in broad daylight on a street in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital. Five men were reportedly captured by a death squad operated by the security services who are probably backed by Russian special forces, in a mountainous republic of 3 million souls divided by growing conflict in the southernmost part of Russia.
The men were bundled away at gunpoint. First their heads were covered with hoods, and then they were allegedly driven to an interrogation center to be beaten and tortured as suspected Islamic militants. One was subjected to a mock hanging, another to electric shocks. Finally, like other young men before them, they were taken to a wood and bound with duct tape. They were put inside a car wired with explosives and doused in gasoline. Their captors sprayed chloroform into their hoods and vanished. “The men, who have never been charged with any crime, were left waiting to be blown to bits,” the report noted. “It is usual for the security forces to claim that terrorist bombers have inadvertently triggered their device before they were able to plant it.”
However, two of the captives were not knocked out by the chloroform. They freed themselves and removed the explosives. But they were unable to wake their three companions before the death squad returned to the scene. The captives fled, and their three companions left behind were later found dead at another spot, their bodies charred. The two survivors are still in hiding.
According to “The Times,” the incident is typical and characterizes the brutality of “an underground war” between Muslim extremists determined to break away from Moscow’s rule and Kremlin-backed forces hell-bent on stopping them. “Caught in the middle are countless civilians,” the newspaper noted. The war is “unreported in Russia and virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world.”
The newspaper pointed out that five months after the Chechnya war was declared over, the northern Caucasus has seen a big upsurge in violence, with 500 people killed so far this year, double last year’s toll. “It has become the Kremlin’s most pressing problem after the economic crisis” the report concluded.
MOSCOW ORDERS TATARSTAN TO ‘HARMONIZE’ ITS LANGUAGE LAW. The parliament of Tatarstan is considering amendments to the republic’s language law after the Russian Supreme Court ordered the Tatar government to harmonize those laws with federal legislation, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported last week. The Supreme Court specified that in addition to official documents by Tatarstan's state bodies, all public pronouncements, posters, advertisements, as well as ballot papers, must be printed in both Tatar and Russian languages.
“If the order is implemented, even promotional posters for purely Tatar-language oriented cultural events will have to be published in Tatar and Russian,” RFE/RL reported. “Tatar activists have been complaining that such actions show that the Kremlin is pursuing a policy directed at assimilating the country's many ethnic minorities.”
Several years ago, Moscow stopped Tatarstan from adapting the Latin alphabet after the Tatar government adopted legislation on the use of Latin over Cyrillic.
OSCE REPS VISIT JAILED KAZAKH HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST. Officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have met with jailed Kazakh rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis, RFE/RL Kazakh Service reported on September 22. Douglas Wake, the first deputy director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and Jeannette Kloetzer, the deputy head of the OSCE Center in Astana, visited Zhovtis in a jail in Taldy-Qorgan on September 19.
Prior to the visit, the OSCE expressed concern about reports of many violations of Zhovtis's right to a fair trial. The United States government, the Helsinki Committee in Congress, and the European Parliament have also expressed concern, and UCSJ and a number of other human rights groups have called attention to the prosecutors’ violations of the law before and during his trial.
Wake said that "while we are not suggesting that Zhovtis should receive any special treatment, it is essential that fair-trial standards are fully respected during the appeals process." He added that Zhovtis's condition in jail is satisfactory.
Earlier this month, a Kazakh court sentenced Zhovtis, the director of the nongovernmental organization called International Kazakhstan Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law, which UCSJ helped to found, to four years in prison for manslaughter and violating traffic regulations following a July accident in which the car he was driving fatally hit a man walking on the highway. Zhovtis has filed an appeal.
KAZAKH RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SURVEY FINDS ‘SERIOUS’ VIOLATIONS. In its survey of freedom of religion or belief in Kazakhstan released on September 23, Forum 18 News Service found continuing violations of human rights commitments. The country will be 2010 Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE, and faces the UN Universal Periodic Review process in February 2010.
Serious violations Forum 18 has documented include: attacks on religious freedom by officials ranging from President Nursultan Nazarbaev to local officials; literature censorship; state-sponsored encouragement of religious intolerance; legal restrictions on freedom of religion or belief; raids, interrogations, threats and fines affecting both registered and unregistered religious communities and individuals; unfair trials; the jailing of a few particularly disfavored religious believers; restrictions
on the social and charitable work of religious communities; close police and secret police surveillance of religious communities; and attempts to deprive religious communities of their property. “These violations interlock with violations of other fundamental human rights, such as freedom of expression and of association,” the news service reported.
KIEV PLANS TO BUILD A HOTEL ON BABI YAR MEMORIAL SITE. The Kiev municipality's decision to build a hotel on the site of the memorial for the Babi Yar massacre has “alarmed” Ukraine's Jewish community, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on September 23. On September 29 and 30, 1941, the Nazis killed more than 33,700 Jews along the Babi Yar ravine’s edge.
Kiev officials approved a plan on September 17 to build 28 hotels to accommodate the tens of thousands of visitors expected for soccer’s 2012 European Championship, including one at the Babi Yar site, the UNIAN news agency reported on September 22.
City Councilman Sergey Melnik, who opposes the plan, told JTA that 67 Kiev deputies voted for the hotel plan without knowing essential details of the construction. Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky has reportedly shown interest in building on Kiev's green spaces. According to municipality officials, there are 125 hotels in Kiev--far fewer than in other European capitals.
According to another JTA dispatch dated September 23, two unidentified vandals threw red paint on the walls and windows of a synagogue in Kremenchug, a leading industrial center in central Ukraine. In addition, antisemitic slogans were daubed on the walls of the synagogue in Kremenchug on Sunday night. The attackers also distributed throughout the building leaflets that read “Death to kikes!”
No one was hurt in the attack. Local police are investigating, but no arrest has been reported. A police surveillance tape filmed the incident.
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, THE IMPORTANCE OF ILLUSIONS * * * “Russia is no simple autocracy in which the boss just barks out orders,” according to a September 23 editorial in the “Financial Times.” “Competing lobbies, including the powerful security services, must be managed. So must the way decisions are presented to the public--and the rest of the world. Appearance matters as much as reality. Even if [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin and [President Dmitry] Medvedev are merely pretending to compete--perhaps to create an illusion of political pluralism--others may still see the competition as real, and respond accordingly.”
NAZI AWAKENING
Murderous Racism Returns to the Old World
The number of crimes committed against members of minorities living in Russia is up and in some areas has doubled in a year, according to both Russian authorities and human rights monitors. The number of swastikas daubed on tombstones and synagogues, fences and walls, as well as affixed on clothing and tattooed on human bodies, has multiplied.
Over the past several years, the Russian authorities have failed to bring to justice hundreds of perpetrators of hate crime murders, and incitement often led to short, suspended sentences. The reluctance to apply the full force of the law was palpable both in the big cities and the provunces. But lately quite a few trials have resulted in convictions, and additional investigations of neo-Nazi gangs are under way. Perhaps the federal center is applying pressure.
Though resurgent Nazi racism is the most murderous in Russia, it is by no means limited to Russian lands. Like an epidemic, it is spreading across the Old World that was liberated from the swastika’s rule only six decades ago.
1. GERMANY MAY RE-THINK BANNING NEO-NAZI PARTY. In Germany on September 23, police raided the headquarters of the far-right National Democratic Party (NDP) as part of an investigation into its incitement of ethnic hatred. The latest incident that prompted the raid was hate mail sent to politicians of immigrant origin by Berlin NPD chief Joerg Haehnel. According to the newspaper “Tagesspiegel,“ police confiscated three computers and three USB sticks during the raid and found the original of the letter sent to about 30 parliamentary candidates and local officials.
Haehnel has acknowledged responsibility for the letter which demanded that people of immigrant families "go home," setting out a five-point plan by which immigrant families be removed from Germany in stages. “It caused outrage throughout the country,“ Deutsche Welle reported. This latest incident in what the German radio-television equivalent of the BBC called “the NPD's aggressive, attention-grabbing election campaign“ has led Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), to renew calls to ban the NDP. "This shows once again that this party, which is unfortunately not banned, is daring to do things that endanger our democracy,“ he told the “Tagesspiegel.“ “A ban on the NPD is now more topical than ever."
Wowereit called on the Christian Democrat Union, the SPD's coalition partners in the federal government, to re-think its policy and "join the SPD in applying for a ban." But, Deutsche Welle recalled, “The political will to impose a ban on the NPD has consistently wilted following concerns that it would make far-right organizations more difficult to control.“
2. CHAUVINISM GAINS STRENGTH IN HUNGARY. For the past year or so in Hungary, the far-right has capitalized on the rising fear of “Gypsy crime” and population increase, while the Roma community, numbering about 800,000, has lived in fear of the mysterious team of gunmen who murdered six Roma in the countryside this past year. But since the global economic crisis hit, Jews, who number around 100,000 in the country, are increasingly feeling the sting of antisemitism.
In an interview with the daily “Nepszabadsag,” Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai noted that almost everyone in the neighborhood “knew that one of the alleged murderers of the Roma was a racist, nevertheless, nothing was done.” Bajnai was referring to one of the four suspects arrested in the city of Debrecen as likely murderers. “The locals,” Bajnai continued, “did not find it disturbing, either, that a neo-Nazi training camp was being run on the edge of their village.” He cited the policeman who asked in an ammunition shop whether it had sold the type of ammunition used for killing the victims. The shopkeeper said that he had not--but had he known what the ammunition was intended for, he would have given it away for free.
According to a recent statement by President Laszlo Solyom, the four parties represented in the Hungarian parliament have ruled out cooperation with the far-right Jobbik party that emerged out of nowhere and in June won 15% of the vote for the European Parliament. “Hungary has forgotten the lessons of the 20th century, the devastation caused by the ideas that are now appearing with growing intensity,” Bajnai said.
3. CZECHS MUST TACKLE RACISM TARGETING ROMA, SAYS EU EXPERT. With a Roma population estimated between 200,000 and 300,000 and an increasingly aggressive far-right, the plight of the Roma in the Czech Republic is one of the worst in the European Union. A report this month from the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said that the Czech Republic must do much more to tackle racism, its Danish chairwoman Eva Smith Asmussen, told “The Prague Post.”
Asmussen,identified three priority areas that need improvement. "First, legal aid must be introduced to allow people who have a complaint the means to file it,” she told “The Prague Post” that featured the interview on September 23. “At the moment, it is very hard for anyone who has been a victim of discrimination or racism to take their case to court. Second, apart from the legal aspect, the police, prosecutors and judges must be better educated. On too many occasions, they have brushed off claims of racism by saying it was just the work of hotheads or hooligans instead of going after those responsible. And third, we are concerned that Roma children are not getting into mainstream education. Practical or special schools are a great idea for those children who need it because of certain difficulties. But we see Roma children being sent to these schools when they should really be in mainstream schools."
Asmussen said that: "Racism does not always have to be violent. It is basically when someone judges themselves superior on the basis of color, creed or region. It can manifest itself in subtle ways like ignoring someone or stepping in front of another person in a queue. It doesn't have to be an attack by a group of skinheads. Young people must be taught that we all have so much in common. It is important for children to mix."
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