Volume 9, Number 37
October 2, 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
_______________________________________________________
Evidence suggests that Russia is turning in the wrong direction.
1. Death threat.
LEADER OF KREMLIN-CREATED YOUTH GROUP THREATENS HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATE. A prominent Russian human rights activist has gone underground out of fear for his safety, after an article he wrote on the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime sparked death threats, according to Reuters and Agence France-Presse reports dated September 29. The article Aleksandr Podrabinek authored was critical of veterans groups, the Russian government, and their glorification of the Soviet past, which ignores the mass killings and other human rights violations that the Soviet regime committed against its own people.
In recent years, anti-fascist and human rights advocates have been threatened, assaulted, and even killed after receiving death threats from neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists. The posting of Podrabinek's address and phone number, combined with Internet postings threatening his physical safety, are serious threats in the current Russian climate. The involvement of the Kremlin-created youth group "Nashi" raises the level of danger he faces.
According to a September 25 report posted on the Internet news site "Ezhednevny Zhurnal," Boris Yakimenko, a leader of "Nashi," wrote in his blog: "Judging from the reaction on the Internet, there are many people who are ready to do what it takes to make Podrabinek's life a nightmare. And that is a good thing. He shouldn't be able to walk the streets without being spat upon. And that should just be the beginning."
Given the dangers that human rights activists already face in Russia and the apparent inability and/or unwillingness of law enforcement agencies to protect them from violent extremists, Yakimenko's statement is a thinly veiled death threat. He also urged that Podrabinek, who during the Soviet era was tortured in a psychiatric facility under state policies that placed many dissidents under forced psychiatric care, to undergo "a psychiatric examination” and then “walk the streets with a document stating that he is insane."
"Every honest person who encounters Podrabinek," Yakimenko wrote, should tell him what they think of him so that, "Podrabinek will at first stop leaving his home and then run off to wherever it's good for him to live"--an unmistakable reference to the West.
On September 24, members of "Nashi" reportedly went to the office of the independent newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" and demanded Podrabinek's phone number. They were refused. However, shortly afterwards, threatening phone calls and texts began, and people began buzzing his apartment, claiming to have deliveries for him. Nikolai Girenko, an anti-fascist activist and academic, was shot to death in his St. Petersburg home by a similar "visitor" in 2004. Earlier this year, someone attempted to stab the eye of Karelia-based anti-fascist activist Maksim Efimov after gaining entrance to his building by claiming to have a delivery for him. Other anti-fascist and human rights activists have received death threats in recent years.
2. Curbing democratic liberties.
PONOMARYOV CALLS INTERNET BILL PART OF CAMPAIGN AGAINST CIVIL LIBERTIES. A government-proposed bill obliging Internet providers to make user information available to investigative agencies is part of a vast campaign to curb democratic liberties in Russia, Lev Ponomaryov, leader of the movement For Human Rights, told Interfax on September 28. "This is part of a big strategy,” he warned. "The bill is reminiscent of the previous initiative to censor correspondence without a court order."
"Human rights are under a steady attack,” Ponomaryov said. “There is confidence that the amendments proposed will pass through the State Duma, although they are at variance with the spirit and essence of a democratic state and the Russian Constitution, which says that private life is inviolable." He added that the law enforcement agencies are lobbying for such amendments “because making things simpler for themselves is in their corporate in terests… We are advancing towards a police state."
3. Two attacks on anti-fascists in one night.
NEO-NAZIS ASSAIL ANTI-FASCISTS IN ST. PETERSBURG NIGHT CLUB. A group of neo-Nazis armed with gas-powered pistols and bottles attacked anti-fascists at a St. Petersburg night club, according to a September 28 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. On September 25, the neo-Nazis reportedly shot and threw bottles at visitors of the Iron Lion night club and returned a few hours later “to beat up anti-fascists,” the report said. Five victims were hospitalized.
Police are investigating the incident, but so far have not brought charges against any suspect.
4. Popular indifference to democracy.
DEMOCRACY CONCERNS RUSSIANS LESS THAN OTHER NATIONS, SURVEY SAYS. Results of the study organized by WorldPublicOpinion.org suggest that Russians care about democracy and freedom of expression less than citizens of other nations do, the daily newspaper “Vremya Novostei” reported on September 29. The Russian part of the study, conducted from April to June in 24 countries, was carried out by sociologists of the independent Levada Center, and the results were released on the eve of International Democracy Day.
Though a majority of Russian respondents--60%--considered democracy “important,” in the rest of the world the same evaluation averaged a whopping 90%. The figures were composed of answers to two questions. Outside Russia, 67% of respondents suggested that democracy was "critically" important and 23% called it "more or less important." In Russia, however, only 16% chose the word "critical" and 44% went for the namby-pamby other response. Moreover, 26% of the Russian respondents called democracy "unimportant" or "not particularly important," while such a contemptuous interpretation averaged only 8% in the rest of the world.
According to the conclusion drawn by “Vremya Novostei,” Russians are more indifferent to democracy than residents of 23 other countries where the study was conducted. Even in Ukraine, 36% respondents called democracy "critically" important.
To the question, "How important is it for people to be able to air unpopular political views without fear of harassment and prosecution?" only 19% of the Russians said that freedom of expression was paramount, as compared to 58% of the respondents in the rest of the world. Of the 24 countries, Russia is the only one where so few attach importance to freedom of expression, whereas the idea was endorsed by 31% respondents in China, 34% in Ukraine, and above 50% in all the other countries.
5. Impunity encourages criminals.
VANDALS STRIKE JEWISH GRAVES IN TVER FOR THE THIRD TIME THIS YEAR. For the third time this year, unidentified individuals have desecrated Jewish gravestones in the Dmitrovo-Cherkasskoe cemetery in the Tver Region, according to a September 24 report by the news web site Gazeta.ru. This time up to 60 gravestones were damaged, compared to 21 in April and 60 in July. The mayor of Tver acknowledged that the police have no suspects and that "impunity in many ways inspires new acts of vandalism." It is unclear from the report if police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
6. Two attacks on a church in one month.
VLADIVOSTOK BAPTIST CHURCH FIREBOMBED AGAIN. For the second time in a month, someone firebombed a Baptist church in Vladivostok, according to a September 28 report by the news web site “Novosti Vladivostoka.” The Good News Baptist church was attacked on Saturday night with two Molotov cocktails but damage to the building was minor. Police are investigating the incident more seriously than they did the August 23 firebombing, according to the report.
So far, no suspects have been detained in relation to either crime, and there is no information if prosecutors are considering hate crimes charges.
* *
PLAN TO BUILD HOTEL IN NAZI MASSACRE SITE DROPPED IN KIEV. On September 29, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised to protect as a sacred spot the site of a Nazi massacre of Jews, following an outcry over plans to build a hotel complex nearby, Reuters reported. "The Babi Yar memorial is sacred,” Yushchenko said in a statement marking the 68th anniversary of the beginning of the massacre. “The Ukrainian leadership will not allow any defilement of the memory of our fellow citizens and will ensure the proper protection of their place of perpetual rest."
A day earlier, the mayor of the capital Kiev, Leonid Chernovetsky, canceled a plan to build a hotel in the Babi Yar ravine. Last week, legislators loyal to Chernovetsky approved a plan to build dozens of hotels in the city, including one across the street from a monument commemorating the victims. As reported in this newsletter last week, Jewish organizations in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world condemned the plan as disrespectful of the more than 33,700 Jews the Nazis shot to death along the ravine’s edge. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), during the Holocaust, Ukraine lost 1.4 million of its 2.4 million Jews.
According to Reuters, “the affair has left a sour taste with the city's 25,000-strong Jewish community.” The news agency noted that the area “where the killings took place is now sprawling parkland which is not properly marked off and is the site of several monuments to victims of the massacre whose remains lie there.”
On September 17, Kiev officials approved a plan 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.
"Nobody is intending to erect buildings for Euro-2012 on human bones," Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Vasyunik has said.
KAZAKH OFFICIAL PROTESTS PRESSURE IN ZHOVTIS CASE. Kazakhstan is calling for an end to international pressure on behalf of jailed Kazakh human rights activist Yevgeny (Eugene) Zhovtis, the Kazakh Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on September 30. This month protesters held rallies in support of Zhovtis in front of the Kazakh embassies in Moscow, Bishkek, and Warsaw.
Yermukhamet Yertysbaev, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev's political adviser, said others should not judge the case until a court rules on an appeal of Zhovtis's sentence. Yertysbaev made his comments at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw on September 28. Kazakhstan will take over the chair of the OSCE in January.
Following his arrest on September 3, a Kazakh court sentenced Zhovtis, the director of the nongovernmental organization called International Kazakhstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, to four years in prison for manslaughter and violation of traffic regulations following a July accident in which the car he was driving struck and killed a man on a highway. Zhovtis has appealed. No date for the hearing has been scheduled.
The OSCE, the United States, the U.S. Helsinki Commission, and the European Parliament have expressed concern over Zhovtis's case and human rights groups such as UCSJ and Freedom House have called his trial unfair.
KAZAKH OFFICIALS SAY THEY RAID RELIGIOUS GROUPS TO FULFILL THEIR DUTY. Murad Ashkhayanov, an officer of the Police's Department for the Struggle with Terrorism in Semey, Kazakhstan, defended the police raid on the town's Ahmadi Muslim community in which he participated. However, he refused to tell Forum 18 News Service why the community was twice raided, and members asked when and why they joined the community and how their beliefs differ from those of other Muslims. Likewise, officials who took part in raiding two Baptist churches in Kostanai Region rejected suggestions that these were raids despite police questioning of participants, filming against their wishes, searches of the premises, and pressures to write statements. Talgat Nagumanov of the Kostanai Regional Justice Department told Forum 18 that he and his colleagues "were merely fulfilling their duty." On September 29, one of the pastors was fined the equivalent of two months' average wages.
TURKMENS IMPRISON TWO MORE JEHOVAH'S WITNESS CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. Two young Jehovah's Witnesses have joined two other Jehovah's Witnesses already incarcerated in the Turkmen labor camp in Seydi after being sentenced in July for refusing compulsory military service on grounds of religious conscience, Jehovah's Witnesses told Forum 18 News Service. Shadurdi Ushotov, 21, received the maximum two-year term, while Akmurat Egendurdiev, 19, received an 18-month term. Both had their appeals rejected in their absence. Jehovah's Witnesses charge that three of the four have been prevented from lodging further appeals. Vyacheslav Kalataevsky, a former Baptist inmate in Seydi, told Forum 18 that the labor camp is in the desert. "It is like something from the Middle Ages," he said.
The news service recalled that on March 19 at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Turkmenistan rejected the recommendations from numerous international organizations--including the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief, Asma Jahangir--that Turkmenistan introduce a civilian alternative to compulsory military service. Turkmen delegate Shirin Akhmedova cited Article 37 of the Turkmen Constitution that describes defense as a "sacred duty" of every Turkmen and states that military service is compulsory for men.
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, EVEN-HANDED STUDY OF GEORGIA WAR * * * “A 9-month international investigation into the 2008 war in the Caucasus concludes that Georgia triggered the war, but that Russia had prepared the ground, broke international law by invading Georgia as a whole and that Russia-backed South Ossetian militias conducted ethnic cleansing of Georgian civilians,” wrote “The Wall Street Journal” on September 30, based on the conclusions reviewed by the newspaper. “The conclusions, compiled for the European Union by Swiss diplomat Heidi Taglivini, found that while there was evidence that regular Russian troops as well as volunteers and mercenaries had entered South Ossetia in Georgia before the start of the conflict on August 7, no evidence was found of the full-scale Russian invasion to which Georgia said it was responding.”
CHECHEN PRESIDENT KADYROV CHARGES DEFAMATION
But the Trial Could Expose the Bloody Character of His Reign
The defamation suit Chechnya President Ramzan Kadyrov brought against Oleg Orlov, the director of the human rights group Memorial, may become a trial of the way Kadyrov has ruled that war-torn land, suggested Roland Oliphant in an article posted on September 29 on the web site “Russia Profile” published by Russia’s semi-official news agency RIA-Novosti.
When Orlov blamed Kadyrov for the murder of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, “he was not voicing a particularly outlandish opinion,” Oliphant’s article began. He cited the string of murders of critics of the Chechen regime, including Estemirova’s friends and colleagues Anna Politkovskaya (murdered in October of 2006) and Stanislav Markelov (shot in January this year). Orlov’s revelations that Kadyrov had “personally threatened her in a private conversation” did not come out of the blue, Oliphant wrote.
“I know,” Orlov was quoted as saying shortly after the murder, “I'm sure who is guilty of the murder of Natasha Estemirova. We all know this man. His name is Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the Chechen Republic.”
Kadyrov immediately phoned Orlov to protest--or to “express condolences,” as the press release on his web site claimed--saying that he was “not a prosecutor or a judge,” but the allegations were “not ethical, look very strange, and are offensive in nature.” Then he said that he would “exercise his rights” and sue for defamation.
Kadyrov kept his word and a hearing opened in Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court on September 25. He is seeking some ten million rubles ($330,000) for damages to his “honor, dignity, and business reputation,” which is the Russian Civil Code’s description of defamation.
But Kadyrov suffered some setbacks. The Prosecutors’ Office announced that it would not bring criminal charges against Orlov, and Kadyrov had to shift to a civil case. Next, Andrei Krasnenkov, the lawyer representing Kadyrovt, opened the hearing with an apparent offer of conciliation. If Orlov apologized and Memorial posted a refutation of the “I am sure who is guilty” statement, Kadyrov would drop the charges. Orlov’s attorney, Anna Stavitskaya, spurned the offer on the grounds that it would amount to caving into Kadyrov’s claim with no mutual concession. “I don’t see where there is a settlement agreement in this,” she told the court. In his statement, Orlov more than refused to retract his words. He insisted that he had “every reason to pronounce them.”
According to Orlov, when he spoke about Kadyrov’s guilt, he was not talking about involvement in the crime. His argument is that Kadyrov has presided over the creation of a situation in Chechnya where law enforcement and security agencies can act with impunity; and that impunity made murders like Estemirova’s possible. Kadyrov’s guilt is not criminal, Orlov has said, but “political.”
The defense began by calling several expert witnesses to testify about Kadyrov’s own strained relations with Estemirova, particularly the meeting at which Orlov claims Kadyrov “personally threatened her.” Orlov’s position is that normal human rights work in Chechnya is impossible, as perpetrators of crimes can rely on impunity for their violent actions.
“The cumulative effect is to turn the tables between the prosecution and the defense,” Oliphant pointed out. “One could extrapolate that it was not Orlov on trial, but Kadyrov,” said Tanya Lokshina, a representative of Human Rights Watch and a witness who testified in court. “At least, that’s what several people in the audience told me afterward.”
“Strictly speaking, since this is a civil case, no one is on trial,” Oliphant suggested. But the defense team’s strategy of turning the hearing into a trial of Kadyrov’s competence or “trying to start a discussion around the case, but not one of substance,” as Krasnenkov complained to the judge—has, in Oliphant’s opinion, “quite momentous implications.”
“If Orlov wins, it means the court acknowledges that he has a solid factual basis to make such assumptions,” Lokshina said. “That would be sort of a judicial/political condemnation of the way Kadyrov has ruled Chechnya.”
“For all its appeal, the drama of the courtroom battle between Kadyrov and Orlov threatens to overshadow the real issue: the investigation of the murder of Natalia Estemirova,” Oliphant averred. He recalled that at the time, President Dmitry Medvedev “made a show of ordering a team from the Investigative Committee of the Federal Persecutor’s Office to take charge of the case.” But the salient fact is that two and half months since the July 15 killing, no arrests have been made. Recently, the chief investigator asked for another two months to investigate, citing the reluctance of witnesses to cooperate.
Oliphant described Lokshina’s characterization of the investigators’ progress in a positive vein. “My impression is that so far they have been doing a good job and they have been very conscientious, interrogating numerous witnesses, and in particular looking into cases Estemirova was working on and linking the murder with her job,” she said. But, Oliphant suggested, such optimism should be tempered with caution. Anna Politkovskaya’s colleagues at “Novaya Gazeta” were at first pleased with the investigation into her murder, Lokshina recalled, but later became frustrated by apparent obstruction of the team’s progress.
* * * *
_____________________________________________________________
Copyright (c) 2009. UCSJ. All rights reserved.
Bigotry Monitor welcomes use of its contents without prior approval on the condition that full attribution is given to "Bigotry Monitor -- UCSJ's weekly newsletter". We would also like to see a copy of the publication.
Send letters to the editor to: cfenyvesi@aol.com
How to Subscribe
Send an email to bigotrymonitor@ucsj.com with the word "subscribe" as the subject of the message.
How to Unsubscribe
Send an email to bigotrymonitor@ucsj.com with the word "unsubscribe" as the subject of the message.
All issues available at http://www.ucsj.org