Volume 9, Number 46
December 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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Sometime after 9 p.m. on November 27, a homemade bomb derailed a luxury express train running from Moscow to St. Petersburg with about 700 people on board, the Emergency Situations Ministry announced late on November 29. As we go to press, the number of fatalities has reached 27, with 94 injured hospitalized, and some passengers still unaccounted for. Russian media reports agree that the explosion was the worst terrorist strike outside the North Caucasus since two planes were downed by suicide bombers in 2004. In his December 3 press conference, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that “we have done a lot to break the spine of terrorism” but conceded that “the threat of terrorism remains very high.”
1. FAR-RIGHT GROUP CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR EXPLOSION. Although the group that calls itself Adolf Hitler Combat 18 was the first to claim responsibility for the bombing, many experts promptly expressed doubt that nationalists could have been involved, Itar-Tass reported. As proof, the semi-official news agency pointed out that the terrorist act was “almost a carbon copy” of the first attack on the popular "Nevskiy Express" in August 2007. The Interior Ministry and the Investigation Committee under the Prosecutor General's Offices (SKP) “do not want to believe that nationalists are behind this crime, even though they have a record of terrorist acts organized by them,” said “RBC Daily.”
Well-known far-right organizations, such as the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DNPI) and the Slavic Union (SS), denied involvement in the bombing. “Nationalists will not blow up the Moscow-St. Petersburg train because the passengers are Russians," SS leader Dmitry Demushkin said.
2. RUSSIAN CONVERT TO ISLAM IS SUSPECTED MASTERMIND. No suspects or motive have been named so far, but on November 30 police released a computerized sketch of a suspect. It was not made clear, however, if the black-and-white composite depicted the man whom Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev had spoken of earlier, “a man about 40 with red hair.” The business daily “Kommersant” cited an unnamed police source as saying that the authorities suspect the bombing was carried out by the same group linked to an almost identical attack on the same track in 2007. The 2007 blast injured dozens but there were no fatalities and the motive was left undefined.
Two suspects in the 2007 blast were detained and their trial is about to begin. But a third, Pavel Kosolapov, remains a fugitive. A former military officer, Kosolapov is believed to have links to Chechen separatists. Quoting an unnamed MVD (Ministry of Interior) “operative,” “Vedomosti” dated November 30 wrote that all theories about the perpetrators are being checked out but “the priority version” is the one that names "Russian Wahhabite" Kosolapov who is also suspected of organizing other attacks, such as the bombings in the Moscow metro and at the public transport stops in Voronezh, and the market in Samara in 2004, as well as the bombing of the "Nevskiy Express" in 2007. According to the operative, Minister of Internal Affairs Nurgaliyev’s earlier reference to a man with red hair referred to Kosolapov.
3. A SECOND BLAST. Several hours after the blast on November 27, a second bomb went off on the tracks while chief of the Investigation Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office (SKP) Alexander Bastrykin inspected the scene of the accident. The blast caused no damage, Itar-Tass reported on November 30 and added: “North Caucasus rebels actively use double explosions as their modus operandi.” That device was detonated by mobile phone, resembling tactics used by terrorists in the North Caucasus, according to the SKP statement.
4. CHECHEN REBELS CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY. On December 2, Chechen rebels claimed responsibility for the bombing, announced the web site Kavkazcenter.com, which is sympathetic to the militants. The statement said: "We declare that this operation was prepared and carried out ... pursuant to the order of the Emir of Caucasus Emirate," the title taken by Chechen separatist leader Doku Umarov. He is thought to head a network of separatist cells across Russia's volatile and mainly Muslim North Caucasus, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The rebels are blamed for attacks on law enforcement officials in the region's five autonomous republics.
“The attack [on "Nevskiy Express"] has struck a nerve in Russian society,” the AP noted, citing an anti-terrorism rally of some 1,500 people in St. Petersburg on December 2. Participants in the rally, organized by the ruling party United Russia, held banners with slogans such as "Terrorists are not People" and "Find and Annihilate."
Human rights activists charge that militant attacks in the Caucasus, such as August's bombing of a police station in the capital of Ingushetia which claimed more than 20 lives, represent the bitter fruit of a brutal counter-terrorism campaign. The AP cited human rights activists to the effect that the security services in the Caucasus have increased the use of kidnappings, killings, and home-burnings targeting suspected militants and their relatives. According to a recent report by the group Memorial, authorities are implementing "a policy of state terror."
"The scariest thing is that this might not be an isolated attack," the AP quoted political analyst Yulia Latynina’s commentary on the train bombing. "It could be the start of a series."
5. TRAIN BOMBING SHOWS MEDVEDEV MORE OPEN THAN PUTIN. “The bombing of the ‘Nevskiy Express’ showed up the difference in approaches to consequences of a terrorist act between the former and incumbent presidents of Russia,” according to “Vedomosti” dated November 30. The bombing is the first large-scale terrorist act outside of the North Caucasus that happened during the tenure of President Dmitry Medvedev, the daily pointed out and added that for the first time, the casualties included federal officials: Avtodor State Company director Sergey Tarasov and Rosrezerv director Boris Yevstratikov.
According to “Vedomosti,” the next day, Prime Minister Putin set up an emergency response center to determine the reasons for the catastrophe and a special commission for cleaning up the consequences. At the same time, Medvedev held a teleconference with the heads of all departments involved and demanded that all news be reported to him personally. “The measures undertaken by the authorities were broadcast practically live,” according to the report.
Medvedev's reaction to the terrorist act attests to a change in the style of the authorities that are “acting much more openly,” political analyst Aleksey Makarkin was quoted as saying: Two broadcasts from the meeting followed and the president publicly gave recommendations to Minister of Interior Nurgaliyev and FSB Director Aleksandr Bortnikov, and publicly demanded that Russian Railroads President Vladimir Yakunin increase the amount of compensation to the victims. In Makarkin's opinion, this was a conscious attempt by Medvedev to demonstrate his independent approach.
6. EXPLOSION IN DAGESTAN CAUSES MINIMAL DAMAGE. On November 30, a small explosion damaged a section of railroad track in the volatile North Caucasus Republic of Dagestan. According to local reports, there were no injuries. A train passing suffered only superficial damage to the locomotive, local transport police spokesman told the AP. Prime Minister Putin suggested that the attacks on the two trains were by the same terrorist group.
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FEW RUSSIANS SATISFIED WITH THEIR GOVERNMENT, POLL SAYS. On November 30, Interfax reported that according to a November poll, only 12% of Russian citizens say they have no complaints about their government's performance while 51% criticized the government for being unable to cope with the price rises, the independent Levada Center said. Of those polled, 36% criticized the Cabinet for not creating jobs, 29% said the government does not provide social protection to its citizens, 28% see no progress in ending the economic crisis, and 24% accuse the government of corruption.
MEDVEDEV AND LAZAR SEE LESS ANTISEMITISM IN RUSSIA. President Dmitry Medvedev assured a delegation of Jewish leaders that antisemitism in Russia "is becoming much less prevalent," the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on December 1. On November 26, Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with a chief rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, and the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, Alexander Boroda, as well as representatives of the European Jewish Congress, according to the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS and Baltic Countries.
In discussing antisemitism, Medvedev said, "I would certainly not go so far as to say that the situation is ideal, but it has become known that antisemitism will simply not be tolerated in the political environment. No sane politician today would make any statements incriminating him in this manner.” He praised the Jewish community's activities and expressed support for its plan to build a Russian Jewish Museum of Tolerance in Moscow. He instructed his administration to look into Lazar’s proposal to make the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, January 27, a national holiday.
Lazar, one of Russia’s two chief rabbis, has expressed concern about growing antisemitism in Europe but stressed progress in Russia. "Here in Russia the situation was rather serious just recently,” he told Russian leaders according to his press service. “Synagogues would be blown up, graves destroyed, and Jews attacked. The situation has improved. But in Europe, the situation is what it was in Russia in the worst years." (Observers note that a few years ago Lazar minimized the extent of antisemitism in Russia.) The struggle against xenophobia and antisemitism is scoring successes in Russia, Lazar added, praising as “robust” the government’s approach to “those who popularize hatred and ethnic enmity." He said that 47 people were prosecuted in the first nine months of 2009 on charges of antisemitism, and all of them were convicted, six of them to prison terms of five to ten years. The accuracy of the statistics cannot be immediately confirmed.
ANTISEMITIC ATTACK IN MOSCOW. A neo-Nazi attacked a Jewish man, 25, in Moscow, according to a December 3 report by the Sova Center for Information and Analysis. The victim was traveling in the metro In the night of November 30 when a man approached him and asked if he was Jewish. Receiving a positive response, the man yelled "Heil," beat the youth, and threatened to kill him. Police detained the alleged assailant, charged him with "minor hooliganism," and then set him free. The victim reported the attack to police but it is unclear if they will charge the assailant with a hate crime--or take any action at all.
ISRAELIS ATTACKED NEAR JEWISH RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY BUILDING IN MOSCOW. Two citizens of Israel were attacked in Moscow near the building of the "Esh-a-Tora" Jewish Youth Religious Community, according to a December 4 report posted on the web site of the national daily "Novye Izvestiya." The attack, which resulted in the hospitalization of both victims, took place around 10 p.m. Police are investigating, the second likely antisemitic attack in Moscow this week.
HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ASK ANTIFASCISTS TO REFRAIN FROM VIOLENCE. Russian human rights activists are calling on antifascists to refrain from violence and "acts of revenge by force" similar to the attack on the office of the Kremlin-created group Young Russia on November 17, Ekho Moskvy radio has learned. “You will not stop political terror in this way,” the appeal said. “Rather, you will give an excuse to law enforcement agencies for fresh repression against nongovernmental organizations." The activists added that they see "political and ideological attacks and murders" as "acts of political terror." They said that "the regularity and impunity" of these crimes suggested that they were prepared by "shrewd professionals provoking a street war." The human rights activists appeal to antifascist movements not to yield to “the provocation.”
The activists also demanded that the authorities "stop political terror in our country." According to the radio, the appeal was signed by Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lev Ponomarev, leader of the For Human Rights movement, Aleksandr Cherkasov, a board member of the human rights center Memorial, and Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the Civil Assistance Committee.
JUVENILE CONVICT FINED FOR NEO-NAZI TATTOO. For the first time that UCSJ is aware of, a prison colony for juveniles fined a convict 500 rubles (about $17) for a neo-Nazi tattoo, according to a November 26 report by the Jewish.ru web site. It is not clear from the report if Stanislav Korobeynikov, 17, is a member of a neo-Nazi gang. Swastika and other Nazi tattoos are not uncommon in Russian prisons, and some even appeared during the Soviet period.
UKRAINIAN ACADEMIC DIGS UP TROTSKY QUOTE TO IMPLY JEWISH ROLE IN FAMINE. Academic Rafail Yuknovsky, head of the National Memory Institute, has made a statement on a TV program that implied Jewish responsibility for the Terror Famine (Holomodor) of the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians, according to UCSJ's Lviv bureau chief Meylakh Sheykhet. Speaking on November 27 on the Inter Cable Channel’s show Freedom of Speech, Yuknovsky claimed that Leon Trotsky, a Jewish-born Bolshevik, said the following about the famine: "Leiba Trotsky/Leiba Bronshtein said during the famine: ‘We must put them [the Ukrainian people] on their knees. They should eat their children as Jewish women ate their children, and only then the masses would become humble [toward Soviet power].’"
By referring to the man universally known as Leon Trotsky as "Leiba" and using his original last name Bronshtein, Yuknovsky emphasized Trotsky's Jewishness, playing into a popular Ukrainian stereotype that portrays Jews as guilty for Stalin's terror famine. However, by the early 1930s, Trotsky was hiding abroad from Stalin's trained killers who eventually caught up with him in Mexico. Even if the thus far unknown quote attributed to Trotsky is accurate, the opinion of a powerless exile would have had no bearing on the policies of his enemy Yosif Stalin who bore the real responsibility for Holomodor.
FAR-RIGHT GROUPS ATTACK ANTIFASCISTS IN KHARKOV. Several dozen members of far-right groups attacked antifascist activists gathered for a concert in Kharkov, Ukraine, according to a December 1 report by the local news web site kharkov.proua.com. The attack took place last Saturday near the Prospekt Gagarina metro station. About 50 people were involved, some wearing masks. Both sides wielded pipes, chains, rocks, and knives. Several people were injured but it is not clear how severely. There was also significant property damage to nearby kiosks. Local police say they have identified several suspects and are investigating the incident as "hooliganism."
KAZAKHSTAN TO DEPORT KAZAKH-BORN BAPTIST LEADER. Kazakh-born Viktor Leven, who holds a German passport, is once again due for deportation because of his leading worship at a Council of Churches Baptist congregation in Kazakhstan, Forum 18 News Service reported on December 1. On November 26, the collegium of the Regional Court reinstated the initial court decision that he had successfully overturned on appeal. "I could now be deported at any time," Leven told Forum 18. Deportation would separate him from his wife and their six children, the youngest just three weeks old. The case came as local papers published an article by state-funded "anti-cult" activist Gulnara Orazbaeva, charging Baptists with spreading the H1N1 virus and accusing Leven's brother David of causing the death of one of his children because of his faith.
* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, THE MODEL MOSCOW BUREAUCRAT MEDVEDEV * * * “[President Dmitry Medvedev’s] relevant constituency is the faceless mass of Russian bureaucracy,” wrote in an editorial posted on November 30 on the web site “Transitions Online” that covers 28 post-communist countries. “For all his progressive talk, Medvedev remains the very model of a modern Moscow bureaucrat. He, like successive Russian leaders before him, needs to persuade them to go about their business in a different way. He faces an uphill struggle. As the influential daily ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ editorialized last week, ‘The principal players in Russian politics have no material reasons for modernizing that is, for radically disrupting the status quo.’ Soviet communism is dead and buried, but the basic structure of a leader with an official ideology--a logocracy--lives on.”
KAZAKHS TAKE OVER OSCE CHAIRMANSHIP, SWISS VOTERS BAN MINARETS
Critical Voices Raised, Pious Hopes Expressed
1. KAZAKHS CRITICIZED AT OSCE MEETING. As Kazakhstan is about to take over the chairmanship of the 56-nation’s Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the former Soviet republic’s human rights record received fresh criticisms, Reuters reported on December 2. OSCE officials meeting in Athens said that Kazakhstan has made some progress but should use its turn at the helm for further improvements.
"Clearly there is a challenge for the incoming chairmanship, whether it will be able to lead by example," said the director of OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Ambassador Janez Lenarcic, at the OSCE held its last top-level meeting before Kazakhstan takes over on January 1. Vera Tkachenko, representing a coalition of human rights groups, said: "In the two years since Kazakhstan was awarded the chair, its human rights situation has seriously deteriorated, especially in the areas of freedom of expression, religion, and assembly."
Reuters quoted Kazakh officials to the effect that they were committed to OSCE principles and were making efforts to improve the human rights situation, but British-style democracy could not be built overnight.
It appears that the Kazakh chairmanship is a done deal; it cannot be stopped. “But let’s hope that Yevgenny Zhovtis will be freed soon,” said a source familiar with OSCE operations and the human rights director who was sentenced in a politically motivated trial and is serving time in a labor colony.
2. SWISS BAN ON MINARETS UNLIKELY TO SPREAD. Another setback to the cause of human rights took place in Switzerland where 57.5% of Swiss voters approved a referendum on November 29 banning the building of minarets. Though Switzerland is not a bellwether of European politics, the ban made front page news and raised some questions across the continent. Would other countries follow suit? Can the strong disapproval of the ban by European governments and human rights groups be ignored?
The referendum was launched by the right-wing Swiss People's Party and the Federal Democratic Union. Its success was promptly followed up by calls for similar referendums issued by two parties known for their opposition to immigration from the south, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on November 30. Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Freedom Party, told the Dutch daily "Volkskrant" that his party "will call upon the government to make a similar referendum possible in the Netherlands." In Denmark, Danish People's Party head Pia Kjaersgaard welcomed the Swiss ban and said her party would also seek a similar vote. Martin Henriksen, a deputy for the Danish People's Party, acknowledged that Denmark has no mosques with minarets. He told RFE/RL that Muslim immigrants have to adapt to Danish society, not the other way around. "There are plans in Copenhagen and other Danish cities to build grand mosques, and we oppose it in every way possible." Henriksen said.
“The moves by the Dutch and Danish parties come amid a flurry of condemnation of Switzerland's ban from around Europe and beyond,” RFE/RL pointed out.
Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, condemned the Swiss vote a sign of prejudice and possibly fear. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he was shocked and expressed the hope that the Swiss would reverse the decision. The UN's expert on religious freedom, Asma Jahangir, said the ban amounted to an "undue restriction" on religious freedom and "clear discrimination" against Switzerland's Muslims. The Vatican said that the Swiss ban heightens the problems of cohabitation between religions.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Islamic grouping, called the ban an example of growing anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe. The European Jewish Congress reiterated the position of its Swiss affiliate in “speaking out firmly in favor of equal treatment and justice and against laws of any type which are intended to apply specifically to certain religious communities.”
In Washington, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and co-chairman Rep. Alcee L. Hastings expressed concern. "The Swiss vote to ban minarets is worrying for a number of reasons, including the fact the Swiss people have seen fit to limit the religious practice of one particular group. I trust the Swiss government will work swiftly to be sure the Swiss are not viewed as an intolerant people,” Cardin said. “I hope the Swiss courts will overturn this referendum and that the Swiss government will double its efforts to implement anti-discrimination laws and have an open and honest dialogue about religious and ethnic tolerance," Hastings said. “If this ban on religious expression is allowed to stand, Switzerland will clearly be out of step with its OSCE commitments on freedom of religion and belief.”
However eye-catching the calls for copycat referendums may be, they do not have much chance of success, RFE/RL suggested. Switzerland allows for a referendum if a proposal gets 100,000 signatures. But in Denmark, 60 votes are needed in the 179-seat parliament and the Danish People's Party only has 25. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party, with nine deputies, would appear to have an even slimmer chance of getting its way.
Freedom of religion and religious practice is a fundamental human right widely recognized in Europe. The ban on constructing minarets in an Alpine republic is unlikely to start an avalanche.
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