2009: GRIM YEAR FOR RUSSIA’S HUMAN RIGHTS COMMUNITY
A Yearly Summary of Bigotry Monitor Reports on the Decline of Russian Democracy
By Charles Fenyvesi
In its ninth year of publication in 2009, the weekly electronic newsletter Bigotry Monitor tracked the alarming further decline of Russian democracy. As many as eight human rights activists and their associates were murdered and the judicial system failed to protect non-Slavs and religious minorities from attacks by skinheads and other racists. Collecting reports from courageous local observers and foreign witnesses and citing studies filed by international organizations, the newsletter documented the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of hate crimes and the authorities’ indifference bordering on complicity to the violations of laws against hate crimes.
In 2009, the murders of human rights defenders became “everyday routine,” said Karina Moskalenko, a lawyer for the family of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya, shot to death in 2006 by gunmen still at large.
Even before a court in Taganrog classified Jehovah's Witnesses as an extremist organization on December 8, a crackdown on that faith was spreading to several Russian regions. Anti-extremism laws, supposedly intended to counter growing neo-Nazi violence and insurgency in the Caucasus, has increasingly been abused by federal and local authorities to persecute the Witnesses, along with members of some other minority faiths. Local and federal media echo official and Orthodox Church accusations against the Witnesses, and violence against them by non-governmental actors has sharply increased.
1. Hate crimes on the rise
FATALITIES ARE UP IN RACE-DRIVEN ATTACKS. There is as yet no reliable final figure for reported racist attacks in 2009 but according to both Russian authorities and human rights monitors, the number of crimes committed against members of minorities is up and in some areas doubled compared to the previous year. Estimates vary on how many cases are not reported. The independent Sova Center for Information and Analysis routinely reminds its readers that its reports of racist attacks represent only a fraction of the total.
A typical item is from the Sverdlovsk Region which 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. He said that “crimes of an extremist character"—the closest equivalent of the term "hate crime" in Russian law—increased in his region, from 11 in 2006 to 14 in 2007, to 17 in 2008, and to a whopping 40 by September 2009. Another typical case involved migrant market traders who held a protest in September in Dzherzhinsk (Nizhny Novgorod Region) calling for the police to protect them from neo-Nazi gangs that killed three victims in one month. Such crimes do not merit mention in the U.S. news media in today’s violence-rich world.
In one egregious case, in February racists in Moscow cut off the head of a migrant from Kyrgyzstan—not the first such event and, one fears, not the last. Four homeless men allegedly attacked the victim because he was collecting bottles on "their territory" and because they didn't like his "Asian features." They allegedly waited until he was asleep and then cut off his head with a knife. Police say that the suspects have confessed to the crime.
In an alarming case in St. Petersburg, 14 neo-Nazi youths were tried for killing eight people who ranged from a Jewish shop clerk to an internationally known ethnographer, a court expert on extremism. But according to the human rights group Memorial, the trial turned out a showcase for neo-Nazi solidarity. Friends and relatives of the accused arrived at court wearing Nazi paraphernalia. Repeated complaints to bailiffs by lawyers representing victims about the intimidating atmosphere in the court fell on deaf ears.
As in previous years, the authorities failed to bring to justice hundreds of perpetrators of hate crime murders and incitement to hatred. Typically, sentences were short and often suspended. The reluctance to apply the full force of the law was palpable both in the big cities and the provinces. But lately a few trials resulted in convictions, and additional investigations of neo-Nazi gangs are under way. Perhaps the federal center is applying pressure.
VANDALS STRIKE AT CEMETERIES, PLACES OF WORSHIP, AND HOLOCAUST MONUMENTS. Hardly a week passes without swastikas daubed on tombstones and synagogues, fences and walls, as well as affixed on clothing and tattooed on human bodies. Observers speak of a multiplication of cases in 2009. In Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, Jewish and to a lesser extent Muslim cemeteries were vandalized—and the same goes for places of worship. Up to a dozen Holocaust memorials suffered a similar fate. In one unusual incident in May, unidentified individuals crossed out a Star of David with spray paint and painted an "extremist symbol" on a monument to Jewish victims of the Norilsk, Russia (Krasnoyarsk Region) gulag camp. The far-north city was constructed largely by slave labor, and the monument complex commemorates victims of various ethnicities and faiths. In one extreme case, vandals struck on three separate occasions the Jewish section of a cemetery in the Tver Region, damaging a total of 141 gravestones. In July, someone painted swastikas on five Muslim gravestones in Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod Region). So far, police are investigating the incident as a case of vandalism--not a hate crime.
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS REMOVE MENORAH IN MOLDOVAN CAPITAL. The most egregious vandalization of a religious symbol in the former USSR took place in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital. Some 200 fundamentalist Orthodox Christians dismantled a large metal Chanukah menorah on a downtown square and replaced it with a wooden cross in December. News footage showed a bearded priest leading the group in chanting antisemitic slogans. The menorah had been installed by the local Jewish community on Europe Square, and the Orthodox Christian group placed it upside down on Stefan cel Mare Square. Neither police nor onlookers intervened.
"The Jews can try to kill us, to traumatize our children," but Moldovan Orthodox believers will resist, Father Anatoliy Chirbik said, speaking into a sound system. Moldova, he said, is an Orthodox country, and the Jewish people are trying to "dominate people." Allowing the menorah to be set up had been "a sacrilege, an indulgence of state power today," he declared. Justice Minister Alexandru Tanese condemned the removal of the menorah. The Orthodox Metropolitan promised to investigate and take action but the Orthodox Church statement a few days later singled out the Jews for blame. Incitement to racial and religious hatred in Moldova is subject to a fine or imprisonment of up to three years. Prosecutors refused to bring charges against mob members—though their faces were identifiable on the video—claiming that there was “no evidence of a crime.”
MOSCOW MAYOR CHASTIZES POLICE FOR COVERING UP HATE CRIMES. Unexpectedly, Moscow Mayor (and Putin ally) Yuri Luzhkov publicly chastised police and prosecutors for covering up hate crimes. In July, Luzhkov characterized the situation as "unsatisfactory" and "getting worse" with the number of hate crimes in Moscow increasing by several times previous levels. For the first time, Luzhkov addressed a problem that human rights and minority community activists have repeated for years: Law enforcement agencies cover up hate crimes by reporting them as ordinary assaults, murders, or "hooliganism." "Everyone knows that [law enforcement agencies] often don't register crimes motivated by fascism, racism, or ethnic animosity, preferring instead to hide them amidst a mass of other, ordinary crimes," he said. "This is unacceptable."
EDITOR OF ANTISEMITIC NEWSPAPER GETS SLAP ON THE WRIST. In June, the editor of one of Russia's most viciously antisemitic newspapers received a suspended sentence on extremism charges. Moscow's Savelevsky Court gave Yuri Mukhin, editor of "Duel," a suspended sentence of two years imprisonment after finding him guilty of "publicly calling for extremist activity through the media." The charges stemmed from an article in which Mukhin called for "the total destruction of the kike state of Russia" and concluded with the slogan "Death to Russia!" After years of demonizing Jews with impunity, "Duel" was shut down under anti-extremism laws in May month because of the article.
CHIEF RABBI’S ATTACKER FOUND GUILTY OF ‘HOOLIGANISM.’ A court in Sevastopol, Ukraine found a man who attacked the city's chief rabbi in 2007 guilty of "hooliganism" and sentenced him to four years in prison. According to a July 26, 2009 report by the Unian news agency, Roman Shvedov "without any reason went up to citizen B. Volff, asked him insulting questions about his external appearance" and then hit him twice in the head, causing a concussion, and subsequently ripped up his clothes before fleeing the scene, the court found. The court did not come to the obvious conclusion that Shvedov was motivated by hatred of Jews and committed a hate crime, punishable under Ukrainian law by additional prison time on top of what he received on the "hooliganism" charge.
UZHGOROD MAYOR CHARGED WITH INCITING ETHNIC HATRED. Prosecutors charged the mayor of the Ukrainian town of Uzhgorod, Sergey Ratushnyak, with inciting ethnic hatred in an interview in which he used viciously antisemitic rhetoric. In an August 7, 2009 interview with "Ukrainskaya Pravda," he called a presidential candidate with an ethnically Jewish background "an insolent little Jew" who heads a "Masonic" movement and is acting like he is running for "elections to some village council somewhere in Israel." Responding to a complaint from the Jewish Forum of Ukraine, prosecutors charged the mayor with incitement, in addition to the "hooliganism" and "exceeding official authority" charges that he already faced after allegedly beating a female campaigner for a political rival.
LAWMAKER’S HATE SPEECHES REMAIN UNPUNISHED. Sergey Kirichenko, a former deputy in Ukraine’s national parliament, has made a career issuing statements demonizing Jews. “Artificiality and moral corruption are poured through the media controlled by Jewish owners; Jewish directors and screen writers film it, using Jewish actors,” he has been quoted as saying. “The people of Ukraine then get depraved by drugs, alcohol, prostitution, homosexuality, lesbianism, risking rates of homelessness and more and more orphans. Through criminal gambling businesses, they take away our last kopeks.”
Kirichenko has threatened pogroms if the Jews who run Ukraine do not give up power: “I would prefer that a just transfer of power from Jews to non-Jews in Ukraine take place in a civilized and peaceful way. Resisting this natural process would only incite tough consequences, examples of which there are plenty of in history.”
“Mr. Kirichenko has a long history of violating laws against the incitement of ethnic hatred,” said Dr. Leonid Stonov, director of UCSJ’s international bureaus. “He often goes beyond the usual antisemitic rhetoric of the far-right by employing terms like ‘genocide.’ Given the fact that antisemitic violence is a troubling feature of Jewish life in modern day Ukraine, it is clear that such statements are not only in violation of the law, but are also extremely dangerous. We therefore ask the Prosecutor’s Office to begin an investigation into his continual illegal incitement of ethnic hatred.”
2. The Cheka spirit is still alive
PUTIN SETS THE TONE. A strident, threatening official tone for the year 2009 was set by Prime Minister and ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin who warned at a celebration in the Kremlin of the Day of State Security Personnel on December 19, 2008: "Any attempt to weaken or destabilize Russia or to damage the interests of the country or its citizens will be strictly cut short." The following day was the “professional holiday” of state security personnel, marking the day in 1917 when the Bolshevik Revolution created the Cheka, the secret police often renamed in the following decades. Putin said that Russia’s intelligence services "should focus on pre-emptive action, on averting the actual possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia, and on cutting off supply channels from abroad for the bandit underground." Terrorism is still "very serious" threat to Russia, Putin emphasized. Almost as an afterthought, he mentioned religious and ethnic intolerance as yet another danger.
"Russia's interests must be secured by all means available, this is my deep conviction,” President Dmitry Medvedev declared in an interview shown Russia’s main television stations on December 24. “First of all, by international and legal tools ... but, when necessary, by using an element of force."
MEDVEDEV PAYS LIP SERVICE TO REFORMS. Human rights activists urged Medvedev, perceived by some as a closet liberal, to veto a cabinet bill ordering that professional judges--rather than juries--run trials involving terrorism, civil unrest, and several other serious crimes. They also called on Medvedev to block government attempts to impose high treason charges on people accused of "harming the constitutional order," which many critics believe could lead to a witch-hunt. Medvedev failed to respond to the suggestions.
More attacks against human rights activists and journalists in Russia as well as the ongoing violence in southern regions show that little has been done to improve the state of human rights since Medvedev became president, Amnesty International (AI) noted on May 7, in a statement timed to coincide with the first anniversary of Medvedev's inauguration. The new head of state set several goals, AI Secretary-General Irene Khan said. "However, no significant changes are yet visible. Concrete actions are needed to prove that he is doing more than paying lip service to reforms, that his statements amount to more than window dressing."
Along with other international human rights organizations, AI protested the climate of impunity that encourages human rights violations and the kidnappings and torture widespread in the North Caucasus despite the formal end to the federal military action in Chechnya. "Normalization is not possible without full accountability for the grievous human rights violations that have taken place in the region," the statement said.
DEFINITION OF 'CRIME AGAINST THE STATE' EXPANDED. In February, the Duma added seven new articles to the criminal code on the Kremlin’s instructions. One expands the definition of high treason and espionage to include advisory and other assistance to foreign and international organizations; another makes “participating in mass disorders” “a crime against the state." Defendants accused of the new crimes can only be tried by a special court of three judges, not by a jury—a system reminiscent of the Stalin-era “troika courts” that sent millions to the gulag. "This is a very dangerous development," Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, told “Newsweek.” "It returns the Russian justice system to the norms of the 1920s."
POLICE SAY 118,800 PEOPLE PROTESTED IN 407 GATHERINGS IN 72 REGIONS. On February 2, the Interior Ministry announced that police detained 51 people in rallies critical of the government held across Russia. Most were accused of hooliganism, violations of rules of public gatherings, and refusal to obey the police. The ministry stressed that the majority of the detainees were unemployed. According to police, 118,800 people took part in 407 public gatherings during the last weekend in January in 72 Russian regions while 19,300 policemen and 4,600 Internal Troops ensured law and order. "Law and public order were fully maintained," the ministry added.
RUSSIAN INTELLECTUALS PROTEST ABUSE OF ANTI-EXTREMISM LAWS. In an open letter dated March 3, 25 prominent Russian writers, lawyers, and human rights activists appealed to Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to stop using anti-extremism laws to persecute those who express "perfectly legal" criticism of the government. The letter said that Chaika's subordinates read President Medvedev's call for combating extremism as a directive to carry out a struggle against those who think differently. The signatories averred that the kind of criticism normal in a democratic society is perceived by Russian prosecutors as incitement of ethnic hatred and thus deserving of punishment under the Criminal Code.
3. Murders, beatings, persecutions, and harassments
HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER, JOURNALIST GUNNED DOWN IN CENTRAL MOSCOW. The new year’s first political assassination occurred on January 19. Stanislav Markelov, 34, a lawyer who fought against the early release of a Russian army colonel convicted of murdering a Chechen woman of 18, was shot and killed in broad daylight a short walk from the Kremlin. Trying to shield Markelov from the gunman, Anastasia Baburova, 25, a freelance reporter for the liberal newspaper "Novaya Gazeta," was shot in the head and died. A journalism student at Moscow State University, she had written about neo-Nazis and human rights abuses. The gunman escaped. Though in November police detained a man who confessed to the crime, doubts persist that he was indeed the murderer. The identity of the mastermind behind the murders remains unknown.
HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATE PONOMARYOV BRUTALLY BEATEN. In April, a group of men attacked human rights activist and former member of parliament Lev Ponomaryov, 67, in his apartment building and beaten unconscious. "Such actions are not just the outlet for evil emotions. They are meant to scare people," Sergei Kovalyov, chairman of Memorial said and suggested that “the authorities have something to do with creating this kind of atmosphere in the country."
PRISONERS’ ADVOCATE FOUND DEAD AND NEO-NAZIS KILL ANTI-FASCIST. Andrei Kulagin, regional director of a non-profit group “Justice” in the Republic of Karelia, disappeared on May 14 and his body was found in a quarry in July. His colleagues called him "a fierce advocate for the humane treatment of prisoners." On June 28, a group of neo-Nazis stabbed and shot anti-fascist activist Ilya Dzhaparidze in Moscow. To date, police have made no arrest in connection with either killing.
RUSSIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST MURDERED IN INGUSHETIA. On July 15, armed men abducted Natalya Estemirova, 50, in front of her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital. She was found dead of gunshots nearly 50 miles away, in the North Caucasus Republic of Ingushetia. A teacher and journalist, Estemirova devoted herself to human rights advocacy at the Memorial human rights center and the European Parliament honored her work in 2005. The murder prompted international outrage. President Medvedev responded more swiftly than the Kremlin had in other recent killings of its critics. He condemned the killing, offered condolences, and ordered the nation's top investigative official to "take all necessary measures" to solve the crime. The White House called on Russia to "bring to justice those responsible for this outrageous crime and demonstrate that lawlessness and impunity will not be tolerated."
Estemirova had ignored death threats and collected evidence with a persistence that infuriated local leaders, including Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a former warlord accused of participating in beatings and torture. “The Washington Post" called her “the latest of several Kadyrov foes to turn up dead" and recalled three others within a year. Lev Ponomaryov of the Moscow-based group For Human Rights charged that "the authorities, or those interested in pleasing the authorities" were behind the slaying. To date, there has been no progress reported in the Estemirova case.
TWO HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS MURDERED IN CHECHNYA. On August 11 in Chechnya, the bullet-ridden bodies of human rights defender Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov were found in the trunk of a car, hours after they were kidnapped from the office of the “Save the Generations” charity in the regional capital Grozny. The European Union’s (EU) president Sweden promptly condemned the murderers and called on Russian authorities to investigate the latest murders “promptly, transparently, and thoroughly. The perpetrators must be brought to justice. … The EU urges the Russian authorities to do everything in their power to ensure the protection of human rights defenders." To date, no progress has been reported in the case.
MEDVEDEV ORDERS PROBE OF LAWYER MAGNITSKY’S DEATH IN JAIL. On November 24, President Medvedev ordered a probe into the November 16 death in prison of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, 37. An advocate of transparency in Russian business dealings, Magnitsky had been involved in a case charging high-ranking Interior Ministry officials with corruption. He was arrested in November 2008 on tax-evasion charges linked to his work with Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest investment fund in Russia. Human rights activists blame the inhumane prison system and many charge murder. Responding to charges of criminal neglect of Magnitsky’s health problems while in jail, Medvedev dismissed 20 top prison officials. The investigation he ordered is still on.
HUMAN RIGHTS LEADERS APPEAL TO MEDVEDEV. In August, Russian human rights leaders protested the rising levels of persecution of human rights organizations and urged Russian leaders to change the atmosphere in which nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are working in the country. "We are forced to appeal because of the direct threat to the operation of human rights campaigners and organizations in Russia," said the appeal addressed to President Medvedev and signed by veterans of the human rights community, including Moscow Helsinki Group chair Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Civic Assistance Committee Svetlana Gannushkina, and leader of the movement For Human Rights, Lev Ponomaryov. Attacks on human rights activists have become more frequent, the appeal pointed out, and charged with responsibility “circles that are extremely annoyed with human rights campaigners' commitment to the principle of universality of humanitarian and democratic values, with their unwillingness to hush up flagrant and systematic violations by officials and authorities of the basic human and civil rights and freedoms."
BOSS OF KREMLIN-CREATED YOUTH GROUP THREATENS HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATE. In September, a prominent Russian human rights activist went underground out of fear for his safety, after an article he wrote on the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime sparked death threats. 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. Members of the Kremlin-created youth group “Nashi” picketed his house and some of them threatened his life.
DOZENS DETAINED AT 'MARCH OF DISSENT' IN MOSCOW. During 2009, police detentions of opposition activists became routine. Local authorities found pretexts not to issue permits for rallies and when the rallies were held regardless, the riot police Omon dispersed, often brutally, those assembled and detained dozens of participants. On December 31 at Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, for instance, Omon detained veteran dissenter Lyudmila Alexeyeva, 82, prompting protest by the U.S. State Department. The aim of the gathering was to remind authorities that Article 31 of the Constitution gives citizens the right to hold mass gatherings.
ST. PETERSBURG POLICE HARASS OPPOSITION. In a clear abuse of anti-extremism legislation, St. Petersburg police are systematically harassing members of the liberal opposition Yabloko party, one of Russia's oldest political parties which until recently was represented in the State Duma, according to the independent "Novaya Gazeta" in April. Police are calling Yabloko members, telling them that their names appear on a list of "extremists" and ordering them to come to the station to be fingerprinted and photographed. Under Russian law, nobody can be ordered to appear at a police station unless they have been detained or if police have started a criminal case against them.
STATE DUMA MEMBERS ATTACK NGOS. United Russia members of parliament leveled accusations more frequently against NGOs operating in Russia, said the leader of the oldest Russian human rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alexeyeva. "They seem to be seeking both a foreign and an internal enemy, other than to attend to real problems," Alexeyeva said in March. "This old idea is obvious: they seek to convince our citizens that foreign enemies are to blame for all problems, the 'world backstage' [coded language for antisemitic conspiracy] and the fifth column inside Russia. In their view, the fifth column does not include, for example, fascists and skinheads, but it does include democrats, and opposition and NGO activists."
At one State Duma session in March, United Russia MP Sergei Zheleznyak said that recently "independent NGOs have intensified their work seeking to use social protests under conditions of the world financial crisis in order to destabilize the domestic political situation."
IN KAZAKHSTAN, HUMAN RIGHTS LEADER IMPRISONED. In August, the State Department and the U.S. Helsinki Committee endorsed UCSJ’s appeal to Kazakhstan to release Eugene Zhovtis, director of the country’s first human rights organization since 1993, who was tried and convicted in a criminal case. UCSJ, that helped Zhovtis to launch his group, suggested that the regime took its revenge for his human rights activities. He is serving his four-year sentence in a labor camp. The trial was based on a traffic accident in which Zhovtis accidentally killed a pedestrian. The court ignored an expert's conclusion that Zhovtis did not violate traffic rules and was not drunk.
4. Russian journalists harassed
RUSSIA RANKS LOW IN PRESS FREEDOM RATING. In terms of media freedom, Russia ranked 170th, followed by Sudan and Yemen, in the 195-country rating by the New York-based Freedom House. The annual report for 2009 described the Russian press as "unfree" and getting worse with every passing year. Back in 2002, Russia was rated "partially free." The report charged the Kremlin with using "the country's politicized and corrupt criminal justice system to harass and prosecute independent journalists.” Journalists were dragged into dozens of criminal cases and hundreds of civil cases, particularly in retaliation for reporting on the Other Russia opposition group. Police officers in Samara and Nizhny Novgorod raided the regional bureaus of the independent Moscow newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” and confiscated their computers, while prosecutors opened politicized criminal cases relating to alleged software piracy.
In July, the rubber-stamp parliament approved amendments to the criminal code expanding the country's vague anti-extremism laws, which are used to suppress critics of the Kremlin and encourage self-censorship. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the Moscow-based radio station Ekho Moskvy received more than a dozen warnings from prosecutors, media regulators, and the Federal Security Service for broadcasting allegedly “extremist” statements. Freedom House and the Western press point out that Russian journalists remain unable to cover the news freely, particularly contentious topics such as human rights abuses in the North Caucasus, government corruption, organized crime, elections, and police torture. In a typical incident in March, police in Nizhny Novgorod detained nine local journalists and foreign correspondents and assaulted three of them as they covered an opposition rally. According to the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, during a crackdown on opposition demonstrations in April in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Samara, more than 70 journalists were detained or beaten. More than 15 Russian journalists covering political issues requested asylum abroad since Vladimir Putin became president nine years ago, said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center. The Committee to Protect Journalists listed the cases of 17 journalists murdered since 2000. In only one case have the killers been punished and only Iraq and Algeria are more dangerous for journalists to report from.
5. A far-right campaign that fizzled out
NEO-NAZIS ATTACK POLICE IN THREE CITIES AND THREATEN MORE VIOLENCE. In response to a "Day of Anger" campaign promoted by far-right web sites marking Adolf Hitler’s April 20 birthday, neo-Nazis committed several crimes in Moscow and other cities. In addition to their usual targets of ethnic minorities, the campaign called for attacks on police and other government officials--a red line that even the most extreme among the Russian far-right had up till then been reluctant to cross. One of the web sites, set up to honor the religiously significant 40th day after the suicide in prison of a neo-Nazi leader, called for his comrades to mark the anniversary on May 5 in the following manner: "Kill, blow up, destroy, smash, beat, stab, write slogans on the walls, do what you have to do, but in the name of your comrades, don't sit there and do nothing!"
But in the months to come, neo-Nazi violence, feared by many in Russia, stayed on the same level and attacked their usual targets, and refrained from attacking the police and the government.
6. In the EU, far-right gains votes and engages in more violence
THE FAR RIGHT RISES ACROSS THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT. Human rights activists have warned of a proliferation of far-right groups across Europe and the former Soviet space as the economic crisis fueled support for extremist movements. According to analyst Pavol Stracansky writing from Bratislava, Slovakia, human rights activists that more and more far-right groups are becoming "paramilitary," carrying out violent attacks on Roma and other ethnic or religious minorities, while extreme right-wing political parties see a surge in voter support. While historical antipathy toward minority groups, such as Jews and Roma, was suppressed under communism, Stracansky noted, the hard-line regimes fostered an atmosphere of suspicion toward foreigners which, when communism fell, continued and focused on immigrants. Then with the subsequent freedom of speech and travel, right-wing extremist ideology spread from western countries to the east in the 1990s, giving a boost to right- wing movements.
HUNGARIAN FAR-RIGHT MARCHES WITH PALESTINIAN ‘ALLIES.’ On January 10, marching across the streets of Budapest, up to 1,000 protesters chanted in unison: “Long live Palestine, perish Israel” and “Zionist murderers,” while individual participants shouted traditional antisemitic epithets. Far-right Hungarian nationalists demanding a recapture of territories lost to neighbors in World War I invented a new slogan, printed across the map of historic Greater Hungary: “Together we will regain our land.” The implication was clear to Hungarians, regardless of their views on the subject of the Gaza war: Palestinians resolved to conquer all of Palestine are the allies of Hungarian irredentists.
SUSPECTED KILLERS OF 6 HUNGARIAN ROMA ARRESTED. In August, Hungarian police arrested four men suspected of murdering a total of six Roma in a carefully planned series of attacks over the previous 13 months. "The execution of the attacks was characterized by strategic planning and professional experience in arms use," said a top investigator.
IN 9 EU STATES, FAR-RIGHT GAINS SEATS IN EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT. The June 4-7 elections to the European Parliament produced a surge in far-right strength in nine out of the EU’s 27 member states: the Netherlands, Romania, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the UK. The far-right saw its biggest drop in Poland. While in 2004, 16 of its deputies were elected, the count in 2009 is zero.
7. U.S. interventions on the top
URGED BY U.S. CONGRESSONAL GROUP, LUKASHENKO FREES ZELTSER. At the urging of Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), chair of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) heading a seven-member Congressional delegation to Minsk, on June 30 Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed documents freeing American prisoner Emanuel Zeltser. Convicted of espionage in a secret trial, New York attorney Zeltser was in a Belarus prison since March 2008. Deprived of his medications, his life was at risk. The Helsinki Commission, along with the State Department, UCSJ, and other organizations, had repeatedly called for his release. "We welcome the release of Emanuel Zeltser on humanitarian grounds," Cardin said. "However, we made it clear to President Lukashenko that the only way to improve the relationship between our countries is for him to increase political freedom and respect for human rights."
OBAMA'S TACTFUL PRAISE FOR DISSENT. On his first trip to Moscow as president, Barack Obama would have undoubtedly pleased Prime Minister Putin by dropping the idea of meeting with oppositionists and human rights activists. Apparently, such an option was not under serious consideration. But during the nearly 90 minute round-table discussion with eight handpicked opposition politicians in the Ritz Carlton hotel, Obama was more diplomatic than cordial, stressing the need for humility rather than dispensing advice. "I think in the past there's been a tendency for the United States to lecture rather than to listen," Obama said. Nevertheless, he did put in a tactful reference to the value of dissent. "[To] not simply tolerate dissenting voices but also to respect and recognize [them]" helped solidify the U.S. government "during some very difficult times," he said.
Boris Nemtsov, co-director of the Solidarity movement opposed to Putin and Medvedev, reminded Obama "for America's leadership, free speech and democracy are basic values, but for ours it is censorship and the total monopoly of power. Liberating Russia from this corrupt bureaucracy is not Obama's obligation, it is ours. This is our battle. Nevertheless, as the president of the biggest democracy in the world, he has to speak about democracy. And President Obama did so in a clear way."
The cause of human rights and democracy remained on the sidelines during the summit, as Obama priority was the establishment of solid relationships with Russia's two leaders. But Obama did tell business leaders from both countries that Russia and the United States should promote transparency and the rule of law to ensure economic growth and investment. "Our fortunes are linked and yet so much potential remains untapped," Obama said, urging more trade between the two countries. He said he wanted trade between Russia and the United States to rise from current levels of about $36 billion a year which "is only about 1% of all our trade with the world and virtually unchanged since the Cold War."
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