Moscow (AsiaNews) – “We could not stand by and watch, we had to take the side of the people”. This, according to members of the local clergy, is the underlying reason that moved all the main Christian Churches in Ukraine to take to the streets in recent months of anti-government protest, not only in support of the […]
‘It was worth living in this country to experience Maidan’
Wearing a kasket cap instead of a kippah in public is a typical Jewish look – this young man could pass as a teacher of national-religious yeshiva, and yet – he is one of the key people in a complex defense system of Maidan and the barricades on Hrushevskoho Street. For understandable reasons, he has […]
YIVO, Lithuania, and Lies About the Holocaust
by Olga Zabludoff Nobody could love or respect the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research more than I do. It was founded as the Yiddish Scientific Institute in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1925. YIVO remains a symbol for all who cherish our Yiddish heritage and, now, its last prewar survivors. Through the years I […]
Russia Hate on Rise — But Not Against Jews
Bigotry and Violence Aimed at Gay Men and Central Asians by Paul Berger Just three weeks before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, two dozen Russian reporters, photographers and cameramen squeezed into the spartan first-floor office of the Independent Press Center in Moscow, a five-minute walk from the capital’s main Orthodox church, […]
‘I know tomorrow will be my last day’: Uncovering Soviet Jewry’s Holocaust experience
by Smadar Shir For years the Soviet Jewry’s Holocaust was a forbidden secret. Now, through letters found in archives, Yad Vashem is working to make the voices silenced behind the Iron Curtain heard “To my dear brother, our city Priluki was taken over quite suddenly and very quickly by the German occupiers. My brother […]
Ban Ki-moon condemns persecution of gay people in Russia
The United Nations secretary-general has used a speech ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi to condemn attacks on the LGBT community, amid growing criticism of Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” laws. Ban Ki-moon, addressing the IOC before Friday’s opening ceremony, highlighted the fact that the theme of the UN’s human rights day last December was “sport comes out against homophobia”. […]
Russia: Sochi Games Highlight Homophobic Violence
Human Rights Watch (Moscow) – The Russian authorities need to address a deteriorating situation of widespread and concerted abuse against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and activists. The authorities’ failure to act and some officials’ homophobic comments expose LGBT people to further harassment and violence and embolden the attackers, Human Rights Watch research found. As […]
Russian Orthodox Church gets increasingly political – experts
by Lyudmila Alexandrova MOSCOW, February 03. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Orthodox Church has become more politicized, say experts as they look back on the five years the ROC has been led by its current head, the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill. Although views of Kirill’s activities in that capacity differ, nobody calls in question […]
Open Address to the Jews of the World
Over the last month there had been a total of three attacks on worshipers attending a Podil synagogue in Kyiv. Two were unsuccessful, one left its victim, a yeshiva student, wounded. The modus operandi and the circumstances leave us no doubt as to who is the culprit. It is certainly not a spontaneous upsurge of […]
AJC: Ukraine Crackdown Seeks to Suffocate Pro-Europe Movement
NEW YORK, Feb. 2, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — AJC applauds U.S. and EU support for Ukrainians protesting against their increasingly repressive government. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, addressing the Munich Security Conference, condemned the Ukrainian government crackdown on demonstrators gathered in central Kiev. The latest outrages involve the kidnapping and torture of leading Ukrainian […]